Free Wings by Danielle Steel Page B

with her skill, of which there could be no question. She was a thousand times the pilot her brother was, a thousand times the pilot most people he had taught were. But they had to convince Fat of that, and they both knew that wasn't going to be easy.
    “Couldn't you tell him you're giving someone lessons out here. He doesn't have to know it's me. Then you'd have an excuse to take her out whenever you want to.”
    “And where's the money, miss? I wouldn't want your dad to think I'm cheating him.” They took a cut on each other's profits, when they used each other's planes, or sometimes if Nick took charters or taught on time he would have otherwise used flying for O'Malley.
    Cassie looked crestfallen at this. “Maybe I could pay you… a little bit from my savings…” She started to look seriously worried and Nick touched the bright red hair and ruffled it.
    “Don't worry. I'll get her out. We'll do plenty of this. I promise.” Cassie smiled gently up at him, and his heart did a little flip. It was all the payment he needed.
    He helped her step from the plane, and noticed that there was a shady tree nearby. “Did you bring anything to eat?” She nodded, and they went to sit under it. She shared her sandwich with him, and he shared his Coca-Cola. He drank a lot of it, and unlike Pat, who liked a good whiskey now and then, Nick had never been much of a drinker. He spent too much time in the air to be able to afford to do much drinking. He was always getting hauled out of bed for an emergency somewhere, or a special mail flight, or a long distance cargo flight for anywhere from Mexico to Alaska. He couldn't have flown those runs if he'd been unexpectedly drunk or even hung over. And Pat was careful too. He never drank if he knew he'd be flying.
    They talked about flying for a long time, and her family, and how much they had meant to him when he first came to Illinois. He said he had come out from New York just to work for her father.
    “He was good to me during the war… I was such a kid… I was a damn fool too. I'm glad you'll never have to get into something like that, dueling it out at ten thousand feet with a bunch of crazy Germans. It was almost like a game, sometimes it was hard to remember it was real… it was so damn exciting.” His eyes shone as he talked about it. For many of them, it had been the perfect time, and everything afterward had paled in comparison. Sometimes she thought her father felt that way, and she suspected Nick did.
    “It must make everything else seem awfully dull… flying the Jenny… or cargo runs to California in the Handley can't exactly be exciting.”
    “No, it's not. But it's comfortable. It's where I need to be. I never feel as good on the ground, Cass, crazy as that sounds. That's my life up there.” He glanced up at the sky as he said it. “It's what I do well,” he sighed, and leaned back against the tree trunk where they were sitting, “the rest of it, I'm not so good at.”
    “Like what?” She was curious about him; she had known him all her life, but he had always heated her as a child, and now that they were sharing the secret of her flying, for the first time, they seemed almost equals.
    “I don't know. I'm not so great at marriage, people… friends… except other pilots and the guys I work with.”
    “You've always been great to us.” She smiled innocently up at him, and he marveled at how young seventeen was.
    “That's different. You're my family. But I don't know… sometimes it's hard to relate to people who don't fly, it's hard to understand them, harder for them to understand me… particularly women.” He grinned. It didn't bother him. It was the way his life was, and he was satisfied with it. There were ground people, those confined to earth, in their bodies and minds… and then there were the others.
    “What about Bobby?” he asked her unexpectedly. He knew about her boyfriend. He had seen him often enough at the house when he stopped by there