Читать книгу: «Blue Skies»

Praise for the novels of
ROBYN CARR

“Robyn Carr provides readers [with] a powerful, thought-provoking work of contemporary fiction.”

—Midwest Book Review on Deep in the Valley

“Carr offers a well-written, warm-hearted story and a genuinely fun read.”

—Publishers Weekly on The House on Olive Street

“You’re in for a fun surprise—just wait and see who walks down the aisle. Don’t miss this zany wedding.”

—Catherine Coulter on The Wedding Party

“A remarkable storyteller…”

—Library Journal

“A warm, wonderful book about women’s friendships, love and family. I adored it!”

—Susan Elizabeth Phillips on The House on Olive Street

“Readers who enjoy books about small-town life…will also enjoy reading about the good folks of Grace Valley.”

—Booklist on Down by the River

“A delightfully funny novel.”

—Midwest Book Review on The Wedding Party

Blue Skies

Robyn Carr

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Jim, the strongest and kindest man I know.

And for the good people of National Airlines.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The commercial airline industry is close to my heart. My husband has spent over twenty years as a pilot and executive in the business. He is now with his fourth airline—and two of them were start-ups. It is a business so competitive and unpredictable that it takes very special, very courageous people to get an airline off the ground and keep it flying.

The people in this edgy, exciting industry are nothing short of awesome. They can vie for each other’s passengers with cutthroat enthusiasm, but when there’s an emergency or disaster, this is an industry that becomes a small town in which everyone helps everyone else. You can count on airline people.

Needless to say, I have had the privilege to know the brightest and the best in the industry—my friends for life—so everything I needed to know to set a story against the backdrop of this fabulous industry was at my fingertips. I’ve taken a few liberties with minor details for the sake of storytelling, and the characters are all entirely fictional, but hopefully this world of a start-up airline rings true enough.

There is one gentleman I’d like to tell you about. Michael J. Conway, president and CEO of the former National Airlines, and before that America West Airlines, is one of the most remarkable leaders I have known. I watched him take money out of his own wallet to give to a ramp worker who was waiting for a paycheck before buying his required steel-toed boots. “Buy them now,” Conway said. He encouraged a vice president to send his secretary home to take care of her desperately handicapped baby and paid her salary for whatever work she could manage at home. Mike Conway pulled strings to send a flight attendant to spend twenty-four hours with her soldier husband in Kuwait during Desert Storm, arranged free passage for veterans to Washington, D.C., for Memorial Day remembrances and was the creator of the policy of sick leave that went like this: You’re sick? We’ll pay you till you’re well, no matter how long it takes.

But the events of 9/11, unsurprisingly, brought out his best. National Airlines, once profitable and successful, had been feeling the strain of a troubled economy and rising fuel prices. Dealing with a country terrified to fly, Mike Conway put the seats on sale for $1.00 one day a week for a month. Getting the country back in the air was the most important thing, because it was the right thing to do. He was not discouraged, nor did he change his plans when the chairmen of other commercial airlines refused to participate. And on every single one of those flights—full flights—Mike Conway and all of his corporate officers flew along, one on every flight, and thanked the people for being there, for supporting the commercial aviation industry and the United States.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

One

Nikki stood at the grave of her ex-husband and thought, This is the last way I expected to get custody.

Beside her was her fourteen-year-old daughter, April, quietly weeping. On Nikki’s other side, eleven-year-old Jared stared straight ahead, stoic. Nikki could sense her father, Buck, towering behind them. He would be scowling, she knew. Buck had hated Drake Cameron and probably considered his death just one more thing Drake had screwed up. Next to April stood Nikki’s mother, and Buck’s ex-wife, Opal, seriously soaking a hanky. Tucked into the crook of her arm was her fluffy white poodle, Precious, who was not. Opal had liked Drake very much; she probably thought marrying him had been one of the few things Nikki had done right. Opal was one to appreciate money and pedigree, both of which she believed Drake had.

Only forty-seven, Drake had appeared to be at the peak of health. Nikki couldn’t remember when he’d last had a head cold. Yet April had come home from school and found him facedown on the floor in his bathrobe, apparently dead since morning. The medical examiner’s preliminary finding was massive coronary.

About fifty mourners gathered at the cemetery in the quickly rising heat of a late May morning in Phoenix. Most were lawyers and secretaries from the firm that had employed Drake, a tax law specialist. The only one of them Nikki knew was his secretary, Mona, who had been with him for at least ten years, long before the divorce. Nikki had had to tangle with her every time she tried to make arrangements with Drake regarding the kids. A most unpleasant woman.

A couple of teachers from April’s school had also come, as well as Jared’s principal and one of the soccer coaches. A small knot of teenagers—April’s friends—stood slightly off to one side, trying not to get too close to the adults.

It was not a big crowd. Like Nikki, Drake was an only child. His parents were deceased, and his rigid, domineering nature meant he didn’t have a lot of friends. It was hard to cozy up to someone who insisted on control at any price. And then there was that business about grudges. Drake’s anger had great stamina; he could stay mad forever.

Somewhere in the gathering were Nikki’s two closest friends, Dixie McPherson and Carlisle Bartlett. Both were flight attendants at Aries Airlines, where Nikki was a pilot. They had worked together for the past ten years, starting when the company was still fairly new and small, and over the years there had been many times they’d have been lost without one another. Like now. Although Dixie and Carlisle were both involved in serious relationships, Nikki had been on her own since the divorce. Oddly, as she looked down at the black earth that would cover her dead ex-husband, an arm around each of her children, she felt less alone now.

The mourners filed past Nikki and the kids. “So sorry,” they murmured. “He’ll be missed.” Or, “Hang in there, kids. Try to remember the good times you had with your dad.” April excused herself and went to join her friends, who immediately embraced her. Jared’s friends were probably considered too young by their parents to attend.

Nikki shook hands and thanked each person, but Opal accepted condolences as though Drake were her son, inviting everyone back to Drake’s house for refreshments. Dixie and Carlisle waited till the last person had left, and April bid her friends goodbye and returned to Nikki’s side.

“How’re you holding up?” Dixie asked, while Carlisle simply filled his arms with April and Jared.

“She’s doing very well, aren’t you, Nicole?” Opal replied for her. Precious snarled.

“I’m doing okay. Are you coming over to the house?”

Before Dixie could answer, April pulled herself free of Carlisle’s arms and, tears in her voice, asked, “Do we have to just keep doing this? Over and over and over?”

Nikki couldn’t imagine her pain. The kids had had a hard time with their dad, but they had loved him. The hell of it was, she thought as she looked at Opal, you loved your parents even when you hated them. As for Jared, he just stared out at nothing, his detachment as troubling as April’s tears.

“Oh, April,” Opal said. “People are going to be there, sweet. It’s the proper thing to do. Say a few kind words about the departed…offer sympathy…And your friends will be there.”

“No, they won’t, Grandma. I told them not to come.”

“But we invited—”

“So? Do we have to?”

“It’s your house, April,” Nikki interjected. “I think Grandma’s just trying to do the right thing….”

“What a pain,” Jared muttered, giving the ground a kick.

“We don’t want to seem rude,” Opal said.

Buck grunted and turned away, heading for his car.

This whole reception thing her mother had planned was not for Opal, Nikki realized, and certainly not for herself. It was for April and Jared. And if they didn’t want to do this…

“Um, guys,” she said to Dixie and Carlisle, “can you take my mother to the house? We’re going to beg off. I’ll see you later.”

“Thatta girl,” Carlisle cheered.

“Nicole! You can’t do that!”

“Of course I can, Mother. We’ll be along later. Come on, kids. I have an idea.”

With an arm around each, she walked them right past the funeral parlor’s limo to her car.

Nikki had been born thirty-nine years before and named Nicole Evelyn Burgess. At that time, Buck Burgess was a twenty-seven-year-old aviator who worked a lot of part-time jobs. He dusted crops, flew cargo, gave lessons, took charters, sometimes buzzed the Grand Canyon. He also pumped gas, washed planes, swept out hangars, turned a wrench here and there—anything to be around the small municipal airport just outside Phoenix, Arizona. On the day of her birth he bought a twenty-year-old Stearman biplane and christened her the Jazzie One. It was the first plane Nikki learned to fly.

A few years later, rather than buying his wife jewelry or a larger house or new car, he bought into the fixed-base operation at the airport and became a partner. Still later, after Opal left him for a man without engine grease under his nails, Buck bought the rest of the operation. It then became Burgess Aviation and the place where Nikki grew up, because when Opal left Buck, she also left Nikki. “I’m not an idiot,” she had said. “I know Nikki will be happier with you.”

Although that was true, Nikki had been only nine at the time, and she felt as if her whole life had fallen apart. If not for the flying, she’d have been lost.

So that was where Nikki took her kids after the funeral—to Papa’s airport. Buck was already there and helped her unleash the Jazzie One from her anchors.

“Me first, Mom,” April said. “Please?”

Through the whole miserable ordeal of Drake’s death, this one thing lifted Nikki’s heart, that April would reach for the sky in an effort to come to terms with her grief. April was okay with flying and knew how. She could hardly escape it with her grandfather the owner of a large and successful fixed-base operation and her mother a Boeing 767 captain. But she didn’t love it the way Nikki did, or Buck and Jared, so her eagerness was all the more precious to Nikki.

She’d take the kids out for a few loops over the desert, a little wild-horse chasing up where it was cool blue and clean and quiet. In all the tough times of her life—whether she’d been stood up for the Homecoming dance or going through a divorce—nothing could breathe new life into Nikki like the sun and wind on her face and the music of the biplane wires as she soared through the sky.

The instant she had traded her dark blue funeral suit and pumps for the mechanic’s overalls and boots that she kept in a locker at the airport, Nikki had felt instantly more like herself. She’d found some sweats and tennis shoes in the same locker for April to use. Her daughter had sniffed them suspiciously and made a face, but she donned them quickly enough.

Nikki then fastened the leather flying helmet on April’s head, pulling back her daughter’s pretty blond hair to adjust the helmet over the earplugs attached to April’s portable CD player. God, but the girl was beautiful, all pale flawless skin, large, luminous blue eyes and thick dusty-black lashes that fell softly against her cheeks as she glanced down. She had inherited her father’s Nordic good looks and lean, sturdy body. Jared, freckled and already broad-shouldered, took after Nikki and Buck.

April climbed into the front of the Stearman, and Nikki into the back, while Buck stood ready on the tarmac with Jared. Nikki could have taken up the Bonanza or Cessna and had both kids in the air together, but flying outside with the wind on your face was so much more therapeutic.

She flipped a couple of switches, pulled the throttle back and yelled, “Contact!” Buck turned the prop, the plane sputtered, the engine caught, and they rumbled out to the runway. In just moments Nikki could feel that familiar lurch as the Jazzie One lifted off the ground and began to soar. Up. Up. Up.

How ironic, she thought. This was where she’d met Drake. She’d fallen in love with him in the Stearman, or at least thought she had. She’d worked at getting over him in the Stearman, and now she was burying his memory in the same plane, flying over the same old ground.

Fifteen years ago, Nikki was a petite and sexy twenty-four year old with boundless energy, working for her dad at Burgess Aviation. She was a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with a degree in aerospace engineering, sigma cum laude. Plus, she could fly the hell out of just about any plane she climbed into. And she was in love with Paul, whom she had dated for a couple of years and expected to marry. They were both pilots looking for work in commercial aviation.

Paul got hired by Delta, left Phoenix to fly out of Dallas, met a flashy young flight attendant and broke up with Nikki over the phone. And that was when her life began to fall apart for the second time.

Her heart empty and aching, she took notice of a good-looking young lawyer who had signed up for flying lessons at Burgess. Drake was thirty-two and almost unbearably handsome. Nikki used to watch him when he went out with his instructor, but she didn’t speak to him until the day she found him waiting for her, leaning against the hangar doors and looking devilishly sexy. “What would it cost me to have a ride in that thing?” he asked, pointing to the Stearman she’d just landed.

She shrugged. He looked like an even bigger risk than Paul, and she wasn’t about to take that kind of chance again. Casually, she answered, “A cup of coffee?”

He grinned at her. “Say when!”

There were warning bells going off all over the place, but Nikki didn’t pay much attention because after Paul, she wasn’t about to take any chances on a guy, even if she was miserably lonely. She just loved an excuse to fly. “How about right now?”

It happened without her realizing it. Disinterested and detached as she was, she must have appeared a real challenge, because Drake wooed her vigorously. He flattered, showered her with attention, brought her gifts and flowers. Slowly she began to forget that Paul had ripped her heart out and handed it to her. With every ride she gave him in the biplane, she let go a little more and thought, what the hell? You only live once. The first time he kissed her, she felt hot and wild, and when he touched her breast she nearly died. In less than six months, she was pregnant and had married him. Not some of her best planning.

Drake never did get the knack of flying and gave up the notion in no time. It didn’t take long before Nikki realized what a terrible mistake she’d made. He was impossible to please. He needled her about everything from her feeble housekeeping skills to her figure, which he found lacking, and he was furious at her refusal to take the name Cameron. But she was Nikki Burgess and planned to always be Nikki Burgess.

Had it not been for her father, things might have been worse. Buck, sweet old thing that he was, could look very threatening. In size alone he was intimidating. And he had not liked Drake from the first. Had Drake dared to so much as lay a hand on Nikki or the kids, Buck might have killed him.

She should have run for her life the moment she heard scorn in Drake’s voice…but she was so stubborn. Plus, there was April. And as every abused and unhappy wife knew, once you stayed past the time you should’ve gone, you ended up staying far too long.

“Get out and don’t look back,” Buck kept saying.

“I’m sure you’re being far too particular,” said Opal. “After all, he makes a nice living.”

It took her eleven years of unhappiness to leave him and she had no idea how high a price she’d have to pay.

Determined not to go quietly, Drake fought her every step of the way, right down to custody. Ultimately the issue came down to work. Nikki’s job as a pilot for Aries Airlines took her out of town for three to four days a week; Drake’s hours were nine to five, more or less, no nights away from the kids. It was very easy for his lawyer to convince a judge that Drake should have custodial guardianship and Nikki unlimited visitation. That meant she could spend as much time with the kids as she could manage to negotiate with Drake, which she quickly learned would be very challenging. And she paid child support.

She had moved in with Buck to save money. For four years she had done everything possible to be involved with the kids’ education and activities, though Drake put tremendous energy into screwing up their plans. Being divorced from him was nearly as emotionally draining as being married to him.

Nikki had only vague memories of that twenty-four-year-old hotshot, sexy pilot she’d once been—one hundred and fifteen pounds soaking wet, cheeks aglow and eyes sparkling with excitement and hope. She used to like what she saw in the mirror, but now she found that the woman staring back was plain of looks, her reddish brown hair dull, her figure shot and her eyes tired. She wondered if she would ever feel good about herself again. And as for having a loving relationship with a man who adored her…

Nikki pulled back on the stick, causing the biplane to soar upward, invert and execute a big loop. She might feel ordinary on the ground, but up here she was a goddess. Drake had done everything to make her feel dumpy and unattractive, but up here she felt sleek and quick and sexy. They had stopped having sex a long time before she left him; he said she just didn’t do anything for him. But up here she was fast and hot and wild…

Thirty minutes or so later, Nikki landed the Stearman and taxied over to where Buck and Jared stood waiting. As April threw a leg over the side of the plane, she pulled off her leather helmet and shook out her hair. Nikki could see the dried streaks of tears on her chapped cheeks. April leaned toward her mom. “He wasn’t real warm and fuzzy, but he wasn’t a bad guy,” she said. “Daddy worked really hard, sometimes all through the night. He meant well, you know. He just had his…you know…issues.”

The kids had loved their father, even though they had struggled with his sometimes arbitrary discipline and negative nature. And he had loved them. She was going to have to remind herself of that, make an effort not to malign the poor, dead, selfish bastard. “I know, honey,” she said. “I know.”

Fifteen crappy years of Drake, and because he’d given her two of the most awesome gifts a woman could ever want…April and Jared…she didn’t dare indulge in regret.

Buck watched as his daughter took the Stearman up again, this time with Jared aboard. He couldn’t shake the sensation that he had failed her, although he also couldn’t imagine what he’d have done differently. He couldn’t make Opal stay with them, couldn’t change what had happened with Paul, couldn’t keep Nikki from marrying Drake.

But she shouldn’t have grown up at an airport with a bunch of guys who could teach her how to change points and plugs but didn’t have a clue when it came to fixing her hair or putting on lipstick. So what if she could fly like a bird—she should have had someone other than a crusty old father to be her soft place to fall when she was weary.

Maybe if he hadn’t raised her to fly she wouldn’t have to struggle so much—a female pilot working and living in a world that still belonged to men. And wasn’t that really why Drake had been such a dick? Because he’d envied Nikki’s skill and intelligence and capability? Buck had always thought as much.

Her life had been too hard. But then, Nikki never did take the easy way.

Lucille Paxton approached him from behind, gazing up at the sky. She owned the café that was attached to the fixed-base hangar offices. In her sixties like Buck, Lucille had often been the stand-in mother and grandmother around Burgess Aviation. Heavy, gray-haired and rosy cheeked, she wore jeans and a T-shirt with an American flag on it and Support Our Troops printed underneath. “I fixed April up with a soda.”

Trotting along behind her was Pistol, Buck’s latest mutt. He was an odd-looking creature with the head of a Labrador, long curly ears like a cocker spaniel or poodle, the short legs of a dachshund, and the genitalia of a small buffalo. But by far his most endearing quality was that he adored Jared and despised Precious.

Buck squatted to pat the Labra-doodle-cocka-dachsie while watching the sky.

When Nikki came around and lined up to land, Lucille said, “She’s due a break.”

“Damn straight,” Buck replied.

There were only two cars at Drake’s house when Nikki, Buck and the kids returned—the housekeeper’s old Camry and Dixie’s Acura. Nikki breathed a huge sigh of relief. The open house was over and she didn’t have to face anyone from Drake’s firm. The mere thought of never having to deal with his secretary, Mona, again almost filled her with glee.

She found her friends in the living room, seated on the sofa, grim-faced. Dixie tilted her head toward the dining room and Nikki looked for the source of the problem. Ah, yes. Her mother. Who else? Opal sat in a straight-backed dining room chair, her expression dour, her poodle curled up on her lap. “Well, finally,” she said by way of greeting. Precious stirred at her words.

The kids headed straight for the kitchen. Nikki dropped her leather shoulder bag on a living room chair and draped her funeral clothes over it. She hadn’t bothered to change out of the greasy mechanic’s jumpsuit and boots. “Sorry, Mother, but the kids just weren’t up to any more. They’d had it.”

Buck and Pistol sauntered in. Precious wriggled upright, and with his back legs on Opal’s lap and front legs on the chair arm, snarled meaningfully. Pistol trotted toward him and snarled back, message received.

“You could have at least attempted to get here in time to say hello to a few of Drake’s mourners,” she scolded.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Mother, he was my ex. If it weren’t for the kids, I wouldn’t even be here.”

But Opal wasn’t listening. She was transfixed by the ensemble Nikki wore, complete with unlaced steel-toed boots. “Good Lord, Nicole, what is that you have on? Merciful heavens.” She stood slowly from her chair, holding Precious and clucking in disgust. “I believe I’ll just go lie down. My head pounds.”

Opal toddled down the hall with her poodle, past the master bedroom to the guest room. She went in and closed the door. Nikki, who had watched her departure, turned a stunned expression back to her friends.

“That’s where I’ve been sleeping,” she said. “I just couldn’t make myself use Drake’s room.”

“I believe your mother knows that,” Carlisle said. “She mentioned something about it being…what was it? Disheveled.”

“Well, Christ.”

“Cheer up. Maybe she’ll tidy up while she’s in there.”

“I guess I probably owe you two for sticking it out with her all afternoon,” Nikki said.

“Sometimes your friendship comes at a mighty fine price,” Dixie drawled. “But Opal wasn’t near as bad as that secretary of Drake’s. Mona? She was all pissed that you and the kids weren’t here.” Dixie shook her head. “She’s one black-hearted bitch.” For Dixie to give a review that bleak was saying something. This sweet Texas beauty queen’s greatest failing was not seeing the worst in people soon enough. Mostly men.

“A very unpleasant woman,” Carlisle agreed, shaking his head. He stood up and stretched. “She completely ruined a perfectly nice funeral.”

Buck’s shoulders shook. He draped an arm around Carlisle. “Come on, cupcake. Let’s see if old Drake left any decent whiskey in the liquor cabinet.”

While the men went to the wet bar in the family room, Dixie followed Nikki to the kitchen to find the kids and Drake’s housekeeper, Lydia. April and Jared sat at the kitchen table while Lydia fluttered around them, serving them sandwiches, drinks of soda, chips and cookies, all the while patting their heads affectionately and cooing to them in Spanish.

“Have you figured out what I owe you, Lydia?” Nikki asked.

Immediately a troubled expression clouded the woman’s tanned and crinkled face, and she seemed to be wringing her hands on the dish towel she held. “Miss Nikki, Mr. Drake got a little behind for me.”

“That’s okay, Lydia. Just tell me how much.”

The housekeeper moved closer to Nikki but didn’t make eye contact. She simply gazed down at the floor and whispered, “Twenty-five hundred.”

“Twenty-five hundred?” Nikki replied in a near shout. Hoping it was pesos, she asked, “Dollars?”

The kids looked up from their food. Dixie clapped a hand over her heart. Buck and Carlisle entered the kitchen with a bottle of Scotch just in time to hear. Lydia actually flushed in embarrassment and began to fan her face.

“Sí. It was in dollars.”

“How long has he been behind?”

“He say when the tax return come, but then—” That was all she could seem to get out.

“Oh, brother. I’m surprised you kept coming back.”

“Sometimes he pay me,” she said. She went to the laundry room on the other side of the kitchen where her purse and sweater hung on a hook. She got them both, then took a notebook from her purse and passed it to Nikki. “I keep track,” she said.

Nikki ruffled the pages briefly. It was clear the woman had documented her earnings carefully. She was telling the truth. It looked as though Lydia worked for several families, and if she hadn’t, she might have starved to death. Nikki handed back the small spiral notebook. “I’ll get my checkbook,” she said with resignation.

A little while later, Lydia left with her check and a promise from Nikki that she would be called to help with cleaning again once they got their bearings.

Drake had let himself get twenty-five hundred dollars behind in paying a Mexican woman of simple means whose entire family struggled to get by? What was he thinking? Did he have no consideration?

“You can repay yourself when the will is settled,” Dixie suggested.

But something in the pit of Nikki’s stomach tensed. Could there be a reason other than greed that Drake had not paid her? Could he have had, as April would say, financial issues? But why borrow trouble? She was seeing the lawyer the next day.

“Ice,” she said, indicating the bottle Buck held. “We need some glasses and some ice. Right away.”

The lawyer who handled Drake’s will had also handled his divorce, and Nikki found it hard to be in the same room with him.

“You’re not technically family,” Richard Studbeck said in lieu of hello.

What a cold bastard. “I’m technically the parent of the minor children who will be represented in the will. Besides an estranged sister, they’re his only family, as far as I know.”

“Have a seat.” He indicated the chair that faced his desk.

“Thanks…Dick.”

He froze. “I prefer Richard.”

“Of course. Now I remember.” She smiled as prettily as she could. He was not fooled.

“I’m afraid I don’t have much good news,” he began.

She felt that tension in her stomach again and held her breath.

“Your ex-husband left only his personal effects. Clothing, furniture, linens, pots and pans, et cetera.”

Nikki stared into his unblinking gray eyes, vaguely aware that her mouth hung open as she tried to understand. “Only?” she finally said.

“Unfortunately.” He folded his hands primly. His deadpan expression did not convey any sympathy.

“But…The house, the car, the insurance…?”

“The house, of which you are co-owner, was mortgaged to more than one hundred percent of its value, the car is leased, the insurance canceled.”

“That’s impossible,” she said, a little laugh escaping her as though this were all just a big, nasty joke.

“I wish it were, Nicole.”

“When the house is sold, he owes me half the equity—it’s part of our divorce agreement! And the firm he worked for required the insurance policy!”

“The firm is the beneficiary of one policy, for which it paid the premium. Drake let his personal policy lapse. And papers on file indicate you signed refinancing agreements.”

“Not for more than one hundred per cent of the value of—” When she realized she was coming out of her chair, she slowly lowered herself again. Yes, she had signed refinancing papers, and there was something about an equity line of credit while the interest rates were so low and the stock market down. But the refinancing was only for the balance of the mortgage. Had he…? Of course, you dolt! Drake had either altered the amount on the papers or forged her signature. “He must have changed the numbers…or forged my signature.”

Richard Studbeck shrugged. “It’s going to be impossible to indict or prosecute him.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute! He didn’t have planes or boats or beautiful women. He rarely traveled, rarely vacationed. I think I remember he spent a weekend in Las Vegas a couple of years ago, but that was before—” She swallowed hard. “I paid child support! It was supposed to be going into a trust for education! What the hell did he do with all the money?”

The lawyer paused at length before responding. “I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea.”

Nothing. He left the kids nothing.

Nikki went home in a daze. How was she to tell them? Did she have to tell them? Maybe there was some mistake. Maybe when she could finally bring herself to go through Drake’s personal effects and private papers, she would find a safe deposit box or secret stash somewhere. But no, she thought—it was more likely she would find he had given everything to a shelter for homeless cats, giving Nikki the shaft one last time from the grave. Wham! Take that, Nick!

Although she knew it wasn’t justified, Nikki felt tempted to direct her anger at Opal. After all, her mother had had far more faith in Drake than in her own daughter.

Once Opal had married Mayer Gould, a neurosurgeon, and moved to San Francisco, Nikki had only seen her mother on her rare and brief visits to Phoenix. But after Nikki married Drake and moved into the big house in the gated community, Opal had visited more often. And in the last couple of years, since Mayer’s death, Opal was constantly turning up, ostensibly visiting her grandchildren, but Nikki thought it just as likely she was visiting Drake.

And Drake, who couldn’t get along with anyone, had allowed this. According to April, Opal fussed over him, constantly praising everything he said or did. It was as though she had finally found someone who cared as much about money and style as she did, and Drake had found a mother to worship him. Nikki hadn’t cared a whit about that at the time, grateful not to have to deal with her mother herself. And Opal was good with the kids, probably because she was just about as mature.

But now Nikki had to get her life back together, which would be hard enough without Opal questioning every decision she made. Her mother would have to go.

When she got back to the house, Nikki found Opal in the living room, cradling Precious and a magazine on her lap, her two-hundred-dollar shoes kicked off and her slim, pedicured feet up on the ottoman.

Nikki ignored the poodle’s welcoming growl and sat down on the sofa opposite her. “Mother, I’m afraid you’re going to have to go home and let me have some time alone with the kids.”

“What?” she said, straightening.

“I know you’d like to stay, Mother, but we really need some time alone.”

“But won’t you be going back to work? I assumed I’d simply…”

Nikki shook her head. “I have a week off, then a couple of trips. The kids can stay with Buck, like they always have. They have bedrooms there. That’s where I’ve lived the past four years.”

Opal made a derisive sound, as though Buck’s place was beneath them.

“I have to go through Drake’s things, Mother, and I need privacy for that. You can visit again when our life is more organized, and stay as long as you like.”

“I think April and Jared would like me to be here now,” she argued. “And who knows how much time I actually have. I’m not getting any younger, you know. The last time I saw the doctor, he was concerned about a few things.”

By sheer dint of will, Nikki kept from rolling her eyes. Her mother had been suggesting her impending death since she was in her thirties. “You seem very well. I’m sure you’ll be around for many years to come.”

“Don’t be too sure. Carolyn Johanson was three years younger than me, never had a sick day in her life, and—”

Nikki cut her off, unwilling to go down that path again. “I want the kids and I to make decisions about our life without any outside influence.” Like whether we stay in this house or not, she thought, but didn’t dare say that. Opal loved Drake’s house. “I’ll buy you a first-class upgrade to go with your pass,” she bribed.

“Well…”

“And I don’t want you to make this hard on the kids by complaining that I’m sending you away.”

“Well, if the shoe—”

Nikki set her lips in a firm line and shook her head, brooking no argument. Opal traveled free on Aries Airlines at the courtesy of Nikki, a privilege that could be rescinded by Nikki at any time she chose. “Let’s not make things any tougher on the kids than they already are. I’m sure you didn’t bring enough luggage for a long visit, anyway.”

“I did come rather quickly.”

“You don’t want to stick around and bake in this desert heat when you have a lovely home in California.”

“I’ve never minded the heat—”

“And there’s a flight tomorrow afternoon with plenty of room in first class.”

“I much prefer first class,” she admitted.

“Yes. I know.”

Opal scooted to the edge of her chair and wiggled her feet around until they found her shoes. “You’re in mourning,” she said, hanging on to Precious. “You should be indulged right now. I’ve lost a husband, remember. I know what this is like. I wish Mayer’s children from his first wife had left me alone to go through his belongings, but they were not nearly as considerate as I.”

That was Opal. Ousted with all the delicacy of a cattle prod and taking credit for being considerate.

I’m not in mourning! Nikki wanted to shout. I’m enraged! I am so damn tired of getting screwed!

Two

Nikki was back at work a week later—a week in which she had neither gone through Drake’s things nor talked to the kids about their lack of legacy. Now, as she made her way to airport security, she forced her thoughts from her current problems and let her mind wander back to the days when she’d first fallen in love with the aviation industry.

When she was a little girl in the sixties, the airport was a mystical, magical fantasyland and the air crews were like movie stars—so exotic, so glamorous, so beautiful. The pilots were tall and handsome. Women would tilt their heads and gaze dreamily at them, and small children reached out to tentatively touch the silver bands on their sleeves. The “Stews,” as they were called in those days, were slender beauties who showed up to work in narrow skirts and high-heeled shoes, each with a matching square makeup bag that held her cosmetics. The crew would enter the airport en masse—two or three stately, distinguished pilots and their gaggle of long-necked beauty queens—and glide down the concourse toward the big shiny planes. As they passed, the crowds would part like the Red Sea. They were magnificent.

“Do you want to be like one of them when you grow up?” Opal had asked her one day when they were at the airport together.

“Oh, yes,” Nikki said with a deep sigh of longing. “Do you think they’ll let girls be pilots of big heavies by then?”

Opal had groaned, but Buck had smiled down at her. “If they don’t, you can be the first,” he promised.

“You’re hopeless,” said Opal.

It wasn’t just the flight crews that were different, Nikki recalled, but the entire airport scene. And the industry was regulated. The government established the routes for the carriers and there wasn’t much competition, so flights were expensive. Damned expensive. It cost more to fly from New York to Los Angeles in 1975 than it did in 2002. There was a certain formality to flying then. Women wore dresses, sometimes hats and gloves, and men were in their business suits.

Security in those days was almost nonexistent. Crews and passengers alike entered the airport and went quickly to their planes without being subjected to bomb-sniffing dogs and metal detectors. And passengers were extremely well-trained. They did as they were told. They were civil. Polite. No yelling at the gate agent, no demanding compensation for a delayed or canceled flight. Airlines were admired, pilots were revered. If a flight was delayed to repair a mechanical problem, your life had just been saved by their diligence, their skill. Through the flight, passengers were well-behaved. God forbid one of those beauties who served the meals—and they were meals, make no mistake—be abused in the commission of her duties.

There was no denying that times had changed. As Nikki passed through security in her pilot’s uniform, complete with ID badge, she was curtly reminded to take her hat off her head and empty her pockets. Randomly chosen, she was told to step to the side, remove her shoes and extend her arms so she could be scanned with the magic wand. Now, it wasn’t as if just wearing the flying costume should get you special treatment; she could as easily be a bad guy as anyone in civilian clothes. But—

“Hi, Virg,” she said to the security agent with the wand.

“Hiya, Nick. You have the same trip this week?”

“Yup. Phoenix, Chicago, New York, again and again.”

“Take off your shoes. Extend your arms. That a good trip?”

“Not bad.”

Nikki saw these same people at least once a week. Did they really think she was packing a weapon or bomb? She had wondered aloud once why they didn’t just move on to the next stranger in line when they saw she drew the random pick. It might give them a better chance of actually catching someone with something to hide. Virginia had replied that they just did it by the book.

While she was being wanded, Nikki watched as a very nervous man who seemed awfully protective of his briefcase went straight through the check while they detained and wanded a woman in her eighties. Nikki wondered why security didn’t just adopt the JDLR method. Just Doesn’t Look Right. But no. They kept checking little old ladies and pilots they talked to every week.

“Have a good flight, Nick.”

“Thanks, Virg. You have a great day.”

Another man with a briefcase, in a hurry and obviously disgruntled by the long security process, rammed into her and almost knocked her off her feet. He had both height and heft and smelled like a mixture of booze and perspiration. “’Scuse me,” he muttered. Then, seeing she wore a pilot’s uniform, he asked, “Any idea what time the nine o’clock flight’s leaving for Denver?”

“Nine o’clock?” she ventured.

“That’d be a first,” he grumbled, taking off down the concourse.

So much for the respect offered to pilots in days of yore.

Crowds didn’t part for aircrews anymore, either, and Nikki stuck close to the wall to keep from getting knocked over again. Up ahead she spotted Dixie at the coffee kiosk and went to join her. “Hey,” she said. “I didn’t expect to run into you.”

“Our inbound flight from San Diego is runnin’ late. I should be servin’ Bloody Marys over Albuquerque right now. Want a coffee?”

“Thanks. I’m a few minutes early. I’ll meet you right over there,” she said, pointing toward her gate.

Nikki crossed the concourse and sat in the almost empty gate area, watching the passengers. They were people in ragged jeans and flip-flops. Young families who would be trying to board with car seats, Cadillac-size strollers and half the nursery. Ah—and a pilot. Not one of those distinguished gentlemen of the past, this captain was about thirty-five years old, forty pounds overweight, no hat, scuffed shoes, loose tie and coffee stains on his shirt. He hadn’t had a haircut in a while, either. What a wreck. His appearance didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Dixie handed her a cup of coffee and took the seat next to her.

“Remember the old days?” Nikki said. “When flight attendants showed up in high heels and pilots were like rock stars?”

Dixie took the lid off her paper cup and blew on the hot coffee. “And now they’re just like rock heads?” Nikki turned her head to smile at her friend. “Present company excluded, of course.”

“Remember when people dressed up to go on an airplane ride?” Nikki persisted. “They wore their Sunday best and behaved like they were in church. Even the hijackers were polite! They didn’t want to hurt anyone—they just wanted to go to Cuba or someplace where you couldn’t get a scheduled flight.”

Dixie tilted her head and looked askance at Nikki. “Back in the days when flight attendants were Stews, had to weigh in before each flight, and were fired if they got married?”

“Okay, it wasn’t flawless, but—”

“And the airplanes didn’t have carts and the Stews carried their five-course meals on trays, up and down the aisles in their straight skirts and high heels and precious little hats?”

“Well…”

“And don’t let us forget about girdles. Any decent woman wore a girdle then.”

“Everyone?”

“It was required. And if you weren’t bosomy enough, a little padding could be issued with the uniform.”

“Nah-uh!” Nikki protested.

“Yes, ma’am. Got to have your girls right up there on your chest so Mr. Passengerman could appreciate the flight. And you better not bend over to pick up an olive off the floor because Mr. Well-Mannered Traveler would definitely put his hand right up your skirt.” She blew on her coffee again. “He probably threw that old olive on the floor to start with. Mmm-mmm, those were some fine old days.”

“You have to admit that the passengers were a lot less rude and demanding,” Nikki said. “With the occasional exception.”

“And the pilots were a lot more accommodatin’. They used to carry bags and pay for dinner, and…Well…They were much more accommodatin’.” Dixie smiled suggestively.

Nikki grinned back at her. Dixie had been accommodated quite a few times. And vice versa. “So were the Stews,” she said.

“Coffee, tea or me?” her friend replied, smile dazzling, lashes fluttering. All of Dixie sparkled. She could easily have been one of those airline beauties back in the sixties. Five-eight, blond, blue-eyed, slender as a reed except for “her girls,” which were full and high and elegant. She had the kind of looks that had men crossing the room to ask if she was attached.

A very pregnant flight attendant pulled an overnight bag on its rollers toward a podium on the other side of the concourse.

“Now, there’s something else you wouldn’t have seen twenty-five years ago,” Dixie pointed out. “In fact,” she said, looking Nikki up and down, “it would’ve seemed pretty unladylike to ask to fly the plane.”

“My God, she looks ready to pop!”

“She told a little fib about her due date. She can’t afford to go on maternity leave, she needs the overtime. Her husband was activated reserve—Navy—gone to Kuwait. The family took a huge pay cut.”

Almost everything about the industry had changed, all right. Back in the glamour days there was no real competition. Enter deregulation of the airline industry and the entrance of low-fare carriers. The large and established airlines found it increasingly difficult to compete. The new entrants, often nonunion start-ups, had low costs, but the big guys had been around long enough so that with every union contract, the cost of labor went up, then up, then up some more. The cost of fuel kept rising, but competitive pricing meant ticket prices plummeted, and the business traveler took advantage, went global.

Before long the big airlines were making almost half their profit from the last-minute business traveler whose company paid the premium price. As for the rest of the travelers, they were no longer just the well-to-do. After deregulation it was cheaper to fly from New York City to Miami for the weekend than to go to a good restaurant and see a Broadway musical. It was frequently more expensive to travel by bus. Now the people waiting to board the airplanes were not wearing their hats and gloves, politely waiting for their flight, but clad in beach clothes or ragged jeans, complaining loudly about the degradation of the service.

The major airlines were losing millions a year, a month, some losing millions a day as they tried to compete with the start-ups. The start-ups would fail and disappear, but that did not put the money back in the coffers of the legacy carriers, and another start-up would appear with bargain-basement tickets, starting the whole process all over again.

Then the unfathomable happened.

Everyone remembered where they were that morning. Buck was hosing down tarmac outside the largest hangar at Burgess Aviation when one of the young maintenance techs came running, yelling for him to come to the office and see the TV. Carlisle was in New York on an overnight, due to fly out later that day. Dixie was in D.C., on the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness center, watching CNN. At first, she thought she was seeing an Aries plane and she ran to the nearest phone and called Aries dispatch.

And Nikki was in Boston, sitting in the cockpit of an Aries 767, full of passengers, ready to push back. She was turned around in her seat, talking to a Delta pilot who was hitching a ride on an Aries jump seat.

An operations agent came aboard, stuck her head in the cockpit and said, “Did you hear what happened? An airplane hit the World Trade Center.”

“What kind of airplane?” Nikki asked.

“A big airplane. Like a 737 or something.”

“Whoa. How do you get that far off course?”

She shrugged. “Sit tight till the airport clears us,” the agent said, and left.

Less than a minute passed when her first officer said, “Did you hear that? They closed the airport.”

Nikki looked outside. “Why?” It was a beautiful morning. The sky was crystal clear.

Some other pilot at the airport keyed his mike and asked why the airport had been closed.

“The airport is closed for reasons of national security,” came the reply.

The deafening silence that followed lasted for perhaps two full minutes. Alarm filled the air like static.

The operations agent came back a few minutes later. Her face had bleached so white that her lips were indistinguishable from her flesh. “Another plane flew into the second tower. Another big one.”

“Holy Jesus,” the copilot muttered.

“They’re saying the airplanes are U.S. passenger planes. Hijacked,” the agent said. She was visibly trembling.

The next announcement ordered all planes back to the gates. Passengers were deplaned, pilots and cabin crews were informed there had been several hijackings from Northeast airports and flights were canceled pending investigation. The airport was swiftly evacuated.

The unprecedented response was that every aircraft in the United States was grounded for several days. Nikki learned she had been sitting next to one of the planes that had been hijacked out of Boston.

That morning, trying to reach the kids on her cell phone, she couldn’t get a signal. When she did get through, she found that the kids were with Buck, terrified for her safety because they couldn’t reach her.

Her first reaction, like the rest of the world’s, was shock and horror. But she had a bigger mission—she had a plane to get out of Boston and a crew that was shaken and needed her leadership.

They were put in a hotel where they sat glued to televisions, watching an unbelievable drama happening not very far away. Most of her crew didn’t have enough money for days of meals and incidentals, so Nikki covered them. It didn’t take long for the passengers to disappear from the airport to find alternative means of transportation. Some of them would never be back.

“Mama, I don’t want you to fly!” April had wailed into the phone.

“April, flying is what I do, what I’ve always done, and no madman from an angry country is going to drive me away from it. But I promise you I’ll be taking extra precautions.”

“But what if it was you?”

“But it wasn’t, April. We have to be strong now. Everyone in the U.S. has to be brave and strong now.”

Days later Nikki and her copilot flew an empty plane back to Phoenix. He had missed the birth of his first child. One of the flight attendants was sick as a dog all the way home, and the minute they landed she quit. When the industry was flying again, Aries canceled the majority of their flights, as did every airline in the industry; they flew approximately thirty percent of their schedule, and those flights were not half-full. Even the business traveler stayed home. When companies started sending their people on business trips again, a sagging economy necessitated prudence—they bought bargain fares, purchasing cheap, nonrefundable tickets in advance.

Nikki, her family, her friends and the rest of the country were consumed by pain and sorrow and anger that seemed to have no end.

Aries furloughed a fourth of its workforce in the first month after 9/11, then levied ten-to thirty-percent pay cuts across the board. Most of the other airlines did the same. Two small airlines simply ceased operations in that first week after the terrorist attacks, unable to sustain the losses.

Industrywide, the financial loss reached fifteen billion in that first year. The government came across with five billion in relief, but the bankruptcy filings of seven airlines proved it would not be adequate. Only a very small percentage of the ten-billion-dollar loan package approved by Congress reached a couple of airlines.

A year later the passenger-load factors were still not quite fifty percent of what they had been before 9/11. Dozens of airplanes, from puddle jumpers to huge jets, sat in storage, parked, unused. Their owners, the lessors that airlines leased the planes from, began laying off personnel and filing for Chapter Eleven protection, as well.

The average passenger didn’t notice empty planes, missing planes or deserted airports; to Joe Six-pack it appeared business as usual, because airlines combined flights and canceled flights. The 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. flights to Philly became one flight, and it was almost full, and so on. And there was the hub-and-spoke operation—all the planes converged on the airline’s hub several times a day and the passengers would deplane, filling up the airport, and reboard their connecting flight. These convergences were called “banks.” Phoenix was Aries’s hub—everything went through Phoenix, then out again, like the spokes of a bike wheel. In between banks you could fire a cannon through the deserted airport concourses, something the average traveler never saw.

Stricter security measures were put into place, but Nikki had no illusions about their effectiveness. She thought the airlines’ greatest security assets were the passengers—they would never let a plane be taken over again.

And then the country went to war, determined to cripple, if not end, terrorism at its roots. Pain and strife and economic troubles spread wider.

Four small to moderately sized airlines shut down in the first year, and in the second year at least three huge airlines that had been around forever teetered on the brink of failure. Nikki’s airline limped along, but had lost several hundred million and flirted with filing for bankruptcy protection.

Nikki was left with two overwhelming conclusions about her work and her world. One: we are no longer safe. And two: we must carry on.

When Nikki took her flight out of Phoenix, Dixie was still waiting for her inbound flight to arrive. She tapped her foot and crossed her fingers. Her trip had better not cancel; she had big plans for her layover. A sexy red teddy and a nice bottle of wine were tucked away in her suitcase, and she also had a very expensive man’s watch wrapped in silver paper—much more money than she should spend, especially with all the recent pay cuts. But this was a very special man, and it was his birthday.

Branch Darnell, a pilot with Aries, was turning forty-seven, though Dixie didn’t think he looked a day over thirty-five. He did have those sexy little crinkles at the corners of his eyes, but that was as much from his year-round tan as age. They’d been seeing each other for six months, and she couldn’t help but think he was The One. At first she’d held off letting herself think that, but she was more convinced of it every day. Over the years Dixie had had quite a few love affairs, way too many of them with pilots, but this time felt different. It had the feel of permanence.

Branch was a Texan, and Dixie couldn’t help but have a soft spot for the Longhorns. He commuted from San Antonio and had all but moved in with her in Phoenix when he came to town to fly. Every week, more and more of his belongings appeared in her closet and bathroom. She was senior enough to hold just about any flying line she wanted, and tried to bid his schedule so she could spend the night with him on layovers. The drawback was that he wasn’t senior, and the lines he was awarded were usually awful—short hops, crappy layovers, working weekends. Branch was a retired air force colonel and had only been flying commercially for three years; he was still a first officer and not even a senior one. Dixie ended up working a lot harder than she had to just be able to spend time with him.

Fortunately tonight was a rarity—a long New York City layover. A nice birthday present in itself.

There was one minor complication—Branch wasn’t divorced yet. He was separated, though, and when the divorce was complete, which he had warned her wouldn’t be real fast, he wasn’t going to relocate to Phoenix for a few years. There were still a couple of kids at home. So it wasn’t perfect, but it was damn close.

Nikki was worried. “I don’t know, Dixie. He’s got that look. Like he’s been around.”

“Well, darlin’, he’s not the only one,” Dixie had replied with a laugh.

“It’s different with you,” Nikki said.

Dixie didn’t have to ask why. Nikki knew as well as she did that she never left a man she’d slept with. She was completely devoted. Completely naive, too. She fell fast, hard and completely.

So why hadn’t she married at nineteen? It was all she’d ever wanted. From her first real date, Dixie had never stopped thinking church bells and altar. But time and the number of men she’d been through had too often left her brokenhearted and lonely. There was always a guy, even when she wished there wasn’t. Men rushed to date her, to get her into bed, to take her on trips and buy her nice things. And then, whoosh—they were gone as fast as they appeared. She was thirty-five years old, had eleven tennis bracelets of varying value, when all she’d really like to have was a husband and baby.

“Maybe if you wouldn’t jump into bed with them so fast…” Carlisle had suggested as gently as possible.

“I try to wait,” Dixie told him. “But I fall in love, they swear it’s forever, and then—”

“Well, at least you’ve gotten some nice jewelry out of it.”

But she’d so much rather have a husband. Well, she’d been with Branch for six months, which was a bit of a record for Dixie.

He could have been put off by the number of men who had come before him, but he accepted her as she was. “How can I expect a woman as beautiful as you to be a virgin till she’s thirty-five? So long as you’re mine now, I’ve got no real complaint.”

“I’m yours,” she was quick to assure him. And it wasn’t just pillow talk—she was.

She checked the inbound flights on the screen and saw that the one she was waiting for had finally landed. Pulling her cell phone out of her purse, she pecked off some numbers.

“Well, darlin’, you gettin’ tired of waiting for me?” he drawled.

“There’s a rumor floatin’ around that it’s some tall Texan’s birthday today.”

He chuckled. “You got somethin’ for me, ma’am?”

“I might be able to rustle something up,” she said. “Tonight. In New York.”

“Mmm, that sounds delicious, darlin’. See you on the plane.”

Branch had had a layover the previous night and Dixie was hooking up with his trip here in Phoenix. Cockpit crews and cabin crews rarely flew full schedules together. The cabin crew that had been on this trip since yesterday was getting off in Phoenix, and a new set of flight attendants would go with the pilots to New York.

At least it was New York for Branch’s birthday and not somewhere like Buffalo or Des Moines. Dixie wanted to be able to take him to a posh five-star restaurant later…if he’d let her out of bed long enough to go eat.

They weren’t ridiculously secretive about their relationship, but they did play it cool at work. Branch was right—there was no point in having everyone talking. “It’s your reputation I’m worried about, not mine,” he had said. “Even though my marriage has been over for years, I’m still officially married.”

She had dated so many pilots, there would be more than the usual amount of chatter when she let the cat out of the bag that she was dating yet another. Her coworkers were pretty quick to catch on, though. They knew the look, the glance, the little mating dance. If a very junior pilot and a very senior flight attendant always flew together…how discreet was that?

But if they came to work in the same car after Branch had spent the night at her house, Dixie would drop him at the terminal first and then go park. When they checked into a hotel on a layover, they went to their individual rooms and met in hers later. They never went to dinner together on layovers unless it was with the entire crew. Tonight they might just break that rule, though, since it was such a special occasion.

When Dixie got to the plane, Branch was doing a walk around out on the ramp, so she started checking meals and liquor in the galley.

Every flight was a little like a stage play, with a different cast of more than two-hundred-fifty every time. You never knew what would be in the script, and that was one of the things Dixie loved about her work.

She was the senior flight attendant on this trip and chose to work in the back cabin. Their Boeing 767 would be nearly full and they had four crew members in the back. The flight had a stop in Denver and they were getting a late start.