Mattie hesitated for a moment before buckling her chin strap. “I suppose it is. Isn’t it for you?”
Leo had already jammed his helmet on his head, but he snapped down his goggles. Maybe if his eyes were obscured, the conversation would veer away from his personal feelings.
“Hold on to that sensation, Mattie. It’s a great one to have,” Leo said, purposely skirting her inquiry.
“Aren’t you excited about this new gig? Just a little?” Mattie cocked her head, as if she could penetrate the thick glass stretching from his cheekbones to his forehead.
He wasn’t, not really, at least not in the way she meant. It would pay a lot and help him work off what he owed the McAdamses. And he’d be with Mattie, something that shouldn’t have pleased him as much as it did. But the actual flying? It was just another job.
“Miss Jones is offering us a good opportunity, Mattie. One we should be getting to. The sun is over the horizon now, and our new employer is expecting us.”
“But—” Mattie began to protest.
The McAdamses began to shift, probably wondering what Mattie and he were nattering on about. Leo tilted his head meaningfully in their direction.
“We’d best head out now unless you want to go through another round of goodbyes.” Leo really hoped that Mattie did not. This conversation was making him itchier than a heavy wool sweater in summertime, and he didn’t want to endure more of the awkward discomfort that always accompanied a departure.
Mattie sighed. “You’re right. Plus, the sky is calling. It’s been a while since I flew into a sunrise. I always love soaring through pinks and oranges. If I were designing a movie poster for an epic, those are the colors that I’d use.”
“Humph,” Leo said. He used to love it, too, but now it just reminded him of the Great War, when he’d rise early to fly east over the lines in hopes of catching and bringing down a German observation balloon. Tension pulled inside him, making his chest tighten as he prepared for a threat that no longer existed.
Mattie leaned closer, peering at him again. Avoiding another inspection, Leo swiveled on one foot and climbed into the cockpit. Unlike Mattie, he did it without flourish. If circumstances didn’t require him to catapult inside to save time or thrill an audience, he didn’t.
Whistling jauntily, Mattie headed over to her Jenny. She bounced onto the wing and popped like a reverse champagne cork into her seat behind the stick. She gave him a salute, and Leo returned the gesture. Walt stepped forward to turn Mattie’s propeller, and Jake yanked on Leo’s. Their engines rumbled to life almost simultaneously, but Leo waved for Mattie to take off first. She blazed forward, the yellow wingtips of her Jenny shining bright in the early light.
When he reached altitude beside her, she wigwagged her wings. The cheerful little welcome caused a smile to bloom across his face, but it didn’t last. The old numbness returned, but at least blankness was better than the turmoil he’d felt on the ground. Glancing over his shoulder to his right, he cast his gaze on the pastel streaks of daybreak. He tried to summon the joy Mattie had described, but he just found himself calculating their position in the sky based on the direction of the rising sun.
“That was glorious.” Mattie ripped off her goggles, in part to punctuate her words and in part to see Leo better. “Didn’t you get a thrill when we flew near the Railway Exchange in Chicago?”
The glazed-terra-cotta edifice had gleamed a bright pearly white as they’d swooped over the blue waters of Lake Michigan. Beside it, the beginnings of the Metropolitan Tower were taking shape. Whenfinished, the skyscraper would rise like a behemoth over the shoreline and stretch overthirtystories high.
Leo removed his helmet and immediately began to pat down the unruly chestnut strands that stood up in spiky clumps. “It’s a good landmark, I guess.”
Mattie yanked off her helmet. Half of her hair had once again slipped from her braid, but instead of fixing it, she whipped it around, letting the air fluff it even more.
Did anything give Leo a sense of wonder anymore?
Mattie jumped out of her Jenny to move nearer to him. “What about the lake itself? Wasn’t the light hitting it just perfectly? It looked like it was made of diamonds and sapphires, it was sparkling so much.”
“There was a lot of shipping traffic,” Leo offered with the air of someone who really wasn’t interested but was desperately trying to make conversation. With almost palpable reluctance, he climbed from his Jenny to join her on the ground. He seemed cagey and uncomfortable as he scanned the flat field. His gaze didn’t pause on the sedges, the sandy white strip of beach, or even the deep-blue lake. He even ignored Vera’s grand home situated on a gentle bluff above them. Considering the heiress lived in a towering pink castle with a blue-gray slate roof, the fact that Leo paid it no notice was almost as extraordinary as the building itself. Instead he focused on a supply shed with a ladder leaning against it.
“It seems wonderful here.” Mattie tried one last time to elicitsomethingfrom her old friend as she gently laid her hand on his arm. In his blue eyes, she thought she saw the faintest flicker, like a flame in an old kerosene lamp slowly coming to life. But before it could catch hold, Leo banked it. And Mattie felt... odd—both closer to Leo than she’d been a moment ago and also more distant.
Leo shrugged as he stepped away from her touch and toward the stepladder. After dragging it beside her Jenny, he climbed up to inspect the motor. “It’s not half-bad here.”
“Not half-bad! It’s like we’ve stepped into a fairy tale.” She stood at the base of the ladder, steadying it. She’d helped Leo like this a million times before, but for some reason, today, it felt different.
“Don’t those fairy tales normally include lurking monsters?” Leo’s voice sounded muffled as he leaned inside the engine bay to check the coolant and oil levels. The position placed his rear precisely in front of Mattie’s eyes. An alien awareness kindled inside her, and she realized she’d never really noticed his posterior before. But old friends, even former ones, didn’t ogle each other. Quickly, she glanced away. Yet something... something pulled her back.
“I refuse to let you dampen this moment.” Mattie lightly bopped Leo’s shoe, which was one of the few places she could easily and safely reach. She couldn’t stop her need to touch him again. Could another caress retrigger that brief hint of sentiment that she’d witnessed in Leo’s eyes? Would it ignite this time?
To her surprise, he paused to grin down at her. No scowl. No flat expression. No annoying “press face.” But his real smile. The shy, sweet one that she hadn’t spotted in years. The one she hadn’t known just how much she’d missed until now.
An odd brilliance burst to life inside her. It was as if her heart had become a fairy-floss machine, madly spinning sugar into a soft confectionary. The emotions she felt certainly seemed as light and airy as the cotton candy her family hawked at their air shows... and just as sinfully delicious.
His blue eyes widened slightly, as if she’d spoken her thoughts aloud. Then they darkened marvelously. His gaze set off a flare within her like a spark plug igniting the gas in its cylinder. Her breathing changed...and so did his. Transfixed, she watched the increasingly deep rise and fall of his muscular chest beneath his white cable-knit jersey. His solid-black oxfords moved a rung down and then another until he stood before her, his intensity sweeping over her like a wave of hot vapor.
“Are you certain you two aren’t lovers?” Vera’s cheerful call obliterated the marvelous, wholly unexpected tension. Mattie jumped back, but not as far as Leo. He bumped into the ladder and would have sent it clattering to the ground if he hadn’t possessed such quick reflexes. Somehow, he managed to steady it before it hit the dirt.
