Danielle Steel: Wings

‘The night runs might be a start. Even though”— he looked ruefully at his young friend. There were fourteen years separating them, but the war had long since dissolved the differences between them—” some nights that's the most restful place to be. If that new baby of ours doesn't start sleeping nights pretty soon, I'm going to start dosing her with whiskey. Oona says it's a heat rash, but I swear it's the red hair and the disposition that goes with it. Oona's the only redhead I've ever known with those quiet, gentle ways. This one is a real little hellion.” But despite his complaints, Pat seemed taken with her, and for the most part, he'd gotten over his disappointment about not having a son. Particularly now that Nick was here. His arrival was just the godsend he had prayed for.

“What's her name?” Nick looked amused. From the moment he'd laid eyes on them, he'd loved their family, and everything about them.

“Cassandra Maureen. We call her Cassie.” He glanced at his watch then. “I'll take you over to the house, and you can have dinner with Oona and the girls. I've got to be back out here at five-thirty.” He looked apologetic then. “And you'll have to find a place to stay in town. There are some rooms to rent at old Mrs. Wilson's, but I don't have a place for you to stay here, except a cot in the hangar where I keep the jenny.”

“That would do for now. Hell, it's warm enough. I don't care if I sleep on the runway.”

“There's an old shower out back, and a bathroom here, but this is a little primitive,” Pat said hesitantly, and Nick grinned as he shrugged his shoulders.

“So's my budget, until you start paying me.”

“You can sleep on our couch, if Oona doesn't mind. She's got a soft spot for you anyway, always telling me how handsome you are, and how lucky the girls are with a lad like you. I'm sure she won't mind having you on the couch, till you're ready to rent a room at Mrs. Wilson's.”

But he never had done either. He had moved into the hangar immediately, and a month later he'd built himself a little shack of his own. It was barely more than a lean-to, but it was big enough for him. It was tidy and clean, and he spent every spare moment he had in the air, flying for Pat, and helping him to build his business.

By the following spring they were able to buy another plane, a Handley Page. It had a longer range than either the de Havilland or the Jenny, and it could carry more passengers and cargo. Nick spent most of his time flying it, while Pat stayed closer to home, did the short runs, and ran the airport. The arrangement worked perfectly for both of them. It was as though everything they touched turned to magic. The business went beautifully. Their reputation spread rapidly through the Midwest. The word that two hotshot flying aces were operating out of Good Hope seemed to reach everyone who mattered. They handled cargo, passengers, lessons, mail, and within a very reasonable time, began turning over a fairly respectable profit.

And then the ultimate bit of luck occurred. Thirteen months after Cassie was born, Christopher Patrick O'Malley appeared, a tiny, wizened, screaming, scrawny little infant. But a lovelier sight his parents had never seen , and his four sisters stared at his unfamiliar anatomy in utter amazement. The second coming could have made no greater stir than the arrival of Christopher Patrick O'Malley at O'Malley's Airport.

A large blue banner was flown, and every pilot who came through for a month was handed a cigar by the beaming father. He'd been worth waiting for. Almost twelve years of marriage, and finally he had his dream, a son to fly his planes and run his airport.

“Guess I might as well pack up and leave,” Nick said mock glumly the day after Chris was born. He had just taken an order for a huge shipment of cargo to be delivered to the West Coast by Sunday. It was the biggest job they'd had so far, and a real victory for them.

“What do you mean, leave?” Pat asked, with a terrible hangover from celebrating the birth of his son, and a look of panic. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Well, I figured now that Chris is here, my days are numbered.” Nick was grinning at him. He was happy for both of them about the baby, and thrilled to be Chris's godfather. But the one who had stolen his heart from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her was Cassie. She was just what Pat had said she was from the very first, a little monster, and everything everyone had ever said about a redhead. And Nick adored her. Sometimes he almost felt as though she were his baby sister. He couldn't have loved her more if she were his own child.

“Yeah, your days are numbered,” Pat growled at him, “for about another fifty years. So get off your lazy behind, Nick Galvin, and check out the mail they just dumped out there on our runway.”

“Yes, sir … Ace, sir … your honor … your excellence …”

“Oh, never mind the blarney!” Pat shouted at his back, as he poured himself a cup of black coffee and Nick ran out to the runway to meet with the pilot before he took off again. Nick had been just what Pat had hoped from the first, a godsend. And there had been no funny stuff in the past year. He'd taken his share of chances flying in bad weather the previous winter, and they both made their share of forced landings and emergency repairs. But there was nothing really outrageous that Pat could complain about, nothing Nick did he wouldn't have done himself, nothing that truly jeopardized one of Pat's precious airplanes. And Nick loved those planes as much as Pat did. And the truth was, having Nick there had really allowed Pat to build up his business.

And that was just what they had continued to do for the next seventeen years. The years had rushed past them taster than their planes taking off from the four meticulously kept runways at O'Malley's Airport. They had built three of them in the form of a triangle, and the fourth, running north/south, bisected it, which meant that they could land in almost any wind, and never had to close the airport due to problems with planes blocking one of their runways. They had a fleet of ten planes now too. Nick had actually bought two of them himself, and the rest were Pat's. Nick only worked for him, but Pat had always been generous with him. The two were fast friends after long years of working together, and building up the airport. He'd asked Nick to become partners with him more than once, but Nick always said he didn't want the headaches that went with it. He liked being a hired hand, as he put it, although everyone knew that he and Pat O'Malley moved as one, and to cross one was to risk death at the hands of the other. Pat O'Malley was a special man, and Nick loved him as a father, brother, friend. He loved his children as he would his own. He loved everything about him.

But other than Pat's, families and relationships were generally not Nick's strong suit. He had married once in 1922, at twenty-one. It had lasted all of six months, and his eighteen-year-old bride had gone running back to her parents in Nebraska. Nick had met her on a mail route late one night, in the town's only restaurant, which was owned by her mother and father.

The only thing she had hated more than Illinois was everything that had anything to do with flying. She got sick every time Nick took her up, she cried every time she saw a plane, and she whined every time he left to go fly one. It was definitely not the match for him, and the only one more relieved than his bride when her parents came to pick her up was Nick himself. He had never been more miserable in his life, and he had vowed never to let it happen again. There had been women since, a number of them, but Nick always kept quiet about what he did. There had been rumors about him and a married woman in another town, but no one was ever quite sure if they were true or not, and Nick never even said anything to Pat. From his striking boyish good looks, he had become a handsome man, but no one ever knew his business. The women in his life were never obvious. There was nothing anyone could talk about, except how hard he worked, or how much time he spent with the O'Malleys. He still spent most of his spare time with them and their kids. He was like an uncle to them. And Oona had long since given up trying to fix him up with any of her friends. She had even tried to start something between him and her youngest sister when she'd come out to visit years before, she was pretty and young and a widow. But it had been obvious for years that Nick Calvin was not interested in marriage. Nick was interested in airplanes, and not much more, except the O'Malleys, and an occasional quiet affair. He lived alone, he worked hard, and he minded his own business.