Danielle Steel - Wings

And when the press had left, he walked her outside and explained to her in no uncertain terms what he expected from her. She had exactly two months “leave,” as he put it, from the tour. On September 1, she was to come back to L.A. to train again and attend briefings, and on October 4 they would leave on the same course, with some slight adjustments for weather. Any variation from that plan, or any failure on her part to appear in Los Angeles, as agreed, would result in a lawsuit. And to be sure she understood perfectly, he had brought contracts with him for her and Billy to sign, and he reminded her that he was flying back the plane she had arrived in.

“Anything else? Would you like my underwear or my shoes? I think you paid for them too. I left my engagement ring in L.A., but you're certainly welcome to it, it's yours. You can have my wedding ring too.” She slipped it off her shaking hand, and held it out to him with trembling fingers. Everything that had happened in the past few days was a nightmare. And he looked at her now, totally devoid of emotion. He was a man who felt nothing for anyone, not even the girl he had married.

“I suggest you leave it on until after the tour, so as not to cause any gossip. You can dispose of it quietly after that, if you like. That's up to you,” he said coldly.

‘That's what this was all about then, wasn't it? It was all about a publicity stunt for the tour. America's sweetheart and the big tycoon. Why did you bother? And what happened to you? Why are you so willing to expose yourself now? Just because I postponed it? Is that such a sin? I know it's inconvenient, and expensive to change plans. But what if we'd had a problem with the plane… or I got sick… what if I did get pregnant?”

‘There was never any danger of that, I can't have children.” He hadn't told her that either. He had let her think that it was an option, that they would have them one day, when she was ready. She couldn't believe how totally he'd misled her, and how willing he was now to admit it. He had shown his hand to her completely. But he didn't care. All he wanted from her was the tour; he knew that he could sue her, and destroy her publicly if she didn't do it. The stupid thing was that she didn't care what he did to her. All she cared about was that he had lied to her. He had asked her to marry him, told her he loved her, pretended he cared about her. He didn't care about anything except his tour, and the planes he would sell as a result. And the publicity he would derive from organizing it from start to finish.

“What do you want from me?” She looked at him sadly.

“I want you to fly. That's all I ever wanted from you. I want you to fly. And I want everyone to fall in love with you. Whether or not I did was never important.”

“It was important to me,” she said with tears in her eyes. She had truly believed him.

“You're very young, Cassie,” he said quietly. “One day you'll be happy you did this.”

“You didn't have to marry me to make me fly the tour. I'd have done it anyway.”

“It wouldn't have had the same impact on the public,” he said without embarrassment. His marriage to her had been totally calculated. She wondered if he had ever cared for her for a single moment. She felt totally stupid now, gullible and used. It was embarrassing to think of their physical relations. Even their honeymoon had probably been a sham. And everything after that had been business anyway. He hadn't wasted much time on romance.

“You never took the tour seriously. Your postponing it now just proves that. I probably should have picked someone else, but you seemed so perfect.” He looked at her as though she had cheated him and she stared at him in amazement.

“I wish you had picked someone else,” she said, and meant it.

“It's too late now. For both of us. We have to go through with it. We've all gone too far now.”

“We certainly have.” She looked at him pointedly. Or at least he had.

He had nothing else to say to her, no apology, no regrets, no words of comfort. He just told her to be in LA. on schedule on September first, and she and Billy signed their contracts. Desmond drove back to the airport then, and an hour later he was gone. He had gotten what he'd come for, their sworn promise, and a round of publicity using Cassie again. By the following week, the entire country knew about her father's heart attack, they'd seen her cry, they sympathized completely. It only made the tour more exciting.

And at Mercy Hospital, her father was bombarded with flowers and gifts and get-well cards. They had to give them away to other patients, and then start taking the floral arrangements away in trucks, to other hospitals and churches. Cassie had never expected a response like that. But Desmond had. As usual, he had known exactly what he was doing.

He kept feeding them stories regularly, and gave interviews from L.A. about how hard Cassie was working, and what progress they had made on her plane. But interestingly, in August, one of the engineers discovered a potential flaw in one of the engines. They were doing wind tunnel trials at the California Institute of Technology when the engine burst into flame, and it caused untold damage to her airplane. It could be repaired, the press was told, but it had been providential that the tour had been delayed and she'd had to stay home with her father. The first Cassie heard of it was when she read the newspaper to Billy, and he whistled.

“Nice, huh? How would you have liked to be peeing on your number-one engine over the Pacific?” she said with a raised eyebrow.

“Give me enough beer, and I can do great things, Captain.” He grinned, and she laughed. But they were both concerned, and they spoke to the engineers several times over it. Everyone assured them that the problem had been taken care of.

It was a tough summer for her. She was still in shock over everything that had happened with Desmond. She thought of Nick a great deal, and she wanted to write to him, but she wasn't sure what to say now. In a funny way, it was hard admitting that Desmond was as bad as Nick thought he was. It made her sound so pathetic. In the end, she just wrote to him about her father, and said that the tour had been postponed, and that she'd always love him. She decided to tell him the rest later, the next time she saw him. She thought of volunteering for the RAF too, but she didn't want to think about that until after the Pacific tour. Maybe afterward, in November, she could fly over to see him. They hadn't heard from him in two months, though that wasn't unusual. The war in Europe was raging on and they could only assume he was safe since they hadn't been notified otherwise. She missed him constantly, and read everything she could about the air war in England.

Most of the fun had gone out of the tour for her. To be doing it under threat was very different from doing it for love, or as a shared project. But she knew it would be interesting anyway, and now all she wanted to do was get it over and done with. She could get on with her life then.

Her father made steady improvements after he went home. He lost some weight, he stopped smoking, and seldom drank, and he looked healthier and stronger day by day. And by the end of August, he came back to the airport. And he seemed better than ever. He was amazed at all that she and Billy had done, and grateful to him for staying with her. But it was his daughter who had won his heart, more than ever. She was a rare and marvelous girl, he said to everyone, she had postponed the Pacific tour just for him, as though they hadn't heard it. And she had told him nothing of her problems with Desmond. Nonetheless he had sensed long since that something was bothering her, and he wondered if it was Nick, or something else. It wasn't until the night before she left that she finally told him.