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
