about one thousand feet above the ground.
Plenty of room to spare. He laughed and sent the plane climbing again.
A half hour later, it was with some regret that he headed the Cessna back to the airfield. A couple of spins was all he had time for today. That was the promise he’d made himself when he’d decided to take the plane up. But he was tempted…
No, he was not going to be late for his grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday party.
Then he grinned again. One more loop wouldn’t break his promise. So with the airfield in sight, he completed one more for the road.
“YOU’RE BORED.”
Nash Fortune didn’t bother to deny the charge as he faced Maggie Fortune, the tiny dynamo of a woman he loved most in the world. They stood on the balcony that opened off of her office. Below them her birthday party was in full swing. While the sun splashed red across the horizon, guests sipped champagne and nibbled at canapés as they clustered in groups around the pool or strolled along a maze of paths. The buzz of conversation and laughter mixed with the muted sounds of a string quartet.
A few moments ago, he and his grandmother had been standing with his friends Jonah and Gabe and Nicola, Gabe’s new fiancée, at the far end of the pool. They’d all been catching up with Father Mike, and without warning, his yawn had just escaped. He’d thought he’d hidden it, but his grandmother’s eagle eye had caught it and she’d announced that she needed to steal him away for a moment.
“Well? Am I right?”
What could he say? She was.
She wagged a finger at him. “What worries me is you yawned just like that the night you set Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock loose in the middle of my dinner party.”
He grinned at her. “You remember my gerbils’ names?”
“Of course. One of my dinner guests fainted, I nearly lost the deal I was negotiating, and my chef quit because no one ate his main course. All because your pets got loose from the Starship Enterprise.” Her eyes, green as the emeralds she wore in her ears, twinkled at him and her lips twitched now just as they had on that long ago evening.
Nash took her hands in his. “Grams, your birthday bash is safe. I promise I haven’t brought any gerbils or other small animals with me.”
“That isn’t the only mischief you used to get into when you weren’t challenged enough. Do you recall when you were in fourth grade and you glued poor Katie Lynn Peabody to her desk? And you put the snake you’d brought in for show and tell in your teacher’s desk?”
“Surely the statute of limitations has run out on those crimes. How about if I apologize for yawning?”
“Why in hell should you apologize?” Maggie frowned at him.
“Because it’s made you worry.” He drew his grandmother into his arms and just held her for a moment. Maggie’s hair was pure white now instead of the raven color it had once been. But it was styled to perfection, and in her red silk pantsuit she looked as if she’d just stepped off the cover of a women’s fashion magazine.
Looks weren’t her only asset. She had one of the sharpest minds he’d ever encountered. For the past two decades, she’d run Fortune Enterprises, a large business empire that ranged from mining and real estate holdings to publishing. And twenty-one years ago, she’d also taken over the job of raising him after his father’s untimely death in the Gulf War.
As he drew back, Nash wondered which she’d claim was the bigger of the two challenges.
“Thanks for the hug,” she said. “They’ve always been your best method of trying to distract me. But not tonight. I didn’t bring you up here just to scold you because you yawned at my birthday party.”
She tapped a finger on his chest. “The problem is you’re bored, period. I can see the signs. You’re not sleeping well.”
That was true although he’d never figured out how his grandmother could always tell.
“More lines around your eyes,” she said with her usual knack for reading his mind. “And twice so far this evening, I’ve seen you gaze off into space. Admit it. I was right. You’re regretting your decision to request a teaching assignment at the Air Force Academy.”
“Not true,” he said.
She held a hand up. “Let me finish. After all, I was responsible for your decision.”
“Partly responsible. Have you ever thought that I might have needed to come home? That maybe I was a bit restless and bored before I learned about your surgery?”
She stared at him for a moment.
Nash fully sympathized with her surprise. It was the first time he’d admitted to himself that his current feeling of…restlessness may have predated his teaching assignment. He might have been courting boredom even in Afghanistan.
She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve got the same problem your father had when he was about your age. Our country’s wars are winding down. And you’re getting older. You’re starting to see that you can’t fly those fighter planes forever. I imagine facing the young men and women who’ll replace you in the classroom each day drives the point home even more sharply. So I’ll tell you what I told your father. You can’t stop time. You have to accept it and go with the flow.”
He raised his brows.
Her lips twitched again. “I know. It’s my milestone birthday we’re celebrating, but your thirtieth wasn’t that long ago. And you can’t be a fly-boy forever. Your father was getting a bit bored with the life of a pilot in peace time before the Gulf War erupted.”
Nash captured one of her hands in his again. As usual, she was spot-on about some of what he was feeling.
“You could always think of making a career change.”
He met her eyes without disguising the surprise in his. From the time he’d been a child, she’d supported his dream of one day following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a pilot in the Air Force. She’d never once put any kind of pressure on him to consider taking over one of the many companies she ran—in spite of the fact that when she’d lost his father, she’d lost the son she’d expected to one day fill her shoes.
He narrowed his eyes as a sudden thought occurred to him. “Something has changed. You’ve received some bad news from your doctors.”
“No, nothing like that. I’m fine. I’d tell you in a heartbeat if I wasn’t.” Maggie raised the hand holding hers and patted it. “I’m just planting a seed about the future. It’s my birthday. I have a right to plant seeds.”
Nash laughed. “You have the right to plant seeds whenever you want.” And they had a tendency to take root and grow. Johnny Appleseed had nothing on his grandmother in that department. But he was beginning to wonder just what seed she’d intended to plant when she’d brought him up here to the balcony.
Maggie continued to meet his gaze. “I also have a right to worry. And perhaps feel a bit guilty.”
“Guilty? About what?”
“Your
