“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.

“Is it Nick that's bothering you, Cass?” He knew she was haunted by the man, and he was worried about how close they had obviously still been the last time she saw him. He was sorry things hadn't worked out for them. But she couldn't have waited for him indefinitely if Nick had told her not to. Pat had tried to tell him it was a mistake, setting her free like that, but young people never listen. Not that Nick was so young anymore. He was old enough to know a thing or two. But like most men, he was foolish when it came to women. “You can't pine for him, Cassie. Not married to another man,” She nodded, loath to tell him the truth. She was so ashamed of her own bad judgment. Desmond had taken her in completely.

‘There's something you're not telling me, Cassandra Maureen,” her father prodded her, and in the end, in spite of herself, she told him. And he was stunned at what she said. It was everything Nick had warned them of and predicted.

“He was right, Dad. Completely.”

“What arc you going to do now?” He wanted to kill the man. What a rotten trick to pull on a girl like her, to exploit her so totally for his own gain and glory.

“I don't know. Fly the tour, obviously. I really do owe him that. I wouldn't back out on him, though I don't think he knows that. Ill do it. And then”- she took a breath, there weren't many choices-” we'll get divorced, I guess. I'm sure somehow he'll make it look as though I did something terrible. He'll manipulate the press somehow to his advantage. He's much more complicated than I realized. And a whole lot meaner.”

“Will he give you anything?” her father wondered. He was a very rich man, and he could have paid her handsomely for her disappointment.

“I doubt it. I'll make my fee for the tour. He was going to reduce it because of the postponement, but he didn't. He considers that a major gift. I don't need more than that. I don't want anything from him. He's been generous enough.” And she could live for years on the career he had helped her achieve, that was payment enough. She wanted nothing more from Desmond.

“I'm sorry, Cassie. I'm so very sorry.” He was deeply distressed by what he'd heard from her, and they both agreed not to upset her mother.

“Just take care of yourself on the tour. That's all that's important now. You can sort the rest out later.”

“Maybe I'll fly bombers to England when I come back, like Jackie Cochran.” That June, she had copiloted a Lockheed Hudson bomber to England, proving once and for all that women could fly heavy airplanes.

“Oh be gone with you,” her father rolled his eyes with a groan, “flying bombers to England. You'll give me another heart attack. I swear, you'll make me rue the day I ever took you up in an airplane. Can't you do something ordinary for a while, like answer phones somewhere, or cook, or help your mother clean house?” But he was teasing her, and she knew it. He knew there was no hope of her giving up the skies now. “Fly safely, Cass,” he warned her before she left. “Be careful. Watch everything, with all your senses.” He knew she was good at that. He had never seen a better pilot.

And the next morning when she left, they all cried at seeing her go, and knowing the danger of the Pacific tour. And Cassie and Billy cried right along with them. Pat and another pilot flew them to Chicago, and Billy and Cassie flew back to California commercially from there. It was pleasant actually, for a change. The Skygirls made a big fuss over her, and she and Billy sat and talked about their month of training. It had been peaceful for them, hanging out together at the airport all summer, just like the old days, only better. They were older now. They had interesting days ahead. And in spite of Desmond, Cassie was getting excited about the tour.

“What are you going to do about a place to stay when you get back to Newport Beach?” Billy asked her quietly as they flew back.

“I haven't thought of that. I don't know… I can't stay at a hotel, I guess.” She suspected Desmond wouldn't like that, because of the scandal. But she couldn't imagine staying in his house with him after everything that had happened. He hadn't called her once in the past two months, and the only letters from him were from his lawyers or his office.

“You can stay with me, if you want. If anyone finds out, we can say it's for training. What do you think?” Billy offered.

“I think I'd like to,” she said honestly. She had nowhere else to go now.

She went home with him that night, with some clothes she'd brought from Illinois, and some flight overalls. And she went to work with him the next day, in his old jalopy. With all the money he made, Billy still hadn't bought himself a decent car, and he didn't plan to. He loved his old Model A, even though at least half the time it never started.