“The aeronautics branch of the US Department of Commerce had strict physical standards that every pilot needed to meet to be licensed. An aviator had to have strong eyes, functioning eardrums, good balance, and a healthy heart. Unrepaired harelips and stuttering speech could be cause for disqualification, as could a history of asthma or pneumonia.”
—Fly Girls by Keith O’Brien
May 1934—New York City
When a wax-shined car slowed in front of the apartment complex, Nancy guessed it was Bob. There weren’t any other cars slowing and stopping in front of her place. She’d been ready for a while, but that didn’t mean she’d rush out to greet him.
No, she watched Bob climb out of the car and walk around it. From her place at the edge of the window, she observed him as an outsider might. Her first impression had been of a pompous and irritating man covered in grease stains, blustering rudely, his red hair at odds.
But the man walking up to her place wore a light-gray suit, dark-colored tie, polished shoes, hair combed neatly. His keys in his hand, he looked like a man on a mission. With intentions for something . . . or someone.
“Is that him?” Susie whispered right next to Nancy’s ear.
Nancy nearly jumped a foot. “You startled me.”
“Spying on your man?” Tommy joined in.
Three grown women crowded at the window, watching Bob walk toward their apartment, was quite ridiculous. Nancy huffed and moved away as a knock sounded at the door.
“You’re not going to hide and make him wait ten minutes?” Susie asked, her eyes comically wide.
“Why should I?” Nancy ignored her roommates’ chortles and opened the door.
Yes, her pulse might be doing acrobatics, but this was just Bob Love. Her employer. A man she’d been around plenty. So what if he was slicked up for a dinner date? She was wearing an emerald-green dress with short puff sleeves and a pleated bodice. Maybe she’d paid some extra careful attention to putting on makeup. It was more for her than for him. He’d seen her with raccoon eyes from goggles and plastered hair from helmets.
“You made it.” Did her voice sound breathy?
Bob Love at her doorstep was a new experience. His eyes were bluer, and he seemed taller somehow, more than his usual five-inch advantage. Maybe because he wasn’t hunched over a plane’s engine or sitting at his desk, surrounded by crumpled papers. “Good afternoon, Miss Harkness.”
“It’s evening.”
“So it is.” Then he smiled.
Before she could let herself bask in that smile, she turned toward her roommates, who were conspicuously hovering a few feet away. “Uh, Mr. Love, this is Susie and Tommy. My roommates.”
“Great to meet you.” He stepped forward and shook each of their hands as if it were the most natural thing in the world to politely greet them.
Why was their first meeting with him so cordial?
She’d give him a hard time about that later . . .
Susie was all friendliness, and Tommy wore a calculated smirk on her face.
“Nancy told us all about Inter City, Mr. Love,” Susie said in a leading tone. “Very impressive. I might take lessons from you if Boston were more conveniently located.”
“To New York City?”
“Yes, well . . .” Susie giggled. “I guess Boston wouldn’t be Boston if it were New York City.”
To Bob’s credit, his eyebrows only rose a tad, although Nancy could only imagine what he was thinking. And why was Susie being so . . . ridiculous?
“Tell us about the planes you have available,” Tommy cut in, her maddening singsong voice making an appearance. “Did Nancy tell you I’ve worked on a plane with Jacqueline Cochran? Do you know her?”
“I know of Miss Cochran,” Bob said. “As for the planes we have at Inter City, they include Waco cabin planes, Monocoupes, Fairchilds, and Kinner-powered Fleets.”
“Very nice.” Tommy tilted her head, looking a little too speculative for Nancy’s taste. “Very impressive. I’ll bet you don’t have trouble getting flight students—”
“I’m ready to go,” Nancy cut in.
Bob looked at her. Maybe with a bit of relief? “Great.” He stepped aside and motioned for her to walk out. “Nice to meet you, ladies.”
“Nice to meet you as well,” Susie said sweetly, echoed by Tommy.
Nancy narrowed her gaze at her roommates before heading outside. As she walked ahead of Bob to the car, she knew her friends were watching every move from the window.
“Here we are.” Bob reached around her and opened the passenger door of the Cadillac.
“Here we are.” Nancy glanced at him before sliding inside. Not surprisingly, his eyes were filled with amusement. She might have paid a dollar or two to know his thoughts. “This your car?”
“Yes, one of them.”
She tried not to act surprised. Or be impressed. Because she wasn’t impressed. Just because his family was wealthy didn’t mean that extended to the whole family. But it sure had given Bob a leg up in life, at least from her perspective. Although, it was clear the man was his own entrepreneur.
As she watched him walk around the car, she realized she knew little of his family. Everything she’d heard had come from Henry, or she’d put two and two together. She didn’t know what Bob’s intentions were for this “date,” but her intentions were to find out more about his background. Who he really was beneath all his shifting moods, intense gazes, and hard-nosed decisions.
When he climbed in, he didn’t start the car right away. Instead, he let the moment stretch between them. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
He nodded, his eyes searching her face. Was he looking for something? “That’s good news.”
“Are you going to start the car?” she asked, not liking the fluster building inside of her. “You know we’re being spied on.”
His smile was slow, and she had to glance away because her stomach was doing flips off a high dive.
Finally, he started the motor. “Where to, Miss Harkness?”
“You can call me Nancy, you know.”
“Does that mean you’ll call me Bob?” He pulled out onto the street after a quick check for traffic.
She cut a glance at him. His smile was still in place. “You’re my employer, so that’s entirely up to you.”
“I think it’s appropriate since we are going out to dinner.” He wasn’t a hesitant driver, of course, and easily steered them through traffic.
“On a date?”
“On a date,” he confirmed.
Nancy couldn’t stop herself, and she laughed.
Bob grinned, and she felt inordinately pleased for some reason. But she shouldn’t be noticing how his left hand guided the steering wheel and his right hand rested loosely on the seat, not far from her. “Do I need to apologize for my roommates?”
He looked over at her as he approached the next corner. “You should never apologize for someone else’s behavior.”
“Only one’s own?”
His mouth turned up in a smirk. “Correct. You’ve told me a few things about your roommates, so it was nice to finally meet them.”
Nancy had chatted about her roommates, she supposed, but only because they were also pilots. “You know, Henry told me you asked him questions about me. What was that all about?”
Bob sped up and pulled around a car going much slower than they were. She didn’t say anything, but she’d commented plenty on his flying when she thought he was going too fast or not decelerating enough before landing. Apparently, his driving was similar to his flying.
“Ah. Good old Henry,” Bob mused, unfazed by his daring traffic move. “Not too great about keeping things confidential. I didn’t want to put you on the spot, so I asked Henry about your dating life to make sure I wasn’t stepping on another fellow’s toes.”
Speaking of toes, Nancy was warming up from head to toe. That was when she noticed they were approaching the next corner a little fast. When was he going to brake? “Slow down, and turn up there,” she said. “We’re going to that diner.”
“A diner?” He was clearly surprised, and for a moment, she thought he might argue. He was dressed to walk into a top-scale New York restaurant, but he slowed and pulled into the parking lot.
They headed into the diner, and the waitress led them to one of the booths.
“This is cozy,” Bob commented, glancing around at the white walls full of framed photos of Yankee baseball players.
“We come here a lot—well, after our paydays. Usually, we’re eating cans of soup in between.”
“Not the actual cans, though, right?” he teased. “Just the contents inside . . .”
“Depends on how hungry we are.”
He laughed. “Tell you what, tomorrow I’ll pick the place we eat.”
“Tomorrow? That’s a bit presumptuous, Mr. Love.”
A heartbeat passed. “Is it?”
They locked gazes for a moment, then she shrugged. “I won’t turn down a free meal.”
His smile was quick. He’d clearly taken no offense to her glib comment. “Good thing I’m paying.”
Nancy’s cheeks were going to flush red at any moment, so she picked up the menu and pretended to browse, even though she knew what she was going to order.
“Tell me about your family,” Bob said casually after the waitress had taken their orders and delivered drinks.
“You know the basics.” She took a sip of water from her glass. “Henry said he filled you in.”
“Touché.” Bob reached for his own glass. “I want to hear from you. Henry is a very poor substitute.”
“It’s all rather boring,” she hedged. “At least, until I started flying—that’s when I started waking up in the morning eager for the day to begin. And only if the day included a lesson somewhere, of course.”
“Of course.”
Nancy decided that Bob was easy to talk to. He listened closely and asked plenty of questions. Their meal came and went, and they ordered more drinks. By the time Nancy was telling him about when she and her brother had buzzed the boys’ prep school, they had desserts in front of them.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d ordered dessert with a restaurant meal.
“So, your brother left you to face the angry headmistress by yourself?”
“Yes, that was Robert Harkness for you. Always stirring up a storm, then slipping away.”
Bob turned his dessert spoon back and forth. He had yet to try the ice cream. “Henry told me a little bit about your brother. I’m sorry he died.”
Talking about her brother tonight had made her miss him all the more fiercely. She looked down with a hard blink. “He left a wife and two little boys,” she said in a quiet voice. “He was only twenty-five but was always a daredevil. Couldn’t resist a race or challenge.”
“It sounds like he lived a full life, on his terms, even though it was cut short.” Bob set his spoon down, ice cream still untouched. “Some people never achieve their dreams. They wake up one day and discover they’ve lived decades without finding joy.”
“Yes.” She hadn’t thought of it like that before, and it was strangely comforting. Her brother had always gone after his passions, taking them to the extreme sometimes but finding joy in every corner of his life. “My parents also lost two little girls at birth—born before either of us—Gertrude and Hanna.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Bob said, subdued. “When I was ten years old, my older brother, John, died.”
Nancy blinked. “Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“He was born an invalid,” Bob continued, his voice dropping low. “Had a lot of health problems, so I guess it wasn’t a big shock, like your brother’s unexpected death. John was in his early twenties.”
She tried to imagine how it would be to have a sibling who was an invalid. The constant worry. The never-ending medical care. “Still, I’m sure it devastated everyone.”
“Yes.”
Nancy reached over and grasped his hand. “I’m really sorry, Bob. I know how big that hole can be.”
He looked at her hand on his, then he turned his hand over and linked their fingers.
She didn’t see it as romantic though—they were sharing their similar grief—so, then, why was her heart banging about? After a moment, she pulled her hand away, and he released it easily.
“What about other siblings?” she asked.
Bob’s face shifted into something lighter. “Ah, my older sister, Margaret. She’s eight years older than me, but she acts like my mother most of the time.”
“She sounds delightfully bossy.”
“Yes, she was, and still is.” Bob finally took a bite of his half-melted ice cream. “She was pretty much my full-time nurse when I was about seven and contracted polio soon after my brother’s death.”
Nancy brought a hand to her mouth, staring at Bob. His life had not been easy. Her preconceived judgments of a privileged childhood took a hard right turn. Could wealth really soften the blow of a lost brother and a dire case of polio? This man had many more layers than she’d first thought. “Oh no, that must have been terrible.”
He gave a small nod of acknowledgment. “It was compounded because the day before I found out I had polio, our chauffeur’s son died from it.”
She shook her head, trying to imagine so many tragedies at the same time. “But you recovered?”
“Due to Margaret’s constant care. That, and my dad convincing a doctor to experiment and use me as a lab rat.”
“What? How?”
Bob’s shrug was nonchalant. “I guess there were experiments that were comprised of taking blood from polio survivors and injecting that serum into someone currently suffering polio.”
“And . . . they injected serum into you?”
“Correct. Right into my spine. Paralyzed me for a while.”
“Bob . . . I can’t imagine.”
The corners of his mouth curved upward, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Rough time all the way around. But . . . I recovered fully. I only limp when I’ve had an exhausting day. Modern medicine is a miracle, isn’t it?”
Nancy exhaled slowly. “It is, yet that’s still a lot to take in.”
He leaned back in his chair, arms folded. “Sorry about the heavy stuff. My sister likes to remind me from time to time that I owe her my life—all that babying she did.”
The things he’d confessed were remarkable, truly remarkable. “She sounds like the best sister, even if she wants all the accolades. I think she deserves them.” Nancy smiled. “I always wished I had a sister, but I guess nosy roommates will have to do.”
Bob released a chuckle, and Nancy was grateful the seriousness of the conversation had eased.
“Well, Margaret would be happy to meet you anytime.”
Nancy didn’t know what she thought of that comment. Had he told his sister about her—or told his parents?
“Henry told me a little about that accident you were in with John Miller—and how you got the gray streak in your hair.”
Nancy absently touched the part of her hair that persistently stayed gray. “Yes, it’s quite the thing. I’ve stumped all doctors.” Bob smiled. She quite liked his smile. “Poor John, he ended up with pretty good scars. So, I guess we both have reminders.”
“Well, I’m glad you both pulled through.”
She nodded, then took a sip of the new glass of water the waitress had brought. How long had they been at the diner anyway? Darkness had fallen, and many customers had come and gone.
It seemed that Bob noticed the same thing at the same moment. His gaze moved to the dark windows, then back to her. “Do you have to get home right away, or are you interested in a walk about town?”
She didn’t have to get home right away, but he’d given her the perfect out. She didn’t want an out though. Bob had intrigued her tonight, more than she’d thought possible. She realized she wasn’t quite ready for their date to end. “I’d love to take a walk.”