Page 5 of Plane Passion

2

At seven-fifty a.m., Millie climbed out of her little red Stutz Bearcat roadster in the dirt parking lot beside Heller Airport. Even after a restless night’s sleep and the long drive and ferry ride from Manhattan, she was still brimming with righteous anger.

Why were men so difficult? She was perfectly capable of flying the mail. Pritchard thought he’d scare her with stories of fuel running out and mechanical failures as if she hadn’t lived through her fair share of near disasters learning to fly circus stunts. She knew very well how to land without power. She’d been doing it for nearly as long as there had been airplanes, probably longer than Pritchard.

Millie knew his type all too well—tall, handsome, convinced he was a god because he could defy gravity. Well, she could defy gravity too. She’d been doing it since she was fourteen.

Pritchard could go to hell with all his warnings. He was just one more man standing in her way as she carved out a life for herself. A life with no man by her side, thank you very much. She’d learned her lesson on that front.

Speaking of the devil, Pritchard drove up in a Model T just as she was pulling her bag out of her trunk.

“Nice car.” He sauntered over to admire her roadster.

What a show he put on with his too-long blond hair that he kept sweeping from his face. He seemed to think his dark caramel eyes would charm her and leave her weak-kneed, like some schoolgirl with a crush. Why should she care how lean and muscular he was beneath his leather flight suit? She certainly wasn’t distracted by the curve of his shoulder muscles or by his rolled-up sleeves showing off a tattoo on his left forearm of a swallow in flight.

“Ahem. I said, nice car.”

She glared at him. It was a nice car, and she’d earned it the hard way. Not that she could have afforded it on her airmail salary, which was half what the men made.

You don’t have a family to support. It wouldn’t be fair to the men, the Postmaster General had said when she objected to the pay. It was just one of the many negotiating points she planned to bring up once she fulfilled the terms of their little deal.

“You know, we have to work together.” Pritchard crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes, a hint of a smile twitching on his lips. For the love of God, the man had dimples. Did he have to have adorable dimples? “We might as well be civil.”

“Why should I be civil to a man who’s plotting to get me to quit? Personally, I’d rather you kept your mouth shut and did your job.” She slammed the car trunk down.

He raised an eyebrow and made a show of closing his mouth with an imaginary zipper. Then he walked away. Cad.

She could ask to learn from someone else, she supposed. But that would mean surrender, and she was never going to do that.

Following him into the breakroom, she poured herself a cup of coffee. Ugh. Who replaced the coffee with mud? But she drank it anyway. By God if the others were going to drink this sludge, she was too.

A tall pilot with cropped black hair rigid with pomade peered into the room, spotted them, and ambled in.

“Jack, come in and keep me company.” Pritchard beckoned. “Have you met Miss Aldrich?”

The man looked her up and down and shook his head, smiling. Or was it a smirk?

Pritchard slapped him on the back and nodded at Millie. “Jack, Miss Millie Aldrich. Miss Aldrich, Jack Thompson, one of my oldest friends. We grew up next door to each other in Brooklyn.”

Delightful. Another man who thought it was hilarious that she intended to fly the mail. Easy does it, Millie. Don’t let your temper get the better of you on your first morning.

“Miss Aldrich. A pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.” Jack held out his hand and smiled.

She bristled. If Thompson made a wisecrack about her former fiancé, she might have to kill him. But homicide was frowned upon on one’s first day at work.

“Only good things, I assure you.” Thompson’s smile fell a bit, but he kept his hand up.

Relenting, she took it and shook it firmly, forcing herself to smile. “It’s a pleasure to meet you too, Thompson. I look forward to working with you.”

She braced herself for the inevitable questions about what it was like to be engaged to Barney Mason, famous Hollywood cowboy.

“I saw one of your shows last May. You’re one hell of a barnstormer. Where did you learn to fly like that?”

That wasn’t what she was expecting. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to get a compliment on her flying after all the nonsense with Barney. “I learned in the circus. My father was in vaudeville, and my mother was an acrobat. When I was fourteen, a barnstormer joined the troupe, and I refused to stay away from his plane. I begged and begged until he taught me to fly, and by the time I was sixteen, I did so well that he added me to his act. It turns out folks will pay a lot of money to watch a girl risk her neck doing aerial stunts, so I kept at it.”

She brought in far more money than Mama and Papa, so quitting was never an option. To this day, she deposited half her earnings into their account every month. It was only because of her contributions that they’d been able to retire to Florida when Mom’s health took a turn for the worse.

Thompson poured himself a cup of coffee. “That’s quite a story! So what made you decide to fly the mail?”