Page 4 of Soaring Sweethearts

It was hard to believe this was the same girl he used to tease mercilessly for trying to play cowboys with him and Ernie. When she was little, she was such a tomboy, trailing after them. Or maybe she was just lonely. He and Ernie were inseparable, and her little sisters were too young to be her playmates. Whatever the reason, she wanted to be one of the boys, and now that they were adults, he regretted not letting her join them more often. She was a sweet kid and didn’t deserve the way they treated her.

And look what a lovely young woman she’d turned into. It was almost alarming to see her with womanly curves, and her big brown eyes and soft dark hair… He didn’t like to imagine what impious thoughts she might inspire in other men.

For him, she would always be the skinny kid with pigtails and two missing front teeth that he met when his family moved next door to the Pritchards. But other men certainly noticed what a knockout she was these days. He had to give Smith a talking-to this very afternoon for the way he was looking at her.

She deserved better than a pilot. Their wives went through hell, worrying every day if their husbands would come home, and Constance was too big-hearted to put through that. Ernie was adamant, and Jack agreed.

For some reason, Ernie had this strange notion that Jack had designs on Constance. Jack couldn’t imagine why. He thought of her as his own sister. They’d been avid correspondents during the war, though she’d been oddly distant during his disastrous engagement to Myrtle. Since he and Myrtle broke up, he might have spent a little bit too much time in her company, but he didn’t mean anything by it. Yes, he liked to talk to her. But they were friends, always had been.

“Thanks for driving me home, Jack,” she said, as they walked together out to his car. “I wouldn’t have been able to take this job if you hadn’t agreed to drive me when Ernie was out of town.”

“No problem at all,” he said, opening the passenger door for her. “It’s my pleasure.”

He cranked up the car and got in. Contance’s company made the long commute back from Newark to Brooklyn infinitely more pleasant.

“And thank you for earlier,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. It felt oddly good there. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

He gave her his best friendly smile and put his hand over hers, squeezing. She smelled like a bouquet of flowers with a hint of vanilla.

“You would have been fine without me. A consummate professional. But I’m glad I was there. It was shocking news, and I know how hard you take things like this. You didn’t stop crying for a month when you were sixteen and your cat died. And then you could hardly eat after your grandmother passed. We were all so worried about you, and⁠—”

“Jack, stop. Please. I feel bad enough already, and I don’t need a reminder of every single time I’ve taken something too much to heart.”

Now he’d stepped in it. “Sorry. I’m just glad you didn’t have to keep a stiff upper lip the whole time.”

She sighed and gave him a sad smile. She had lovely lips. Objectively speaking. Other men might have had thoughts about those lips.

“Well, thank you for being a shoulder to cry on. If it had been anyone else, I would have been so embarrassed.” She looked up at him with those big, earnest eyes.

He cleared his throat, which was suddenly dry, and backed out of his parking spot.

“I don’t know why,” he said quickly. “There’s nothing wrong with having a tender heart.”

“Says the boy who used to tease me mercilessly for saving baby birds that fell out of their nests.”

He laughed. “Yes, I suppose I did. Sorry about that.”

“But you always helped me save them. I still remember that time you broke your arm falling out of the tree out back after you returned one of my rescues to its nest. You were my hero.”

“Oh, I remember. You strung a brass ring from the carousel on your favorite hair ribbon and pinned it on me like a medal.” Which he still had, not that he’d ever told her that.

“You remember that?”

“Of course! Though I also remember I couldn’t play stickball for a whole month and a half.”

She laughed. It was a woman’s laugh. Her girlish giggle was long gone. Something about the sound of her voice did things to his insides that he didn’t want to examine too closely. No wonder Smith fell under her spell.

“You should have thanked me. You were terrible at stickball.”

“Ouch! You wound me.” Though she wasn’t wrong. No matter how much he played, and he played nearly constantly when he was in grade school, he never could match Ernie’s skill. But he tried. Oh, how he tried.

“I take that back. You were excellent at stickball, but as a coach not a player. You were pretty hopeless with a ball, but your strategies always won the day. Ernie and the gang would never have won as much as they did without you.”

He couldn’t help but grin as pride puffed out his chest. She noticed. He never thought anyone saw what he did for the team. But of course, Constance saw. Nothing got past her.

They arrived at the ferry from New Jersey back to the city, and he drove onto the lower deck. Together, they went upstairs into the cabin and found an empty row with a window seat, which, of course, he let her have. The spikey skyline of Manhattan loomed on the other side of the East River. It seemed to get taller every time he looked at it.

As they sat side by side, their shoulders touched, and warm contentment filled him. He was so glad to have Constance as a friend. He’d lived for her letters during the war, and she’d been so kind and understanding when things fell apart with Myrtle. And he didn’t think there was anyone else on earth who knew him quite so well. Not even Ernie. He wasn’t sure when the switch happened—when he started feeling closer to her than her brother. It was so gradual.