The Invitation (Montgomery/Taggert 19)

“Ah, too bad, but I’m sure you can hire others. Doesn’t he have young cousins who fly? I seem to remember a few of them buzzing around.”

“I rather like buzzing around myself,” she said, her head down.

Immediately Edward knew that he had offended her. “Of course you do. Forgive me. I didn’t mean anything. You are years away from retirement. It’s just that retirement is close at hand for me, so I think it’s that way for others too.”

He was protesting too much, and it was obvious that he was backtracking merely to make her feel better. There was an awkward silence in which Jackie kept her head down and moved her fish about on her plate. She’d ordered fish so she could cut it with a fork; she wouldn’t have liked to ask a man to cut her steak for her. Only William—Stop it! she commanded herself.

Edward didn’t fully understand what he had said to offend her. When his wife had reached forty—an age Jackie was fast approaching—she had cried for two days. She’d said it was the end of youth and that she didn’t want to be middle-aged. Maybe that was Jackie’s problem. She was refusing to face the fact that she wasn’t a kid anymore. No longer would the newspapers write stories about her being the youngest person to do so and so. Maybe her eyesight was failing, or her reflexes. Maybe she was seeing the younger pilots doing so well, then seeing her own body aging, and it was making her angry. Aging often made a person angry at first.

Maybe, he thought, she was worried about whether or not she was still attractive to men.

“I like mature women,” he said. “They know more about life.” His eyes twinkled. “They don’t expect so much of a man.”

He meant to make light of himself, but Jackie didn’t take the remark that way. “Do you mean that an older woman knows she has to take what she can get in a husband, that she can no longer expect some gorgeous young man to sweep her off her feet?”

That was not at all what he meant, but he didn’t say so. Something seemed to be bothering her, and he didn’t know enough about her to figure out what it was. He decided it would probably be better just to change the subject.

“I’m going to sail around the world someday,” Edward said brightly, trying to introduce a whole new topic. A more pleasant one than aging.

“Are you?” Jackie asked, trying to work up some interest in what he was saying. She knew that he hadn’t meant to demean her by saying that he liked mature women. She was a mature woman. So why did William’s words—“I’d love to marry you and give you as many kids as you want”—echo in her head? He hadn’t said, “as many kids as you have fertile years left.” Could a mature woman have a dozen children?

“Have you always been a sailor?” she forced herself to ask.

The question embarrassed Edward, for he knew she thought he’d meant that he was going to sail a boat himself. Considering her skills with a plane, it was understandable that she would assume others were as capable as she was.

“I meant that I’m going on a cruise ship with a few hundred other people.”

“Oh” was all that Jackie could reply. She had been in towns when a cruise ship had pulled into port and suddenly every shop, every restaurant, would be overrun with tourists buying anything that could possibly be called a souvenir.

“Come with me, Jackie,” Edward said, surprising both of them.

“What?”

“I’ll make all the arrangements, pay for everything. I don’t expect you to marry me. I’ll book us separate cabins, and we’ll be traveling companions, friends. We’ll see the world together. Or maybe you’ll be seeing the world again.” He reached acr

oss the table and took her hand in his large warm one. “I know we could be friends. I’ve read so much about you, and I’d love to hear all about your exciting life. I’d love to hear about the time you flew those burned children to the hospital and the president called you. You must be full of hundreds of stories.”

“Rather like taking a radio with you, huh?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Taking me with you to tell you stories would be like having your own radio with you at every moment. You could feed me a dinner and I’d perform. Buy me a trinket and you get a story. Pay for a whole cruise and you get relief from the tedium of months on a ship with nothing to do.”

By the time she finished, he was sitting straight in his chair, and there was a closed look on his face. It was a businessman look rather than an I’m-out-with-a-pretty-woman-for-dinner look.

“I apologize,” she said, then took a deep breath. “Mr. Browne, I don’t mean to be offensive, but I think you’ve fallen in love with Terri’s glorification of whatever I may have accomplished in my life. I’m a woman, just as your wife was a woman. I’m not a public institution, nor am I an especially good storyteller. I’ve led an exciting life, and I have no intention of retiring yet.”

Oh, heavens, but she was making a mess of this. This was a very nice person, just like Terri. But why did she have the feeling that ninety percent of Terri’s and Edward’s interest in her was based on her fame? What other reason would this man have had for asking about her? She certainly wasn’t the most beautiful unmarried woman in town. So why was he interested in her?

He had already answered that question: he wanted companionship. He was fifty-five years old, and he was no longer looking for long legs and a woman to start a family with. At this stage in his life he wanted someone to talk with and what better candidate than a woman who’d traveled all over the world and was “full of stories”?

After Jackie’s outburst there was no way to salvage the evening. They spent the rest of the meal in awkward silence.

Chapter Nine

When Jackie returned home she wasn’t surprised to see the house dark and no sign of William anywhere. What had she expected, that he’d be waiting up for her?

She shook her head, trying to clear it. There was nothing between her and William, nothing at all, and there wasn’t going to be. He said he loved her, even though she had done everything possible to keep him from loving her. She winced when she thought of flying the airplane upside down and making him ill. Even if she couldn’t return his love it hadn’t been very polite of her to be so nasty about everything.