The Way Home (4 page)

No doubt Meg Harper knew exactly what people said about her father — about her family. In a town as small as Regret, you couldn’t avoid knowing what was being said — about yourself as well as about anyone else. In her eyes, he saw a pride older than her years, the kind of pride that came of knowing you were starting out with two strikes against you and that you had to prove you deserved the same level of respect most people took for granted.

Ty knew that feeling, at least in part. Hadn’t he spent half his life trying to show his parents that he was as worthy of their love as his older brother had been? That Dickey might have died in the trenches of France but they still had a son? He doubted that Meg’s pride would make anyone forget that she was a Harper, any more than he’d ever been able to make his mother forget that her favorite son had been taken from her. But he couldn’t slap at that pride by offering her charity, either.

“Hey, you ready to go home?” Jack’s voice preceded him as he came around the Jenny’s nose. “Hello.” He gave Meg a friendly grin.

“Hello.” Meg was already starting to edge away.

Afterward, Ty couldn’t have explained just why he didn’t let her go or why he was so determined that she have her ride in an airplane. Maybe it was the wistful glance she threw at the Jenny as she took a step back. Maybe it was the fact that her blatant hero worship had soothed the sting of his mother’s attitude. Or it could have been the stubbornness that his mother claimed was his besetting sin. Whatever it was, he was damned if this big-eyed little girl was going to go home without getting a taste of flying.

“Just a minute, Meg. I may need your help.” He made sure she’d stopped her retreat before turning to Jack. “I thought I should check the gyroscopic balance of the lower magneto. I’ll need a passenger for that, and I was thinking that Meg might be just about the right weight.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose but to his credit, his mouth didn’t even twitch at this string of nonsense. He turned to look at Meg, considering her with the solemnity the question deserved.

Meg held her breath, waiting for his verdict. If she’d be helping Tyler by going up in his airplane, then it wouldn’t be the same as taking charity.

“I think she’d be heavy enough,” Jack said after a moment, having let the tension stretch until Meg was sure she would explode with it. “And you certainly don’t want to let that magneto get out of balance,” he added, shaking his head to indicate what a serious problem that could be.

Meg felt her chest swell and her cheeks flush with excitement. Not only was she going to get to ride in an airplane, but she’d be helping Tyler. It just didn’t seem possible that two such wonderful things could happen on the same day.

“Would you mind helping me, Meg?” Ty hardly needed the vigorous shake of her head to give him his answer. She was nearly quivering with eagerness. She straightened her shoulders and tugged the bottom of her blue cotton middy into place over her pleated skirt, like a soldier preparing for inspection.

“If you really think I could help,” she said, not bothering to hide her enthusiasm.

“Like Jack said, it’s important that the magneto be properly balanced, and I have to have a passenger to do that.” If it occurred to Meg that Jack could very well have provided the necessary weight, she didn’t feel obligated to point it out.

Jack grinned as he watched Ty lift Meg up onto the Jenny’s wing. He’d just started to lift her into the seat when they heard someone calling Meg’s name.

“It’s Patsy.” Meg’s voice was flat. Ty set her down and she slid off the wing to the ground. He jumped down and stood next to her. “I imagine I’ve got to go,” she said, watching her sister approach. There was no emotion in the words, no indication of the disappointment he knew she felt. He had the feeling there’d been so many disappointments in her young life that she’d come to expect them more often than not.

“I knew I’d find you here.” Patsy paused when she saw the two young men. She reached up to pat her hair, bobbed just this summer so that it framed her pretty features like a soft brown cap. Her voice deepened to what she fancied was an alluring huskiness. “Mr. Davis says it’s time we went and he sent me to find you. I figured you might still be here watching the flying. It was so exciting, it nearly took my breath away.”

She smoothed her hands down her hips, curving her spine just the way she’d seen the models do in the Sears Roebuck catalogs, drawing attention to the sleek lines of her figure.

“We aim to please,” Jack said, grinning at her obvious attempt to look seductive, though he couldn’t help but notice that she was really a very pretty girl. Too bad she wasn’t a little older.

Ty set his hand on Meg’s shoulder when she started to move away. She hadn’t said anything but he could feel the disappointment radiating from her. He had the feeling there were few enough treats in her life. It didn’t seem fair that she should have to miss this one, too.

“Meg was going to help me run a test. Do we have time for a quick flight?”

“I don’t know.” Her expression softened when she saw the plea in her little sister’s eyes. “Course, it might have taken me a good bit longer to find you, I suppose.” She hesitated, nibbling her lower lip. Meg’s small body was tense under Ty’s hand as she waited for the verdict.

“You know, it occurs to me that I ought to check out the balance on my magneto, too,” Jack said suddenly. “Can’t ever be too careful about those things. Since I’d have to have a passenger to do a proper test, maybe you’d be willing to go up with me?” he asked Patsy.

“I might.” She hesitated only a moment longer before tossing her head, making her bobbed hair swing out from her face. She slanted Jack a flirtatious look. “I reckon I can always say that it took me awhile to find Meg.”

Ty didn’t wait for more. He lifted Meg bodily and set her in the front of the plane. Meg sat docilely while he tugged a leather cap over her hair and buckled it under her chin. She took the goggles he handed her and slid them on, hardly aware of what she was doing, unable to think of anything beyond the fact that she was actually going to go up in an airplane.

She felt no trepidation. Her confidence in Tyler McKendrick was absolute. She gripped the sides of the plane as it lumbered down the field. It felt heavy and clumsy, nothing like she’d imagined. But before disappointment could take hold, the wheels lifted off the ground and they began to angle away from the earth and Meg forgot how to breathe.

It was everything she’d imagined it would be and more. So much more that she didn’t even have the words to describe it. The ground fell away beneath them, becoming a patchwork quilt of green fields and trees with crisp edgings of brown where roads cut through. Ty turned the Jenny’s nose westward and suddenly Regret lay spread beneath them, the houses like a child’s building blocks lined up in neat rows.

Meg tilted her head back to look up at the sky. It was a vast blue arc, the color paler and yet sharper than it was from the ground. It seemed as if she were a part of the sky, as if she belonged there, as if she’d found a place that could truly be hers. Up here, earthbound concerns were small and insignificant. It didn’t matter if her dresses were hand-me-downs or that there might not be enough food for supper. Those were all distant things that didn’t matter up here.

She laughed up at the sky.

Ty felt his heart contract at the sheer joy he saw in Meg’s face. Over the course of the afternoon, he’d seen many reactions, from fear to a distinct greenish tint that indicated a quick landing to be a wise choice, to a cautious pleasure. Not once had he seen the elation he saw now.

It made him wish the flight could be longer, that he could give her more than just a taste of what flying was like. But the light was starting to fade and he could see Jack’s plane already taxiing to a halt near the edge of the field. He brought the Jenny around and started down.

He stopped the plane behind Jack’s, pulling off his leather cap and tossing it in the seat as he jumped to the ground and moved forward to help Meg out. The cap had flattened her pale hair against her head, crushing all the fat curls, but her eyes shone bright blue. He’d half expected a spate of words. Most children couldn’t wait to talk about their short freedom from the bonds of earth. But Meg didn’t say anything until he’d set her on the ground. They could both see her sister and Jack approaching, Patsy’s steps quick and hurried.

“Come on, Meg. We’ve got to hurry or Mr. Davis’ll bust a gusset,” Patsy called from a few yards away.

Meg hesitated a moment longer, looking up at Ty with those big blue eyes. “Thank you. It’s like being right next to heaven.”

She darted off before Ty could think of a reply. Not that there was much he could have said except that he agreed. Patsy threw a last look in Jack’s direction, her smile pure flirtation, before she hustled Meg in the direction of the fair.

Ty was still watching the two of them when Jack reached him.

“You know, when she gets a little older, that girl is going to be pure dynamite,” Jack commented, his eyes on the carefully cultivated swing in Patsy Harper’s walk.

“I think you’re right,” Ty said, thinking of the fathomless blue of Meg Harper’s eyes. “She’s going to be a heart-breaker.”

CHAPTER 3

SEVEN YEARS LATER

Ty had nearly forgotten what summer was like in Regret. Hot and dry or pouring rain — there didn’t seem to be any happy medium between the two conditions. He stood on the front porch of the house where he’d grown up and looked down the hill at the tidy streets of Regret, Iowa.

It was, he admitted grudgingly, a pretty view. One he’d even missed occasionally over the last few years. But just because he’d missed it didn’t mean that he was looking forward to spending his summer looking at it.

Sighing, he moved down the steps, favoring his left leg. He’d learned the hard way that airplanes and trees were a bad combination. The plane had been repaired inside a week. Unfortunately, his leg was taking a good bit longer than that. Be patient, the doctor had told him. The bones needed time to knit. Plain in the doctor’s tone had been the thought that he was lucky it hadn’t been his neck that was broken.

Well, he was going to have plenty of time to practice being patient, iy thought sourly. He leaned over the door to put his fishing pole and the basket that held his lunch in the passenger seat of his car. The car, like the fishing, was another consolation for the weeks of boredom that undoubtedly lay ahead.

His father had presented it to him, saying that he’d need a way to get around. He knew, firsthand, just how hard it was to say no to Helen McKendrick once she had her mind made up. And she’d made up her mind that Ty
— her only remaining son,
she’d said, her voice breaking — would spend the summer recuperating at home. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to rest, wondering if he was talcing care of himself. And he’d given in, cursing his weakness even as he heard himself agreeing to stay for the summer.

The opportunity to have Tyler firmly under her thumb had been so enticing that she’d even decided to cancel their trip to Europe. Which was when his father — God bless him — in a rare display of husbandly authority, had put his foot down. They’d planned to go to Europe and he’d already paid for the their crossing. Tyler was recovering from a broken leg, not a broken back. He didn’t need full-time nursing.

So it could have been worse, Tyler told himself as he pulled open the driver’s door and stepped up on the running board. He could have been facing the next couple of months with his mother hovering over him. As it was, she was safely — and he hoped happily — on her way across the Atlantic, and he was the owner of a snappy little roadster, courtesy of his father.

The car wasn’t new but it was a honey. And even if it had been nothing more than a rattletrap, it would still have represented a certain freedom, the illusion that he could leave whenever he wanted, instead of staying out the summer as he knew he would. Not because his leg would take that long to recover, but because he’d promised his mother he would stay.

He drove past the Vanderbilts‘ — no relation to
the
Vanderbilts, Edwina Vanderbilt liked to say, giving a coy smile to suggest that there
might
be a relation but she wasn’t the sort to boast. Edwina and his mother were at once bosom chums and heated competitors in everything from gardening to hairstyles. No doubt Edwina would be keeping a discreet eye on his comings and goings, happy if she could report to his mother that he’d behaved just as he should, even happier if there were a few indiscretions she could pass on.

Ty was just considering the likelihood of finding an indiscretion to commit and coming to the sad conclusion that, in Regret, indiscretions weren’t as easy to come by as he might have liked, when he saw the girl.

She was walking down the sidewalk, doing absolutely nothing to draw attention to herself. But with a figure like that, she didn’t have to do anything but just breathe, Ty thought. He whistled softly under his breath, taking in the slender waist and gentle curve of her hips. Her dress was navy with white polka dots. The full skirt ended below her knee, exposing only a few discreet inches of slender calves and a pair of shapely ankles. Her hair was shoulder length and softly waved, golden blond and eminently touchable.

Even without seeing her face, Ty was sure he didn’t know her. It wasn’t possible that he’d have forgotten that figure and that hair.