LITMIR.BIZ

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though Skeeter was only on her first carrier cruise, she could hold her own with this bunch of bandits.

      When she realized what she was doing, Michelle forced herself to look away. If they caught her peeking, she’d never hear the end of it.

      Well, that would be one way to lose her icy reputation. Though she’d hate to think of what they’d call her then. Behind her back the Varks referred to her as the Ice Princess. Which was fine. Because the one thing they’d never call her was Quota Queen.

      She’d earned her gold wings. And the price she’d paid may very well have been her only chance at happiness. Certainly it was higher than the price paid by a man.

      Bending over in an exaggerated bow, she cinched her parachute harness tight, reminding herself of at least one advantage to being a woman. She didn’t have to worry about crushing her balls during an emergency ejection.

      Sweeping aside the curtain, she strode past the men with all the regal bearing of a condemned royal, pausing only long enough to pick up her oxygen mask and helmet with the call sign Rapunzel emblazoned across the front.

      A flight instructor had given her the tag after her first solo. In the aftermath of excitement, she’d taken off her helmet and let down her hair.

      A mistake she’d never make again.

      ON THE FLIGHT DECK, winds buffeted Michelle’s face. Jet engines roared in her ears and rattled her teeth, while the familiar heady scent of jet fumes filled her nostrils.

      The sun put in its first appearance of the day, highlighting the light cloud cover with streaks of bright orange and pink.

      A fine Navy day, as her father would say.

      God, she loved this life. Nothing compared with a dawn launch off an aircraft carrier. She’d take that adrenaline rush over a man any day.

      Pausing to check the safety of her 9-mm pistol, she placed the gun back in the holster pocket of her survival vest. Then ran a confident hand across the sleek underbelly of her assigned F-14 Tomcat. This was the point when she pushed aside all self-doubt and donned the persona of Xena Warrior Princess.

      “I read the maintenance log,” Skeeter shouted above the din as she joined in the preflight walk-through. “The last pilot reported a problem with the left rudder, but the ground crew didn’t find anything.”

      “Thanks, I’ll check it out.” Even though she trusted the “Vark fixers,” Michelle didn’t believe in leaving anything to chance. As a Navy pilot, she knew her plane inside and out.

      Circling the aircraft, Michelle scanned the overall structural integrity of the jet. After she inspected the hydraulic gauges, she moved on to check the tires. And more importantly, she made sure the tailhook was pointed down. If the hook couldn’t catch the arresting wire and the jet couldn’t be diverted to a land base, the pilot had to fly into a steel-mesh-and-canvas-net barricade strung across the deck. A terrifying experience she could do without.

      “You okay? You seem distracted,” Skeeter observed.

      “Well, you know Captain Greene.”

      “That bad, huh?”

      “Worse.”

      “I thought maybe you and Zach had a fight.”

      Michelle didn’t respond at first, needing the few moments it took to round the plane and come up on the nose again. But finally she had to satisfy her curiosity. “What makes you think Zach and I are fighting?”

      “For one thing,” Skeeter answered, “he keeps looking over here with those soulful blue eyes of his.”

      Michelle feigned indifference, but from the look on her RIO’s face, Skeeter wasn’t buying it. She pushed on the nose of the Tomcat to make sure the cone wouldn’t flip up during the catapult launch and crack the windshield.

      Her gaze darted toward Zach’s plane a few feet away. They made eye contact from where he crouched on the wing checking an access panel. But he didn’t offer a jaunty salute or wave as he normally would have.

      The corner of her mouth turned up in a sad smile. “He always looks like that.”

      “Maybe when he looks at you. Personally, I don’t know what you see in him,” Skeeter said.

      “Nothing,” Michelle denied automatically. Skeeter was probably the only person she knew who wasn’t taken in by Zach’s charisma. “In fact, I’m putting in for a transfer when we get to Turkey. I’m thinking about joining the Nintendo generation and retraining to fly the F/A-18 Hornet,” Michelle confided. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her until she shaded her eyes to watch as one of the newer, more maneuverable jets landed on deck.

      The pilots were younger, from a generation where working mothers were the norm, and less likely to see a female flier as a threat. Hell, as sobering as the thought was, they’d probably think of her as mom.

      Motherhood. With thirty approaching at Mach speed, she couldn’t deny thinking about it a time or two lately. Mostly with regret for what would never be.

      A son with dark hair and blue eyes, toddling after his daddy…or a daughter, slipping her tiny hand into a much larger one…

      “What about an F-14 squadron on the East Coast?” Skeeter asked.

      A tidal wave of homesickness washed over Michelle for her home state of Virginia. For her mom and dad.

      For forfeit fantasies.

      “You don’t really want to fly with Bitchin’ Betty, instead of me, do you?” Skeeter persisted.

      Michelle forced her attention back to her RIO, who was referring to the soft feminine voice of the computer system in the newer aircraft. The Hornet and the Super Hornet didn’t need a navigator. The pilot viewed operating systems from a four-inch screen with a touch pad, instead of having to scan countless dials and gauges.

      The jet was equipped to do the job of two planes—the fighter and the attack bomber—while utilizing only one-quarter of the personnel. In a few short years fighters like the F-14 Tomcat would be as obsolete as bombers like the A-6 Intruder. And so would she. Why hadn’t she seen the writing on the wall sooner?

      “If you stayed with the F-14, I could ship out with you.” Skeeter sounded a little desperate. And no wonder. As a pilot, Michelle had more options than her flight officer did. An NFO qualified to ride in, but not drive, a plane.

      In Skeeter’s case, she was too short. Skeeter had received a waiver for the back seat only after proving she could reach the farthest control, the handle that jettisoned the canopy during an emergency ejection.

      The Navy had built its planes decades earlier to accommodate males from five-six to six-three. Michelle’s height and build worked in her favor. “You’d want to do that?” she asked, weighing Skeeter’s feelings against her own motives. She didn’t want to hurt her dear friend with careless words or deeds. It wasn’t necessary to make up her mind right now.

      “We’re a team, right?”

      “Teammates,” Michelle agreed, but wondered in the end if she wouldn’t be moving on. She stole another glance at Zach, gabbing with a grape, a person wearing the purple vest of aviation fuels. The young enlisted woman appeared to hang on his every word. The knot in Michelle’s stomach tightened.

      She knew what that girl and others saw when they looked at Zach, his movie-star looks for one thing. The charm that radiated from every pore for another.

      But what did she see in him? Nothing…

      Except that he was everything she wasn’t. A better pilot. A better person. And she resented him for it. And some resentments took a lifetime to overcome.

      Michelle climbed onto the left wing to check the rudder. Was it possible to be jealous of and in love with your best friend?

      WITH ONE LAST LOOK in Michelle’s

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