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you…!” she cried, exasperated.
    Chuckling, he crushed out his cigarette. “Come on, brat. Let’s go home.”
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    Minutes later, she was sitting in the cockpit of Russell’s Cessna Skyhawk while he went over the preflight checklist, a procedure that was still incomprehensible to her.
    She watched him with quiet, caressing eyes and saw the way the light burned in his dark hair. Despite the events of the past year, the dreams she had always had about him had never really stopped. The vague longing persisted. The look that had flashed through his stormy eyes that lazy summer afternoon when the whole pattern of her life seemed abruptly to change forever still haunted her.
    Anyway, she had Frank. Frank, who was younger and handsome and so undemanding. Frank, who wouldn’t remind her of the childhood that had caused so many nightmares.
    But, oddly, she wanted Currie Hall again. She wanted Mattie, little and wiry and coffee-colored, to call her “sugar cane” and fuss over her. She wanted old Joby’s lazy smile as he polished the silver and hummed spirituals in the kitchen while Mattie cooked. She wanted Eileen’s gay laughter and the feel of the towering old house nestled among the pecan trees that were oldenough to remember Reconstruction and the ragged trail of weary Confederate soldiers making their way home.
    How was it possible to love something and hate it all at once, she wondered, and again her eyes were drawn to Russell as he eased his formidable weight into the seat beside her.
    He tossed the clipboard with the checklist onto the back seat of the four-seater plane and threw a grin at Tish. “Ready?” he asked.
    â€œReady.” She checked her seat belt and her door while he cleared the plane for takeoff and taxied out onto the runway to wait for the final go-ahead.
    When it came and he pulled back on the throttle, she felt a rush of excitement as the small craft gathered speed and nosed up toward the sky in a smooth, breathless rush.
    Russell chuckled at the wild pleasure in her face. “It wasn’t me you missed,” he taunted. “It was the damned airplane.”
    â€œI love it!” she cried above the drone of the engine.
    â€œDo you? I’ll wait until we get over someopen country and treat you to a few barrel rolls,” he mused.
    â€œYou wouldn’t!” she gasped, gripping the seat.
    He caught the expression in her eyes and threw back his head, laughing like the devil he was.
    â€œRussell Currie, if you dare turn this plane over with me in it, I’ll…I’ll send an anonymous letter to the Federal Aviation Administration!” she sputtered.
    â€œBaby, there isn’t much I wouldn’t dare, and you know it,” he replied. “All right, calm down. We’ll save the stunts for another time.”
    She glanced at him apprehensively. The lion was content now, his dark eyes bright with the pleasure of soaring above the crowded expressways, of challenging the clouds.
    She wondered if he was remembering other flights. In Vietnam he had been a combat pilot and she and the rest of the family had lived for letters and rare trans-Atlantic phone calls, and the six o’clock news had held a terrifying fascination with its daily reports on offensives and skirmishes. He’dbeen wounded in an attack on the base and spent weeks in a hospital in Hawaii. When he finally came home there was death in his eyes, and he had bouts with alcohol that threatened to last forever. It was rumored that his problems were caused, not by a winnerless war but by the death of a woman in childbirth. A woman, the only woman, Russell had ever loved. It was a subject no one, not even Baker, dared to discuss with Russell Currie. A subject Tish only knew about from vaguely remembered bits and pieces of overheard conversation.
    She studied his profile with a tiny frown. His reputation with women was enough to make protective mothers blanch,