Undaunted

“I figured that talking wouldn’t really help the headache.”

“Good point.”

“Have you had them all your life?”

He nodded and winced, because the movement hurt. “My mother had them. Terrible headaches. We had to drive her to the emergency room a lot, because they got so bad.”

“Wouldn’t a doctor come to the house for you? I mean, you’re very rich...”

He smiled. “I wasn’t always.”

“Really?”

“I inherited a small private air service from my father. I studied business management and parlayed it into a bigger private air service. I absorbed a company that made baby jets, and added a regional air taxi service that had gone bankrupt. It took a long time, but when I hit it big, I hit it big.”

“Empire builders.”

“What was that?”

“You’re an empire builder,” she said simply. “I read about them when I was in school. Men like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Sinclair. Men who started with nothing but had good brains and strong backs and earned fortunes.”

“It was a little easier in their day.” He chuckled. “No income tax back then, you see.”

She cocked her head. “You own one of the biggest airplane manufacturing corporations in the world,” she recalled. “One article said you test-flew the planes yourself.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

His eyebrows arched.

“I mean, you’re rich. It’s risky, right, testing planes?”

“Very risky.”

She was silent. She didn’t push. She just waited.

He drew in a long breath. He didn’t usually discuss personal things with staff, not even with Barnes or Marie. But she was different somehow.

“I got married when I was eighteen,” he said after a minute. “She was beautiful, inside and out. She had black hair and blue eyes, and I loved her beyond measure. At that age, I thought I was invincible. I thought she was, too. We went on this vacation. It was before cell phones were popular, when you usually had to have a landline to talk to people. We were on an island with no outside communications except a line to the mainland, to be used in emergencies. It was a quiet place just for honeymooners. The boat ran once a week. We had the time of our lives, lying on the beach, cooking for ourselves. She was five months pregnant with our child.”

Her lips fell apart. She stared at him.

“She’d been healthy, perfectly healthy. The doctors said it was risky, to go off like that, but we were young and stupid. Something went wrong. She was in agony and I didn’t know what to do. I tried to call for help, but there was a storm and the lines were down to the mainland. I couldn’t even manage to build a fire and signal, because of the rain.” He lowered his head. The memory was still painful. “She died in my arms. The baby died with her. At least, I suppose it did, because I had no idea how to save it. It would have been too soon in any case. When the boat came to bring supplies, I was half-mad. They took me off the island, put me in the hospital and sedated me. My father and mother, and her mother, came to make the arrangements for her and to bring me home.” His face hardened. “I never wanted a child after that. I hated the whole idea of a baby, because a baby cost me Winona.”

She grimaced. What a tragic life he’d had. Now she understood his attitude about love. He’d had one great love, and now he’d convinced himself that love and sex were the same thing. It was a shame. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. “I can’t even imagine how that would feel.”

He hesitated a minute before he spoke again. “I’ve had brief affairs, but I never let a woman get close again. And I make sure there will never be another child. I thought about having a vasectomy, but my doctor talked me out of it.” He shrugged, then clenched his jaw. “Every woman who came along wanted a child. I told them that if they got pregnant, I’d insist on a termination.”

The words chilled. He was the sort of man who would love a child if he had one. But he was obviously determined never to let that happen. To Emma, who loved children, it was a blow. She caught herself. Why should it bother her? She was just his assistant. She sat up straighter. “It’s sad, to blame a baby for something that wasn’t its fault,” she said very quietly.

“The baby killed Winona,” he said harshly.

She felt his sorrow, his rage. “You know, we think we’re in control. That we can decide what happens to us by the actions we take. But life isn’t like that. We’re like leaves, floating down a river. We can’t even steer. We have the illusion of control. That’s all.”

He sat up. “And now we can talk about God and how He loves people and takes care of us,” he scoffed.

“No. We can talk about how there’s a plan to every life, and that what happens to us is part of it. If she’d been meant to live, she would have.”

His eyes began to glitter. “Twenty-three, and already a philosopher,” he said sarcastically.

“I’m not bitter, the way you are,” she said. “I haven’t had bad things happen to me.” That was a lie, but she couldn’t tell him the truth. “So I see things from a different perspective.”

“Pollyanna.”

She smiled. “I guess I am. Optimism isn’t expensive. In fact, it’s cheap. You just have to take life one day at a time and do the best you can with it.”

“Life is a series of tragedies that ends in death.”

“Oh, that’s optimistic, all right.”

A half smile touched his hard mouth. “Happiness is an illusion.”

“Sure it is, if you think that way. You’re living in the past, with your heartache. You don’t trust people, you don’t want a family, you don’t have faith in anything, and all you live for is to make more money.”

“Smart girl.”

“Now you’re all sarcastic,” she said. “But what I’m trying to say is that you don’t expect any more from life than a struggle and more heartbreak.”

“That’s what I get.”

“And are you happy?”

He scowled.

“It’s an easy question,” she persisted. “Are you happy?”

“No.” His jaw tautened. “Nobody is happy.”

“I am,” she said.

“What makes you happy?”

“Birds calling to each other in the trees. Leaves rustling when they turn orange and gold and there’s just the faintest nip in the breeze. White sails on the lake just after dawn. Crickets singing on a summer night. Things like that.”

“How about nights on the town? Dancing in a nightclub? Going to a rock concert? Watching the Grand Prix in Le Mans?” he mused.

“Martians playing in dust storms? Because I’m just as likely to see the latter as the former. Not my world.”