The Gauntlet

Jason Rutledge sat down, holding his Scotch between his hands. “Retrieve our honor, Molly. My associates at the stock-brokerage firm couldn’t believe you were washed out of flight training. You don’t realize the embarrassment it caused me to admit that my daughter didn’t make the grade. At least let me give them good news that you’re making it as a test-flight engineer at your new station.”

Molly knew suddenly that she would never endure thirty days at home with her father and brother. “If it’s all right with you, Father, I’m going to leave in about a week for Lexington Park. It’s a town right outside the gates of Patuxent River. I’ll have to find an apartment and get moved in.”

“Fine.” He glanced over at her. “Do you need money?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very sure.”

With a sour face Jason muttered, “I’m a millionaire twenty times over, but money can’t buy me the one thing I wanted most for this family: an heir to carry on our Navy-pilot tradition.”

Knowing that every emotion registered on her face, Molly turned away, drained. No amount of “I’m sorrys” would make her father let go of his disappointment at her failure to get her wings. She left the den as quietly as she had come, and climbed the stairs to the second floor of the penthouse.

At the top of the steps, Molly hesitated, peeking into Scott’s room. Her father had had an elevator installed to make it easy for him to move from floor to floor by wheelchair. Top Gun posters hung on the walls. So did posters of the F-14 Tomcat, the Navy’s premier fighter. The F/A-18 Hornet, another Navy fighter, was prominently displayed on the wall above Scott’s bed. Plastic models of all the modern-day airplanes cluttered his bookshelves. Molly felt sorry for their housekeeper, Emma Sanders, having to dust and pick up everything her brother left littered about the room.

Molly opened the door to her bedroom. Once inside, she stopped, feeling an immediate sense of comfort and security. The walls were papered with pale-pink and white flowers. Moving to her bed, she picked up her doll, Amanda. When her mother, Corrine May Rutledge—daughter of a very rich banking family—had died of cancer, Molly had spent hours on her bed, crying for her loss. Only Amanda, a rag doll whose painted face was nearly worn off from years of loving, had offered any solace.

Smiling gently, Molly barely touched Amanda’s gold yarn hair. “How many of my tears did you soak up over the years, Mandy?” When Molly was nine years old, her mother had bought Amanda for her as a birthday gift because the doll had blond hair and green eyes like Molly’s.

Life had become harsh and demanding after her mother’s death. Her father, who had always run his stock-brokerage house like a military machine, had brought that strict, cold order home. Molly remembered sobbing alone at night, longing for her mother’s warming embrace, kisses and gentleness.

Who would have thought that Molly Rutledge would turn out to be an Annapolis graduate? It still surprised Molly to think about it. She shook her head and placed Amanda back against the bed pillows.

Turning around in the middle of the room, she breathed in the past she’d left behind four-and-a-half years ago. It was a soft room in comparison to the harsh conditions she’d endured at Annapolis. Her china tea set was arranged on one shelf; several other dolls that shared the loneliness of this huge penthouse with her sat on another. Everything in the room shouted femininity, not militarism.

With a slight quirk of her lips, Molly pulled her suitcase up on the bed and began to unpack. In the eyes of her family, she was an utter failure. The only way to redeem herself was to become a test-flight engineer. Had she jumped from the frying pan of flight school into the fire of test school?

Her hands shook slightly as she slid her folded lingerie into a dresser drawer. Somehow she had to make her father and Scott proud of her again. After stowing the empty suitcase under her bed, Molly took a shower. Changing into a pair of dark gray slacks and a light peach-colored sweater afterward, she was ready to face her family for dinner.

Just as she reached for the doorknob, a knock sounded. The door swung open to reveal Scott sitting in the hallway.

“Dinner’s on, Molly.”

“Thanks, Scott.” She picked up a hand-painted silk floral scarf and tied it into a loose knot around her neck.

Scott’s hands rested on the wheels of his chair. “Father’s really upset. No one feels like eating.”

“Life goes on, Scott. I’ve already apologized. If this funereal atmosphere is going to continue for the next week, I’ll leave sooner.”

“Oh…no. You promised to tell me all about Whiting Field. Your letters are one thing, but hearing the stories in person is best.” Scott forced a smile. “Come on, you can go down in the elevator with me.”

Molly nodded and waited patiently while Scott turned his wheelchair around on the hardwood floor and headed toward the elevator at the other end. “At twenty-five, I’d think you’d have other things to occupy you than waiting for my stories,” she told him dryly.

Moving his wheelchair into the spacious elevator, Scott shrugged. “Father has given up on me becoming a stockbroker. It just isn’t for me.”

Molly pressed the button that closed the brass and glass door, and laughed for the first time since her arrival home. It felt good to discuss something other than her failure as a pilot. “Knowing Father, he doesn’t want to turn his company over to us or anyone. Not that I’d want it. I’m not cut out for the barracuda halls of stockbrokering.”

“Roger that.”

Molly smiled. For as long as she could remember, Scott had wanted to fly and become a Navy pilot—a life plan preordained by her father since Scott’s birth. Scott would go to Annapolis, graduate and become a pilot like the other men of the Rutledge family. An auto wreck two weeks before he was to leave for Maryland had paralyzed him from the waist down. As an afterthought, Jason Rutledge had pushed Molly into the appointment. She’d gone willingly, wanting to uphold the family honor.

The doors whooshed open to the first-floor hallway, and Molly followed Scott out of the elevator. As always, the highly polished oak floors and the expensive oil paintings lining the walls, made the place look more like a museum than a home.

“Scott, haven’t you found anything that interests you yet?”

“Your continuing saga in the Navy is what interests me, Molly. I really enjoy your letters. You’re a great chronicler. I read and reread them, and then I call my friends and relay your stories.”

Molly winced. She ached for Scott, who still felt guilty over having driven that fateful night. The accident wouldn’t have happened if Scott hadn’t been drunk. Luckily, he was the only one who’d been hurt.

She patted her brother on the shoulder and said, “I still think you ought to get interested in something other than my less-than-glorious naval career,” she teased.

“Naw. You’re the highlight of my life, Molly. You know that.”

Molly’s fingers tightened momentarily on Scott’s shoulder. Her thoughts moved ahead, to entering the test-pilot school’s doors, in spite of her apprehension at potentially failing her family again. But Molly dreaded her stay with her family. Her new training program couldn’t come a moment too soon.

* * *

Dressed in his olive-green flight suit—his favorite uniform because it was loose and comfortable—Captain Cameron Sinclair sat at his desk muddling through the stack of mandatory paperwork that always materialized when a new class of students started TPS. He glanced out the window of his office.

The June morning was beautiful at 0800. Cam had been at work for two hours already. Frowning, he laid down his pen and thought of his wife, Jeanne, and their son, Sean. Even now, he remembered the exact number of days, hours and minutes since they’d died. One year. Twelve of the worst months of his life. Picking up the pen, he ran his fingers absently along its smooth lines.

Depression had become a familiar friend. He knew fellow instructors called him “the Glacier” behind his back. But why should he smile and joke when it was the last thing he felt like doing? They had loved ones to go home to every night, while his apartment was huge and empty. As empty as his heart felt.

The parking lot was to the left of his office, and Cam noticed a tall, slender woman getting out of a gray station wagon. She was wearing a light blue Navy summer-uniform skirt and blouse. He lifted his chin, interested, the pressure on his heart lessening slightly. It had to be their woman student, Ensign Molly Rutledge.

Cam watched her leave the parking lot and make her way up the sidewalk to the doors of TPS. His office sat just to the left of the doors, so he had an unobstructed view of her progress.

The sun filtered through her loose blond hair, which glinted with gold highlights. She was decidedly feminine, Cam thought. She wore her garrison cap at an angle, her bangs pushed to one side to allow it to sit on her brow. Cam was struck by the serenity of her face, and unexpectedly, the cabin in the Smoky Mountains where he used to spend time with his family came to mind.

Her eyes were green, like the light of the sun shining through the leaves of trees along the trails they used to hike. Or were they gold and blue, reminding him of the sun high in the sky? Cam couldn’t be sure. He’d have to get a much closer look. One thing, he thought, taking a deep breath, Molly Rutledge was pretty in a clean-cut sense. Her face was smooth and nearly symmetrical. Her blond brows were slightly arched, emphasizing her wide, alert eyes. Her nose was small and straight.

Cam shook himself. As a test pilot, he was used to making minute observations. Now he was taking Molly apart with the same sort of appraisal, but he wasn’t retaining his usual objectivity. He hadn’t felt anything since his family’s death, so why was his heart thundering in his chest? As she drew closer, Cam saw that despite her regulation low black heels, Molly’s legs looked slender. His eyes narrowed in appreciation.

When his gaze settled on her mouth, he felt himself tighten in physical reaction. Her lips were delicately shaped, as if by a master artist. Cam found himself wanting to reach out and touch that soft, gentle mouth to see if it was real or just a figment of his fevered imagination.

Whenever a new class arrived at TPS, Cam secretly labeled each student with a name that embodied that person in his mind. And using that intuition, he was usually correct about who would and who would not graduate. Molly was tall, like a reed giving and bending in the wind. She was all grace and femininity. None of those attributes would serve her well at TPS, he thought sadly. What was needed was bullheadedness, strength, endurance and plenty of machismo.

Unable to tear his gaze away, Cam shook his head as she approached the door, her black purse hanging from her left shoulder and her records in her right hand. “You’re a gossamer angel ready to enter hell,” he muttered. “This place chews men up and destroys them on a regular basis.”

His words sank into the silence of his office as he watched Molly disappear inside the doors. A part of him wanted to jump up and go meet her in the foyer. She’d be looking for the commandant’s office, and he could point it out to her. Suddenly the need to meet Molly Rutledge ate at him, and, startled, Cam digested the unexpected feelings. Was he alive, after all?

The discovery was pulverizing to Cam, and he sat there, absorbing the fact of his reawakening emotions. He heard voices in the hall beside his office. Her voice. It was muted, so he couldn’t make out the exact conversation. Stymied, he shook his head. Cam was a test-pilot instructor; Molly would be assigned to First Lieutenant Vic Norton, the flight-engineer instructor.

“Lucky bastard,” Cam said to no one in particular, and looked back down at the work on his desk.

So what name would he give her? “Angel” was certainly appropriate: soft, gentle and serene. Molly floated, she didn’t walk; there was such grace in her movements. Muttering to himself, Cam grimaced. How had she stolen into his work? Okay, so he’d call her Angel. She’d never know it, and certainly no one else would.