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By Root 1335 0

to memory. The attentive cheeky face that a few years back could have been of the calendar kind but now could serve on a recruiting poster; Cass was dramatically weather-tanned, a trace whiter around the eyes where the goggles masked her while flying. Dark brown hair naturally wavy, which she kept authoritatively short off her shoulders; she'd told him she cut it herself with a razor blade, there wasn't ever time to command a squadron and visit a beauty shop both. The invitation of her snug peach-perfect breasts, and the tomboy thrift of her body on down. Already he was hungry for her again, in a way beyond what they had just been doing in bed. Fresh from the night before, when his imagination had given her up for lost, the ache with her name on it cut through to his bones. Life without Cass? Last night had shown that wasn't life, it was barely existence. What kind of a passion pit was the dark of the mind, where he had struggled every way he knew and still ended up so far gone on this woman? And if they catch us at this, we're goners of another kind. Double jeopardy, Cass. The law of averages isn't doing the two of us any favors either.

Watching his mood turn, Cass headed off whatever he was about to say. "Save it for the chaplain, okay? We're not the first ones who ever caught the screw flu and—"

"This is more than that, Cass, you know goddamn good and well it's more."

"—call it what you want to, it always comes down to one of two things, doesn't it. We either quit with this or go at it like crazy while we still have the chance. Right now we don't seem to be much good at quitting, I'd say." She flicked him the urgent smile that showed the irresistible tiny gap between her front teeth, and he melted like a schoolboy and knew it. Deeply and rigorously they kissed again, running their hands silkily here and there, as if keeping track of everything in the book of hotel-room romance. "Welcome back, by the way," he murmured when their heads were clear enough. "I never knew I hated fog so much."

Her voice rose from where she lay. "Those shiny-pants lamebrains last night couldn't make their minds up to scrub that flight when they couldn't even see to the control tower." Cass disposed of the Seattle military hierarchy while flat on her back. "They held us in the ready room until full dark, the chickenshits. What did they think, we'd be able to see better in the fog at night, like bats?"

She rolled sharply up onto an elbow, facing Ben from so near he could feel the warmth of her breath on his face. "While I'm at it. Know what, Scar?" she resorted to a mock growl as her free hand lightly traced along the groove in his skin where he had been wounded. "You need a thicker hide in more ways than one. You'd be better off not checking the flight board when I fly."

"Doesn't matter. I'd be worried to death that way too."

Something like a wince came to her hazel eyes. He saw her start on a word, then draw it back.

Finally Cass wrinkled her nose at him. "Hopeless man, I guess there's no cure for what ails you then. Hey, that reminds me"—she pushed off him, and slick as a seal, flipped herself over and around, instantly onto her feet at the side of the bed—"before we got distracted, I was going to offer a guy a drink. One thing about Seattle, the Navy commissary is never short on scotch." Not bothering with clothes she padded across the room, evidently oblivious to the cold linoleum and all else, to where her ready-bag had been dropped by the door.

Ben sat up to take in the sight of her on parade. Stripped, Cass was as slim and wiry as a jockey, medium height for a woman, a perfect fit for the notoriously snug plane she flew; the P-39 carried the reputation that the aircraft company's president, a little guy, had scooted into the mock-up of the cockpit not realizing it wasn't full-scale, declared it just right, and started production that very day. The consequence supposedly was that male air cadets had to have their butts measured to see if they could fly the thing, and when that proved to be too much trouble, the P-39s were Lend-Leased