The aviatrix, p.17
The Aviatrix, page 17
“We can borrow John’s Ford if you want to return to Vera’s,” Leo offered in a low voice.
Mattie slowed. Leo hadn’t spoken the words like an order, but she wasn’t sure if he was being overprotective again.
“Are you saying we should go back to the castle?” she asked carefully.
“Not necessarily. I just thought you might have been a little shaken after what happened back there. Most folks would be, men or women.”
“It’s not that you think I shouldn’t frequent speakeasies?” Mattie asked.
Leo didn’t answer right away. Instead he looked down at his polished shoes, and Mattie wondered what he was thinking.
“It’s not the place I’d choose to go with you,” he finally answered, lifting his chin to shoot her one of his slow, shy smiles, “but you certainly showed you can hold your own in one.”
“I was pretty impressive, wasn’t I?” She tossed her head back in mock dramatic pride, but the real reason for the gesture was a lot simpler . . . and much more complicated. Leo’s words had caused a sweet arc of energy to burst through her, and she had to make some sort of gesture to release the raw giddiness.
“I wouldn’t have minded having you at my back when I was a boy; that’s for sure.”
Mattie might not have thought much of the offhanded statement if she hadn’t just been wondering how he’d learned to fight so proficiently. “Did you get into a lot of tussles when you were younger?”
His pace faltered ever so slightly, and he glanced away from her again. This time he trained his eyes on the brick walls surrounding them. Of course, he gave as cryptic an answer as possible. “Something like that.”
Vera’s voice broke into their conversation. “And we are here!”
“The back of a button factory?” Sadie asked.
“Clearly it is a front for a club,” Lily said in a dramatic stage whisper.
“You are both right.” Vera knocked twice on a door that Mattie had almost overlooked. It had been painted to resemble the rest of the redbrick facade. Vera waited several beats and then gave three short raps followed by a thud. A small crack appeared in the wall.
“What’s the matter?” a rough voice croaked.
“I’m here to complain about my last shipment. It was pink. I wanted green.”
The two inches became several feet. Vera breezed inside the dark hole first, while Mattie and Leo were the last to enter what appeared to be the bowels of a factory. Crates rose above their heads, while odds and ends from bits of rope to broken pieces of machinery cluttered the floor. It made the other storeroom look practically neat and tidy in comparison. Vera, however, did not need the doorman to guide her. She wound her way through the warren of buttons, wood, and even seashells with the confidence of someone keenly familiar with the potential death trap.
The guard at the door tipped his hat to the rest of the Flying Flappers as they hurried to keep up with Vera. The bouncer’s face was surprisingly as smooth and refined as his voice had been coarse and rough. He gave Mattie a particularly devilish wink. Unlike the dreadful Crenshaw, he exuded a kindhearted charm despite his job as an enforcer. She responded with a bright smile but nothing more. She hadn’t come to the speakeasies for meaningless flirtations, although she supposed it was part of the experience. But she would much rather talk to Leo than a handsome stranger, no matter how chiseled his jaw or jade green his eyes.
Vera’s cherry-red dress sparkled in the dull, dusty room as she ducked behind a rather large coil of rope and opened another obscured door. Within moments, they all found themselves in the low-lit interior of a bar. This didn’t have the opulence of the first speakeasy. Cigarette smoke, dense and thick, hung in the air. People were jammed into the small space, especially near the stage, where a band played. The tin ceiling seemed to trap and amplify every sound, making it hard to hear the bluesy music. Mattie’s head swam from the press of bodies, the jumble of raised conversations, the smell of alcohol, and the heat of the hidden room.
Vera, however, plunged into the swarming crowd. She was soon swallowed up in a sea of colors, followed by John and the rest of Mattie’s friends. But Mattie stayed back with Leo.
“You can go on.” He jerked with his head in the approximate direction of the stage. “I’ll stay back here.”
And observe, Mattie thought, like Leo always does. On the edge but not really part of things.
“I’ll stay with you.” Mattie looked around and found a table tucked into a corner.
“You don’t need to on my account. I’m fine by myself.”
“Crowds this thick make me feel like a caged swallow,” Mattie said, relaying half the truth. She also simply found herself wanting to be with Leo.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll get us some drinks, and I’ll meet you back here. What do you want?”
“A mint julep.”
“I’ll be back in a jiff,” Leo promised before he, too, disappeared into the ever-shifting wall of human beings. He hadn’t been gone too long when a rough voice spoke near Mattie.
“I’d hoped to see you on my break.”
She turned to find the bouncer standing there. Unlike Crenshaw, he didn’t encroach into her space but stood back like Vera’s aristocratic friend Edward. The two fellows might have been of different social classes, but they were both gentlemen.
“Do you mind if I chat with you?” His gravelly voice carried such an incongruous strain of earnestness that Mattie didn’t have the heart to dismiss him outright.
“Until my friend returns with some drinks.”
The fellow grinned. It should have been devastating. So should have Edward’s charming smile. But neither of the men’s handsome expressions had affected her, not like one of Leo’s slow, shy looks.
“Are you the same dame who flew that airplane yesterday?” the man asked. “I was there. Your hair is different, though.”
“I had it cut today.” Mattie couldn’t help but reach up and touch her wild curls. They felt so different. Light. Buoyant. Free.
“It’s nice. I like it.”
His words were pleasant, but they didn’t explode inside her like Leo’s had. “Mattie’s always bold no matter what she wears, but I think she looks swell.”
The bouncer and she slipped into small talk. Mattie learned his name was George and that he originally hailed from Indiana. She found him interesting enough, just as she had Edward, but she was distracted . . . and not just by the speakeasy’s raucous atmosphere. She wondered where Leo was. He’d been gone longer than she’d supposed, but then it would take a while just to navigate through the crowd.
When the aviator finally reappeared, he faltered. He stood still, and then he started to turn, not angry or blustery but courteous. He was giving Mattie a chance to get to know this stranger better if she desired.
“Leo!” She waved at him, just like she’d seen Vera do when hailing an acquaintance. He shot her a questioning look, and she beckoned again. Slowly, as if letting her have the opportunity to change her mind, he stepped forward.
“Your friend?” George’s voice held a twinge of disappointment. Mattie could have assured the bouncer that nothing romantic lay between her and Leo. But she didn’t.
Instead, she nodded her assent and introduced the two men as Leo drew closer. George stayed for a bit, but the conversation had grown stilted. Finally, the bouncer excused himself, saying he had to return to his post.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to chase him off.” Leo eased into a chair and slid her drink toward her. A sprig of mint cheerfully peeked from the glass.
But as much as Mattie wanted to try the drink Vera had called “simply the berries,” she didn’t reach for it. She had something to say. Something that suddenly felt critically, overwhelmingly important.
“He was sweet, but I didn’t want to get to know him better. I want to be with you.”
As soon as the words fell from her lips, Mattie realized the startling truth of her statement. This . . . this was what she had been feeling the whole evening. She wanted Leo. Handsome, boyish, quiet, protective, wonderful Leo.
And when Mattie wanted something, really wanted something, she never hesitated and always raced toward it, throttle open, caution be damned.
“I want to be with you.” The words threatened to ignite Leo into a ball of burning hydrogen. But he knew all too well the danger inherent in an explosion. How it burst out of control. How it became a force of its own. How once triggered, it became unstoppable.
Surely Mattie did not mean the words romantically. She only meant that she preferred his company. And the cautious part of him, the part that had kept him safe through a life of peril, hoped it was true. Because if she did desire him . . . then he was truly lost to her.
“You know,” Mattie said, leaning over her sweet-smelling drink, her eyes a molten gold, “I realized something tonight.”
Leo should have glanced away, excused himself, found some reason to flee. Instead, he sat rooted to his chair like one of the ancient gnarled yews he’d seen on leave in France.
“What?” The word sounded hoarse to his own ears, and a strange prickly sensation spread over his body.
“If someone asked me to describe my perfect man, he’d end up sounding a lot like you.”
Her confession was just the oxygen needed to feed the spark that her first statement had triggered. His control erupted in a burst of orange fire. His fingers gripped the cool glass holding his tonic water, as if somehow the substance could cool him down.
It didn’t.
Instead, he was afraid he would crack the cheap crystal.
Mattie reached over, her fingers so close to his that he swore he could feel their heat. But she didn’t touch him. Not yet. But he wanted her to. Wanted it with his entire body. He thrummed with need, need that he had repressed for over half a decade. Need that he’d never expected to tempt, let alone to fill.
“We were friends so long ago.” Mattie’s words teased him like a physical touch, and energy skittered along his flesh. “And then we were always fighting. Do you think there was something there all the time? Something we’ve been overlooking?”
He’d never overlooked it. Not once. He’d buried it. But not deep enough. Never deep enough. It wasn’t possible.
“I don’t have a lot to offer, Mattie. I don’t own a single piece of property other than an aging biplane that was built to train pilots, not to set records.”
Her lips curled up . . . dangerously. The muscles in his throat closed, holding further protests at bay. The tip of her finger touched his. He should have withdrawn. He should have scrambled backward quickly enough to upset his chair. But he didn’t. He stayed.
“I had a millionaire’s son flirt with me tonight. He was nice. Charming. Affable. And he bored me. What would I do with a big mansion and heaps of bric-a-brac anyway? You can’t fly them.”
Leo choked, his first words coming in a splutter. He hadn’t expected her to say that. For some women, it might just be sentimental bluster. But not Mattie. She’d never cared much about material possessions. She enjoyed looking at them, for sure. She appreciated them. But she didn’t need them. Didn’t desire them. Not like she did excitement.
“I’m not adventurous enough for you either, Mattie.” He couldn’t keep the desperate tone from his voice, but whether he was desperate to convince her of his unsuitability or desperate for her to deny his objections . . . he didn’t know. But it seemed that she did.
Her finger slid up to his knuckle. He swallowed at the burst of sweetness that cascaded through him. How was she managing to seduce him with the most innocent of touches?
“I had a bouncer at a speakeasy flirt with me tonight. He has connections to the underworld. He knows bootleggers and gangsters, and maybe he even is one. But he was still nice and courteous and seemed like a generally good man. But he isn’t right for me any more than the wealthy aristocrat.”
“And you’re saying that I am?” The words squeezed out of him. He actually hurt from trying to physically hold them back. He shouldn’t have said them, shouldn’t have encouraged her to rush into this like she did everything else. But he couldn’t stop her . . . or even himself.
Her hand closed over his. It was smaller, more delicate, but no less capable than his larger one. Her warmth, her confidence, her unshaken belief in them seeped through him. His heart seemed to swell like a hydrogen-filled balloon and threatened to lift straight from his chest. His inhibitions certainly did.
“You’re honest, and you’re steady, and you’re completely devoid of unnecessary flash.”
Leo grinned. Mattie’s words weren’t those that a lover would typically utter, but he liked them. Liked their sturdiness. Liked that they weren’t sweet nothings but something blessedly logical. Something real.
This was happening fast. But then Mattie never did like to apply the brakes.
“Are you saying that you are attracted to me because I am boring?” Leo didn’t know if he had ever teased a woman in his life, but it suddenly came naturally.
Mattie’s fingers now grazed his wrist. Her eyes blazed with golden fire. “Because you’re solid, Leo. Sensible. Sometimes I chafe when you try to stop me from doing a stunt, but there is an unwavering strength in you that I cannot deny. We complement each other, like two opposite ends of a magnet. I just don’t know why it took me so long to notice the pull.”
Because he’d been fighting it for the both of them.
“It came to me in a brilliant flash tonight,” Mattie continued, “but I think part of me has been thinking about us since we built the sandcastle.”
He shifted his palm until it pressed against hers. Their fingers closed around each other’s hand, tight and firm. Her thumb danced along his flesh.
“You were right before.” Mattie paused her caress as she spoke the words.
Leo froze, sharp little shards of pain like shrapnel ripping through him. “I was?” Did she know how he’d struggled against his feelings for her? Was she changing her mind about blazing forward with her newly discovered attraction for him? He should be reassured she was being uncharacteristically wary, especially when he’d lost his own caution . . . but he wasn’t relieved. Quite the opposite.
“Let’s blouse.” Mattie winked at him, indicating they should leave the speakeasy. “I’ve always wondered what a beach looks like in moonlight.”
What she was offering was probably the most dangerous challenge Leo had ever faced. But with her hand snug against his, he didn’t balk . . . he couldn’t balk. In fact, he felt a glimmer of fresh excitement, a light, buoyant, springy feeling that he hadn’t experienced since his first days in the skies.
“I’ll ask John if we can take his Ford.” Leo stood up. He almost bent over their still-joined hands and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. But he wasn’t a knight or even a military man anymore. And sweeping emotive gestures weren’t him.
So instead, he just gave her a light squeeze before letting go. And she smiled. Warm. Bright. And entirely Mattie.
He’d just stepped back from the table when Vera appeared from the middle of the crowd, glass in one hand. This time her cocktail was a frothy green substance, unlike her normal drinks, which tended toward pinker hues.
“Is this where you two have secreted yourselves? Why, you can’t even hear the band from here! It’s a shame there’s so much noise tonight. They’re really the bee’s knees.”
“Actually, Vera,” Mattie said as she slid from her chair, “Leo and I were just thinking about finding John and seeing if we could borrow his car. We’re a bit tired and thought we’d call it a night.”
“You were?” Vera asked in surprise and then glanced between them. Suddenly, she blinked her violet-blue eyes. “Oooh.” She paused as a knowing gleam leaped into her gaze. “Oooooooh.”
Mattie didn’t try to dissuade the heiress. Instead, she smiled smugly and boldly reached for Leo’s hand. Leo knew he blushed. He was afraid that even his neck colored, but he didn’t avoid the symbolic declaration. In fact, he felt warmed that Mattie was so openly announcing that she’d chosen him.
“Finally!” Vera clapped her hands before reaching into her white-sequin-and-pearl clutch and withdrew a calling card. “I hardly use these anymore, but I keep them for occasions just like this.”
“Are you writing us a congratulatory greeting?” Mattie arched one of her auburn eyebrows as Vera began to scribble a missive on the back of the scrap of paper.
“Heavens no. I’m not that eccentric.” Vera laughed. “What I am doing is letting the hotel know that you can have my Duesenberg. I’m not fit to drive back tonight, and you might as well travel home in style. It will be so much more romantic to ride under the stars rather than beneath the roof of John’s old Model T.”
With a flourish, she handed the perfumed cardstock to Mattie. Leaning close to her, Vera spoke in a lower voice that still managed to carry to Leo’s ears, too, despite the noise buffeting them. “Have fun, and don’t take things too seriously. That is the quickest way to ruin a delightful affair.” Then, stepping back, she cried to both of them, “Enjoy the Duesy, darlings!” before disappearing into the crowd.
“I enjoy having a wealthy chum.” Mattie smiled impishly up at Leo. He wanted to kiss her then and press his lips against the wide mouth that had fascinated him for years. But he’d waited this long, and he certainly wasn’t going to have their first embrace in a speakeasy that reeked of bootlegged booze, imported cigars, and cheap cigarettes.
“Being friends with Vera has its perks,” Leo admitted, although he wondered a little about her cavalier approach to romance. But then, unlike the heiress, he rarely did anything lightly.
“Who’s going to drive?” Mattie asked.
“How is that even a question? Obviously you.” Leo chuckled as he gently rested his arm on Mattie’s shoulders, something he’d imagined doing more times than he could ever count. He’d underestimated how good it would feel. His hand brushed against the soft skin of her upper arm. He’d never felt something so smooth and inviting.
