Chapter 1 1934
Jackie was flying a plane, so Jackie was happy.
Soaring high, catching the breezes, winking at the setting sun, Jackie stretched and the plane stretched. Jackie moved and the plane moved. As though the body of the plane were a second skin to her, she could move the airplane as easily as she moved her arm or her leg. Smiling, she dipped one wing downward to look at the beautiful high mountain desert of Colorado.
At first she didn't believe what she saw. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road, was a car. Thinking that the vehicle had been abandoned, she turned her plane, dipping the wings, turning on a dime, to backtrack to have a second look. The car hadn't been there yesterday, so perhaps someone needed help.
She swooped down as low as she dared, not that the piÞion trees, rarely over twenty feet tall, were going to interfere with the height she needed to stay aloft. As she came back for a second pass she saw a man stand up from the shade of the car and raise his arm in greeting. Smiling, she turned her plane back toward her home base. He was all right, then, and as soon as she landed at her airstrip in Eternity, she'd call the sheriff to send the stranded traveler some help.
She was chuckling to herself. Travelers often were stranded in Colorado. They looked at the flat landscape off the side of the road and decided to see nature up close. But they didn't take into consideration the thorns as large as a man's little finger and rocks whose sharpness had not been worn away by heavy yearly rainfall.
Maybe it was because she was laughing and not watching what she was doing that she didn't see the bird, as big as a lamb, that flew straight into her propeller. She doubted that she could have avoided hitting it, but she would have tried. As it was, everything happened very quickly. One minute she was flying toward home and the next minute there were feathers and blood all over her goggles and the plane was going down.
Jackie was a good pilot, one of the best in America. She'd certainly had a great deal of training, having received her license at eighteen years of age, and now, at thirty-eight, she was an old hand. But coping with this bird took all of her knowledge and skill. As the engine began to sputter, she knew she was going to have to do a dead-stick landing, a landing without power. Quickly, tearing off her goggles so she could see, she looked about for a place to set it down. She needed a wide, long clearing, someplace free of trees and rocks that could tear the wings off the plane.
The old road to the ghost town of Eternity offered the only possibility. She didn't know what had grown or rolled across the road in the many years that it hadn't been used, but she had no other choice. Within the flash of an eye, she lined up the nose to the "runway" and started down. There was a boulder blocking the road -- it had probably rolled down during the spring thaw -- and she was praying to stop the plane before she hit the enormous rock.
Luck wasn't with her, for she plowed into the rock. As she crashed, she could hear the sickening crunch of her propeller being destroyed. She didn't think anymore. Her head flew forward, hitting the stick; she was out cold.
The next thing Jackie knew, she was being held in a pair of very strong, masculine arms and carried away from the plane. "Are you my rescuing knight?" she asked dreamily. She could feel something warm running down her face. When she put up her hand to wipe it away, she thought she saw blood, but her eyes weren't functioning properly and the daylight was fading fast.
"Am I badly hurt?" she asked, knowing the man wouldn't tell her the truth. She'd seen a couple of men mangled in airplane wrecks, and as they lay dying everyone had reassured them that tomorrow they'd be fine.
"I don't think so," the man said. "I think you just bumped your head, cracked it a bit."
"Oh, well, then, I'll be okay. Nobody's head is harder than mine." He was still carrying her, but her weight didn't seem to bother him at all. As best she could, considering how dizzy she felt, she pulled her head back to look at him. In the fading light he looked great, but then, Jackie reminded herself, she'd just cracked her skull in a plane wreck. For all she knew, he had three heads and six eyes. No one could be so lucky as to crash in the middle of acres of nothing and find a handsome man to rescue her.
"Who are you?" she asked thickly, because all of a sudden she felt very sleepy.
"William Montgomery," he answered.
"A Montgomery from Chandler?" When he said yes, Jackie snuggled against his wide, broad chest and sighed happily. At least she didn't have to worry about his intentions. If he was a Chandler Montgomery then he was honorable and fair and would never take advantage of the situation; Montgomerys were as honest and trustworthy as the day was long.
More's the pity, she thought.
When they were some distance from the plane, near his car, which she could just make out in the dim light, he gently set her on the ground. Cupping her chin in his hand, he looked into her eyes. "I want you to stay here and wait for me. I'm going to get some blankets from the car, then build a fire. When you don't show up at the airfield, will anyone come looking for you?"
"No," she whispered. She liked his voice, liked the air of authority in it. He made her feel as though he'd take care of everything, including her.
"I was planning to spend the night out here, so no one will look for me either," he said. "While I'm gone, I want you to stay awake, do you hear me? If your head is concussed and you go to sleep, you might not wake up again. Understand?"
Dreamily, Jackie nodded and watched him walk away. Very good looking man, she thought as she lay down on the ground and promptly went to sleep.
Mere seconds later he was shaking her. "Jackie! Jacqueline!" he said over and over until she reluctantly opened her eyes and looked up at him.
"How do you know my name?" she asked. "Have we met before? I've met so many Montgomerys that I can't keep them straight. Bill, did you say your name was?"
"William," he said firmly, "and, yes, we've met before, but I'm sure you wouldn't remember. It wasn't a significant meeting."
"'Significant meeting,'" she said, closing her eyes again, but William sat her up, draped a blanket around her shoulders, then rubbed her hands.
"Stay awake, Jackie," he said, and she recognized it for the order it was. "Stay awake and talk to me. Tell me about Charley."
At the mention of her late husband, she stopped smiling. "Charley died two years ago."
William was trying to collect wood and watch her at the same time. The light was fading quickly, and he had difficulty seeing the pieces of cholla on the ground, as well as the deadfall. He had met her husband many times, and he'd liked him very much: a big, robust gray-haired man who laughed a lot, talked a lot, drank a lot, and could fly anything that could be flown.
Now, looking at her, drowsy, he knew he needed to warm her up, get some food inside her, and make her stay awake.
Right now she was in a state of shock, and that, combined with her injury, might keep her from seeing another dawn.
"Jackie!" he said sharply. "What's the biggest lie you ever told?"
"I don't lie," she said dreamily. "Can't keep them straight. Always get caught."
"Sure you lie. Everybody lies. You tell a woman her hat is nice when it's hideous. I didn't ask you if you had lied or not; I just want to know what your biggest lie was." He was stacking up what wood he could find as he questioned her, his voice loud; he couldn't let her sleep.
"I used to lie to my mother about where I was."
"You can do better than that."
When she spoke, her voice was so soft he could barely hear her. "I told Charley I loved