Wings Read Free Page B

had never seen , and his four sisters stared at his unfamiliar anatomy in utter amazement. The second coming could have made no greater stir than the arrival of Christopher Patrick O'Malley at O'Malley's Airport.
    A large blue banner was flown, and every pilot who came through for a month was handed a cigar by the beaming father. He'd been worth waiting for. Almost twelve years of marriage, and finally he had his dream, a son to fly his planes and run his airport.
    “Guess I might as well pack up and leave,” Nick said mock glumly the day after Chris was born. He had just taken an order for a huge shipment of cargo to be delivered to the West Coast by Sunday. It was the biggest job they'd had so far, and a real victory for them.
    “What do you mean, leave?” Pat asked, with a terrible hangover from celebrating the birth of his son, and a look of panic. “What the hell does that mean?”
    “Well, I figured now that Chris is here, my days are numbered.” Nick was grinning at him. He was happy for both of them about the baby, and thrilled to be Chris's godfather. But the one who had stolen his heart from the first moment he'd laid eyes on her was Cassie. She was just what Pat had said she was from the very first, a little monster, and everything everyone had ever said about a redhead. And Nick adored her. Sometimes he almost felt as though she were his baby sister. He couldn't have loved her more if she were his own child.
    “Yeah, your days are numbered,” Pat growled at him, “for about another fifty years. So get off your lazy behind, Nick Galvin, and check out the mail they just dumped out there on our runway.”
    “Yes, sir … Ace, sir … your honor … your excellence …”
    “Oh, never mind the blarney!” Pat shouted at his back, as he poured himself a cup of black coffee and Nick ran out to the runway to meet with the pilot before he took off again. Nick had been just what Pat had hoped from the first, a godsend. And there had been no funny stuff in the past year. He'd taken his share of chances flying in bad weather the previous winter, and they both made their share of forced landings and emergency repairs. But there was nothing really outrageous that Pat could complain about, nothing Nick did he wouldn't have done himself, nothing that truly jeopardized one of Pat's precious airplanes. And Nick loved those planes as much as Pat did. And the truth was, having Nick there had really allowed Pat to build up his business.
    And that was just what they had continued to do for the next seventeen years. The years had rushed past them taster than their planes taking off from the four meticulously kept runways at O'Malley's Airport. They had built three of them in the form of a triangle, and the fourth, running north/south, bisected it, which meant that they could land in almost any wind, and never had to close the airport due to problems with planes blocking one of their runways. They had a fleet of ten planes now too. Nick had actually bought two of them himself, and the rest were Pat's. Nick only worked for him, but Pat had always been generous with him. The two were fast friends after long years of working together, and building up the airport. He'd asked Nick to become partners with him more than once, but Nick always said he didn't want the headaches that went with it. He liked being a hired hand, as he put it, although everyone knew that he and Pat O'Malley moved as one, and to cross one was to risk death at the hands of the other. Pat O'Malley was a special man, and Nick loved him as a father, brother, friend. He loved his children as he would his own. He loved everything about him.
    But other than Pat's, families and relationships were generally not Nick's strong suit. He had married once in 1922, at twenty-one. It had lasted all of six months, and his eighteen-year-old bride had gone running back to her parents in Nebraska. Nick had met her on a mail route late one night, in the town's only restaurant,