Lone eagle

It was as though he exuded some strange scent that mesmerized her. She could already feel it, and told herself she had to leave. But she felt paralyzed, and lulled by his voice, and went nowhere. “She loves the baby.”

“He's a cute guy. The business is doing great, by the way.” She smiled at the understatement. It was one of the most important corporations in the country, and Andy had told her several times that Joe had made millions. The last thing she'd read about him was that he was starting an airline called AllWorld.

“I read about you a lot, Joe. Are you still flying as much?”"

"“As much as I can. I don't have enough time. I still test my own designs, but that's a different kind of flying. We're developing commercial airlines now, capable of transoceanic passages. Charles and I flew to Paris together a few weeks ago. But most of the time I'm stuck in the boardroom or my office.

I have a place in town now,” he said. They were like old friends catching up on old times, standing on the corner shooting the breeze, except they weren't. The breeze they were shooting was a strong one, and there were dangerous currents in the waters they were wading into. Kate tried to tell herself that wasn't true, but instinctively she knew it was. “We have an office building here now, one in Chicago, one in L.A. I go to the West Coast a lot, but I'm actually in New York more than anywhere else,” he volunteered. He had been leaving his office when he ran into her on Fifty-seventh.

“You're an important man, Joe.” She remembered when he hadn't had anything, and she'd loved him then. In some ways he was different now. He had the aura of a man in power, and yet when he looked at her, he was still the same, awkward, shy, hesitating to look at her one minute, and then gazing directly into her eyes the next, as though he were looking straight into her soul and knew what she was thinking.

There was no way she could avoid the power of his eyes.

“Do you need a lift somewhere, Kate? It's too hot for you to be out with the baby.”

“We were just getting some air. I live a few blocks up. I don't mind walking.”

“Come on,” he said, taking her arm, without waiting for her reaction.