“Very well.”
She listens to Kubis’s retreating footsteps. And now, another choice. Max cannot very well be seen following her from the room, especially with Kubis in the corridor. But if he stays here they will have to continue this conversation, and Emilie will have to finally give her answer. She sits there, looking at Max, one hand on the key and the other pressed lightly to her lips where he has just kissed her. “Will you wait here?” she whispers.
He gives a small, pleased smile. “Of course.”
Max stands and lifts her dress from the ladder. “I am quite fond of that robe already, and what lies beneath it even more so, but I doubt Kubis would approve of your attending to Frau Mather in your slip.”
“And you propose to help me dress?”
“I can turn to the wall, if you like.”
As always, the decision is hers. Max Zabel truly is the most infuriating man she has ever met. But Emilie unties her robe and sets it on the top berth. She shrugs and raises her hands above her head like a little girl being dressed by her mother.
This time Max does look. But it’s the barest whisper of a glance as he lowers the dress over her head. Somehow they do the buttoning and the belting in tandem. They do not speak. They do not look at one another. Max approaches the job very much the way she imagines he approaches his charts: with precision and delicacy. And it is now, even more so than during the kiss, that Emilie realizes how much she has missed being touched.
In the end he does turn to the wall when she pulls on her stockings. There is only so much intimacy she can handle for one night.
Max straightens her collar and with a warm hand slides the key back inside her slip. His knuckles brush against the swell of her breast but it does not linger. Seconds later he stands there, hands tucked into his pockets.
“I will be right back,” she says.
“I will be right here.”
THE NAVIGATOR
Max does not mean to find the documents. It happens by accident, the way everything with Emilie happens. Much like the way he has fallen in love with her. She should have been back by now. Of course, he thought that thirty minutes ago as well. Whatever help this Mather woman needs must be excessive and completely unnecessary. It has been over an hour now, and Max has not even begun to cool off. That’s what set him pacing in the first place. And if he hadn’t been pacing he wouldn’t have gotten a little carried away and started swinging his arms in agitation. And if he hadn’t been charging around the room like a damned horny monkey he wouldn’t have run into the closet door, knocking it open. And he would not now be staring at a birth certificate, passport, five hundred American dollars, and immigration documents in the name of one Fr?ulein Emilie Imhof. Max scoops them up, takes one look, and then sits down roughly on the bed.
Emilie does not plan on returning to Germany.
The strangled sound he makes is one of despair. These are her private things, and he has no business riffling through them. He knows that. Emilie owes him nothing. But she kissed him back, damn it. He mutters this as he lifts the pale green satin robe from the bed. He buries his face in it, inhales her clean, sweet scent until it fills his head.
For over a year Max has wondered what it would be like to kiss Emilie. He has watched her from the day of their first flight. He has created opportunities to speak with her. Slowly, one trip at a time, he has lessened her resistance. He has reveled in her humor. Marveled at her defiance, her intelligence, her uncanny ability to anticipate the needs of others. And now he knows that her kiss is even sweeter than he imagined, that her skin is softer, and the feel of her breast beneath his hand—no matter how fleeting—reduces him to putty.
And Emilie Imhof is leaving him.
There are certain attributes that work better than others in the field of aviation, and for the most part Max has them in abundance. He is cautious. Patient. Thorough. Punctual. He has diligently applied these traits to his pursuit of Emilie. But at this moment he is also embarrassed. He is hurt. Sad. Volatile emotions that filter through a rapidly deteriorating fuse of anger. When that fuse burns dry he is past the point of reason.
Max jerks to his feet. He grabs his cap from the top berth and places it firmly on his head. He pulls a pen from the inside of his coat pocket and writes a note, a single line, on the envelope that holds her money, the nib digging so deeply into the paper that it almost tears. He looks at what he has written. It’s blunt and acerbic, and he isn’t sorry. He sets everything back in the closet where he found it. Then Max Zabel, navigator, postmaster, breaks his first promise to Emilie. He does not wait for her to return.
THE JOURNALIST