Lone Eagle, by Danielle Steel

The phone call came from a snowy December afternoon. Kate was certain it was Joe, her soulmate since they'd met thirty-four years before - but what she got was the one call she had never wanted. It took her mind back to the moment whenshe and Joe first met, when she was just seventeen and he was young, powerful, dazzling and different from any man she'd ever known...

Christmas, 1940, and Kate is making her debut in New York society. Joe, the brilliant protege of Charles Lindbergh, seems just out of Kate's reach. As the months pass, they meet again, and although Kate goes off to study at Radcliffe and Joe skyrockets to fame in modern aviation, he is always drawn back to her, as a moth to a flame. When the war is over Kate wants a marriage and family - while Joe wants the world. Unwilling to wait any longer, Kate moves on with her life. But when a chance encounter brings them together again, the time has come to make a choice, one that will have profound consequences for the rest of their lives.

It takes courage to let someone you love fly free.