Читать книгу Star-Crossed Lovers - Zena Valentine - Страница 10

Kale Noble looked out the window of the Bonanza as Phil Bergerson lifted the twin-engine craft expertly off the runway. He watched the line of tidy hangars race by in a blur, and then he looked back at the two-story building, the second floor with dark-tinted windows on all four sides, resembling a sprawling, oversize control tower.

It was a prosperous fixed-base operation and it belonged to Jessi Caldwell. If he’d known, he might have thought twice about bidding on the Point Six. Hell, the project was going to be a pain in the posterior anyway, without having to deal with one of the Jezebel sisters. He should have his brain examined for taking on a revolutionary design that, if there were significant flaws, could ruin his business.

He looked down as the plane swung to the left into the flight pattern at the end of the runway, and then left again. He heard the gear retracting, and he saw the field and the buildings from the air once more before they angled away.

She must be a wealthy woman, he thought, and all she’d had to do was sleep with an old guy named Rollie Morris, then marry him and wait for him to die. It was what he’d come to expect from a Caldwell.

It was the anger, he told himself for the twentieth time that afternoon; it was the anger that was making his blood race.

She had changed. He could see that right away. She had matured well into a softly rounded woman. There was something luscious about her, even in her khaki shorts and militarystyle shirt. It was a masculine outfit, but the belt nipped in her waist and left no doubt she was a woman with nicely pert breasts and rounded hips.

She still had big brown eyes—fawn eyes, he used to call them—and baby doll cheeks with dimples so deep when she smiled, a full wide mouth and sandy blond hair that frizzed and curled with unruly defiance. He wondered whether she was still soft-spoken, or whether her bent toward deceit and manipulation had let her true character show itself.

Hell, she’d only been fifteen at the time of the accident, and sixteen the last time he saw her, after their blowup. He had been ashamed because he’d fallen for her phony innocence and her soft touch. But it was his first time in love and he would have given her anything. It was when he learned only a fool trusted a female, and he had been the worst kind of fool.

It had cost him, learning that lesson, just as it had cost his parents. But Paul had paid the ultimate price.

And the Caldwell sisters had sailed blithely out of their lives with no consequences, anxious to be Up North by their Fancy Acres summer retreat, now that they had both found better “catches” than the Nobles. Kale tried not to think about when Rollie Morris had caught Jessi’s attention.

He had smarted for a long time from humiliation, and he experienced a peculiar, lasting pain very high in his gut, very close to his heart.

She was the first girl he had ever kissed.

Why had he thought of that when he saw her, silhouetted against the window in the base lounge? Why had he remembered that she had swept his breath away when he kissed her? Why, when she came close to him and faced him, did he remember how his randy teenage body had ached for her, how he had denied himself even touching her because he thought she was too innocent and precious, and he wanted to marry her someday when they grew up?

But when she went about her business there at the base, efficiently filling out the forms, he remembered how she had, at such a tender age, sweetly deceived him about a number of things that were important to him.

It was anger, he told himself again, that made his body feel as though he had been running a great distance; his pulse pounded in his ears, and he felt the sweat running down the middle of his back in spite of the cool air in the plane. And a crazy kind of anger it was, because it stirred his groin and left him with an insane inclination to pull Jessi by the hair until she was so close to him he could imprison her with his body. And then what? Ravish her? Make love to her?

He didn’t know. It had hit him like a blow from an unseen assailant. He hadn’t seen it coming. It had happened when he saw her, when she walked to him, and brushed past him and coolly took care of his paperwork at the counter. He didn’t want her, he told himself. It wasn’t desire or attraction. It was some crazy manifestation of the resentment he had harbored all these years.

It was unhealthy to think about Jessi Caldwell.

He could recognize that plain enough.

Hell, he had finally come to terms with his destructive prejudice about women, and had finally let himself envision having a wife. He thought of Londa, quiet, intellectual and reliable, and he thought of the diamond he had almost given her.

Well, she hadn’t turned out to be the right one, but he knew it was what he wanted, a wife and children.

There was certainly no room in his life for a troublemaker like Jessi Caldwell.

* * *

Jessi overheard the conversation when two weeks later Kale flew in and the rental car was already in use. With a certain chiding enjoyment Chaz officiously said he was sorry, “but Kenross Aviation cannot legally provide customer transportation when the rental car is not available.”

Annoyed with Chaz’s attitude, Jessi wiped her suddenly sweaty palms on her cotton slacks, strolled into the room where Kale was now on the telephone with the bridge contractor. Kale said, “If you can get me to the contractor’s office in the industrial park, I can handle it.”

He froze when he saw her. She saw him stop talking, stop moving, stop breathing, and she wondered what was going on in his head.

“I’ll drive you,” she said, and found her voice so strangled she wasn’t sure he had heard her. It was several long seconds before he ceased staring at her and spoke again into the phone.

“I’ll be there shortly,” he said, and hung up the telephone, returning his hard, cold gaze to her.

She walked past him to the door, past a stunned Chaz, and didn’t look back, assuming Kale was following her. When she was through the sidewalk gate, he drew alongside her.

“Why?” he demanded.

“It’s good business,” she said.

“But it’s my business. It’s Noble Engineering.”

“You’re a customer,” she replied.

She opened the door of her sports car, her one concession to luxury, her submission to Amanda’s pressure to buy a “black sports job with lotsa chrome.” She expected it to bring derision from Kale, but she was in the driver’s seat this time and he was, temporarily at least, dependent upon her good will.

“Did it come with the business?”

“No.”

“Good taste.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you know where to take me?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know where I’m going?”

“I know where my customers go when they come to town. It’s good business,” she reminded him again with deceptive confidence.

“It could be a problem, your rental car not being available when I need it,” he said harshly.

“Call ahead and it will be there.” She made an effort to keep her tone pleasant, treating him as a valued customer.

“Next time.”

She reached in her pocket and pulled out two business cards. “Here. For you, and for your secretary.”

In her peripheral vision she saw him look at the cards and then put them in the breast pocket of his shirt. “Advice taken,” he said.

She drove in silence until they came to the industrial park. At Kale’s direction, she turned left toward the temporary headquarters of Burness Contracting. The company had moved in several months ago when it began constructing the bridge. Curt Burness was a regular customer at Kenross Aviation; he rented one of her large hangars for his company plane.

“If I had a smaller plane, I could land at a private field near here,” Kale said as she was pulling into the Burness yard.

“Your choice. I can sell you a smaller plane,” she said.

He snorted a short, humorless laugh.

She stopped the car and he opened the door. “You have a damn monopoly. The nearest decent airport is sixty miles away,” he said.

Jessi forced a cold smug smile. “Yes, and I hope to keep it that way.”

“Thanks for the ride,” he said and slammed the door.

As she drove away, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw that he stood in the parking lot and watched her car until she turned out of view.

She wondered whether he was married, had a family. What had his life been like? His father had apparently never recovered his senses and Kale had obviously taken over the presidency of the company. She wanted to ask about Reggie Mom, his mother, and how her health was, but she was afraid of what that might stir up, afraid of an explosion, really, and she wouldn’t blame him.

She understood now why he hated her. It made perfect sense that he should hate the Caldwell sisters, and it gave her a sickening feeling, even though she had not intended to hurt him, that he had reason to blame her.

Back then, she had fostered a growing resentment because she thought his accusations were unfounded and unfair, as if he was sick of her and grasping for excuses to drive her out of his life. She had resented him for most of the last twelve years.

It was Charlotte’s posthumous letter, left years earlier with Frank’s attorney, that finally revealed just how heinous the Caldwell crimes against the Nobles had been. Jessi had been the pawn in a game she hadn’t understood.

She had been sixteen years old, in love and incredibly naive, trying to keep her family from shattering, trying to be the good daughter.

The Nobles had suffered a terrible loss, and Charlotte had done a despicable thing to Paul. Not only had she driven recklessly after drinking, but she had in her panic abandoned him in the car at the bottom of the lake.

Everyone knew she was a good swimmer. But she hadn’t gone back for him.

And all these years later, the Nobles still didn’t realize just how much they had lost. They had never learned that Charlotte had kept a most precious secret from them.

As a torrid July arrived, Kale Noble became a fixture in Jessi’s life, flying to Kenross weekly and calling ahead for the car. They occasionally spoke to each other, but mostly, it seemed, they glared at each other. Chaz said an unlit match held between them would burst into flames.

One afternoon, Amanda was at the counter when Kale returned from an afternoon at the bridge. As soon as Jessi realized it, she rushed to relieve Amanda to send her niece elsewhere on an errand. Anything to get Amanda out of Kale’s sight.

“No!” Amanda protested. “Let me do it. I want to learn all the forms!”

“Some other time,” Jessi said softly. “Not now.”

“Now!” Amanda insisted.

“A little young to be working here, aren’t you?” Kale muttered to the insistent girl.

She showered him with a glowing smile and thrust her hand at him in an eager greeting. “I’m Amanda Morris. I’m twelve, and I’m going to be a pilot as soon as I’m old enough to get a license.”

He shook her hand and grinned. His face did not crack when he grinned, Jessi noted, but did marvelous things. His eyes sparkled, his smile nearly dazzled her. He was what Amanda would call drop-dead gorgeous when he smiled.

“My dad was a pilot,” she said. “He died last summer.”

Jessi heard the faint catch in her voice, but Amanda handled it well. She was only beginning to talk about her parents’ untimely deaths. Jessi put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

The gesture was not lost on Kale, who said, “I’m sorry, Amanda, for your loss.”

She looked up and gave him a painful grin of acknowledgment, and then turned to Jessi to help her fill out the form.

As Kale was signing the slip, he asked, “How old did you say you were, Amanda?”

“Twelve,” she replied.

“You have the look of a Caldwell,” he said. Jessi tried not to cringe at his probing.

“Of course. My mom’s fault. I look totally like a Caldwell. I don’t look anything like my dad,” she said, tearing off the credit card flimsy and handing it to him.

“I see,” he said, studying her face and then turning his dark, flashing eyes onto Jessi. “And which Caldwell sister is your mother?” he asked quietly, suggestively.

Jessi’s spit caught in her throat and she coughed in a spasm. The question terrified her. Fear of discovery bit her sharply. “Kale is an old friend, Amanda, and his pilot is waiting for him. Now, get your books.”

Amanda dashed for her books because it meant they were leaving and would soon eat. It was what Jessi had counted on. She forced a smile at Kale who was studying her thoughtfully.

Suddenly, he set down the briefcase and came swiftly around the counter, moving with an unreal speed. He pushed her against the cabinet behind the counter, and one hand slid into her hair, grasping it, forcing her head back. “Did you have a baby twelve years ago, Jessi?” he rasped in a voice so whispery hoarse she’d not have recognized it if he hadn’t been in her face.

She felt the length of him pressed against her, felt the heat of his body through his clothes, felt helpless with her head tilted so that his face was only inches from hers and her breasts pressed against his chest.

“Did you?” he demanded, shaking her head with his skillfully painless grasp on her hair.

“If I did, Kale Noble, it certainly wasn’t yours, now, was it?” she retorted, regretting that her words came out in a whisper instead of the taunting condescension she was aiming for.

The darkness in his eyes seemed to spread over his face, and the anger became a kind of grimace of pain. His face moved closer to hers, and his lips were almost touching hers when he softly blew his words into her mouth. “You lied. And you cheated. I could have.” Then he backed up abruptly and released her hair and strode to the door. He flung it open, stopped, and inhaled raggedly. “Damn you, Jessi Caldwell,” he rasped and was out the door.

She buried her face in her hands and called out weakly, “It’s Jessi Morris. Morris!”

In near panic, she wondered what he saw when he looked at Amanda. Certainly he wouldn’t notice the distinctive Noble hairline with the widow’s peak in the middle of the forehead, or the vaguely square shape of her jaw so like the Noble boys. No, he seemed to have missed that. What he saw were Jessi’s fawn brown eyes and dimples and puffy lips.

He thought Amanda was her daughter, and that Jessi had been with another man when she was telling him she loved him, and she had let that other man do what Kale was using all his idealistic self-discipline not to do to her. He actually thought she.but, no, he would figure it out. He would know she couldn’t have deceived him about having a child. They had been seeing each other while Charlotte was pregnant, although he hadn’t known about the baby. He would certainly figure out that Amanda couldn’t be Jessi’s. He wouldn’t know, of course, that Jessi having a baby was an impossibility in any case.

But when he figured out that Amanda was Charlotte’s, he might also realize that she had been pregnant at the time of the accident. He was going to learn that Amanda was Paul Noble’s daughter, the only grandchild in her generation, and she had been kept from the Nobles deliberately, legally claimed by the man Amanda thought had fathered her.

Jessi had thought until a year ago that Charlotte’s husband, Frank, was Amanda’s father. As a teen, Jessi had been appalled by her mistaken notion that Charlotte had gotten pregnant by Frank when she was talking marriage with Paul Noble.

If Jessi had been more mature and wise, she might have put the pieces together. After all, Charlotte had run off within days of the accident to marry Frank, a man she had met years earlier at Fancy Acres Resort, but had never considered more than a distant admirer. And to settle in Kenross, which she had never liked. And then to have a baby nearly two months “premature.”

It was just another of a string of events that Jessi had handled badly. Even the vague suspicions that had occurred to her, she ignored, discarded, pushed aside.

Not until Charlotte’s letter enlightened her did she realize the extent of the lies. Now it was a deeply personal thing, for among the truths Charlotte had admitted was that Amanda was Paul Noble’s daughter.

Amanda, who was like her own child, was now in danger of being lost to her.

She didn’t think she could bear to give her up if the Nobles should claim her. Amanda was the only child she would ever have.

Perhaps it had been foolish to be coy with Kale. It had just been too frightening at the moment to admit that Amanda was Charlotte’s and Paul’s.

And yet, she hadn’t been prepared for how painful it had been to be the object of Kale’s contempt, and to see the flash of hurt that underlay his intense rage at the Caldwell sisters.

Nor had she been prepared for the feel of his hard hot body pressed against her, the spicy male scent of him, and the awesome power he kept leashed so that he could bury his long fingers in her hair and not hurt her.

She had found the experience strangely exciting, sensing in him something savage, tempered only by what she identified as his innate elegance.

As she listened for Amanda’s eager thudding down the steps and watched the Noble aircraft taxi away, she knew Kale would soon figure out the truth about Amanda’s birth. She would have been wiser to be honest with him.

When he did figure out the truth, Jessi had two alternatives: she could confirm his suspicions, or she could lie and deny Paul’s fatherhood.

She dreaded Kale’s next visit.