Читать книгу Star-Crossed Lovers - Zena Valentine - Страница 9

Jessica Caldwell Morris felt a furious charge shoot through her chest when she looked up from her desk and saw the glazed white body of a twin-engine prop plane settle onto the runway like a giant porcelain bird.

Noble Engineering, said the crisp blue lettering on the fuselage.

It was several moments before she realized she had ceased breathing as she followed from her second-floor viewpoint the plane’s slackening progress to the end of the runway. While the pilot braked, the plane slowed smoothly as if harnessed by an invisible hand, nearly stopping before it pivoted toward the fuel pumps.

A random gas stop?

Jessi hoped so.

An accident of fate?

Surely the Nobles had no business in Kenross.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she gasped, covering her face with her hands. She felt the sweat and the foreboding of bad memories being jarred awake. Very bad memories. Twelveyear-old very bad memories.

Thank God Chaz was down in the lounge and could take care of whoever was in the plane. Certainly there wasn’t a Noble in the plane, or surely it wouldn’t have stopped.

Unless they didn’t know a Caldwell owned the base.

But how could they know it was her operation? Her name was Morris now, and the sign said Kenross Aviation. On the maps it was identified as Kenross Airport, although she owned the runway and all the land, buildings, equipment and individual businesses, including the repair service, new sales, flight school, plane and hangar rentals. She even owned the helicopter.

She was momentarily stunned by the plane pulling to a halt at the gas pumps. She saw Chaz’s lanky form already trotting along the sidewalk onto the tarmac.

The prop slowed and abruptly stopped with a little backward jerk, and both doors flew open. The pilot remained in his seat, leaning out and flexing his shoulders as he talked to Chaz on the ground.

Her eyes darted to the other door, where she spotted the top of a man’s head, hair as black and straight as crow’s feathers, his body leaping with lithe grace onto the tarmac. He turned to swing the door shut, and she saw his face.

Kale Noble.

“Oh, God, no,” she whispered to the empty office, clutching her clammy palms together. Even though he had been a nineteen-year-old kid and it had been twelve years, she recognized him immediately. The thin rawboned high school athlete had matured into a muscular, broad-shouldered man, his face no longer long and bony, but filled out and solid. The eyebrows that had looked as misplaced as overgrown caterpillars in his youth now blended into a face harshly handsome.

He moved with the same athletic control she remembered, although he was no longer a skinny kid. He moved faster, aggressively, with a power she sensed was born of anger and impatience.

He strode around the back of the plane with long strides, carrying a fat mahogany-colored briefcase, and he interrupted Chaz, who was climbing the short stepladder to put gas in the starboard wing tank.

Chaz nodded and retreated, replaced the gas nozzle at the pump, and jogged after Kale into the office door below her second-floor window.

He was straight and sleek, Kale was, with a flat belly and narrow hips. He wore dark pants and a short-sleeve white shirt, open at the neck in an understandable effort to cope with the hot humid June weather. He looked busy and important. Intimidating. He advanced to the office door as if he might squash anything in his way.

What was he doing here?

Please, she prayed, let his visit be brief, whatever its purpose. He was downstairs, directly below her desk. Jessi pressed her eyes closed and listened to her own breathing, jagged and starkly hollow. She felt ages-old guilt, although she knew she’d had no deliberate fault in the tragedy that had sent his brother Paul to the grave, split their families, and sent her older sister Charlotte into hell, where she had flailed through her days as if she were drowning until her death last year.

The memories came alive, overwhelming her in a blighted cloud. Eyes closed, she slowly lowered her arms, grasping her forearms. Kale had never ceased haunting her, though in recent years she’d had blessedly extended periods of relief.

Why now?

Things were going well.

She was recovering gradually from the deaths of her husband, her sister and her brother-in-law in the same plane crash a year ago, feeling good about the healing progress her niece Amanda was making, satisfied with the profits and the volume of her business, and, as always, enjoying the hours she managed to spend flying.

And now she was assailed not just by memories. It was the nightmare of Kale Noble at nineteen, a year after Paul’s tragic accident, furious, in a barely controlled rage, pointing a finger at Jessi, calling her and a married Charlotte the Jezebel sisters, depraved women who caused destruction and loss to the men they so callously used and misled. And around him were familiar people, people they had known most of their lives, agreeing with him.

It wasn’t until Jessi had married Rollie Morris, a distant cousin of Charlotte’s husband, Frank, three years later and slept every night with her cheek against his warm body that she began to shed the nightmares and sleep through the long nights. The nightmares had not been from her imagination, but memories of a stark and nasty reality.

She focused again on the sunlit scene below. Kale’s powerful strides were taking him from the office to the rental car in the parking lot, and Chaz was once again setting up to gas the aircraft. The pilot was wandering in wide circles, stretching his legs and arms, looking over the buildings, the hedge, the parking lot, the hangars, the other planes parked on the visitors’ strip at perfect angles with chocks behind their wheels.

Kale backed up the rental car and drove through the parking lot to the highway.

Then, he was out of sight, leaving only a faint trail of dust through the hard gravel. Her eyes returned to Chaz who was in conversation with the pilot, pointing toward the restaurant across the parking lot.

She waited. Eventually, the pilot moved the plane to the guest parking area, kicked the pitted white chocks against the tires, and ambled lazily toward the restaurant. Chaz returned to the office downstairs.

She heard him tripping up the steps.

He stopped at the top. When she turned toward him, he was leaning his sinewy frame against the door casing, his arms folded across his chest. Sweat had stained his blue shirt under the arms and down the middle of his chest.

“So who the hell is Kale Noble?” he demanded as if he had a right to know.

She inhaled deeply and wondered what to say. A man who hates the Caldwells? A man still full of resentment for something that happened over a dozen years ago?

A bright, beautiful boy she’d thought she would love forever when she was a naive young girl?

She wondered if Kale had known it was her flying service when he landed here. Obviously, something had been said downstairs to inspire the accusation in Chaz’s voice.

“Then he knows I’m here,” she ventured. “Does he know I’m the owner?”

“He does now,” Chaz said pointedly, raising an eyebrow.

She swallowed hard. “What did he say?”

“About you? Nothing. It was the way he didn’t say it that set bells to ringing.”

She looked out the window. “Tell me what he said, or didn’t say,” she commanded quietly.

“You tell me who he is,” Chaz barked in reply, pushing himself away from the door frame and coming to the desk, where he placed his palms flat and leaned over to put himself within her view.

She lowered her eyes to the desktop. “Someone from the past. A reminder of a family tragedy.”

“You mean the car accident that made Charlotte bonkers?”

She turned on him swiftly. “Charlotte was not bonkers,” she snapped. “And I want to know what Kale Noble said to you. His brother died in that accident and none of us has been the same since. I want to know exactly what he said, or didn’t say, and how he did or didn’t say it.”

She glared at him.

He withered. “He was looking around while I made out the rental car form, and he saw the picture on the wall of you and Rollie when Rollie gave you your wings. I noticed he was staring at it. He asked me who you were.”

Ah, yes, the color photo Rollie had enlarged to 11x17 and framed with “Congratulations, Jessi” screaming from its plaque. It was still displayed where he had hung it nearly ten years ago, like an eyesore, she thought, but so endearingly placed she couldn’t bear to remove it.

Kale wouldn’t know that Rollie was her late husband, unless Chaz had told him.

Chaz continued, “I said ‘the boss lady.’ He said, ‘it figures.’ If looks could burn, that photograph of you and Rollie would be ashes.”

As if in afterthought, Chaz added, “I told him about Rollie’s plane going down. And about your sister.”

So Kale knew she was a widow, and that Charlotte was dead. “And what did you find out about him?”

“President of Noble Engineering. They designed the Point Six bridge across the swamp.”

She lowered her face and rubbed her forehead. Damn! It meant he would be a fixture around Kenross for a while, maybe months. Why hadn’t she noticed his company name before this?

The bridge had been in the news for the last couple of years. It was an experiment in road building to preserve the environment. Purportedly, the bridge was of a revolutionary design, the first of its kind. Why hadn’t she noticed his name before? Or seen him?

All these years he had simply been a hundred and fifty miles away in Minneapolis.

“They just bought it,” he said, eyeing the plane. “The boss decided he was wasting too much time on the highway.”

“I suppose I can manage to keep out of his sight,” she murmured.

“What’s he got against you? Charlotte was driving the car,” he said.

“There’s more to it than that, Chaz. It got very messy.” She looked up at him, understanding but resenting his morbid curiosity. “Both our families got involved.”

He didn’t move.

“That’s all, Chaz,” she told him.

“Hell, I’ve been hearing about ‘Charlotte’s accident’ since before she married Frank. Every time she got tanked up or did something crazy, people said it was because she caused some guy to die in a car accident. Nobody ever knew the details. Nobody dared to ask you or Charlotte about it. Sounds to me like there was a lot more to it than just a car accident and some guy ending up dead.”

“It got complicated,” she replied, flinching at his insensitive rendition. “But it was a long time ago, and I certainly don’t want to talk about it now. How long is he using the car?”

“He’s at a special city council meeting. Coupla’ hours or so.”

She looked out to see her twelve-year-old niece Amanda walking across the parking lot from the highway, kicking stones with the toes of her battered Nikes, her backpack flung over one shoulder. She looked a lot like Charlotte used to look, except she had a stockier build, bigger bones, and an oval face. Still, she reminded Jessi of Charlotte years ago, when she walked, lost in thought, absently kicking stones in front of her.

“Here comes Amanda,” she said.

Chaz glanced at his watch. “Right on time,” he replied. “What’s she doing today?”

“Mowing around the east hangars,” she said. “Will you help her get the mower out of the shed?”

“Sure thing,” he replied and moved to the doorway.

She was relieved when he disappeared down the stairs. She refused to share something so painful and intensely personal with Chaz, who had been a part of the airport for most of his thirty-five years, an employee of Rollie’s since he was twenty, and now her chief pilot.

Jessi had accumulated a wealth of knowledge over the last year, not the least of which was that she was capable of running the business she had inherited when Rollie died. He had trained her well by encouraging her to take on responsibility a little at a time, gradually teaching her nearly everything she needed to know, as if sensing he wouldn’t be around forever.

Forever? He had only lived to forty-six. And at twentyeight, she was now the boss.

She missed Rollie, for even though their relationship had lacked intimacy and passion, he had become her best friend over the years. It had been so sudden. Rollie, Frank and Charlotte had taken the float plane on a fishing trip and crashed at a remote lake in Canada. In seconds they were all three gone, the plane sunken into several feet of mud at the bottom of a lake without a name. It had taken days to find them and bring them out.

It had been a catastrophic loss for Amanda, Chaz and Jessi. Jessi had lost her husband, her sister and her brother-in-law; Amanda had lost both her parents; Chaz had lost lifelong friends. They had been close, their lives revolving around the airfield.

But the tragedy had left Jessi little time for mourning. The business wasn’t something she could set aside even for a short time in the name of grief. You didn’t shut down the only paved runway in a sixty-mile radius, or ignore the growing dependence of local industry on the air traffic she provided. A new part-time pilot was needed immediately. And Frank and Charlotte’s house had to be sold, and the money placed in a trust for Amanda, who now lived with her full-time.

It hadn’t been a major move for Amanda, considering Charlotte had often enlisted Jessi’s help with her daughter, and so Amanda already felt at home in Jessi’s cottage in the trees. Amanda had had her own bedroom in the cottage since she was three years old.

Amanda settled in, though, initially in silent bitterness and depression, but eventually responding to the nurturing and love Jessi showered on her.

Jessi was thankful that Amanda loved airplanes and flying and wanted to spend her time where her father had spent his waking hours. Her niece was gradually healing.

She heard Amanda’s heavy sneakers stomping up the stairs, and she turned her chair, rose to her feet and swept her arms wide to pull the hot, disheveled twelve-year-old into a long embrace. It was a ritual, and it seemed to offer as much comfort to the child as it did to the woman, for Jessi rocked her for several minutes while Amanda blurted out things that she had experienced during the afternoon at her summer school computer class. And when they’d had their afternoon fix, Amanda set her backpack on the chair by the file cabinet and looked out the windows on all four sides, checking out the field, the hangars and the restaurant across the parking lot.

“Whose twin engine?” she asked, studying the Noble plane.

“Engineering business in Minneapolis,” Jessi replied. “They’re designing the Point Six bridge.”

Amanda’s eyes flew to the parking lot. “And renting the car?”

“And the pilot’s having a late lunch,” Jessi added. Amanda didn’t miss much.

“What am I doing today?” she asked.

“Mowing by the east hangars? Chaz will get the mower out.”

“Good. I like that,” Amanda said. “Pelly’s doing a 500 on Oliver’s new plane. I want to stop by and watch.” There didn’t seem to be any part of the aviation business Amanda wasn’t interested in, even a routine 500-mile inspection by Pelly, Kenross’s only aviation mechanic.

“Have at it,” Jessi said, grinning.

Amanda gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and trotted down the steps. Jessi watched her retreating back, tendrils of warm feelings twining through her chest. Amanda plodded in from the summer school bus every day as if each step were an effort, and dragged herself to wherever Jessi happened to be, and then she threw herself against her aunt and sucked in the love, surveyed the place she loved best on earth and, revived, usually bounced to do whatever job had been assigned to her for that day.

Even at her tender age, Amanda had a sophisticated knowledge about airplanes, and she was capable of flying a single prop, though she would not be able to solo legally until she was sixteen.

Jessi confined herself to her office until Chaz left to give lessons, and then she moved down to the counter, for it was the busiest time of day in late afternoon when the weather was good and people came off their jobs to take lessons or simply fly around the area.

There was a lull about six o’clock and she wandered through the lounge to look for Amanda across the field among the east hangars. Jessi stood at the windows, aware suddenly that the door had opened and closed. When she turned, she was staring at Kale Noble as tense and as beautiful as a classical Roman statue, still and straight, errant strands of black hair slashing over his forehead, eyes so dark the pupils were lost in them, his jaw tight, making him look even more rugged up close than he had from the second floor.

If he smiles, his face will crack like dry clay, she thought, although even if he never smiled she would still think him the best-looking man she had ever known.

Her heart raced as a charge of something hot jolted from her scalp to her socks and she wondered what he would say, or do. She hoped he would not attack with sharp words. She wanted to be polite, to say hello, but she envisioned him turning even that into some kind of evil suggestion and slamming her greeting, whatever it might be, with clever sarcasm.

And so she said nothing, but she stared at him across the lounge. He responded by raising an eyebrow, a facial gesture he had obviously perfected in the last decade or so.

“Hello, Jessi,” he said. It seemed more a challenge than a greeting.

She tried twice to speak and on the second try said, “Hello, Kale.”

He pulled a key from his pocket and flung it to the side with casual accuracy so that it landed on the countertop. “I brought your car back.”

“Yes,” she murmured, her insides churning with uncommon wildness. “I kind of figured that you had.”

He was very still as he studied her, then he quietly offered belated condolences on losing her sister and her husband, after which she thanked him.

His face was unreadable. “Nice place,” he said. “Imagine my surprise to find you here.”

She moved toward him, knees trembling and palms sweating. There were forms to be completed and signed now that he had returned the car. She walked up to him and faced him and saw the fine lines in his skin, too many for a man who was only thirty-one. She wanted to reach up and brush aside the strands of hair that had broken loose from where they were supposed to be, but, of course, she would never do that, not when everything about him screamed “forbidden.”

She brushed past him and slipped behind the counter, found the form, completed the last few blanks, signed it, and pushed it across the counter with the pen. He turned, picked up the pen with long tanned fingers and signed it.

“Imagine my surprise to see your company plane landing here,” she said, watching his tanned hands, one holding the pen, the other holding down the form. “Your business must be doing well.”

“Extremely well,” he said, tearing off the back sheet. “We have projects in several states.”

She transferred the amount due to his credit card charge, adding it to the gas charge, then totaling, adding tax, before pushing it toward him to sign.

“Congratulations on your success,” she said. “How are your parents? Has your father retired?”

He signed the second form. Then she tore off his copy and stapled it to the car rental form. He looked up. “My father barely recognizes me, and my mother’s life is hell, trying to take care of him. I’ll tell her you inquired.”

She abruptly stopped, feeling guilt. “I’m sorry,” she told him softly. “It must be difficult.” She remembered that Matthew Noble had withdrawn into a shell of grief after the accident and Regina had been desperate to rescue him. Apparently, her efforts had failed.

Kale’s eyes narrowed, his hostility barely harnessed. “Difficult?” It was a scoff. “You can’t imagine what ‘difficult’ has meant to my family over the years.”

She watched him walk toward the door, watched him hesitate and then stop and look at her. “So you own all this now. The whole thing. Airport, flight service, restaurant.”

“Not the restaurant,” she corrected, hating the huskiness in her voice.

“Well, I’m sure you know how to get that if you want it,” he said, his voice low and hard. “See you next trip, Jessi Caldwell,” he added as he walked away.

“It’s Morris!” she called after him. “It’s Jessi Morris now!”

“Don’t I know it,” he answered quietly. Then he was gone.

She banished the guilt. She had no reason to feel responsible in the tragedy that had torn apart both their families. She had not played the Jezebel, as he thought.

She had simply been in love, and suffocating in a mire of good intentions gone bad.

She didn’t blame him for his resentment, however. She had been an innocent sixteen-year-old too shocked and hurt to defend herself against his accusations. When anger had set in at his perceived betrayal, she had fled without explanation.

And now it was too late by at least a dozen years.

At last report there hadn’t yet been a single successful attempt at turning back the clock to replay the past with a revised script. Regrettable, she thought, feeling again the old sharp pain, for she would have done quite a few things differently if given a second chance.