Czytaj książkę: «Summer on Kendall Farm»

CHAPTER ONE

SWEAT TRICKLED DOWN Jason Kendall’s neck. It had been years since he’d fled this same road, the wind behind his Corvette creating a small hurricane as he vowed to never set foot on his family’s property again. Coming back to Windsor Heights, a town forty miles west of Baltimore, wasn’t easy and the closer he got to the farm, the harder it was to hold the memories at bay.

Rain pelted the car windows like large splats of paint falling from the sky. Wiper blades flipped back and forth, clearing the windscreen a second at a time, giving Jace a glimpse of a road that appeared smaller than he remembered. It was a long tree-lined ribbon without lights that led to the house at Kendall Farm. Jace had thought of it as the big house when he lived there. The Kendall, as it was known by the locals, was a world unto itself, but it was a world that was stuck in time. His half brother, Sheldon, made sure of that.

Thinking of Sheldon, Jace almost laughed. Wouldn’t he be surprised to find the family’s black sheep on his doorstep?

Jason Kendall had grown up here. Maybe grown up was too strong a term for what had happened to him. He supposed he could say it was the place that made him into the man he was today. He was proud, resourceful, cynical and steadfast. Although maturity had curbed his urge to throw a punch as a solution to an argument, he was always ready to stand his ground.

The Kendall was what the farm had been called since the end of the Civil War when Jameson Kendall returned from the conflict to find himself the lone survivor of his family, the others having succumbed to disease or died on the battlefield. It took him five years of hard work to bring it back to a profitable enterprise. As it passed from generation to generation, it had been well maintained but virtually unchanged.

Peering through the rain-soaked window, Jace tried to spot the house. He’d last seen the imposing structure five years earlier, vowing with every fiber of his being that he wouldn’t ever return.

But here he was, driving up the narrow road, returning not as the Prodigal son, but still as a son, even if he was illegitimate and merely tolerated. He had a reason for coming back and it outweighed his emotions.

Would the place be the same? Rain obscured his vision, along with the column of trees that lined the driveway. So much had changed in his life in the intervening years. He was more responsible. And he wasn’t as angry, yet no one would call him humble.

He hadn’t let Sheldon know he was coming. Why should he? Jace frowned. The Kendall was as much his as it was his half brother’s, even if their father had referred to Jace in his will as a distant relative. How distant were direct genes? The same blood that flowed through Sheldon’s veins flowed through Jace’s, “tainted” though it might be.

Jace gripped the steering wheel strongly enough to crush the hard plastic. What would Sheldon say when he saw him? Would he throw him off the property now that he was the sole owner? Jace didn’t put it past his brother. The two had never been real brothers, even saying they were friends would be a stretch, but underneath that tough exterior, Jace had the feeling Sheldon wasn’t totally indifferent to him. He was simply his father’s son.

When the jumbo jet had set down at Dulles Airport, it had been daylight outside. But quickly the light had gone, giving way to the dark, rainy sky. Lightning flashed and in that instant, Jace saw the house. Unconsciously his foot eased off the accelerator and the car rolled to a gentle stop. Windshield wipers tossed water back and forth as Jace stared at the white house that shimmered through the raindrops.

The house grew larger as he approached it. The six-thousand-square-foot structure had sat on five hundred acres for over a century. The other five hundred that comprised the original property boundary was sold during the Depression, but the majority was still intact. Jace remembered times when all six bedrooms had been filled with guests, when the ballroom was bright with music and he couldn’t wait to get to the horses in the back stables.

The road ended in a semicircle in front of the house. For a moment Jace only looked at it. Age didn’t show on the old homestead. The pristine white color he remembered was as fresh and new as if the paint job had been completed yesterday. The five-bar fence he’d climb over as a boy was as strong as it had been when he sat atop a horse and raced the wind. The giant lawn, manicured and welcoming even in the darkness, led to the front door.

He let out a relieved breath. Looking over his shoulder, Jace checked on Ari, his four-year-old son sleeping in the backseat. Jace smiled, thinking Ari could sleep through a war. It was because of him that Jace was here. Ari needed a quiet, private place and better medical care than he was getting in South America. So Jace was back on American soil.

He got out of the car. Instead of climbing the front stairs, he stood looking at the house, oblivious of the water drenching him. He could smell freshly cut grass with the faint hint of horseflesh over the rain. He hadn’t ridden in years, but he remembered sitting in the saddle and racing across the grounds with Sheldon shouting at him to slow down. Not that his half brother was concerned about him. He didn’t want the horse to suffer a fall.

A smile came easily to Jace. Yet he never thought he’d miss the Kendall. But he had. It wasn’t his brother or father that he missed, but the grooms, the horses, the races and the few people he’d become friends with in town. He missed riding, challenging the wind as he edged the horses faster and faster. He missed jumping fences and even the splash of dirty water and flying debris that hit him in the face. He missed the silent rush of exhilaration for that tiny space of time when both he and his steed were airborne. Knowing there would be a reprimand at the end of the ride didn’t stop Jace.

Rain smacked his head and shoulders, soaking through his clothes, breaking the memory that held him in place. Quickly, he moved around the car and lifted the still-sleeping Ari onto his shoulder. Taking the wide steps up to the porch, he carried the boy and stopped in front of the century-old door. Jace reached into his pocket and pulled out a key ring he hadn’t done more than glance at in ages. He pushed a gold-colored key into the lock. It resisted his effort to turn.

Shifting Ari, Jace tried again, and again the key would not line up with the inside tumblers and release the lock. “Well, it’s been five years,” he said aloud. He supposed Sheldon had changed the locks in that time. Stepping back, he rang the doorbell. Inside he heard the soft sound of it chiming. Behind him thunder and lightning cut the sky in quick succession.

Peering through the side windows, he noted that other things had changed, too. The runner that led from the door through to the kitchen at the back was gone. A new floor of polished oak gleamed in the semidarkness.

Jace waited several seconds before ringing the bell again. Ari weighed about forty pounds, but he was getting heavy. It was well after midnight and maybe Sheldon and Laura were asleep. If his brother was following their father’s method of housekeeping, any help they had would have left hours ago.

Suddenly, a light went on inside the foyer. Jace squinted as the one above his head illuminated at virtually the same moment. Ari squirmed, turning his face toward Jace’s neck. Resettling himself, he was asleep without even opening his eyes.

“May I help you?” a voice said through the heavy door.

“You could open the door.” Jace peered through the beveled glass trying to see whether it was Laura or someone else.

“Who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want?”

“I’m Jason Kendall and I live here.”

There was a long pause before Jace heard the door locks clicking and finally the oval-glass door was pulled open. The light from both the porch and the foyer fell on the woman standing before him. Jace gasped.

“Laura,” he whispered, taking a step backward. He thought he was prepared to see her again, but he wasn’t.

“I’m not Laura.”

Jace stared at her face. He frowned. She wasn’t Laura. He blinked several times. This woman only looked slightly like her. Her hair was red with unkempt tendrils that had come loose from the braid that disappeared down her back. Laura, on the other hand, never had a lock of hair out of place.

The young woman appeared weary and tired, wearing exercise pants and a sweatshirt that came to her knees. “I’m Kelly Ashton. You’d better come out of the rain.”

Stepping inside the door was like going back in time. Even though much of what he saw was different, the faint aroma of furniture polish triggered memories he thought were long dead.

Jace brushed passed her and walked several feet into the foyer. The only sounds he heard were his own footsteps as he crossed the floor. The place could have been empty. “Who are you?” he asked as he went into the living room and laid Ari on the sofa. He stood up, taking in the decor of the room. It was completely changed. Laura had probably redecorated. Jace could smell the remnants of a fire that was smoldering in the grate. Even though it was May, the nights in Maryland at this elevation could be nippy. Pulling an afghan that was lying on the back of the sofa over the boy, he turned to examine the woman standing in the doorway.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well what? I told you my name is Kelly Ashton and I live here now.”

“You what? Where is Sheldon? Has Laura divorced him? Taken him for all she could get?” Jace could hear the cynicism in his voice. Try as he might, he couldn’t remove it when it came to the topic of Laura.

There was silence for a long moment. Then Kelly shook her head.

Jace could see she was a little nervous. He didn’t understand why. Who was she? “So, where is my brother?” Jace grimaced. Saying Sheldon’s name always left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I think we’d better talk.” She stepped back, indicating they should go to another room. Checking Ari one more time, he left his son and followed her.

She went through to the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. Without asking, she made him a roast beef sandwich and poured a large glass of orange juice. Jace hadn’t realized how hungry he was until she set the food in front of him. Taking a seat at a huge table that hadn’t been there five years ago, he took a bite of the sandwich.

“I don’t know where your brother is,” she began.

“Then why are you living in our house?” Jace asked between mouthfuls.

“It’s no longer your house,” she said quietly.

“Excuse me?” He stopped eating, nearly choking on the orange juice.

“I own the Kendall. I bought it a couple of years ago.”

“What?” he shouted.

“The house was in receivership and I—”

“What’s receivership?” he interrupted.

“There were liens against it. Unpaid taxes. Your brother couldn’t afford to keep up. He was forced to sell.”

“He can’t do that.” The words burst from Jace.

The woman delivering them sat calmly across from him. She waited a moment, giving him time to calm down.

“I know this is difficult for you to hear. You’ve been away a long time.”

“I’m fine,” he said, finishing the sandwich before standing up.

“I was told the property was for sale and I bought it.”

“Just like that?”

“Not quite. It took a while to pull my assets together, but I managed.”

Jace noticed her eyes were fiery, but her voice remained steady. She was good at holding her emotions in check.

“Where is my brother?” Jace heard the anger in his voice. He and Sheldon had never been on the best of terms, but he had no business selling the house without at least consulting Jace.

“I don’t know,” she said, and Jace realized he’d asked the question before.

He tried to remember her name. The red hair made him think of Laura. It came to him. Kelly.

“There was no reason for him to be involved in the closing. The state had already taken the house and grounds. I don’t know where he went once the sale was complete. I heard rumors that he moved out of the state.”

Jace hung his head. The pressure of the past few days suddenly came down on him. He and Ari had left Colombia in the midst of political and social turmoil. Ari had asthma and Jace’s jobs were often in places that aggravated his condition. He’d watched the child struggling to breathe and knew the child needed better medical care. But the other reason for them to leave Tumaco was the drug war that had broken out nearby. For their own protection, it was time to go. Jace made the decision in a rush of packing, discarding furniture and settling his job. Soon he and Ari had boarded a plane and flown to Mexico. Then on to Washington, DC, where he rented a car and ended their journey at the Kendall. Jace had assumed he could bring the boy home despite his brother’s treatment of Jace. He assumed he and his son would have a place to stay.

What would happen to them now? Ari had already lost his mother. He was too young to remember her or her sacrifice to save him. Jace formally adopted the boy, going through a well-run program that advocated for children. He was the only parent Ari had ever known.

Jace thought of his own mother. It had been a long while since he remembered her. She made sacrifices for him, loved him unconditionally, the way he’d come to love Ari. Losing her was painful. It took years of grieving before he could think of her without tears.

He couldn’t go to the home they’d had before he came to live at the Kendall. There was nothing there. They’d lived in an apartment in Albany, New York. When his father came to get him, he’d thrown out everything in the apartment. All Jace saved were a few pictures and the jewelry the hospital returned to him. In this he and Ari were nearly the same. Jace had a photo of Ari’s mother that he’d taken from the apartment where she had lived.

Ari had no memory of his mother and Jace didn’t know if knowing or not knowing was better. He supposed time would tell.

Jace didn’t have that much money. Most of it had been spent getting him and Ari to the States. He’d counted on everything at the Kendall being the same. It couldn’t be true, he told himself. Sheldon couldn’t have sold the house without telling him. Even with the way things were left between them, Jace should have been told. Maybe he could have helped. He couldn’t, but Sheldon didn’t know that and he never asked.

“What about Laura? Do you know anything about her?” Jace changed the subject.

Jace assumed Kelly’s hesitation meant that she knew the history behind Laura and himself. At least she knew the rumors.

“I’m s-sorry to be the one to tell you this,” Kelly stuttered. “But I’m afraid she died two years ago.”

Jace was stunned. Numbness took over his body. He needed someplace to go. Pacing in the spacious kitchen didn’t seem far enough away from the news. He didn’t think of Laura often, but he never imagined her dead. Before deciding to come home, Jace had basically folded up the memories of his former time at the Kendall and placed them in a safe corner of his mind, never to be revisited. But life wouldn’t let him keep that promise to himself. The memories had been opened as he watched Ari limp across the floor of their tiny apartment in Colombia. Ari loved to climb. Two weeks ago he was running through some trees when he tripped and twisted his foot. The limp was better than it had been. In another few weeks hopefully it would be gone. He looked thin and pale. Jace made the decision to return to Maryland once the shootings started in their neighborhood, and in so doing, to bring Laura and his brother back into his life.

Laura had been perfect for Jace, or so he thought. And that should have been his first clue that life was never going to end with happily-ever-after. But Jason Kendall was too blinded by Laura’s beauty to see that their relationship was already skidding.

It was a wonderful wedding. The bride wore white and had the appropriate amount of mist in her eyes. The groom beamed and the best man—well the best man sat in the audience, witnessing the nuptials between his brother and his former fiancée, feeling like every eye in the huge church wasn’t on the bride and groom, but trained with pity on him.

Tucking his hands behind his back, Jace stared at the darkness outside the windows. It was like looking through a time portal, viewing the day he’d met Laura Whitmore and how that had altered the course of his future.

He closed his eyes, failing to block it out.

“Hullo,” she had said. It was the first word she’d uttered and it had that deep, sexy sound of a 1930s screen star. He was Jason then. He wouldn’t be called Jace for several years. Twenty years old, as green as they come, and just out of college, Jace was ready to conquer the world. Laura looked as if she’d recently stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine—tall, willowy, with dark red hair that shadowed one side of her face and dipped over her shoulder playing hide and seek with one of her breasts.

Jason had been peering at the sky as he headed for the concession stand. The Firebirds had just flown overhead and most of the patrons of the fall air show were watching their aerial exercises. Unaware that he was close to someone, Jason and Laura collided. Instinctively, his hands came out to steady her. He felt her curves and the softness of her waist. No woman had ever claimed his attention as instantly as she had. He could feel his breath catch and electricity snake through his fingers and up his arms.

“Hello.” He only managed to get the one word out, because his eyes were too busy taking in a face more lovely than any he’d seen before. Her eyes were on him, too. Admiring. He shifted his position and glanced away, not wanting her to read the thoughts that were dominant in his head. He probably apologized for walking into her, but no memory of the exchange came to him.

Jason introduced himself then and took the hand Laura offered. And that’s where it had begun.

“Have you ever wanted to fly one of those?” she asked later as they’d strolled about the grounds, inspecting the planes on the airfield. She sipped from a bottle of water that hung from a strap over her shoulder.

“What guy hasn’t?” Jason answered. “To control all that power and have the freedom of the sky, it’s a dream come true.”

Dream come true. Today Jace sneered at the irony of the phrase. He thought Laura was the beginning and end of everything he’d searched for in life. From then on, even though she lived in the District of Columbia, and had worked as a researcher for the Air Force for the past two years and he lived in Maryland, a few hours from her, he pursued her.

For them, everything seemed to fit. Neither could see beyond the other, at least he thought that was true for both of them, until that night six weeks after they met, when he brought her home to introduce her to his family. Little did he know that a simple dinner with them would be another turning point in his life. That the fabric of a relationship Jason would have sworn couldn’t be ripped, was shredded.

That was the night Laura met Sheldon.

Looking back on it, Jace should have realized. His fire with her had flashed fast and burned bright, but it couldn’t match the inferno that surrounded her and his older sibling.

Jason stayed around until their wedding, most of it he couldn’t remember the next day or any day since. They left for their honeymoon and he left for parts unknown. He still wasn’t sure to this day where he went or what happened to him. Six months later he emerged from a bottle of vodka on the seedy side of some town near Athens in Greece. With no money, no friends and only the sour taste of stale liquor in his mouth, he headed out to find work.

He looked like a homeless drunk. He was a homeless drunk. His clothes were dirty and torn and he had difficulty speaking the language. Eventually, Jason found a church, a place where he got a meal. His stomach had growled all day and as soon as he entered the dimly lit shelter and smelled the coffee, he thought he’d gone to heaven.

He speculated how long it had been since he’d eaten. If he ate anything, would it stay down? Sitting at a plain wooden table he ate a little rice and lamb and had another cup of the heavy mud-like coffee.

Jason kept his head down, speaking to no one and likewise no one spoke to him. The coffee was a bottomless cup and it seemed his thirst was unquenchable. He drank so much of the stuff that he thought it would have cured him for a lifetime of ever drinking the liquid again. But later, he discovered an acquired taste for it.

That night he slept in an alley and in the morning, nudged by a not-so-friendly constable, continued his search for a job. He washed up in the sea and, turning his only shirt inside out, did the best he could to look presentable. He got hired washing dishes for half the usual rate, but he couldn’t be picky. Meals came with his wages. It wasn’t much, but enough to pay for a room for the night and a hot shower. After a week, Jace signed on to a freighter. He didn’t care where it was going, east or west didn’t matter. Eventually he would get back to the States. What he hadn’t expected was to end up fighting for his life in the middle of a South American drug war. But that’s where he found Ari. And for the child’s sake he would do it all again.

But there was one thing he would never do again. No woman would ever make him feel the way Laura had. She was dead and so was anything that surrounded his feelings for her or any other woman.

“When did she die?” he asked, coming out of the years that bound his old life to this one.

“She died just before your brother lost the house.”

Kelly’s voice was soft and kind. He wasn’t sure he deserved her consideration given how he’d landed here with Ari.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“When I left she was so active, so alive.”

“You might talk to some of her friends. I didn’t know them.”

Jace walked to the window. He looked out on the darkness. “I didn’t expect this,” he said, more to himself than to Kelly. “I’m not sure what we do now.” He turned back to her. “Do you mind if I just rest awhile before making any decisions?”