Table of Contents

Cover Page

Dear Reader

Excerpt

Title Page

Dedication

About the Author

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Copyright

Dear Reader,

Merry Christmas from Silhouette Desire-where you’re guaranteed powerful, passionate and provocative love stories that feature rugged heroes and spirited heroines who experience the full emotional intensity of falling in love!

The always-wonderful Cait London is back with this December’s MAN OF THE MONTH, who happens to be one of THE BLAYLOCKS. In Typical Male, a modern warrior hero is attracted to the woman who wants to destroy him.

The thrilling Desire miniseries TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB concludes with Lone Star Prince by Cindy Gerard. Her Royal Princess Anna von Oberland finally reunites with the dashing attorney Gregory Hunt who fathered her child years ago.

Talented Ashley Summers returns to Desire with That Loving Touch, where a pregnant woman becomes snowbound with a sexy executive in his cabin. The everpopular BACHELOR BATTALION gets into the holiday spirit with Marine under the Mistletoe by Maureen Child. Star-Crossed Lovers is a Romeo-and-Juliet-with-a-happyending story by Zena Valentine. And an honorable cowboy demands the woman pregnant with his child marry him in Christy Lockhart’s The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby.

Each and every month, Silhouette Desire offers you six exhilarating journeys into the seductive world of romance. So make a commitment to sensual love and treat yourself to all six for some great holiday reading this month!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

“You Shouldn’t Have Followed Me,”

she said. “It should have been obvious, even to you, that I wanted to be alone.”

“It’s all the old hate and resentment, building up for years and years,” he said, his voice low. “And frustration. I wanted you then, you know. It drove me to distraction how much I wanted you, and I held back. And then I discovered I had been a fool. And then I wondered what it would have been like, satisfying that lust.”

“Lust?” She raised her head at the fresh cut of his words. “I loved you then, Kale. I know it was just puppy love. But that’s what you felt for me? Lust?”

He didn’t answer her aloud, but she saw a passing frown, and his eyes strayed from her face. She saw that it might just be his pride talking, for he wasn’t going to admit he loved her once.if he ever had.

Star-Crossed Lovers
Zena Valentine

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one is for Don.

ZENA VALENTINE

has had a career goal since childhood to “have adventures.” Throughout her adventures in journalism, cosmetics, construction, parenting, corporate financial relations, photography, sports car racing, gardening, flying, cooking and real estate, she has carried a lifelong love of writing. She likens writing a romance novel to restarting an airplane at five thousand feet (“exciting”). Nowadays she divides her time between the north woods of Minnesota and the desert country of Nevada. Her journalist daughter and musician son are off having their own adventures.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FORZENA VALENTINE’SDEBUT SILHOUETTE NOVEL:

From Humbug to Holiday Bride

(Silhouette Romance #1269)

Nominated for Best First Series Book and Best Silhouette Romance by Romantic Times Magazine

“…a heartwarming tale. Ms. Valentine’s multi-dimensional characters, strong plotting and tender passion blend perfectly to create a marvelous tale of hope that will touch the hearts and souls of readers everywhere.”

—Romantic Times Magazine

“…a love story based on miracles—the miracle of faith and the miracle of love.”

—Rendezvous

One

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.

Two

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.

Three

Kale flung open the door of the plane, pushed himself out onto the wing and leaped to the ground. Although it wasn’t as hot and humid in Kenross as it had been a hundred and fifty miles south in Minneapolis, the blast of hot July air turned his skin sticky.

He slammed the door, and then he looked up at the small high-wing plane on base leg, perpendicular to the runway. Suddenly the engine stopped and the prop spun to a slow undulating roll. He almost felt the pilot’s shock as one wing dipped sharply and then straightened. It looked for an instant as though it would take a nosedive.

All his senses moved to alert. He thought he was seeing an accident about to happen, but somehow the plane continued, turning to line up with the runway, gliding onto the tarmac with uncertain hops and jolts as it landed and then braked in jerking assaults.

Phil came to stand alongside him. “Don’t worry,” he said as though reading his boss’s mind. “It’s a student pilot flying dual. The instructor shut off the gas on final approach as part of the training.”

“Taking his life into his hands,” Kale mused, still shaken but relieved.

“Her life, you mean,” Phil said.

As the plane drew closer he saw what Phil had already noted, that Jessi sat in the instructor’s seat. He wasn’t prepared for the rush of anger that slammed like a torrent through him at the thought of Jessi being in a plane that was in trouble, of Jessi deliberately shutting off the engine while an unskilled novice was at the wheel, of Jessi putting her life in danger while he watched helplessly from the ground.

And then he caught himself, took a deep breath to clear such thoughts from his mind, and wiped sweat from his brow. He swung around to head for the office and the keys to the rental car. Was he crazy? What in the hell did he care if she wanted to take risks? If she was a flight instructor, she knew what she was doing. How was it that she goaded his anger so easily? It must be that she fed into his entrenched resentment, he thought. It was inconvenient as hell.

No one was behind the counter when he reached the office, so he reached into the drawer and helped himself to the keys. He had been here often enough, and he had reserved the car as usual, so he didn’t feel as though he were trespassing. Looking around quickly, he saw two men smoking in the lounge, and he could hear Chaz’s voice, presumably on the telephone in the next room.

As he closed the drawer with the car key in his hand, he looked up and the memory of nine days ago socked him in the gut. He was standing only inches from where he had lost control then, threaded his hand through her hair and pushed her against the cabinets with his body, angry that she might have been guilty of yet another betrayal a dozen years ago. But as he had held her imprisoned, his rage had colored into a desire so potent he had been obsessed with penetrating her through all the wrappings. He almost kissed her. He’d been only a scant inch from her lips. He’d had an overwhelming urge to take her mouth in a kiss savage enough to bruise.

In horror, he had backed away, cursed her and left, relying on instinct and habit alone to make his legs move, to carry him to the plane and to buckle himself in while Phil went over his checklist.

Strapping himself into the plane, he had been painfully aware that being close to her, touching her, had been a damning mistake, and had left him so shaken he forgot for a while what had inspired his rage in the first place. Every part of his body had been tight and hard with nerves bunched for attack, but it was the hardness in his groin and recognizing his oddly barbarian intentions while he had her in his power that had horrified him.

It had been a first, having his carnal desires violently awakened by rage. He was not, had never been, a violent man, had never forced a woman, or treated a woman roughly. Never in his life. He was appalled by violence, and had never associated it with either sex or desire.

It had frightened him. He had turned his head to face out the window so that Phil would not see his shame and turmoil, and he had held the briefcase temporarily on his lap to cover the evidence of his fierce arousal. Damn that woman for turning him into an animal!

No, that was unfair. She had done nothing to inspire his sudden insanity. It was something within himself, something dark and painful and frighteningly powerful, that had blossomed without warning and overshadowed his civility.

The thought that she had once wooed him with sweet shyness, and then given her body to someone else, had once again infuriated him. He had to know if that was what she had done, borne some other man’s child when he as a teenager in love was lying awake nights missing her and wanting her, wondering when he might see her again. When he thought of his own young innocence and the aching need to be close to her, to take care of her and hold her and dream of a future together, he felt the ominous force of his pain-fired anger, because he had been deluded and used. He had been a fool, naive and trusting. Believing in her.

Until he heard about the “other” man and confronted her.

That Amanda might be her child had caught in his chest, until he had realized she probably wasn’t Jessi’s. During the return flight he had thought about that stretch of time twelve and thirteen years ago, from the accident in September to the last time he saw Jessi the following August, and he figured that if Jessi had got herself pregnant during that time, the child could not yet be twelve years old.

And then, riding in the plane alongside his pilot, he had let the other feelings overwhelm him, the ones he could neither understand nor explain that caught him in their grip when he touched her and felt the length of her soft body against him, and it sickened him. What had possessed him to handle her so harshly and to find himself wanting to force her to his will? What ill-conceived demon had driven him to such lengths?

Was it because he had harbored and nurtured his resentment toward her for so many years that when he finally found himself in her presence he could no longer contain his anger?

He was a man of infinite control. Ask anyone who knew him, the women he had known intimately, the people he worked with, his family, his clients, anyone.

To lose control now was to face a terror, for it was something within himself that he did not recognize. And could not tolerate.

That he must harness these wild errant feelings was without question. And he must do so immediately. Furthermore, he must avoid future contact with Jessi Caldwell Morris, who seemed to bring on this unconscionable behavior.

Now, standing at the cabinet where he had manhandled her nine days ago, he yanked himself back to the present. It had happened again, losing himself in the experience of touching her and suffering the consequences.

He turned quickly from the cabinet, gripping the rental car keys in his hand and strode outside. He was heading for the rental car when she called to him, and without thought he instantly responded.

She was running from the small plane, jogging toward him in a short sleeveless tank top that revealed too many inches of delectable flat midsection, and khaki shorts, a clipboard held against her side. Her hair was frizzed by the heat and humidity, pulled into an inadequate clasp at the back of her neck so that wildly curled tendrils framed her face. As she drew near, he saw that some of the tendrils were wet and stuck to her face.

He saw the sheen of perspiration from her forehead down her clear tanned skin to the top of her breasts. That was how he had thought she would look under him when he finally made love to her, her skin glowing with pleasure and heat while she gave herself to him.

Adolescent thoughts, he warned himself, better forgotten. It would never happen. He would never make love to a woman he despised.

But he remembered her convincing innocence and her quiet vitality. He could still hear her calling his mother “Reggie Mom,” see her savoring the sour apples off the sprawling tree in the Nobles’ backyard.

“Kale,” she called, although she was within a few feet of where he forced himself to stand without expression. He ordered himself to be absolutely still, to express nothing, to stay in control of himself.

She studied him for a moment as though she was looking for something in his face, and then she spoke. “I want to talk to you, Kale,” she said quietly, still searching his face. “Would you have time after your business today?”

“What have we to talk about?”

She inhaled sharply and winced. She ran a hand over her hair which was hopelessly wild. He watched her struggle for a reply, keeping his face cool and immobile, keeping his body still while inside a fire was raging.

“Nothing, I guess,” she said in a voice so low he saw rather than heard it. “Forget it,” she murmured.

He should, although he would like to talk some more about Amanda. He already knew the girl was Charlotte’s and not Jessi’s. And he shouldn’t talk to Jessi. He shouldn’t allow himself to be caught in a conversation with her, and yet, he did intend to pursue his suspicion that she was hiding something in regard to Arnanda. He wanted to ask when Amanda was born. He wanted to know whether there was a possibility she was Paul’s.

It seemed unlikely that even the Jezebel Caldwells could have been cruel enough to withhold all these years a precious child of Paul’s. Still, he wanted to know for certain.

He was watching Jessi’s knotted eyebrows, and then he looked into her eyes. Hell, it was Friday afternoon, and he wouldn’t mind a cool drink before he crawled back into the plane. He tried not to think of how it would be sitting near her, watching her, sharing a drink.

“All right,” he said finally. “But I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be here,” she said softly.

He nodded and tore himself away from her soft voice and her luscious glowing woman’s body, turning swiftly to walk in the opposite direction to the rental car, letting himself through the high latched gate at the end of the sidewalk. He looked back once before he tucked himself into the car, but she was gone.

Jessi wrote her instructor’s comments in the student’s logbook, then gassed the plane and returned it to the hangar. She looked at the schedule for the rest of the day, what planes were reserved by whom for what time periods, and she went through message slips that had been accumulating during the day, then checked the ground school schedule to make sure that Chaz had arranged his hours to teach the Saturday morning class. She would be tied up with lessons as she usually was on Saturdays, and once again she promised herself she would hire another part-time flight instructor.

She had hired Harry, a retired airline pilot, as a part-time pilot after Rollie and Frank had died, and she had given Chaz the full-time job, but she and Chaz were the only ones qualified to instruct, and during the summer she needed another person on weekends.

Amanda skipped in from school, threw herself into Jessi’s embrace and told her aunt she had been invited to spend the night at a friend’s. Jessi approved of the friend and agreed to drive her there if Amanda would go home and pack a bag and come back when she was ready to go.

Before leaving to transport Amanda, she told Chaz she would be gone for fifteen minutes. “If Kale Noble comes back, ask him to wait. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Both Amanda and Chaz were startled at her casual words.

“Mr. Noble? That gorgeous man who said I look like my mom?” Amanda asked.

Chaz observed, “The man can hardly stand to be in the same room with you, Jessi.”

“We have something to discuss,” she snapped, and headed to the door so quickly Amanda had to jerk herself around to keep up.

“I’ll tell him you’re busy getting into your armor,” Chaz yelled after her.

When she returned, Chaz was waiting for her. “You watch out for him, Jessi,” he warned.

“Well, what do you think he’s going to do to me, for heaven’s sake,” she scoffed, fleeing further questions by dashing to her upstairs retreat.

“Jessi!” he shouted, taking the steps two at a time behind her. “Did you ever look in his eyes? They’re black as coal, like there’s a fire burning in there. And the way he acts like he has the whole world in his control. Curt Burness says he’s a genius! A genius, for crying out loud!”

“Curt Burness said that? Interesting.” She pulled an accounting book out of a desk drawer. Well, Curt Burness would know a genius if he worked with one.

Chaz was silent for a moment. She could hear his heavy breathing. When she looked up, his face was a picture of chagrin, but his voice had softened and his arms were still. “I think he could hurt you,” he said.

She was dismayed not only by the intensity of his concern, but also by the unwitting accuracy of his words. Any hurt Kale Noble caused her wouldn’t be of the physical variety, but rather it would be the soul-deep pain of a twice-broken heart. She forced a small smile. “Thank you for worrying, Chaz, but Kale Noble has never been a violent person,” she replied, deliberately misinterpreting his prediction.

“Every time I see that damned Noble plane I get a pain in my gut. Every time I see it fly away I feel relieved. The guy is arrogant as hell,” Chaz continued.

So it wasn’t just her imagination that Kale Noble paced through life with an aura of power and intimidation. It wasn’t just memories of the past or her awareness that he resented her that gave him an appearance almost sinister. And then, there had been the incident behind the counter the last time they were together, when he crowded her and put his hand in her hair. She saw him as a walking energy force, threatening her emotional stability with his raw sensuality.

“You’re probably right, Chaz,” she agreed. “I’ll suggest we meet at the restaurant.”

He reluctantly left, and she worked on accounts payable, stopping frequently while her mind wandered.

Was she doing the right thing intending to probe to learn how close he was to discovering the truth about Amanda’s parentage? She deeply regretted her taunting and defiant response to his question when he held her against the cabinet and let her see for the first time that his rage had been fostered by abject pain. It wasn’t in her nature or true to her principles that she be coy with him. She didn’t approve of playing games with people’s feelings. Certainly it was inappropriate not to be honest about a subject that was so emotionally charged it was bound to cause yet another series of painful eruptions between the Caldwells and the Nobles.

Still, she didn’t think she could bear to tell Kale and risk losing Amanda to the Caldwells’ archenemies.

Whatever action she took or didn’t take in the matter, the truth might eventually be revealed now that Kale was a regular customer, and if it was, all of them were going to be hurt in some way. Better, she thought, to determine how close Kale was to figuring things out. If he should discover Paul was Amanda’s father, his accusations and bitterness were likely to curdle the air. And she wouldn’t blame him.

She disliked working on accounts payable, and when she caught herself writing the wrong amount on a check, she ceased her efforts, and stared out the window at the nice flurry of activity on her airfield.

In spite of the uncomfortable heat, people were coming to fly airplanes, their own that were hangared there and hers that they rented. She saw her sleek six-passenger aircraft turn from downwind to base leg and knew that Harry, her part-time pilot, was returning with officers from one of the corporations that regularly used her flight service.

There was a line of three planes at the gas pump occupying Chaz.

She put away her books and went down to the counter.

She wandered into the lounge to visit with the men who sat around because they loved flying and at the moment had nowhere to go. Sometimes there were a few women around, too, but seldom.

There was no profit in idle pilots sitting around the lounge, but Jessi encouraged it nonetheless, as Rollie had, because she liked the camaraderie. She liked to hear the old-timers talk about tail draggers and tease the younger pilots about the minimal skills required nowadays to fly “tricycles.”

Being a pilot made you a part of a special fellowship. She had felt it the first time she set foot in Rollie’s lounge, and she had known immediately that she wanted to be a part of it. After her first ride aloft, she recognized that a whole new world had been opened to her, a world she was born to.

At times like this she missed Rollie, whose devotion to flying and his friends had left a gaping hole in her life.

And then she felt a bite of guilt because in recent days her thoughts of Rollie had been insidiously replaced by thoughts of Kale Noble, who, as Chaz fantasized, was bedeviling her.

She grinned when he came through the door, having handed off his briefcase to Phil, and the words fell from her lips, “Well, just think about the devil and.”

He eyed her from where he stood by the counter, his white cotton shirt stained with sweat and fine splatters of mud. His black hair was blown out of its natural waves, and strands were plastered to his gleaming skin. He looked rugged and earthy, sensual and elegant.

She stared at him from the lounge. He ran a hand over his ruffled hair and headed for the rest room. When he emerged, the mud splatters were less evident, his face was clean and his hair combed.

“Does that place across the parking lot sell liquor?” he demanded.

“There’s a bar,” she replied.

“Good. Let’s talk there,” he said, reaching out a hand in an impatient gesture to have her join him. He didn’t ask. He just made the decision and expected her to agree.

Well, the talk was her idea and he had reluctantly gone along with it. So let him be high-handed about choosing the site. She had intended to meet in the restaurant anyway.

They walked across the parking lot in awkward silence. She wondered again whether she was doing the right thing, or whether she should keep mum and avoid the risk of triggering further suspicions from Kale.

If her timing would prove to be bad, or if he would lose his temper again and pull her within his body force as he had done before, she would once again find him kindling wild sensations, wrecking her inner balance.

Too late, she recognized she was only dreading the aftermath, not the experience.

Four

Kale ordered a glass of ice water followed by a martini. Jessi ordered lemonade.

“Nothing stronger?” he questioned.

“I’m on call for the chopper tonight,” she explained, not telling him she rarely drank. It interfered with flying. Besides, most of it tasted like caustic medicine, she thought.

“The chopper? On call for what?”

“We have a contract for emergency air ambulance service. One of us is always on call. See?” She tapped the beeper attached to the belt of her shorts.

“So you’re also qualified to fly a helicopter,” he observed.

“Chaz, too. Unfortunately, we’re the only two, and so one or the other of us is always on call, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But we don’t have many calls.”

“You put in a lot of hours,” he murmured, draining the glass of ice water. “So you’re finding there are drawbacks to owning your own business?” He flung the words at her as though it was righteous consequence for her ambition.

“It never seems like too many. I love it,” she replied.

“I feel the same way about my business. I always have, even as a teen. I couldn’t wait to get through engineering school and be a real part of the company.”

“I know,” she said softly. “I remember.” She remembered that his father hadn’t been concerned about Kale’s education, or where he finally found employment. Yet how fortunate he was that he had a son like Kale who could competently take over.

“I didn’t expect as much responsibility as I got, though, or so soon. My father lost interest after Paul’s accident. He always planned that his financial son would actually run the business when he was ready to give it up.” Kale’s voice was low and hard, but she heard every word, all of it familiar facts. “I would simply be chief of engineering when the Noble boys eventually took over.”

He looked up at her, his eyes simmering. “There wasn’t much left of the business by the time I got out of school. My father, well, he has, uh, withdrawn over the years.”

She didn’t know what to reply. It was all so brutal, the consequences of the accident that Charlotte had caused.

Finally, she said, “I was always fond of your father, and I was especially fond of Paul. I’ve thought of them both many times over the years, especially at Christmastime.” Christmas Eve had always been a special time for the Caldwells and Nobles.

His lean dark face took on dramatic shadows in the dimly lit atmosphere, highlighting the rugged lines. He was not overtly accusing, but she felt the guilt nevertheless for the pain her family had caused.

“You must have dedicated much of your life to Noble Engineering for it to be the success it is,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he conceded in little more than a whisper. “Other things have been neglected.”

“No family?”

He hesitated, staring hard into her eyes. “No wife. No chil- dren. Yet. No home in the ‘burbs. I find I don’t even get away on vacation often enough,” he said.

“Where do you go on vacation?” she asked in a desperate attempt to get the conversation into another direction. His lack of family was none of her business, and why should she care anyway?

“The last one was with a, er, friend to the Grand Caymans. I didn’t want to be gone a whole week, but once I was there, a week didn’t seem long enough,” he said, leaning on his elbows, looking at her steadily.

Did he see her reaction? Could he see how his words affected her, sending tiny explosions through her chest? A friend? Well, of course, it had been a woman. She hadn’t seen a wedding ring and assumed he was not married, and now she knew he had never got to the altar at all. But if a woman friend traveled on vacation with him, obviously he was in a serious relationship with her, she concluded.

“I thought you would have married long ago,” she murmured.

“I’ve been thinking about it. I would like a family.”

“Well, give marriage serious consideration, Kale. I hope when it happens you’ll be as happy as I was being married to Rollie.” Surely he couldn’t see that she was brimming with turmoil, and although she meant what she said, the words were to hide her inner distress.

He narrowed his eyes as if doubting. “Let’s talk about Amanda,” he said. It was not a suggestion, but was said in a low commanding voice.

“She’s Charlotte’s,” she blurted, clutching her wet lemonade glass to steady her hands.

“I figured that out.” When she didn’t reply, he remarked, “I owe you an apology.”

She nodded awkwardly, taken aback by his admission that he had been in the wrong. “Accepted,” she said. “And I’m sorry I was so defiant and, well, vague.” And afraid. But she didn’t say that, only lowered her eyes. The feelings he generated were too strong and she didn’t want him to see how shaken she was.

She could feel his eyes on her, though. She could feel his heat projecting itself, touching her, and she kept her face down, her gaze on the tall lemonade she clung to irrationally as if it might leap away from her on its own.

“You had every right to be afraid,” he said quietly, as if reading her mind. Or was he used to people being afraid of him? “I lost my temper. A rare occasion.”

She looked up. His eyes were still hard. Chaz was right. He was dangerous. Maybe she would do well not to think of him as the boy he had been, gentle and trusting, so loving and tender he stole her breath when he kissed her. He was a man now, and as his body had grown more powerful with maturity, so had his force of energy.

“When was she born?”

“Who?”

“Amanda. When was she born?”

“May 15,” she said, swallowing hard. She knew the question would come sooner or later. Now he had what he needed to figure it all out.

He stared at her for long seconds, and she saw his mind calculating. It didn’t take long. “She could be Paul’s.”

Her answer was a long time in coming. The conversation was not moving as she had expected. Obviously, she had underestimated him, and now it was a kind of fear she felt, and a jolt of strangeness. After having assumed Amanda was Frank’s all these years, and then discovering the truth after Charlotte’s death, she had never revealed it before now.

“Charlotte said Amanda was premature,” she said. “She was born seven and a half months after she and Frank were married.”

He folded his hands under his chin, as if he doubted her. “Nine months after Charlotte and Paul became engaged and were seeing each other every day,” he added.

Jessi sipped her lemonade and nodded in silence.

“Then, Amanda is Paul’s daughter, isn’t she?” His voice was so low with menace, she shivered at the sound of it.

She stared at him, silently begging him to soften, not to insist, not to take Amanda away from her. Fear knocked her speechless.

“Do you deny it?” he probed.

She pursed her lips and steadfastly met his glare, shaking her head finally.

“So it’s true.” She saw the rage vivid and real in every feature of his face, although he barely moved and his voice remained low.

She understood the anger. In spite of having arranged this session to discover how close he was to the truth, she hadn’t wanted to discuss Amanda’s parentage in detail. Neither had she estimated he would already have figured it out. She could see that his venom was ages old, simmered to a high concentration.

She pushed her chair back, her intent, suddenly, to flee. “I’m sorry I brought this up. I’m sorry I thought we could discuss—” She rose abruptly.

He was up and reaching across the table, his hand on her forearm, coaxing her back into the chair. “Sit down, please.”

“You can’t force me to stay here,” she cried, hushing her voice. “This conversation is done. You make me feel dishonorable.”

“What does a Caldwell know of honor?” he returned.

“It was a mistake to try to deal with you!”

“Just what kind of deal did you have in mind?”

She hushed her voice. “Your sarcasm will get us nothing but more anger. Do you intend to rip open new wounds? Or discuss the future with…reasonableness?”

His grimace revealed the pain she didn’t want to see behind his sarcasm.

This time she pushed her chair back several feet and stood beyond his reach. “You’re…impossible!” she charged, and walked swiftly out of the bar, through the foyer and onto the steamy hot parking lot. She started toward the airfield, and then changed her mind when she felt tears choking her, and headed in a dead run for the trees that hid the lake and her cottage from view of restaurant patrons.

It was too hot for running, and by the time she reached the path under the trees, perspiration was running down her face and neck. She was quickly out of breath. When she reached her cottage, she ran out onto the dock with the intent of slipping into the cool water. Instead, she stood at the end of the dock, her body heaving as she sobbed and tried to catch her wind. She bent over, elbows locked, resting her hands on her knees, forcing herself to breathe in deeply through her nose and exhale through pursed lips.

She felt his weight on the dock before she heard him, and when she peered around her shoulder, he was slowly advancing on her. She quickly wiped her eyes, straightened and turned to face him, but his ominous visage intimidated her and she backed away.

He reached for her suddenly and pulled her toward him as her heel struck air at the end of the dock. She realized at that moment that he had reached out to prevent her from stepping backward into the lake.

Still, she wrestled to get away, but he pulled her against him, and as she continued to struggle, he countered her by holding her tightly against his chest, his arms all the way around her, creating a hot steel cage she had no hope of escaping.

She heard his low voice and felt his breath disturbing the curls above her temple. “Give it up, Jessi. Give it up. You can’t get away from me. I’ll hold you until you stop fighting me.”

It was another kind of emotion that gripped her then, shocking her, burning her from the inside. She stopped fighting him, but only because something powerful within her made his chest a lover’s cradle and his arms a haven.

So she gave up the struggle as she became aware of immense sensuality, hotter than the air and the sun, born of their bodies pressed together, the pressure of his solid arms and his hard chest, and gradually, from the part of him that was growing thick and heavy against her belly. Even when she stopped struggling, she did not so much relax as melt against him, against all of him, caught in arms that continued to hold her close. He was enormous against her, and she might have pulled away the lower part of her body because his arms were enfolded over her upper back.

But she didn’t.

She felt herself turning liquid down low, under her shorts, and her body moved beyond her conscious intent so that her back arched and her head went back. Next she felt his lips crushing hers, and then withdrawing as though he intended to stop, but they came back again and tasted, nibbled and brushed, and when she opened to him he came into her mouth with his tongue, owning her mouth, taking as he explored, commanding with practiced tenderness.

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