.
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