Star-Crossed Lovers

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.