—Rendezvous
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