It was a wonderful wedding. The bride wore white and had the appropriate amount of mist in her eyes. The groom beamed and the best man—well the best man sat in the audience, witnessing the nuptials between his brother and his former fiancée, feeling like every eye in the huge church wasn’t on the bride and groom, but trained with pity on him.
Tucking his hands behind his back, Jace stared at the darkness outside the windows. It was like looking through a time portal, viewing the day he’d met Laura Whitmore and how that had altered the course of his future.
He closed his eyes, failing to block it out.
“Hullo,” she had said. It was the first word she’d uttered and it had that deep, sexy sound of a 1930s screen star. He was Jason then. He wouldn’t be called Jace for several years. Twenty years old, as green as they come, and just out of college, Jace was ready to conquer the world. Laura looked as if she’d recently stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine—tall, willowy, with dark red hair that shadowed one side of her face and dipped over her shoulder playing hide and seek with one of her breasts.
Jason had been peering at the sky as he headed for the concession stand. The Firebirds had just flown overhead and most of the patrons of the fall air show were watching their aerial exercises. Unaware that he was close to someone, Jason and Laura collided. Instinctively, his hands came out to steady her. He felt her curves and the softness of her waist. No woman had ever claimed his attention as instantly as she had. He could feel his breath catch and electricity snake through his fingers and up his arms.
“Hello.” He only managed to get the one word out, because his eyes were too busy taking in a face more lovely than any he’d seen before. Her eyes were on him, too. Admiring. He shifted his position and glanced away, not wanting her to read the thoughts that were dominant in his head. He probably apologized for walking into her, but no memory of the exchange came to him.
Jason introduced himself then and took the hand Laura offered. And that’s where it had begun.
“Have you ever wanted to fly one of those?” she asked later as they’d strolled about the grounds, inspecting the planes on the airfield. She sipped from a bottle of water that hung from a strap over her shoulder.
“What guy hasn’t?” Jason answered. “To control all that power and have the freedom of the sky, it’s a dream come true.”
Dream come true. Today Jace sneered at the irony of the phrase. He thought Laura was the beginning and end of everything he’d searched for in life. From then on, even though she lived in the District of Columbia, and had worked as a researcher for the Air Force for the past two years and he lived in Maryland, a few hours from her, he pursued her.
For them, everything seemed to fit. Neither could see beyond the other, at least he thought that was true for both of them, until that night six weeks after they met, when he brought her home to introduce her to his family. Little did he know that a simple dinner with them would be another turning point in his life. That the fabric of a relationship Jason would have sworn couldn’t be ripped, was shredded.
That was the night Laura met Sheldon.
Looking back on it, Jace should have realized. His fire with her had flashed fast and burned bright, but it couldn’t match the inferno that surrounded her and his older sibling.
Jason stayed around until their wedding, most of it he couldn’t remember the next day or any day since. They left for their honeymoon and he left for parts unknown. He still wasn’t sure to this day where he went or what happened to him. Six months later he emerged from a bottle of vodka on the seedy side of some town near Athens in Greece. With no money, no friends and only the sour taste of stale liquor in his mouth, he headed out to find work.
He looked like a homeless drunk. He was a homeless drunk. His clothes were dirty and torn and he had difficulty speaking the language. Eventually, Jason found a church, a place where he got a meal. His stomach had growled all day and as soon as he entered the dimly lit shelter and smelled the coffee, he thought he’d gone to heaven.
He speculated how long it had been since he’d eaten. If he ate anything, would it stay down? Sitting at a plain wooden table he ate a little rice and lamb and had another cup of the heavy mud-like coffee.
Jason kept his head down, speaking to no one and likewise no one spoke to him. The coffee was a bottomless cup and it seemed his thirst was unquenchable. He drank so much of the stuff that he thought it would have cured him for a lifetime of ever drinking the liquid again. But later, he discovered an acquired taste for it.
That night he slept in an alley and in the morning, nudged by a not-so-friendly constable, continued his search for a job. He washed up in the sea and, turning his only shirt inside out, did the best he could to look presentable. He got hired washing dishes for half the usual rate, but he couldn’t be picky. Meals came with his wages. It wasn’t much, but enough to pay for a room for the night and a hot shower. After a week, Jace signed on to a freighter. He didn’t care where it was going, east or west didn’t matter. Eventually he would get back to the States. What he hadn’t expected was to end up fighting for his life in the middle of a South American drug war. But that’s where he found Ari. And for the child’s sake he would do it all again.
But there was one thing he would never do again. No woman would ever make him feel the way Laura had. She was dead and so was anything that surrounded his feelings for her or any other woman.
“When did she die?” he asked, coming out of the years that bound his old life to this one.
“She died just before your brother lost the house.”
Kelly’s voice was soft and kind. He wasn’t sure he deserved her consideration given how he’d landed here with Ari.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“When I left she was so active, so alive.”
“You might talk to some of her friends. I didn’t know them.”
Jace walked to the window. He looked out on the darkness. “I didn’t expect this,” he said, more to himself than to Kelly. “I’m not sure what we do now.” He turned back to her. “Do you mind if I just rest awhile before making any decisions?”
A THOUSAND THINGS went through Kelly’s mind as she watched Jason Kendall staring through the window. She’d seen all the signs before. He was carrying a torch for his brother’s wife. Kelly had lived in Windsor Heights all her life, except for the five years she’d spent in New York after college. She’d heard conflicting versions of the story about Jason Kendall and his brother’s wife. You couldn’t live in Windsor Heights and not be fascinated by the people living at the Kendall, especially when they were acting less than perfect. And with Jason that was the norm.
Kelly had seen Jason at infrequent times. He always seemed to be away. Kelly doubted he would recognize her.
“What about the child?” she asked. The boy he’d carried in was small and dark, with no resemblance to Jace that she could see in the few seconds she’d glanced at his sleeping figure. “What’s his name?”
“Ari. Short for Aristotle.”
“Greek,” she smiled. “How long have you two been traveling?”
“A couple of days,” Jace said. “And he’s not Greek.”
She stood up. She admitted she shouldn’t do this, but she was going to. If Jace had been alone, she’d send him to the nearest hotel, but she couldn’t have him waking up a child and taking him out in the rain. And she did know him. If knowing his reputation and living within spitting distance of his home counted for anything, then she did know him. Almost.
“I can offer you a bed for the night. Tomorrow you’ll need to make other arrangements.”
He