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Jace wasn’t even sure if Sheldon was still alive. His search for his brother, who was older than Jace by more than two decades, would have to start at square one. It wouldn’t be easy. Yet someone had to know what had happened to him. Kelly said she thought he’d left the state. Why would he do that? He’d lived his entire life in Maryland. At the Kendall. Obviously, he had friends, business acquaintances elsewhere, maybe he’d gone to one of them? Jace wished he’d known his brother better, it would give him a clue now as to where to look.
All Jace could remember about his brother, other than their arguments, was that Sheldon was always at the farm and rode horses. Well, he certainly wasn’t here any longer, and apparently he’d left with only the shirt on his back.
* * *
THE SUN WAS relentless on Meadesville. Sheldon scraped the bottom of a boat, one of many he’d be attending to at the yacht club that day. It was only nine in the morning and already his shirt was crusted with salt-laden perspiration. The wire brush he was using had seen better days, forcing him to scrub harder to get the pesky crustaceans off the surface. Would anyone back at the Kendall believe that he would be doing this kind of work? The irony was staggering. First Sheldon had lost his precious family home and now he labored for the rich locals. To think that Sheldon had once looked down on his half brother. He’d always called Jason his half brother when he deigned to talk to him or of him. Now he understood.
Sheldon stopped scraping and stood up. His back hurt and his fingers were cramped. He looked out at the marina. Sailboats, cabin cruisers, watersport and racing boats stood majestically in the sunlight. He hadn’t been in Meadesville long. It was an affluent golf and boating community along the coast of North Carolina. The homes there were spacious and sold upwards of six and seven figures. They were newer than Sheldon’s former home in Maryland but didn’t have the history and time-honored traditions that the Kendall possessed. He’d been here for a little over eight months.
This hadn’t been his destination when he left Maryland. Sheldon had had no destination, actually. He was lost, angry and without resources. Even his experience with horses was out of date for training them. He’d never trained a horse, technically, but lied and said he had. There were horse farms in Virginia. He’d stayed at a couple of them briefly, but being around them made him homesick for Laura.
He’d moved on and tried Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, but found no work. He couldn’t remember how he got to North Carolina, only that he’d hitched a ride unaware and uncaring where the driver was going. All he knew was he no longer wanted to have anything to do with horses.
So he’d ended up in Albermarle. A man he met in a bar one night told him about a job and Sheldon followed up on it. He’d long since moved from believing he could find a management position on another horse farm. Apparently, his reputation as the former owner of the Kendall reached farther than he knew and no one would take a chance on him.
Lowering his expectations, he accepted the job maintaining the boats in the marina. The work was hard, unyielding, usually enhausting.
He wouldn’t complain. The old Sheldon would do nothing but complain, but this was a new world and he needed to adjust to it.
He prayed again that there was a little of Jason in him as he scraped the brush against the hull.
CHAPTER FIVE
SEVEN LONG AND very wide steps led to the porch of the big white house at the Kendall. Kelly stood as stiff as a statue next to one of the columns watching Jace stop his rental car in the circular driveway. She couldn’t believe he was disrupting her entire life after only a few hours. Behind her stood his duffel bag. She was throwing him out.
He got out of the car, looking up at her.
“Where’s Ari?” he asked. He probably thought her expression had something to do with his son.
“He’s fine. He’s taking a nap,” she answered.
“Nap? Ari doesn’t take naps.”
Her brows rose. “Apparently, he does.”
“What’s wrong then?” He came around the car and looked up at her.
“As if you didn’t know.” She spoke through clenched teeth.
“I clearly don’t understand.”
Kelly knew he was lying. Color crept up his cheeks turning his face to a beautiful shade of crimson. Picking up the duffel bag, she tossed it down the steps. Instinctively his hands came out and he caught the bag.
“What’s this?” He dropped it at his feet.
“You’re fired, Mr. Kendall.”
“Fired?”
“Yes, fired. I offered you room and board and to take your son in until you could get on your feet, and you repay me by going to the bank and trying to swindle me?”
She expected he’d drop his gaze, but he looked directly at her. While his eyes remained steady, she could see he was surprised that she knew about his trip to see Kurt Mallard.
“This is a small town, Mr. Kendall. Didn’t you think word would get back to me about your adventures?”
“Actually—”
“Actually, you didn’t,” she finished for him. “So don’t go behind my back and try and usurp my right to be here. You are the one who’s trespassing.”
“I know that’s how it looks.”
“That’s how it is.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands in defeat. “I could tell you I’m just surprised to find things so changed.”
“What did you expect? That the world would stop until you returned here to set it in motion again?”
“For the Kendall, that’s how it’s been for a century.” He paused and looked at the house behind her. “My father and my brother kept things the same. Tell me, when you took over this place, you didn’t have to upgrade and restore everything?”
Kelly shifted her weight from one foot to the other. That’s exactly what she had to do. She’d spent a fortune bringing the house up to code. A lot of which she’d had to learn and then qualify to do herself, since she couldn’t afford to hire professionals.
She’d put up with the dust and general mess of renovation by using the rooms not being worked on, until it was their turn, and she’d switch to living in the finished ones. It was a long, arduous process.
“Almost everything. And all right, most of what you said is true. But whether it is or isn’t, you still have no claim here, and no business trying to undermine me. And what possible hold could this place have for you when you were treated with contempt by both your father and brother?”
Kelly watched him force himself to relax. “I see you know more about me than I thought.”
“People talk,” she said. “It’s still a small county.”
Jace moved up the steps and sat on the top one. He glanced at Kelly. After a moment she sat a discreet distance from him. She was angry, a body singing anger, yet she could feel the vibes that seemed to bounce off Jace.
“I never thought this place would or could hold anything for me,” he began. He spoke softly as if he was talking to himself and not to an audience of one. “Then I got Ari.”
“Got Ari?”
“He’s adopted.”
“You told me,” Kelly said. “But you made it sound as if he was left on your doorstep.”
“Close,” he said. “His mother threw him to me. Ari is four. I’ve had him for three years.”
“He wasn’t an orphan?” Kelly asked.
“Not at first. He had a mom. I didn’t know her. I only learned about her after she died. I knew nothing about the cocaine factory where she worked.” He stopped. “You’re probably thinking a factory is a building. It’s not. It’s a hole in the ground, protected by guys with guns. I was working on a water pipeline through one of the jungles and the cocaine factory was nearby. There were rumors about it, so I knew it was there and our crews steered clear of it. But then it was raided. People were screaming and running in all directions when it exploded.”
Kelly’s heart went out to the small child sleeping in the bed upstairs.
“When we heard the bang, I ran toward it, grabbing and pulling people out of the wreckage. Ari’s mother crawled out, dragging the child with her. She pushed him at me just as a second explosion rocked the ground. Both Ari and I went down, but I fell on my back instinctively keeping him safe. He’s been with me ever since.”
This, Kelly knew, was designed to gain her sympathy. It did, but she was determined not to show it. “And Ari is the reason for the return?”
“In part. Ari needed better doctors. I mentioned his asthma.”
“You have health insurance?”
“I have to check on my options. I’m not sure anymore.”
“What happens then?”
“I hope to have a job by then.”
“I’d like to suggest that you put your efforts into finding employment with insurance instead of trying to get a bank loan to buy the Kendall. It’s not for sale.”
“I suppose that’s fair. In the morning, I’ll look for another place for us to stay.”
“Dad?” The door to the Kendall had been ajar and Ari pushed it fully open and stepped onto the porch, his fist wiping sleep from his eyes.
