Summer on Kendall Farm (5 page)

Sheldon looked down to find the nine-year-old standing next to him. He wore gray shorts and a white shirt with an anchor on the breast pocket. His feet were in deck shoes and no socks. Sheldon had met the boy several times and he always came to talk to him. While Sheldon wasn’t used to small children, he thought Christian missed male company.

“Cleaning the bottom of the boat,” Sheldon told him.

“How’d it get dirty?” he asked.

“These things are in the water and they see the boat and they want to make it their home.”

“So?”

“They slow the boat down when it’s sailing and you know how much we all like speed.”

Christian smiled. He’d seen Christian on his bicycle and knew if his grandmother found him riding in places this far from their home, she’d ban any use of the two-wheeler.

“If we don’t get the barnacles off, they’ll eat right through and then the boat will leak. We can’t have that happening.”

Christian was shaking his head slowly from left to right. “Then the boat would sink. And it they couldn’t swim, they could drown,” the child said.

“That’s right.”

“Can you sail?” Christian asked.

“No,” Sheldon told him. As far as his work was concerned, he hoisted the boat out of the water and worked on it while it was either in dry dock or he’d swing it over the wharf and work on it there. He was doing that today.

“How come you work on boats then?” Christian asked.

“A man’s gotta eat,” he said.

“You eat these?” The child’s face squinched up as he peered at the barnacles on the tarp and his expression was that of horror.

“No, I don’t eat these,” Sheldon mimicked with a laugh.

The child looked relieved. “They’re ugly,” he said.

“That they are,” he agreed. He glanced farther down the marina and then by the row of houses leading away from the area. He didn’t see Audrey. “Does your grandmother know you’re here?”

Christian stared at the ground, but didn’t say anything at first. “I told her I was going to play video games.”

“Here, by the water?”

He nodded, but Sheldon could see there was little belief in the gesture.

“And what did she say?”

“She told me to be home in time to eat.”

“And that’s all she said?”

He nodded.

Sheldon stopped working and stooped down to Christian’s level. “I know you like the boats, Christian,” he said. “I know you like coming here, but your grandmother could be very worried if she can’t find you where you’re supposed to be. Do you understand?”

He nodded again, but still refused to make eye contact with Sheldon.

“Tell you what.”

The boy looked up as if he was about to get a reprieve.

“Why don’t you go tell her where you are. And if she says it’s all right, you can come back.”

Christian smiled. He ran off, calling his grandmother.

Sheldon watched him go. He smiled after the boy, his gangly legs trying to keep up with his growing body. At least there was one person who liked Sheldon for who he was. Christian didn’t mind being around him. He didn’t look at Sheldon’s clothes, his beard or where he lived and judge him as someone unworthy of his attention.

Suddenly Sheldon remembered Jason. He was about Christian’s age when he came to live with them. Had Jason been as innocent and in need of love and acceptance as Christian when he came to the Kendall?

* * *

H
OW
HAD
ALL
this happened, Jace asked himself. How could Sheldon let the house and the horses go? He knew his brother loved the Kendall. Had the years changed him? Jace needed to know. He needed to understand what motivated Sheldon to give up and walk away, leaving everything he owned behind.

Why hadn’t Sheldon tried to contact him? Of course, Jace had left angry over Laura, but when things had gotten so bad that Sheldon needed money, why didn’t he at least call him? Sheldon could have tracked him down. Yet, just as his brother ignored him when he was present, he also cut him out of what he might have been able to provide to keep the farm in the family. As distant as Sheldon thought Jace was, the two still shared a bloodline and a heritage.

Questions, Jace thought. Since he’d arrived at the Kendall that rainy night all he had were questions and no answers. He was going to have to face facts and find his brother. Sheldon held the key to whatever was going on.

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.

* * *

T
HE
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

S
EVEN
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.

Jace automatically opened his arms and the small child walked into them. He settled the still-sleepy boy on his legs.

Kelly’s heart softened. She hadn’t known Ari twenty-four hours, yet she felt protective of him. She loved how father and son cared for each other.

“For the sake of Ari,” she began. “The job is still open. It has medical insurance. You’ll be covered as soon as you sign the papers.”

“I accept,” Jace said without hesitation.

“However,” Kelly stopped him. “If I even think you’re trying to undermine me in any way, I’ll throw you off the property and you can fend for yourself.”

She refused to include Ari in that threat.

Though Kelly’s anger had abated, she was still unnerved. It had been a while since she was intrigued by a man the way she was with Jace, even as he stood wet and lost in her foyer the night before.

To send him packing might have been the right thing to do, but she wanted to explore these other feelings. Even though getting the Kendall to be self-sustaining was number one on her priority list, she felt he could help her and she could work out the chemistry that was obvious between them.

“Wanna go for a walk, Ari?” Jace spoke.

“Wow! Yeah,” he said, raising his head from Jace’s shoulder.

The two got up and moved down the steps.

“Kelly, wanna come?” Ari asked.

She looked at the child, then at Jace. “I have a lot to do,” she said. “Why don’t you and your dad spend some time together?”

Jace nodded and he and Ari headed out. She watched them go, Jace holding securely on to Ari’s hand.

They were a pair, Kelly thought. She couldn’t imagine them separated, couldn’t think of them ever being anything except father and son. She wondered if Jace was giving Ari the childhood he’d wanted. That this was the real reason he’d returned to the Kendall. She didn’t doubt that the child probably needed to see a specialist. But she thought that could be the secondary reason he was at
this
farm. He wanted Ari to know the love and support of a father that Jace had wanted and never received. He wanted Ari to be on the land where he’d grown up and know that he could always call it home. That this was his heritage and that love and understanding were his.

Kelly shook her head, trying to clear away the confusion she felt at the man and boy and their dependence on one another. Their love was obvious. She couldn’t fault them for their feelings. It was her own feelings that bothered her.
She
owned the Kendall. And she was not giving it up. It wasn’t her duty to solve Jace’s problems. She couldn’t go back in time and fix all the things his father had done or not done to him.

The Kendall was hers. And as she told him, it wasn’t for sale.

* * *

A
RI
LET
GO
of Jace’s hand and started running across the grass. His short little legs carried him toward the far fence where Kelly used to sit and watch the horses. Jace didn’t take any notice of her back then. Usually he was riding to try to get the hurt out of his system. All he could remember was her red hair, which even on a dark and cloudy day was still noticeable. Ari seemed to go straight for that area. Jace followed him.

The fence had been replaced and painted a bright white. It would reflect off car lights in the dark and act like a beacon leading to the house.

Jace shook it, checking its sturdiness. Kelly said she’d done a lot of the labor, but he couldn’t imagine her digging fence posts and resetting the miles of fencing that surrounded the farm. The fence, however, was solidly set. He lifted Ari and placed him on the top rung. With his arm around the boy, he looked over the grass toward the eastern slope of the property’s pasture.

Jace had some savings. He could make a down payment on a small house and support Ari, but he needed to be available for engineering jobs that might take him away from the boy, whereas Ari needed stability. And Jace didn’t want to relinquish his stake at the farm, although he’d never really had one. Somehow he was going to have to get Kelly to let him buy it back.

“Do you think we could get a horse, dad?” Ari asked.

“Can you ride?” Jace raised his eyebrows as if he was surprised at the question.

Ari smiled and looked embarrassed. “I bet Kelly knows how to ride. She could teach me. Can I ask her?”

“May I ask her?” Jace corrected.

“May I ask her?” he repeated.

“We don’t have any horses now, Ari, but when we get some, I’ll be sure to teach you to ride.”

“Wow!”

Jace wondered it Ari liked it here or if he missed his home country. The child had never known anything except the small village he’d been born in.

“Ari, are you enjoying it here?”

“Yeah. Did you see my room?”

Jace nodded. “I mean do you miss home?”

“You said this was gonna be our home.” His voice sounded frightened, as if he’d been promised something and someone was about to take it away from him.

“You had a lot of friends there. Here there’s no one. At least, not yet.”

Ari’s eyes filled with tears. “Are we going back?”

Jace put his arms around him and lifted him off the fence. He cradled him close as the child sniffed. “We’re not going back.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Small arms circled Jace’s neck. He didn’t know what it was about the Kendall that had gotten to Ari, but it had happened quickly. The only thing Jace could think of that had gotten to him was a person...not a thing. And that same person was the current owner of the Kendall.

* * *

S
ATURDAY
NIGHT
, S
HELDON
THOUGHT
. He didn’t work weekends since the owners of the boats usually took them out on Saturdays and Sundays. He enjoyed the rest. He read at night since he had no television, radio or phone. They were luxuries he’d discovered were unnecessary. And there was no one to call even if he had a phone.

He spent most of his free time at the library. At least he had a library card and he never returned books late. The librarian always smiled at him, although he knew she pitied him. His taste in books was eclectic. Sheldon wanted not only to be entertained with the fiction he read, but he wanted to learn, to study subjects that interested him and on those he thought he needed to know.

He’d taken many books out about boats and the creatures that attacked them, the sea tides, the North Carolina coastal region, cook books and electrical wiring. He didn’t know why he took the electrical wiring book out. The bungalow was dimly lit, its electrical panel decades old.

Tonight Sheldon was reading an engrossing novel about a female clock maker. He heard the soft lap of the water not far from his front door. Sheldon loved the water. He’d lived with horses all his life and never knew how soothing the water could be. He went back to his book, pulling it closer to his face so he could see the print.

A knock on the door startled him. No one had knocked on his door since he rented the bundalow. Who could that be?

Sheldon untangled his long legs and stood. The knock came again. Slowly he made his way over and peered through the window. Christian stood there.

“What are you doing here?” Sheldon asked as he yanked the door open. It wasn’t dark yet, but it was dangerous for the boy to be alone.

“My grandma sent me to invite you to eat with us.”

“What?”

“We want you to eat with us.”

“Oh.”

“You should come. We’re having meatloaf.” Christian frowned at that. “I’d rather have a hamburger, but Grandma says we can’t eat hamburgers every day.”

“Did you know meatloaf is hamburger? It’s just presented differently. I bet if you put yours on a hamburger bun, it would taste the same.”

“Do you think so?” His smile was wide and his eyes open in anticipation.

“I’m sure of it, but—” He stopped, raising a finger and making sure he had the child’s attention. “You’ll have to eat all your vegetables.” Sheldon felt slightly foolish giving a child advice about what he should eat since his own diet consisted of whatever was cheapest.

“So, are you coming?”

Sheldon hadn’t had a home-cooked meal in years. His stomach reacted to the thought of some delicious meatloaf. He wanted to go, but he also wanted to be presentable and he had nothing that would make him look like the man he used to be.

“Give me a minute to clean up,” he said. “You wait there.”