Summer on Kendall Farm Read Free

back into his life.
    Laura had been perfect for Jace, or so he thought. And that should have been his first clue that life was never going to end with happily-ever-after. But Jason Kendall was too blinded by Laura’s beauty to see that their relationship was already skidding.
    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