Jace thought of his own mother. It had been a long while since he remembered her. She made sacrifices for him, loved him unconditionally, the way he’d come to love Ari. Losing her was painful. It took years of grieving before he could think of her without tears.
He couldn’t go to the home they’d had before he came to live at the Kendall. There was nothing there. They’d lived in an apartment in Albany, New York. When his father came to get him, he’d thrown out everything in the apartment. All Jace saved were a few pictures and the jewelry the hospital returned to him. In this he and Ari were nearly the same. Jace had a photo of Ari’s mother that he’d taken from the apartment where she had lived.
Ari had no memory of his mother and Jace didn’t know if knowing or not knowing was better. He supposed time would tell.
Jace didn’t have that much money. Most of it had been spent getting him and Ari to the States. He’d counted on everything at the Kendall being the same. It couldn’t be true, he told himself. Sheldon couldn’t have sold the house without telling him. Even with the way things were left between them, Jace should have been told. Maybe he could have helped. He couldn’t, but Sheldon didn’t know that and he never asked.
“What about Laura? Do you know anything about her?” Jace changed the subject.
Jace assumed Kelly’s hesitation meant that she knew the history behind Laura and himself. At least she knew the rumors.
“I’m s-sorry to be the one to tell you this,” Kelly stuttered. “But I’m afraid she died two years ago.”
Jace was stunned. Numbness took over his body. He needed someplace to go. Pacing in the spacious kitchen didn’t seem far enough away from the news. He didn’t think of Laura often, but he never imagined her dead. Before deciding to come home, Jace had basically folded up the memories of his former time at the Kendall and placed them in a safe corner of his mind, never to be revisited. But life wouldn’t let him keep that promise to himself. The memories had been opened as he watched Ari limp across the floor of their tiny apartment in Colombia. Ari loved to climb. Two weeks ago he was running through some trees when he tripped and twisted his foot. The limp was better than it had been. In another few weeks hopefully it would be gone. He looked thin and pale. Jace made the decision to return to Maryland once the shootings started in their neighborhood, and in so doing, to bring Laura and his brother 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.