“Need help with those?”
Shayla glanced over her shoulder and blinked twice when she saw Trent Jordache standing beside her in the terminal. She was so surprised at seeing him that she nearly tripped over the luggage sitting in front of her. Transfixed, she stared at him a second before finally asking, “What are you doing here?”
Trent smiled, then glanced around. “This is an airport. I’m here like everyone else—to catch a flight.”
Shayla shook her head, realizing how stupid her question must have sounded. “What I meant is that I’m surprised to see you. I didn’t know you’d be leaving Hong Kong today.”
“I had planned to stay a little longer, then changed my mind. My father’s business meetings concluded early. He wanted to stay a while longer, and I didn’t.”
Shayla nodded. She then remembered something Paul had mentioned to her last night. “I thought that you weren’t involved with TJ Electronics.”
He glanced down at his wristwatch, then said, “Actually I’m not, but my father makes it a point to include me in certain aspects of the business. Especially if it involves something major.”
“And the meeting was about something major?” she asked calmly.
“Ah, I can’t tell you that, Shayla,” Trent said with a slow grin. “After all, you do work for Chenault Electronics, and everyone knows that TJ and Chenault are big competitors.”
Shayla nodded. “Yet you and Nicholas are friends.”
He chuckled. “Yes, the very best. We make it a point to not discuss any business when we’re together.”
“But still, I’d think it would place a strain on your friendship.”
He shrugged. “We work very hard at not letting it. There’s more to life than money. There’s something like true friendship, which has an even greater value. Speaking of Nick, have you heard from him?”
Shayla shook her head. “No, but he should be back in the States by now. I hope he finds everything all right.”
“So do I.” He glanced at his watch again. “It seems we’re on the same flight going back into Chicago. After we get our luggage checked in, how about if we go somewhere and grab a cup of coffee? We have a good hour to kill before our flight takes off.”
Shayla smiled. “I’d like that.”
Nicholas looked around the laboratory, too stunned to move as he assessed the damage.
“It’s not as bad as it could have been, Nick,” said Elliott Russell, Jacksonville’s fire chief, when he came to stand next to Nicholas. Elliott and Nicholas had been star football players, helping to make the Vikings of William M. Raines High School state champions for two years straight. Elliott had been captain of the team their senior year.
Nicholas nodded, then knelt in front of a burned-out piece of lab equipment. Shaking his head, he stood up. “Do you think it was an accident?”
Elliott shook his head. “Can’t say. I want to do a thorough investigation, not jump to any kind of conclusion.”
Nicholas nodded. He glanced over at Paul, who was talking to Fred Bostwick, the security man who’d been on duty. From the young man’s grim expression he could tell that Paul was giving him hell for what could be perceived as a breach in security at the lab. From what Elliott had told Nicholas earlier, due to the state-of-the-art smoke alarm system Nicholas had installed, the blaze had been discovered early enough to cause minimal damage, and fortunately no one had gotten hurt. Although the lab had been closed, security guards on duty usually made their rounds in the building periodically.
“How long will the investigation take?”
“A few days, but you can get your insurance people in here as early as tomorrow.”
Nicholas nodded. He was glad to hear that. But still, he was under a tight schedule, and in order to stay on it he would have to move this part of the project to the Chicago lab. He hadn’t really wanted that. For security purposes it would have been much better to operate things in Jacksonville, but now that wouldn’t be possible.
Elliott tipped his head back and looked at Nicholas. He smiled. “I hate to tell you this, but you look like hell. Jet lag combined with a burned lab just don’t agree with you, buddy.”
Nicholas couldn’t keep from chuckling. Leave it to Elliott to find humor even in a bad situation. He’d done that in school whenever they’d lost an important game, especially when they’d worked their butts off to win. Elliott’s easy wit and sense of humor had kept the team’s spirits high.
“I would imagine they wouldn’t agree with me, El. By the way, how’s Nina?” Elliott had married a childhood friend of theirs who had attended a rival neighborhood high school.
“Nina’s fine. She wants a baby, and is rather insistent about it. My body’s being used as a means to an end.”
Nicholas shook his head, smiling. “And you really look all torn up about it.”
Elliott lifted a brow, returning Nicholas’s smile. “I do? Really?”
“No, you don’t. You look like a man who likes being used that way.”
Elliott laughed. “I admit that it has its advantages.”
Nicholas joined him in laughter, realizing just how much he needed it. “You’d have a hard time convincing me that it doesn’t.”
Shayla placed the magazine she’d been reading in her lap and glanced at the man sitting beside her. Trent’s head was tilted back against the headrest, and his fingers were resting across his chest. She could tell from the gentle rise and fall of his chest that he was sleeping. She couldn’t keep from smiling at the way he had finagled the seat from an older lady who had been sitting next to her on the plane.
Shayla glanced at her watch. They had six more hours of airtime to endure. She had just finished reading her fourth magazine in its entirety. She adjusted her seat back and closed her eyes, remembering the conversation she and Trent had over coffee. She liked him. If things had been different, he could have been the big brother she had wanted while growing up.
But things had not been different. Even now, after meeting him, she was still glad things had worked out the way they had for her parents. They were meant to be together, and now, knowing the truth about her father’s sterility, she was so glad she had been his daughter. Knowing that he had unselfishly accepted and loved another man’s child as his own just made that much more love flow in her heart for Glenn Kirkland.
But then, a terrible ache grew in her heart as she realized that she would probably never be able to tell Trent that they were brother and sister. She had made a decision to give up her plan of revenge against Chenault Electronics, since she’d allowed personal feelings to get involved. She could never tell Trent of their true relationship, for fear of Thomas Jordache finding out. Under no circumstances did she ever want the man to know. As far as she was concerned, she was better off if he believed her mother had gotten the abortion that he had suggested.
“Is it too much to hope for that we’re about to land?”
Shayla opened her eyes and tilted her head sideways to glance at Trent, who was looking at her with sleepy but hopeful eyes. She gave him a rather rueful amused look. “Sorry, we’re still about six to seven hours away. You may want to go back to sleep.”
He smiled over at her. “I think I will, Ms. Kirkland.” Then he closed his eyes.
Happiness slid through Nicholas when he pulled his car into the driveway and saw his mother, Angeline Chenault, on her knees tending her rose garden. He thanked God every time he saw her. Last year he had come very close to losing her when she had developed a brain tumor. On the same day she had sat him down to tell him about her medical condition she had also told him that he had a brother—a brother he hadn’t known existed.
She had been married at seventeen to a man she had thought she loved, only to discover she had made a mistake marrying so young. A pregnancy soon after the marriage had complicated things, and six weeks after the child was born Angeline had asked her husband for a divorce, given him full custody of their child, and left both husband and child behind in North Carolina to pursue her dreams.
She had worked in Atlanta for a couple of years before deciding to move to Miami. While she and a girlfriend made a stop in Jacksonville on their way to Miami she’d been fortunate enough to meet Alan Chenault. They had married, and a couple of years later Nicholas had been born.
Nicholas had not known about his mother’s other life before she had met his father, and he sure hadn’t known that the world-famous movie actor Sterling Hamilton was the son his mother had turned her back on years ago. But Sterling had known, and he’d grown up bitter that Angeline could so easily replace the life she had shared with him and his father, wiping both of them from her memory, and start a new life that included another husband and son.
After asking Sterling for forgiveness last year—for the actions of a confused young woman who at the age of seventeen had thought that fame and fortune were everything—Angeline and Sterling were working very hard to build the relationship they’d never had. Nicholas was enjoying the fact that he had an older brother. Even more important, Sterling had become a good friend.
When Nicholas got out of the car he saw his mother had stood, and was smiling brilliantly at him. He smiled back. From the time he could remember, he and his parents had had a very close relationship, and he’d thought that he’d known his mother better than anyone. That was why it had been hard for him to believe what she’d told him about turning her back on her first husband and son. The person who had done such a thing could not be the warm, caring, loving woman he knew as his mom. But, as she had explained to him, she’d been young and naive and had believed that money was everything, and she had been willing to sacrifice the love of a good man and her child to search for it.
But all that was in the past, and she had lived regretting her mistakes. His father had known the truth about her past, and had loved her with all his heart, anyway. Since she’d become his wife her values had changed, and she was an exceptional wife to him and a wonderful mother to their only child.
“Welcome home, Nicky,” Angeline said, taking off her work gloves and placing them in a basket on the ground.
Nicholas shook his head. His mother was the only one still brave enough to call him by his childhood nickname. He walked over to her and gave her a huge hug. “It’s good to be home, Mom.”
After the hug Nicholas looked down at her. Even disheveled, dressed in an oversize workshirt and pair of frayed shorts, his mother was a fine-looking woman. She carried her age well, and didn’t look a day over fifty. And she sure didn’t look like a woman who had two sons in their thirties and a granddaughter a little over a month old.
Angeline took Nicholas’s large hand in her smaller one and led him into the house. “Come on in and join me in a cup of coffee. I want to hear all about your trip to China. I also want you to tell me about the fire in the lab last night.”
“So you heard about it?”
“It was in this morning’s paper. Was there much damage?”
Nicholas sat at the table while his mother went about pulling mugs out of a kitchen cabinet. “It’s not as bad as it could have been. I won’t know if the fire was deliberately set until the fire department finishes their investigation.”
Angeline’s expressive face mirrored her doubts. “Do you really think that was the case?”
“I don’t know what to think, Mom, but you know Paul. He’s willing to let the fire department and the insurance people come up with their own ideas, but he definitely has thoughts of Jordache being involved.”
“Do you think he is?”
Nicholas accepted the mug of coffee his mother handed him. It smelled delicious. “I don’t want to. Trent really believes his father has changed and intends to keep his promise and not cause Chenault Electronics any more problems. But still—”
“You can’t let your guard down, right?”
Nicholas’s smile widened. “Right.” A frown settled on his face. “I just wish I knew the entire story of what brought on this bad blood between Dad and Jordache in the first place.”
Angeline came and sat down at the table across from her son. “It happened a few years before I met your father, and he never divulged the full story to me.” Deciding to change the subject, his mother took a sip of her coffee before asking, “So, how was Hong Kong?”
“Hong Kong was fine, and we were able to close out the Ling Deal.”
“Oh, Nicky, that’s wonderful. I’m glad to hear that. You must be pleased about it.”
“Yes, I am. The negotiations were rough going for a while, but then a new employee of mine, Shayla Kirkland, saved the day. She was something else.”
Something in Nicholas’s tone caught his mother’s attention and piqued her interest. “Really? Tell me about her.”
Nicholas looked into the coffee mug, thinking of what he could say to his mother about Shayla. There was so much to tell. “She’s smart, intelligent, and used to manage the Business Department at Howard University. She came to work for us a week ago. She speaks four languages, and, with an MBA from Harvard, she has a great sense of business. I think she’ll be an asset to the company. Even Paul thinks highly of her.” He couldn’t tell his mother that he also thought highly of her, but for other reasons—she was beautiful, sensuous, and he had enjoyed making love to her. The bottom line was that Shayla Kirkland had gotten to him in a way no other woman had, and truthfully, that scared him. Now that there was distance between them and he had reclaimed his space, he needed to think things through. He had actually slept with one of his employees, something he’d never done. He needed to get his mind back on track and put things between him and Shayla back into perspective.
“Will I get the chance to meet her, Nicky?”
Nicholas shook his head. “I doubt it. She works out of the Chicago office. I see no reason for her to ever visit my office here. Besides, there’s no reason why you would ever have to meet her.”
Angeline nodded. Her son was saying one thing, but the wistful look in his eyes while he’d been discussing Shayla Kirkland had hinted at something else. Angeline decided to change the subject, for now. “Sterling and Colby have sent more pictures of Chandler. Do you want to see them? She’s getting bigger every day.”
Nicholas smiled. “Yes, I’d love to.”
When his mother left the kitchen to get the pictures, Nicholas stood and walked over to the window and looked out. He was missing Shayla something fierce, and—although he was fighting thinking about her—he was doing so, anyway. Her plane should be arriving in Chicago about now. He had told her he would call her, and he’d intended to, but now he knew that wouldn’t be wise. The attraction that had developed between them had been a mistake from the start. He had been thinking more with a certain part of his body—the one below the belt—than with his head, and that was what he had acted on. It had taken something like the fire at the lab to reel him back in. He didn’t have time to let his mind wander, to allow his body to start constant cravings. He had gotten caught up in the moment. Chances were that Shayla, like him, was also regretting what had happened in Hong Kong.
Nicholas turned away from the window when his mother returned carrying a large envelope filled with photographs. Somehow he would get Shayla out of his mind, and when he did see her again he would be able to deal with it.
“Are you sure you don’t need a ride?”
Shayla smiled up at Trent. “I’m positive. My aunt is picking me up, but thanks for asking, anyway.”
“No problem. Nick would have my hide if he thought I’d left you stranded.” Trent reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a business card. “Pass this on to that Realtor friend of yours.”
Shayla accepted the card. “Thanks, and I will.”
“Well, take care, and when you do talk to Nick ask him to call me.”
“Okay.”
“I hope to see you around.”
“Same here.”
Trent turned to leave, and Shayla watched him until he got lost in the crowd of people rushing across the terminal.
“Who was that?”
Shayla turned, hearing her aunt’s voice. She hadn’t heard her approach. She dropped her carry-on and gave her aunt a hug, glad to see her. “That was Trent Jordache…my half brother.”
Shayla watched the expression on her aunt’s face turn into one of total shock. “Come on, Aunt Callie, let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you everything in the car.”