Storyline
Kendall Hart is raised in Florida by her adoptive parents, Bill and Alice Hart. They keep her adoption a secret from her until she overhears them talking about it. After hearing the news, Kendall begins a search that leads her to Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, where she becomes the personal assistant to Erica Kane, who is planning a wedding to Count Dimitri Marick. However, Erica's mother, Mona Kane Tyler, recalls a familiar birthmark on Kendall's neck and realizes that she may be the baby girl that Erica gave up when she was 14 years old. Erica was raped on her 14th birthday by movie actor Richard Fields in a trade so that he would act in a film that her father, Eric Kane, was directing. Mona begins to seek information about Kendall when she is visited by Nick Davis and shares her suspicions with him. Nick searches Kendall's room at Myrtle's boarding house and stations Hayley Vaughan there as a resident to investigate Kendall, but they are unable to find evidence that she is Erica's daughter. Meanwhile, Kendall reveals to Myrtle that Erica is her mother. Being jealous of the attention her half-sister Bianca Montgomery receives after a horse riding accident, Kendall reveals the truth to Erica. Initially, Erica welcomes the young woman into her life, but when Kendall resolves to find her birth father, Erica cuts her out of her life. Kendall is able to convince Dimitri to help her in her search. During the successful operation, Kendall develops a crush on Dimitri, and attempts to seduce him in December 1993. After he rejects her, Kendall instead has sex with a student from Hungary named Anton Lang, and claims that Dimitri raped her. An enraged Erica stabs Dimitri with a letter opener. At trial, Kendall states that Erica knowingly stabbed him because she was jealous that Dimitri wanted her romantically as well. Kendall tells the jury that the only thing she told Erica was that she had unprotected sex with Anton, and was scared that she was pregnant. When Richard Fields comes to town and attempts to rape Bianca, Kendall admits the truth and is sent to jail for perjury.
While imprisoned, Kendall is put into the same cell as fellow town pariah Janet Green, who has received experimental plastic surgery on her face. After both are released from jail, Kendall keeps quiet about knowing Janet is worming her way back into town with her new face under the name "Jane Cox". They develop a friendship, which lasts until Kendall witnesses what she believes to be Janet's death in May 1995. After getting engaged to Anton while still in jail, Kendall and Anton move into the hunting lodge at Wildwind. Anton makes Kendall promise that she will cease her plotting against Erica.
Discreetly, Kendall decides to write a tell-all book about Erica with Del Henry, a writer who initially propositioned the idea to her while she was still incarcerated. When Kendall's grandmother, Mona Kane Tyler, dies, Kendall is deeply affected and attempts to pay her respects, only to be angrily confronted by Erica, who mistakenly believes that Kendall is faking her grief and had merely come to crash the funeral. Despite Kendall's heartfelt confessions, Erica orders her to leave. Later, when visiting Mona's grave, Kendall gets into another argument with Dimitri, which climaxes when Kendall demands to know why he still protects Erica after she stabbed him. Kendall continues to work on the book with Del and they begin to form a friendship. Soon after, Kendall's involvement in the book is revealed and Anton throws her out of Wildwind.
After the tell-all book is dropped, Kendall fakes a suicide attempt in an effort to win Anton back. When this fails, she tells Anton that he is Dimitri's son, a revelation she does not know yet to be true. After Dimitri confirms this to Anton, he and Kendall elope as vengeance against their respective parents. She schemes with his mother, Corvina, to forge documents that would make Anton the heir to the Marick fortune instead of Dimitri. After the plan fails, Anton divorces Kendall because of her continual scheming.
Kendall then develops her relationship with Del and they fall in love. He helps Kendall to rebuild her life and mend her relationship with her adoptive mother, Alice Hart, after her adoptive father dies suddenly from heart complications. Kendall and Del get engaged and leave for Florida to take care of Alice, but not before Kendall makes peace with Erica.
In January 2002, Erica goes on trial for the murder of Frankie Stone, Bianca’s girlfriend. Needing someone to help incriminate her, Erica calls in an eager Kendall, who has amicably split from Del. She stays at the Pine Cone Motel across from Ryan Lavery. The two come to verbal blows often due to their strong-willed personalities, but eventually begin dating. After Erica's house is set on fire with Bianca still inside, Kendall is charged with arson. Ryan hires Trey Kenyon to represent her at trial, not knowing that Trey is the guilty party. Believing that Erica is framing her, Kendall becomes obsessed with the idea of exposing her mother, despite being engaged to Ryan. Ryan catches Kendall seducing Aidan Devane for information regarding Erica, and leaves town after ending his relationship with a devastated Kendall.
Needing something beyond her flirtation with Aidan, Kendall begins a cosmetics company along with Greenlee Smythe, Mia Saunders, and Simone Torres to compete with her mother's company, Enchantment. They name the company FUSION, and it has a rocky start, as Kendall and Greenlee have been enemies in the past. But the company eventually becomes a success.
Kendall begins dating the charming Michael Cambias, but ends things after sensing menace behind his charms. He attempts to rape both Kendall and Erica, but succeeds in raping her younger sister, Bianca. As Bianca is being raped, Kendall helps Erica through a panic attack involving the night she was raped and Kendall was conceived. This marks a cornerstone of their relationship. Police are unable to make a strong case against Cambias, and Kendall begins a convoluted plot against him when he is released from prison. After claiming she had married him in Las Vegas, Michael is murdered by an unknown assailant. Her relationship with Erica, which had grown stronger because of Erica's panic attack, is again strained because of the marriage to Michael, his murder, and the revelation that Bianca is pregnant with his child. Erica encourages her to get an abortion, and Bianca prepares to go through it with the help of her friend, Maggie Stone. At the clinic, Kendall tells her sister how much she admired her, and though Kendall does not give an opinion on the abortion, Bianca lets Kendall know that she has secretly decided to keep her baby.
So that no one will know that Bianca is carrying the child of a rapist, Kendall claims that she is pregnant with Michael’s child after marrying him (actually marrying Fusion chemist Boyd Larraby who stole Michael's identity) before he was murdered. A skeptical Greenlee begins investigating her friend, while Erica shuns her. Bianca, however, stands by her sister, as does a newly returned Ryan Lavery, who helps keep the secret. Kendall explains to Bianca that she is helping her and her baby because she sees the baby as herself since Kendall was also the product of rape.
Kendall is put on trial for Michael’s murder, and begins wearing padding underneath her clothes to keep up the ruse. Not understanding the level of trust Ryan has in Kendall, Greenlee reveals the fake pregnancy by ripping the dress off a testifying Kendall. Kendall is forced to reveal that she had faked her pregnancy to protect Bianca, who has killed Michael, though she doesn't remember. Realizing how much Kendall cares for Bianca, Erica becomes close to her daughter again, but Kendall's budding friendship with Greenlee is shattered.
Kendall begins dating Ryan again, who suggests that she forgive Greenlee. Kendall refuses and uses the controlling interest of Fusion she had inherited after Michael's death to treat her former friend unfairly. To even the playing field, Ryan gives Greenlee the shares of Cambias he has inherited from the deceased Alexander Cambias. He goes on to propose to Greenlee to help her out at Fusion, which causes an infuriated Kendall to lock her nemesis in a room to stop the marriage. Kendall attempts to marry Ryan herself, but he chooses Greenlee after realizing what Kendall has done.
To help Kendall be on equal footing at Fusion with Greenlee, Zach Slater offers to marry her and give her his shares of Cambias Industries. Over time, Zach and Kendall's relationship turns into deep romantic love and Kendall's friendship with Greenlee begins to mend. Eventually the two become so close that they consider themselves "sisters."
Kendall goes on to have two children. Her first, Spike Lavery, is born on May 31, 2006. He was originally supposed to be Greenlee's biological child and carried by surrogate mother Kendall. However, a power outage caused by Zach forces Kendall to use her own egg during the artificial insemination. She is almost killed when JR Chandler accidentally drops construction supplies on Kendall and her unborn son. Zach comes to consider Spike as his own son, though Kendall shares custody with Ryan and his wife Annie Lavery at the time.
Ian Slater is her son with Zach, and he is conceived during Kendall and Zach's second marriage, in February 2007, while the "Satin Slayer" terrorized Pine Valley. He is born severely premature on July 26, 2007.
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