True Love (11 page)

Jared’s thoughts returned to the present. He thought it was definitely better that he leave the island. He’d tell Dilys about Alix, she’d introduce her to his cousin Lexie and her roommate, Toby, and within a week Alix would be deep in the Nantucket summer social whirl. And Jared would be back in New York creating … he didn’t know what. And right now he was between girlfriends so he’d … Damn! He kept envisioning Alix’s eyes, her mouth, her body.

This wasn’t good. Alix Madsen was a young, innocent girl and he couldn’t touch her. Yes, he’d better leave as soon as possible.

Chapter Five

A
lix was in bed, trying to keep her mind on a murder mystery she’d found in a table drawer, but the words seemed to blur. All she could think about was Jared Montgomery—or was his name Kingsley? Everything about him seemed to be a lie, up to and including his name.

Why did he have to lie like that? As she went over every word of their conversation, she saw how he’d eluded her many hints. If he didn’t want to answer her questions, he could have said no. He could have—

Her cell phone rang and cut off her thoughts. It was her father. Why, oh why, had she told him that Montgomery was staying in the guesthouse?

She took a breath and tried to smile. “Dad!” she said cheerfully. “How are you?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing is wrong. Why would you ask that?”

“Because I’ve known you all your life so I know your false cheerfulness. What happened?”

“Nothing bad. It’s just Izzy and her wedding. Both her mother and mother-in-law are making her miserable, so I told her I’d put on the wedding here. But how can I do that? What do I know about weddings?”

“You love a challenge and you’ll figure it out. What’s really bothering you?”

“That’s it,” she said. “I think making a wedding for someone else is impossible and I’m thinking about leaving Nantucket and returning home. I’m Izzy’s maid of honor, so I need to help her choose cakes and flowers and everything else. Or maybe I’ll stay with you for a while. Would that be all right?”

Ken took a moment before answering. “It’s Montgomery, isn’t it? Did he show up?”

Alix felt quick tears come to her eyes, but she wasn’t going to let her father know. “He did,” she said, “and we had dinner together. He cleans bass just like you do.”

“What did he say when you told him you were a fan of his?”

“Nothing.”

“Alix, he must have said something, so what was it?”

“He didn’t say anything because I didn’t tell him. He pretended he wasn’t who he is.”

“I want to hear every word of this. Don’t leave out anything.”

Alix told him as succinctly as she could manage. “Maybe I would have been a pest to him or whatever he thought I’d be—if that’s the reason he didn’t tell me who he is—but to just sit there and tell one lie after another was … was …”

“Despicable,” Ken said, and she could hear the anger in his voice.

“It’s okay, Dad. He’s a big shot and I can see why he wouldn’t
want to announce to a student that he’s
the
Jared Montgomery. He was probably worried that I’d kiss his ring or do some groupie thing. And to be fair, I would have. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’s leaving in the morning and he won’t be back while I’m here.”

“Are you saying that you’ll be alone in that big house for an entire year?” Ken asked. “You know no one on that island and you’ve promised to put on a wedding for your friend. How are you going to do that?”

“Dad, you’re supposed to cheer me up, not make me feel worse.”

“I’m being a realist.”

“Me too,” Alix said, “and that’s why I think I should return to the mainland. Besides, this house belongs to Mr. Kingsley and he wants it back, if for no other reason than for the big sink.”

“Who’s Mr. Kingsley?”

“Jared Montgomery.”

“He told you to call him Mr. Kingsley?” Ken was aghast.

“No, Dad. That’s what the lawyer called him. But I called him that and he didn’t correct me.”

“That upstart!” Ken said with his teeth clenched. “Look, honey, I have something I have to do. Promise me that you won’t leave the island before I talk to you again.”

“All right,” she said, “but what are you planning to do? You aren’t thinking of calling his office, are you?”

“Not his office, no.”

“Dad, please, you’re going to make me sorry I told you. Jared Montgomery is a very important person. When it comes to architecture, he’s in the stratosphere. It’s understandable if he doesn’t want to deal with a nothing, nobody student. He—”

“Alixandra, it may be a cliché to say this, but you have more talent in your little finger than that man has in his whole body.”

“You’re sweet but that’s not true. When he was my age, he—”

“It’s a wonder he
lived
to be your age. All right, Alix, how about this? I’ll give him twenty-four hours to come to his senses. If he’s the same this time tomorrow and your feelings are still being hurt, then
I’ll come and get you. And furthermore, I’ll help you and Izzy with the wedding. Is that a deal?”

Alix thought about telling her father that she was a grown woman and could take care of herself, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. “That sounds like a bet you don’t want to lose,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. She had no hope that Jared Montgomery was going to change anything about himself.

“Good! I’ll call you this time tomorrow. Love ya.”

“And I love you back,” Alix said, and hung up. She was tempted to call Izzy and tell her there was going to be a change in the wedding venue, but she didn’t.

Jared was bent over his drawing board, working on what had to be his fiftieth sketch for the house in California, when his cell rang. Since so few people had his private number, he always answered it.

Right away he recognized the
very
angry voice of Kenneth Madsen.

“When I met you, you were a fourteen-year-old juvenile delinquent. You’d been in and out of the local jail so many times they knew your breakfast order by heart. Your poor dear mother was on six medications because you were driving her insane. Am I right? Am I saying anything wrong?”

“No, you have it right,” Jared said.

“And who straightened you out? Who dragged you out of bed in the mornings and put you into a truck and made you work?”

“You did,” Jared said meekly.

“Who searched under your bad-boy act and found your talent as a designer?”

“You did.”

“Who paid for your goddamn schooling?”

“You and Victoria did.”

“Right! Alix’s father
and
her mother,” Ken said. “Yet you made our daughter cry?! Is that how you repay us?”

“I don’t know what I did to make her cry,” Jared said honestly.

“You don’t know?” Ken took a breath. “Do you think my daughter is stupid? Is that what you think?”

“No, sir, I never thought that.”

“She knows who you are. She saw you on the day she arrived and she recognized you right away. Heaven help me, but you’re some sort of hero to her.”

“Oh, Lord,” Jared said. “I didn’t know. I thought …”

“Thought what?!” Ken half yelled, then calmed somewhat. “Look, Jared, I understand that she’s just a student and that someone like you might see her as a pest, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to treat her like one.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Jared said.

Ken took a couple of breaths. “My daughter only agreed to go to Nantucket so she could spend the time there assembling a portfolio of designs. Right now it’s hard for me to stomach the idea, but she wants to apply for a job at
your
firm. But tonight you—” He had to pause for a moment. “So help me, Jared Montgomery Kingsley the bloody Seventh, if you ever again make my daughter cry I’ll make you regret it. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if you
do
spend any time with my daughter I don’t want your usual shenanigans you pull with women. This is my daughter and I want her treated with respect. You get what I mean?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Do you think you can be
nice
to a girl
and
leave her clothes on? Is that possible with you?”

“I’ll try,” Jared said.

“Do more than try,
do
it!” Ken clicked off the phone.

Jared just stood there, feeling like he had when he was a teenager and Ken, the man who’d been a second father to him, had bawled him out. Again. Just like old times.

Jared went downstairs, started to reach for the rum, but knew that wouldn’t calm him down. He found a bottle of tequila, and had
two shots before he allowed himself to think about what had happened tonight.

He went into the living room and sat down and his mind went back to when he was, as Ken had said, a fourteen-year-old juvenile delinquent.

As Aunt Addy and Ken later told Jared, Kenneth Madsen had come to the island to find his wife—who he thought would be living in abject poverty and therefore glad to see him—to let her know that he’d think about taking her back. He might even forgive her for her one-night stand with his business partner, followed by her flight to Nantucket with their small daughter, Alix. Eventually.

The truth was that he missed her and his daughter so much he could hardly function.

But what he found on Nantucket wasn’t what he’d expected. His wife had written a novel, it had been accepted for publication, and she was planning to divorce him.

She was fabulously happy; he was fabulously depressed.

After Victoria took little Alix and left the island, Addy suggested that Ken stay in the guesthouse until he recovered from his melancholia. After he’d been there a couple of months and showed no signs of going back to his architecture business or even of coming back to life, she said he could renovate an old house owned by the Kingsley family.

“But I can’t afford to pay
you
,” she said. “I can just afford materials.”

“That’s all right,” Ken said, “my former business partner is footing my bills. He owes me big time.”

Addy waited for him to continue but Ken didn’t say any more about why his partner owed him. “You can hire workmen on the island, but you’ll have to pay them. On the other hand, my nephew Jared is young and inexperienced, but he’ll work for free. But then it doesn’t matter because I don’t think you can handle him.” She looked Ken up and down in a way that said he wasn’t man enough to deal with the boy.

Ken’d had enough of being treated like less than a man. He said he’d take on the kid.

From the first meeting, Ken and Jared were a match. Ken’s life was a mess, but then so was Jared’s. A big, angry teenager and an elegant, angry young architect were a perfect pair. Ken’s attitude was that if Jared didn’t behave he was out of a job. Since the job was a free remodel of the falling-down old house he and his mother were living in, Jared felt he had to stay with it. Besides, Ken listened to what Jared had to say about how he thought the house should be changed.

Jared knew nothing about construction, and at first he’d worked every day with a hangover. At fourteen he was on his way to being an alcoholic. To his mind at that time, drinking was okay because most of the kids he ran with did drugs. Jared’s teenage mind thought that if he stayed away from drugs he could drink all he wanted to.

But being hungover on a construction site was bad. He’d ended up with smashed thumbs and one accident after another until he’d finally learned to say no to going out at night with his buddies. It hadn’t been easy as they told him what they thought of him. “Selling out to the other side,” they’d said.

Ken had helped, even though his “help” hadn’t been gentle. He didn’t put up with any nonsense, never felt sorry for Jared’s circumstances, and made him work no matter what.

One day after the boys had skidded off in their cars, their catcalls that Jared was a wimp still hanging in the air, Ken said, “You might make a man after all. Who would have guessed?”

Gradually, Jared began to want to prove himself. Ken stayed on the island full time for nearly three years and the two of them worked construction constantly. One time Jared saw Ken crying and he’d stepped away, not wanting to embarrass him. Later he found out that the divorce papers had come that day. “It was all my fault,” Ken said over his sixth beer. “I was the one to ruin it all. I thought I was of a higher class than pretty little Victoria Winetky and she knew it.”