True Love (2 page)

“Sounds to me like a fine thing.”

“It isn’t!” Jared said. “I don’t want to be the bait that gets fed on. And I like to
do
, not teach.”

“So what glorious deeds do you plan to
do
”—he emphasized the word—“while she’s here? Will it involve any of those floozies you parade past the windows?”

Jared gave a sigh of exasperation. “Just because girls today wear fewer clothes doesn’t mean they have low morals. We’ve been over this a thousand times.”

“Are you referring to last night? How were that one’s morals? Where did you meet her?”

Jared rolled his eyes. “Captain Jonas’s.” It was a bar near the wharf and it wasn’t known for its decorum.

“I daren’t ask what ship
he
captained. But who are the parents of this young woman? Where did she grow up? What is her name?”

“I have no idea,” Jared said. “Betty or Becky, I don’t remember. She left on the ferry this morning, but she might be back later this summer.”

“You are thirty-six years old with no wife, no children. Is the Kingsley line going to die out with you?”

Jared couldn’t help mumbling, “Better that than an architecture student to deal with.”

Although Jared was taller, his grandfather managed to look down his nose at his grandson. “I don’t believe you need to worry about her attraction to you. If your sainted mother were alive, even she wouldn’t recognize you as you are now.”

Jared stood where he was by the window and ran his hand over
his beard. His grandfather had told him this would be Aunt Addy’s last year alive, so he’d rearranged his architectural firm to spend the final months with her on the island. He’d moved into the guesthouse and spent as much time as he could with Aunt Addy. And she was an understanding woman. She’d always warned him when she was going to have a tea party so he could go out on his boat. She never mentioned the women who occasionally came home with him. And most of all, she pretended that she had no idea why he was there.

In their last weeks together they’d shared a lot. Aunt Addy had told him stories about her life, and as the days passed she began to mention Caleb. At first she explained who he was. “He’s your fifth great-grandfather,” she said.

“I’ve had five of them?” he teased.

She was serious. “No. Caleb is your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.”

“And he’s still alive?” Jared had asked, playing dumb as he refilled her glass with rum. All the Kingsley women had a remarkable capacity for rum. “Sailors’ blood in them,” his grandfather said.

Jared saw the way his aunt got slower every day. “She’s getting closer to me,” his grandfather had said to Jared, and Caleb began to stay with her every night. They had lived together for many years. “The longest of any of them,” Caleb said and there were tears in those eyes that never aged. Caleb Kingsley was thirty-three when he died, and over two hundred years later he still looked thirty-three.

But for all that Jared had shared with his aunt, he never came close to telling her that he too could see, talk, and argue with his grandfather. All the Kingsley men had been able to, but they didn’t tell the women in their lives. “Let them think Caleb belongs to them,” his father told Jared when he was a boy. “Besides, it emasculates a man for it to be known that he spends his evenings with a dead man. It’s better to let the women worry that you’re having a flirtation.” Jared wasn’t sure of that philosophy, but he’d maintained the code of silence. All seven of the Jared Montgomery Kingsleys could see Caleb’s ghost, and most of the daughters and a few of the
younger sons could. Jared thought the truth was that Caleb could let people see him or not, but the old man would never clarify the matter.

To say it was odd that this young woman, this Alix Madsen, could see the Kingsley ghost was a great understatement.

His grandfather Caleb was frowning at him now. “You need to go to a barber and remove that beard from off your face, and your hair is much too long.”

Jared turned to look in a mirror. Caleb had chosen the mirror in China on that last disastrous voyage so long ago. Jared saw that he did indeed look bad. Since his aunt’s death, he’d hardly been off his boat. He’d not shaved or cut his hair for months. There were gray streaks in his beard and strands of gray in his hair, which now reached down the back of his neck. “I don’t look like my New York self, do I?” Jared said thoughtfully. If in the next year he couldn’t stay away from his beloved island, it would be better if he was unrecognizable.

“I do not care for what you’re thinking,” Caleb said.

Jared turned back to smile at his grandfather. “I’d think you’d be proud of me. Unlike you, I’m not trying to make some innocent girl fall in love with me.” That was another statement guaranteed to take the smile off his grandfather’s face.

The explosion was instant. “I have
never
made a woman—”

“I know, I know,” Jared said, taking pity on the handsome ghost. “Your motives are pure and clean. You’re waiting for the return—or the reincarnation, whatever—of the woman you love, your precious Valentina. And you’ve always been faithful to her. I’ve heard it all before. Heard it all my life. You’ll know her when you see her, then you two will go off into the sunset together. Which means that either she dies or you come back to life.”

Caleb was used to his grandson’s disrespect and general insolence. He’d never say it, but this particular grandson was the one most like himself when he was alive. He kept the frown on his face. “I need to know what happened to Valentina,” he stated simply.
What he didn’t add was that he now knew there was a time limit. He had until the twenty-third of June, just weeks away, to find out what had happened to the woman he loved so much that even death couldn’t separate them. If he didn’t put it all back together, he didn’t think that any of them—all the people who had been involved so long ago—would find the happiness they deserved. All he had to do was make his stubborn, never-listens-to-anyone grandson
believe
.

Chapter One

A
lix continued weeping as Izzy handed her one chocolate after another. So far it had been two doughnuts, one of those flat bars of sixty percent cocoa, a whole Toblerone, and a Kit Kat. If this kept on Alix was going to start in on chocolate chip cookies, which meant Izzy would join her and would probably gain ten pounds and not fit into her wedding dress. Wasn’t that above and beyond the call of friendship?

They were on the fast ferry that went from Hyannis to Nantucket, sitting at one of the tables by the snack bar. All sorts of delicious, fattening things were within their reach.

Alix had done well in the past few weeks as she and Izzy finished their last semester of architecture school. They’d turned in their final
projects, and as always, Alix had been praised by the teacher to the point of embarrassment.

It was that night that Alix’s boyfriend had broken up with her. Dropped her flat. Eric said he had a different plan for his life.

After the disastrous date, Alix went straight to Izzy’s apartment. When the knock came, Izzy and her fiancé, Glenn, had been snuggled on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn. She wasn’t in the least surprised when Alix told her what happened—she’d even prepared for it by having two quarts of chocolate caramel ice cream in the freezer.

Glenn kissed Alix on the forehead. “Eric is a stupid man,” he’d said before heading off to bed.

Izzy thought she’d be in for a whole night of misery, but an hour later Alix was asleep on their couch. In the morning, she was quiet. “I guess I better go pack,” she said. “Now there’s no reason for me not to go.” She was referring to spending a year on the island of Nantucket. A few years before, right after Izzy had met Glenn—and she’d immediately known she was going to marry him—the girls had made a pact. After their last semester of school, they would take a year off before going job seeking. Izzy wanted time to just be a wife and to think about what she wanted to do with her life.

Alix had always known that she wanted to prepare a portfolio of designs that she’d present to a possible employer. Since most students went directly from school to a job, all they had to show was the work they’d done for assignments, all heavily influenced by the likes and dislikes of a teacher. Alix wanted to show her own work, all of it original.

When Alix was told of the year in Nantucket, she had been reluctant. Going somewhere she knew no one was too much. And then there was Eric. Could their relationship stand so much separation? Alix began to come up with excuses for why she couldn’t go, starting with Izzy needing her for the wedding.

But Izzy had said that this was a once in a lifetime chance and Alix
had
to take it. “You
have
to do this!”

“I don’t know,” Alix said. “Your wedding … Eric …” She shrugged.

Izzy glared at her. “Alix, it’s as though your fairy godmother waved her magic wand and gave you just what you need at exactly the right time. You
must
do this!”

“Think my fairy godmother has green eyes?” Alix had asked and the two of them had dissolved into laughter. Alix’s mother, Victoria, had emerald eyes. Of course she’d been behind obtaining this year of work and study for her precious daughter.

What made them sure Alix’s mother was behind the hiatus was that she’d been the one to tell Alix about the strange provision in Adelaide Kingsley’s will. Izzy had always been in awe of Victoria. Even if she weren’t internationally famous for all those wonderful, exciting books she wrote, she’d still be magnificent. For one thing, she was gorgeous. She had thick auburn hair, a figure like a Spanish soap star’s, and a personality that commanded a room. Victoria wasn’t loud, wasn’t really flamboyant, but when she entered a room everyone took notice. A hush fell over people as they stopped talking and turned to look. It was as though they felt Victoria’s presence as much as saw her.

The first time Izzy met Victoria, she wondered how Alix would react to her mother getting all the attention, but Alix was used to it. To her, that was how her mother was and she accepted it.

Of course it helped that whenever Victoria spotted her daughter entering a room, she stopped charming the people who’d gathered around her and went straight to Alix. They would link arms and turn away to some quiet corner, just the two of them.

When Alix had first been told about the contents of the will of some woman she didn’t remember, she’d said no. Yes, Alix had always planned to take a year off, but not on some isolated island.

The real problem was that she hadn’t told her mother she had a boyfriend whom she was thinking about marrying. If Eric asked, that is.

“I don’t understand,” Izzy said. “I thought you and your mom told each other everything.”

“No,” Alix said. “I said that I find out everything about her. I am very selective about what I tell her.”

“And Eric is a secret?”

“I do my best to keep my love life with any man away from my mother. If she knew about Eric, she’d be here interrogating him. He’d probably run away in terror.”

Izzy had to look away so Alix wouldn’t see her frown. She’d never liked Eric and she wished Victoria would do whatever it took to get rid of him.

After Alix had finished her designs for the last school year and made her model, she’d “helped” Eric with his. The truth was that she’d almost done his whole project for him.

After the breakup and Alix’s decision to go to Nantucket, she’d been very adult about it. “I’ll also have time to study.” To become a licensed architect, one had to take a series of truly horrific exams. “I’ll do well on the tests and make my parents proud,” Alix vowed.

Izzy thought that Alix’s parents couldn’t be more proud of her than they already were, but she didn’t say so. When Alix finally said she was going, it was her depressed, fatalistic tone that made Izzy decide that she would travel with her friend and stay in Nantucket until Alix got settled. She wanted to be there when Alix finally broke down.

It happened when they stepped onto the ferry to Nantucket. Until then there’d been so much to do to get ready for the trip that Alix hadn’t had time to brood about Eric. Her mother had covered all expenses, even shipping their luggage to the island, so the two young women would only have to deal with overnight bags. And they’d left days earlier than the original plan because Izzy was afraid Alix would see Eric again.

Alix had seemed to be doing well until the ferry pulled away from the dock. When she looked at Izzy, there were tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

Since Izzy had known this was coming, she had a big Toblerone
bar in her bag. “What you did wrong was to be born smarter and more talented than Eric. You intimidated the hell out of him.”

“I didn’t,” Alix said as Izzy opened the chocolate and they took a seat at a table. It was still early in the season so the big boat wasn’t packed with people. “I was always very nice to him.”

“Yeah,” Izzy said. “You were. That’s because you didn’t want to hurt his teeny tiny ego.”

“Come on,” Alix said, chewing. “He and I had some great times. He—”