True Love (20 page)

“Wes?”

“Your cousin? My cousin? Remember him? Young, handsome Wes Drayton who inherited two acres out in Cisco and plans to build a house because he’s ready to settle down and have kids?
That
Wes?”

“Are you trying to say that Wes and Alix might get together?”

“Wes hasn’t shut up about Alix since he met her. Yesterday he spent an hour with Toby planning the daffodil decorations for his dad’s old car for the festival. His family is putting on a tailgate picnic meant to welcome Alix to the island. And in the afternoon he plans to take her out on his boat.”

Jared leaned back in his chair and stared at Lexie. “Alix wouldn’t … Look, she just broke up with some guy, so she’s not going to run off with another one she just met and get married and live on an island. She’s ambitious. She wants a career in architecture. She has to make a name for herself before she can hide away somewhere.”

“Okay,” Lexie said, her eyes on Jared’s, “then she’ll just have a lot of fabulous rebound sex with your cousin Wes. He’ll make her feel like a man wants her for something besides drawing a house plan, and next year she’ll leave Nantucket feeling great. She’ll get a job at your big, fancy company, then she’ll marry some guy who works for you, and they’ll have kids. The end.” She smiled sweetly at her cousin.

Jared looked back at Lexie, too shocked to say anything.

“Maybe Ken did put some limitations on you, but you need to figure out how to change things or you’re going to lose her before you even get her.” Lexie picked up her bag and went to the door. “Toby and I will be home all day tomorrow, so come for lunch. We’ll be cooking for the picnic. Too bad Alix is going to be dining with Wes’s family. Bye-bye,” she said as she closed the door behind her.

Jared sat where he was, thinking about what Lexie had said. The truth was that it would be good if Alix and Wes hooked up. That would free Jared from having to escort her everywhere. And having a boyfriend on the island would make her stay. No one would give
Jared hell for making her leave. Instead, they’d tell him he’d done a good job. Plus, he could give Alix the boxes of info about Valentina and she and Wes could work on that.

For a moment Jared had a vision of Alix and his cousin sitting on the floor of the back parlor, papers all around them. They would be like he and Alix had been for the last few days. Only Wes wouldn’t have chains around him as Jared did. No one was going to tell Wes to keep his hands off her.

And what would Jared do? Return to New York and go back to twelve- and fourteen-hour workdays? And for the next year when he was on the island, would he be banished from wandering in and out of his own house? He could imagine Alix telling him that she and Wes needed their privacy. Would Jared accidentally walk in on them when they were …?

He didn’t want to take that vision any further.

He looked around the kitchen and thought of the days since Alix had arrived. They’d done such ordinary things: grocery shopping, preparing meals together, working side by side. In work, she had the ability to look ahead, to see how and why a feature wasn’t going to work. It was a talent Jared also had, but he knew from experience that few people did.

But none of that really mattered.

All in all, it made sense that Alix and Wes should spend tomorrow together and let happen what may. In fact, it would be good for everyone if the two of them got together.

“Like hell!” Jared muttered as he left the house. He needed to shower and make some calls. Daffy Day started with a parade of antique cars and he knew just where he could get one.

Chapter Ten

W
hen Alix awoke she heard voices. One was unmistakably Jared’s deep rumble and the other belonged to a woman. For a moment she lay on the couch and wondered if the voice she remembered hearing so long ago was his. She’d heard Jared laugh, but only slightly, not that kind of laughter that comes from deep within a person and is so all encompassing that it cures illnesses. That was the laugh she remembered.

She turned her head to look at the jumble of books and papers on the floor and couldn’t help smiling. It had been glorious working with him! He was opinionated and knowledgeable and experienced and … and sexy, she thought. But she’d tried to stamp that thought down. If she got too close to him, he moved away. It looked like her
original impression that he was interested in her as a woman was wrong.

She couldn’t bring herself to ask him if he had a girlfriend. That wasn’t any of her business.

When she heard the back door open and close, she leaped off the couch and ran for the stairs. She knew she must be a mess and she needed time to clean up. Besides, she was dying to call Izzy and tell her everything that was going on.

Once Alix was upstairs, she phoned Izzy but it went to voice mail, which made her frown. She hadn’t talked to her friend or had a response to her many emails and text messages for days now.

On the first night after she’d been to dinner with Kingsley—somewhere in there she’d dropped the “Mr.”—she’d talked to her father and told him of the lavish apology she’d received, complete with flowers.

“Just an apology?” her dad asked. “Nothing else? No inappropriate innuendos or touches?” He made the last sound like his worst fear.

“No, Father,” she said solemnly, “I’m still as virginal as I was before I met Big Bad Kingsley.”

“Alixandra,” her father said in warning.

“Sorry,” she said. “Jared Kingsley treats me with absolute and total respect. Is that better?”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Ken said.

Alix wanted to say “I’m not,” but she didn’t.

She hadn’t heard from her father since then, but she knew that he had finals to administer and grade, so he was busy.

Her concern was Izzy. Alix sent another email, left yet another long voice message, then went to the shower.

She took her time dressing and working on her hair and makeup, even though she wondered if she should bother. Would she see him today? On the first of these last four days they’d finished the plan for his cousin’s house. In the end they’d compromised between her ideas
and his: his dormers; her windowed addition. He had surprised her by being good at landscape design, something Alix knew little about.

“It comes from seeing a lot of gardens and drinking a lot of beer with a lot of landscapers,” he’d said.

Alix had wanted to say “I like beer,” but she was afraid such a remark would scare him off.

After they’d finally settled on how to remodel his cousin’s house, they were faced with being
finished
. There were no more reasons to work together. No reason to stay in the same room, side by side.

It took Alix all of thirty seconds to decide to run upstairs and get her fat portfolio of school drawings. When she’d first realized that she was going to meet Jared Montgomery, actually be living near him, she’d fantasized about all the wonderful things he’d tell her about her work—just as her teachers did.

But Jared had gone through them quickly and said, “Do you have anything original?”

For a moment Alix felt like a little girl. She’d wanted to run away and hide so she could cry. And she wanted to call her best friend and tell her what a jerk Montgomery really was.

But in the next moment she became a professional and began to defend her work. When she saw a tiny bit of a smile from him she knew that’s what he was pushing her to do.

One by one, they went over her drawings and tore them apart. Only if she could give a good argument for a design feature did he begrudgingly admit it was possible. What was really annoying was that Alix saw that he was nearly always right. His eye for proportion and his intuition for design were perfect. As her father often said, “You can’t teach talent,” and talent was what Jared Montgomery Kingsley had in abundance.

Under his guidance, she changed nearly everything she’d drawn—and they were all improved.

It was on the last day—to Alix’s astonishment—that he brought out the plans for a house he had designed for a client in New Hampshire.

By that time they had become quite familiar with each other through work and shared meals and even falling asleep in the same room. Even so, she was hesitant to say anything critical about his designs, but then the truth was that it was extraordinary. That he—and for all his name changes, he was
the
Jared Montgomery—would ask
her
opinion gave her a moment of speechlessness.

“You have nothing to say?”

“It’s perfect,” she whispered, and the exterior was. But then she saw the floor plan. She took a breath and plunged ahead. “The living room is in the wrong place,” she said, and they went on from there.

Now that they were truly done with the plans, she wondered if he would retreat to the guesthouse and work on his own. Several times he’d mentioned the house in California that he had to do and Alix’d had to work not to say something about her own design. But there was something so personal about the chapel she’d drawn that she didn’t want it critiqued.

On impulse, she pulled her suitcase out from under the bed, unzipped it, and removed the little model. She was still so pleased with it that she couldn’t bear having someone tell her the roof angle was wrong or the steeple was too tall or too short. She liked it just the way it was.

Standing up, the model on the palm of her hand, she held it up to the portrait of Captain Caleb. “What do you think?” she asked. “You like it or not?”

Of course there was silence and Alix smiled at the thought of receiving an answer. She turned to put the model back into the suitcase, but looked back at the portrait. “If you like it just as it is, make something move.”

Instantly, the framed photo of the two women yet again fell off the table and hit the thick rug.

For a moment Alix felt a little dizzy at what had happened. She told herself that the picture falling just when she’d asked the question was a coincidence, but she didn’t believe it.

She sat on the edge of the bed, still holding the model. “I guess you do like it,” she said. She was glad when there was no response to her words. “And it looks like I’m living in a haunted house.”

She didn’t want to think about that too much. After a few deep breaths she stood up, put the model back in its hiding spot, and went to the door.

A white envelope like the one that had been with the daffodil had been pushed under the door. “Why didn’t you tell me this was here?” she said aloud, then caught herself. “And don’t you dare answer that. One ghostly answer a day is all I can take.”

She opened the envelope and saw the distinctive lettering.

Would you like to go with me to liberate an old truck?

Alix couldn’t help laughing and doing a little dance around the room. “Oh, yes, I would love to go,” she said aloud as she danced over to Captain Caleb’s portrait. “Are you happy about this?” she asked, looking up at him, then said, “Do
not
make anything fall down.”

She was pleased when everything in the room held steady. After taking a moment to compose herself, she headed downstairs. As before, Jared was in the living room reading a newspaper. All their papers and the big prints were gone from the floor and neatly stacked on the shelves.

“Hungry?” he asked without looking up.

“Starved. Did we get any cereal?”

“No,” he said as he put down the paper and looked at her.

She thought she saw a spark in his eyes, but it was quickly gone.

“If you can scramble eggs, I can make toast. Toby sent over some jam she made.”

“The Toby who everyone loves does her own canning?”

“And baking. She makes a blueberry pie that’ll make you weep. I think she puts cinnamon in it.”

“When are you two getting married?”

“Toby is much, much too good for someone like me. I’d feel that I had to behave all the time.”

“No hijacking of old trucks?”

“Definitely not,” Jared said, smiling at her.

As they started for the kitchen, Alix’s phone buzzed and she looked at it, hoping it was Izzy, but it was an ad trying to sell her a used car. She deleted it.

“Something wrong?” Jared asked.

She told him that it had been days since she’d heard from her friend and that wasn’t usual.

“Are you worried about her?” he asked as he went to the fridge.

“Not really, but I do wish she’d let me know what she’s doing. Have you eaten?”

“I did.”

As usual, they worked together like a perfectly aligned machine, getting food out and putting it where it was needed. When Alix picked up the skillet Jared handed her the butter. He’d already cracked two eggs into a blue bowl that Alix remembered seeing being used for eggs. Bread went into the toaster and Jared set the table.

Within minutes they sat down and he filled their cups with hot coffee.

“Did I hear voices this morning?” Alix asked, then said, “Even if it’s a lie, please tell me that I did.”

“What does that mean?”

If she told him the whole truth she’d have to mention her chapel model and she didn’t want to do that. “Just that another picture fell off a table—and don’t you dare say it’s a drafty old house.”