True Love

by Jude Deveraux

  A young woman had come up beside Jared, taken his arm, and was leaning toward him in a possessive way. Fairly attractive, with short blond hair and big eyes, but what really stood out about her was how she was dressed. She had on an airy white tunic that reached to the top of her thighs—and there appeared to be nothing underneath it. Her long, beautiful legs—perfectly tanned, perfectly waxed—seemed to go on forever, down to some little gold sandals.

  Alix, speechless, looked from the girl to Jared, to Wes, and back again.

  “This is my date,” Jared said to Wes.

  Alix’s mouth dropped open. No wonder he didn’t care that she was going out with someone else. No wonder—

  “Trade?” Jared asked his cousin.

  Wes gave a curt nod and the girl left Jared’s arm to go to Wes.

  Alix was standing still, unable to move, and she had no idea what had just happened.

  “Are you ready to go?” Jared asked impatiently.

  Alix was still blinking.

  “The parade’s about to start and we need to get in the truck.”

  Alix recovered enough to walk across the cobblestones to the blue Ford and get in beside Jared. “Did you plan that?”

  He started the engine. “Plan what? Oh. You mean Daris?”

  “Is that the girl with no pants on?”

  Jared smiled. “Best legs on the island. She and Wes were a couple until six months ago. He did something she didn’t like so she told him to get lost. I guess she’s punished him enough. Here.” He handed her a bouquet of daffodils.

  Alix took them as he pulled into place behind a gull wing Mercedes from the sixties. “So you did plan it all.”

  He glanced at her with a little smile. “Did you really think I was going to let you go out with Wes?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “I did.” She smiled at him. “Thanks for proving me wrong.”

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  He spoke in such a vain way that she couldn’t let him get away with it. “It’s so rare that I’m wrong that I’d begun to think it wasn’t possible.”

  He laughed. “Wave at the people.”

  She did. “So what ideas do you have for the guesthouse for the Forbes top-ten man?”

  “All glass,” he said. “Philip Johnson comes to Nantucket.”

  “That’s a joke, right?”

  “You’re not supposed to work today. Enjoy the scenery.”

  They were going down Orange Street and every beautiful old house made her think of a guesthouse design. But she didn’t say anything.

  “His wife loves to garden and wants her own potting shed,” Jared said. “Just a little one. A mere two thousand square feet.”

  “Really?” Alix looked at him with wide eyes. “Maybe Toby has some ideas about that.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Jared said, grinning, and they talked about design all the way to ’Sconset—which was only about eight miles, but it seemed longer.

  When they got to the impossibly cute little town that Jared said used to be full of fishing shacks, Lexie and Toby were waiting for them. They’d unloaded an SUV full of food, utensils, and elegant picnic gear.

  Jared drove the old truck into the parking area Lexie pointed out to him, then disappeared in that way males do when faced with whatever they consider women’s work. Alix followed Lexie’s orders and helped set up. Within minutes the back of the old truck and a table had been covered with food and drink on top of pretty Italian tablecloths. It was all very high end, very much like a picture-perfect country picnic.

  Alix stepped into the street. On both sides were the beautiful old cars and trucks that had been in the parade through the town.

  Since she’d arrived on the island, Alix had been gradually becoming aware of the wealth on Nantucket, but the gathering of the old cars had solidified it. They weren’t just jalopies but museum-quality vehicles, and the laughing and chatting owners were decked out like models in a Ralph Lauren ad: Blazers, ascots, gold watches for men. Perfect designer outfits for the women. She looked at the lavish layouts of the picnics and smiled.

  “Like it?” Jared asked as he reappeared now that the work was done.

  “Truly beautiful. I feel like I’ve stepped onto the cover of Town and Country magazine.”

  “Come on,” he said. “They’re doing an ice-carving demo halfway down.”

  There were dancers and musicians, artists and acrobats wandering around and everyone seemed to know everyone else. When they got back to the truck, Jared talked to a group of people while Alix filled plates for the two of them. There were chairs at the front of the truck and she and Jared sat there to eat.

  “I haven’t been to this in years,” he said. “It’s grown.”

  “Why would you ever miss it? It’s wonderful.”

  “Couldn’t get a date,” he said.

  Alix could remember all too well the sight of beautiful Daris on his arm. “Ha! Half the women here—”

  He cut her off. “I meant that I couldn’t find a date I wanted to go with.”

  Alix smiled at him and for a moment his eyes held hers. But as always, he turned away. “Mixed signals” were the words that came to Alix’s mind. Jared had gone through an elaborate scheme to keep her from going out with another man, but when she looked at him with something besides work in her eyes, he turned away.

  She told herself to keep it light.

  Thirty minutes later they were standing on the road, chatting to people, when Jared turned to her with a serious expression. “Alix?” he said. “Do you have any feeling that you owe me for anything at all?”

  “Of course. Haven’t I said thank you often enough? If not, I apologize for—”

  “No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that my cousin is coming this way and—”

  “Wes?”

  “No.”

  “The woman from the liquor store?” His look made her stop guessing. “Okay, sorry. One of your cousins is coming toward us and …?”

  “His wife was my girlfriend in high school. He won; I lost. It’s ridiculous of me, but—”

  Alix looked through the crowd and saw a man about Jared’s age who had the Kingsley jawline, the dark hair and eyes. But whereas they worked together on Jared to form a very masculine face, on this man there was something effeminate about his features. He was well dressed, in a perfect shirt and jacket, and even had on jeans. But they weren’t like the jeans Jared usually wore that even when clean looked as though they’d been to Davy Jones’s locker and back.

  Beside the man was a tall, slim blond woman with pale blue eyes. Alix thought she was quite pretty, but she looked tired and maybe older than she really was.

  When the woman caught sight of Jared, her face lit up, the tiredness disappeared, and her prettiness doubled. Alix could imagine her riding on a parade float and being the queen of the prom.

  When the man beside her saw Jared, for a split second, his face clouded. He recovered enough to put on a grin that didn’t make it all the way to his eyes.

  “Jared,” the woman said and held out her arms as though she meant to hug him.

  Alix reacted on instinct. He hadn’t finished his request of her, but she thought he’d been about to ask her to run interference between him and his ex. “Want me to protect you?” she said under her breath.

  “Please,” he said, standing his ground and waiting for the charging woman to get to him.

  Alix put her body in front of Jared’s so that she halted. Her arms were still outstretched and she didn’t seem to know what to do with them.

  Alix reached up and shook her hand. “Hi. I’m Alix. I take it you know Jared.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lexie punch Toby in the ribs. Of course both women stood there eagerly watching the drama unfold.

  “I’m Missy,” the woman said. “Jared and I have known each other for a very long time.”

  “Oh?” Alix said. “And here I thought I’d heard of all his friends, but he never mentioned a Missy.” W
hen she turned to look at Jared, she realized that, with his head bent, they were practically nose to nose. When she started to step away, he put his arm around her waist and pulled her full length back against him.

  Alix’s eyes widened, but then she got herself under control. Sort of. “I, uh … I …”

  “It’s good to see you, Jared,” the man said as he came to stand behind the blond woman. Like Jared, he put his arm possessively around her waist. “So how is it living off-island? Did you learn lots of new things about the outside world?”

  Even Alix knew that was an insult. She gave the man a chilly smile. “Jared is still conquering the world with his magnificent designs.” When the man didn’t lose his self-satisfied little smile, Alix remembered her mother’s books and how that family had spent centuries fighting over the family home. “And of course there’s all the work he does at Kingsley House. Keeping it intact for his son-to-be, the Eighth, is a cherished legacy of his inheritance.”

  For a moment Alix thought she’d laid it on too thick, but then she had the satisfaction of seeing him drop the smug little smile.

  Behind her, Jared buried his face in Alix’s neck—and sent the hairs of her body rising.

  “You are my dream girl,” he said, and she could feel him holding in his laughter. He managed to recover himself enough to lift his head. “This is my cousin Oliver Collins and his wife, Missy. And this is Alix.”

  “How nice to meet you,” Alix said, holding out her hand to shake Oliver’s. “You’re not named Kingsley?”

  “We’re related through his mother, who married an off-islander,” Jared said. Then, still holding firmly on to Alix’s waist, he motioned toward the truck that was loaded with food. “Come and have lunch with us.”

  “Thanks,” Oliver said, “but we must get home. The children need us. Marriage carries great responsibilities. Alix, Jared,” he said curtly, leading his wife away.

  Missy glanced back as though she wanted to stay, but her husband didn’t let up his iron grip.

  Jared turned Alix around to face him. “You were wonderful!” he said. “Really great. Ol’ Oliver hasn’t been put in his place so well in … well, ever, I guess. You are Victoria’s daughter!” Still laughing, on impulse, he planted a quick, hard kiss on Alix’s smiling mouth.

  At least that’s what it was meant to be. Instead, both he and Alix were jolted as though an electrical current went through them.

  “I …” Jared began, then stepped closer.

  Again she saw that fire in his eyes, and she lifted her arms to put them around his neck.

  But it wasn’t to be. Frowning, Jared stepped away, the fire in his eyes doused.

  Alix’s first impulse was to flee. How many times was this going to happen? They’d get close, he’d look at her as though he was about to devour her, then he’d turn cold and walk away. Again and again it had happened.

  Alix didn’t know where she’d go if she did leave the picnic, but from the anger that surged through her she thought she could walk back to Kingsley House. And once she was there she just might pack and leave the island. She’d had all she could take of this man looking at her with lust one second and turning away the next. She backed away from him.

  “Alix—” Jared began, but she moved quickly through the crowd.

  Toby caught up with her.

  “I don’t want to hear the excuses—” Alix began.

  “Go straight ahead to the store, bear left, and there’s a bridge to the beach. Walk.”

  Alix gave a nod and hurried forward. It wasn’t difficult to find the tall bridge, go down the stairs, then out to the beach. The cool weather meant there weren’t many people about and she was glad of it. The water and the sand calmed her.

  She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. Her thoughts wouldn’t come in an orderly fashion but seemed to float around in a mixed-up way. Visions of her and Jared drifted before her, laughing and eating and creating together. And through it all, he’d made it clear that there was to be nothing sexual between them. She’d assumed it was because he didn’t feel that way about her.

  But that kiss! As electric as a bolt of lightning. She saw that he’d felt it too, so why had he pulled away? Why had he looked at her so coldly? There didn’t seem to be someone else in his life, so what was his problem?

  When a shiver went through her, she rubbed her arms and turned around. Not far away, Jared was sitting on the sand in the shade. Just sitting there, waiting. He looked as though he was worried about something.

  But she had no sympathy for him. She walked to stand in front of him. “I’d like to go …” She couldn’t call Kingsley House “home.” “Back,” she finished.

  He didn’t stand up. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but first I’d like to tell you the truth.”

  “That would make for a change,” she said.

  He took off his jacket and held it out to her, but she didn’t take it. “Please,” he said. “Give me twenty minutes, and if you still want to leave me or Nantucket or whatever you want, I’ll arrange it.”

  Reluctantly, she sat down on the sand a few feet away from him and when he started to put his jacket around her, she flinched. “You’ll get cold.”

  “Not when you’re shooting laser rays at me, I won’t,” he said.

  She didn’t smile, but she did let him put the jacket around her shoulders.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” he said. “If it were up to me I’d tell you everything, but I can’t.”

  She turned to glare at him. “Then why am I here?”

  “I don’t know!” Jared said in exasperation. “I know about five percent more than you do and I don’t understand any of it. I do know that people have been keeping secrets from you all your life.”

  “Who?”

  “I can’t tell you that. I wish I could, but I can’t. All I can say is that I owe people for my entire life. I wouldn’t have been anything but maybe a criminal if it hadn’t been for … for some people who helped me.”

  Alix looked out at the sea and tried to figure out what he was telling her. “I know you didn’t want me to come here.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t. I told you that I was angry at my aunt. I saw her will as a betrayal of me. If you hadn’t come early, I would have been gone, and we never would have met.”

  “But you stayed,” she said.

  “Because I liked you,” he said.

  “Past tense?”

  He took his time answering. “I’ve never before met anyone who fit into both my worlds, a woman who could clean a fish and argue about subflooring too.”

  “I know,” Alix said softly. “We’re on our way to becoming great friends.”

  “No,” he said. “Tim, my business partner, and I are friends. He hates fishing, thinks all dirt paths should be covered with concrete, and endlessly bellyaches about money. But we’re good friends.”

  “And you and I aren’t?” Alix asked. Damn! She could feel tears beginning to form in her eyes.

  “As much as I care about Tim, I have no desire to tear his clothes off. I’ve not wanted to make love to him for however long it takes until this gnawing hunger inside me is fed. I haven’t stayed awake thinking about his lips or his thighs or anything else he has.”

  Alix was staring at him. “Yet you don’t touch me.”

  “I made a promise to someone I owe,” he said softly.

  “And this person has asked you to … what? Keep your hands off me?”

  “Yes.”

  Alix looked back at the water. “I want to get this clear. You owe someone—or multiple people—big time and they know both of us.”

  “Yes, but I really can’t tell you more than that.”

  “That’s okay. I may be able to guess some of it. There have been a lot of fairly recent repairs on Kingsley House, things like the roof, and they’re expensive. But I couldn’t help noticing that some of the repairs were very deep, which means that at one point the house was allowed to deter
iorate rather extensively. Am I right?”

  Cocking his head to one side, Jared looked at her and gave a quick nod.

  “To allow a house to get into that state means either the owner doesn’t care or couldn’t afford the repairs. Obviously, your family cares very much about that old house.”

  “We do,” he said.

  “And then there are the other houses. You said your family owns the one Lexie lives in, and it also owns where Dilys lives, where you grew up. You told me you were all of fourteen when that remodel was done, and it was obviously your work.”

  He was watching her in fascinated silence.

  “The year I was here with my mother, that was when you were fourteen. Now, who in the world would allow a teenage boy to plan a remodel? And who would pay for it?”

  “Aunt Addy,” Jared said, smiling at her.

  “If she could afford that, why didn’t she repair her own house?”

  Jared was smiling broader. “Okay, Miss Sleuth, what’s your theory?”

  “I think my mother has written all her books based on your family, and for compensation she paid for the remodels, and …”

  “And what?”

  “I think she probably helped with your schooling.”

  Jared didn’t answer, but she could tell by his eyes that she was right.

  “The question is,” Alix said, “why would my mother forbid you to touch me?” As a truly shocking thought came to her, her eyes widened. “It’s true! You and my mother were lovers.” Her voice was full of horror.

  “No. Never,” Jared said and smiled. “But when I was seventeen and your mother kept wandering around in the garden in a red bikini I did visit Aunt Addy more often than usual.”

  Alix narrowed her eyes at him.

  He lost the smile. “I can assure you that Victoria and I never came even close to anything other than friendship.”

  She looked away from him. “What does my mother have to do with the will?”

  “Nothing that I know of,” Jared said honestly. “She was as shocked by it as I was.”

  Alix thought for a moment. “I want to be clear on all of this, since I think you’re right that I’ve been lied to for most of my life. Is it true that you like me for something besides helping you draw plans?”