True Love

by Jude Deveraux

Ken smiled at Jared’s shock. “Don’t bother trying to cover it up. I used to practically live with you, remember? You were always arguing with an unseen person. I figured you were either crazy or talking to a ghost. Of course I meant the last as a joke.”

  “So you decided I was insane?”

  “More or less.”

  Jared refused to look at his grandfather—who, no doubt, knew that Ken was aware of the Kingsley Family Secret—or one of them, anyway.

  “Besides,” Ken said, “I found out that if Addy drank enough rum she’d tell me anything.”

  “But she didn’t know I could …” Jared couldn’t bring himself to say the truth out loud. Secrecy had been preached to him by every male in his family since he could understand words.

  “No, she didn’t tell me about you, but she did tell me about my daughter and your ghostly ancestor. I assume Alix’s ability to see the … the man is what this year is about.”

  “I think so,” Jared said. He wasn’t quite able to control his discomfort in talking of this matter.

  “Has she …? Has my daughter …?”

  “Seen him? Not yet,” Jared said.

  Ken frowned. “I worry about that. In fact, it’s the real reason I came here—and I plan to stay until it …” He looked at Jared. “Until he shows up. I don’t know how my daughter will react to seeing a ghost.”

  Jared didn’t know either. If he were alone he’d demand an answer from his grandfather, but Ken’s presence made that impossible. “I’ll be here,” Jared said. “Alix won’t be alone, and I don’t think she’s going to be too upset.” He thought it was better not to mention all the things his grandfather had already done to ease Alix into actually seeing him. Pictures falling, cheek kisses. Caleb had never stopped.

  Jared wanted to change the subject. “How is the beautiful Victoria?”

  Ken understood that Jared wasn’t going to say any more about the ghost that, supposedly, Alix could see. Or could when she was a child. “Victoria is telling her editor that her next book is half done.”

  Jared groaned. “When she gets here, she’s going to want to take this house apart looking for Aunt Addy’s journals.”

  “What do you want to bet that she’s going to try to get Alix to leave the island so she can search in peace?”

  “Under no circumstances is Victoria going to stay in my house alone,” Jared said. “For all I know, Aunt Addy may have hidden them under some hand-carved molding.”

  “Victoria would tear out the wallpaper to get to those journals.” The men, both architects, both lovers of old houses, looked at each other in mutual horror. Some of the wallpaper had been made specifically for Kingsley House, hand-painted in France in the early nineteenth century. It was one of a kind. Irreplaceable.

  “Which is yet another reason why I plan to stay here.” Ken looked at Jared. “Is it possible that you could ask your … uh, ancestor where the journals are hidden?”

  Again, it took all Jared’s strength not to glance at his grandfather sitting just to the left of Ken. It was one thing to speak of a ghost in a general sense, but quite another to be told one was sitting just a few feet away. Jared and his father had talked openly about Caleb, and when Jared was a teenager there were many times when he’d also wanted to confide in Ken. “My grandfather”—Jared said the name pointedly—“knows, but it’s his sense of humor not to tell. He probably believes that if the journals are found, no one will look for Valentina.”

  Jared watched Ken struggle to not show his discomfort at this outright mention of a man who had died long ago. Maybe he’d thought Jared would deny the contact—and maybe he should have.

  “Oh, right,” Ken said, then cleared his throat. “The missing Valentina. I read about her in the will.”

  “The one Victoria so very carefully didn’t let Alix see?”

  Ken smiled. “And we keep coming full circle, back to my daughter.” He paused. “I think I was a little rough on you when I called.”

  “I deserved worse. She’s …”

  “Go on,” Ken said. “What were you going to say about her?”

  “That she’s not like I thought she would be. I’d heard so much about her from you and Victoria over the years that I thought she’d be a spoiled brat. She had two parents who competed for her attention. To my eyes, she had everything. A real princess.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I think I was jealous.”

  “There’s no need to be. We didn’t mean to, but I see now that her mother and I tried to split Alix in half. Victoria wanted her to write, and I …” He shrugged.

  “Wanted her to follow you,” Jared said. “Alix told me that she hadn’t inherited her mother’s talent, that she could write but couldn’t plot. I couldn’t tell her that she had exactly inherited Victoria’s talent. And yours.”

  “Alix is better than I ever was.” Ken’s voice was full of pride. “She has her mother’s ambition and my— No, I’m not going to take anything from her. Alix has her own talent. She is unique.”

  “When she speaks of you she goes into a rapture.”

  Ken smiled. “That’s an odd choice of word.”

  Jared took his time before speaking. “Will she …? Do you think she’ll forgive me?”

  “You mean when she finds out that you haven’t told her about my part in your life?” Ken asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it important that she does forgive you?”

  Jared answered immediately and there was passion in his tone. “Yes, it is.” He looked Ken in the eyes. “It is very important to me.”

  Ken didn’t try to hide his pleasure at the words. Alix and Jared were the two people he loved most in the world, and right now he was very glad that they hadn’t grown up together. Chalk one up for Victoria, he thought. She’d always said that it would be a mistake to let the two of them spend a lot of time together when they were growing up.

  “He’ll never see her as anything but a kid,” Victoria had said.

  At the time, Ken thought it had been just another of Victoria’s excuses for getting what she wanted, but it looked like he was wrong.

  Ken smiled at Jared. “It’s me Alix will be angry at, but I’m not too worried. She’s forgiven Victoria for a thousand things.”

  “But not you?”

  “She’s never needed to forgive me for anything.” Ken’s smile and his lack of worry made Jared relax. “Until now.”

  Jared laughed.

  When Alix got downstairs, she tried to calm her jangled nerves as she walked into the big back parlor, tried to prepare herself for the coming argument. This is ridiculous! she thought. I’m twenty-six years old and I have a right to…

  The room was empty and she didn’t know if she was glad or disappointed. The problem wasn’t that she had a boyfriend, it was a matter of who he was. Jared Montgomery’s designs were shown by her father in his classroom. And a quarter of his students, especially the females, had turned in papers about Montgomery’s work. More than once Alix had heard her father complaining about what they wrote. “Why they feel compelled to include whole pages about Montgomery’s sex life is beyond me. Listen to this!” He’d then read aloud something about how the man had been seen with half a dozen females in the last year.

  How was Alix going to counteract that? How would she be able to make her father believe that Jared had changed?

  And for that matter, what made Alix so sure that he had changed? Just because she’d made some statement about not wanting to be hurt didn’t mean that the two of them had a future together.

  For a moment she thought of running back upstairs and hiding. Maybe she’d send her dad an email.

  “Coward!” she said and started walking again.

  When she got toward the front of the house, she heard two male voices. Had someone come to visit and her father was entertaining him? But as she got closer she recognized the voices—Jared and her father.

  Oh, no! she thought. This is a disaster. Please, please don’t let Jared tell my father
the truth. Alix needed to talk to him first.

  The sound of laughter made her stop just outside the door and listen.

  “It’s good to hear that Dilys is well,” her father was saying. “Think I can persuade her to have me out to dinner?”

  “I think she’ll be hurt if you don’t go. She’ll make those scallops you like so much,” Jared answered. “And Lexie always wants to see you.”

  “Oh, no,” Ken said. “Lexie is going to bawl me out for not telling Alix everything.”

  “Get in line!” Jared said. “I try to go over there only when I’m sure Toby is home.”

  “And how is that beautiful girl?”

  “The same. Her dad bought her a big fridge for her flowers.”

  “Barrett! I haven’t seen him in over a year. In college, we were such close friends. Is he still playing tennis?”

  “Last I heard, he was. Great Harbor.” He was referring to the yachting club that cost over three hundred grand to join.

  “How’s Wes? He and Daris get married yet?”

  “He tried to take Alix out,” Jared said.

  Ken snorted in derision. “I guess you took care of that.”

  “I certainly did.” There was laughter in Jared’s voice. “I got Daris to show up half naked. Wes couldn’t resist her and besides, she was ready to forgive him.”

  “Ever find out what he did to her?”

  “Not a word of it.”

  “Poor guy. How can he know what not to do again if he doesn’t know what he did wrong in the first place?”

  “It’ll be good for him. Daris will keep him on his toes.” Suddenly, Jared looked to Ken’s left and his face seemed to drain of color. “Oh, no,” he whispered, then put down his mug.

  “What is it?” Ken asked, alarmed.

  “Granddad said Alix overheard us. She went back upstairs.” Jared crossed the room in three strides and left.

  Ken leaned back in his chair. He didn’t like that his daughter had just had a bombshell dropped on her, but he hated that Jared had just talked to a ghost.

  All Alix could think of as she ran up the stairs was that Jared and her father had known each other for years—which meant that her father had spent a lot of time on Nantucket. But he’d never told her. Alix would not have believed that her father would keep a secret like that from her. Her mother, yes, but not her dad. They had a special bond. Or she’d thought they did.

  She shut the bedroom door, leaned against it, and thought, Now what do I do? Try to act as though this information doesn’t hurt?

  Turning, she tried to lock the door but the key for the old door plate wasn’t there. “It’s Nantucket!” she said aloud, momentarily annoyed that nothing ever seemed to be locked.

  She moved a chair under the knob, then, in anger, started stripping the bed of sheets. What else was being kept a secret from her? she wondered. Her mother and now her father. Everyone had been lying to her for what looked to be her entire life. But then hadn’t Jared said that? Secrets kept all her life, is what he’d said. Alix threw the sheets on the floor and looked up at Captain Caleb’s portrait. “Do you have thousands of secrets too? Like all the Kingsleys do? And don’t answer that or I’ll drag your picture up to the attic and nail boards over your chamber pot staircase.”

  “Alix?” came Jared’s voice through the door. “Could we talk? Please?”

  “Go away,” she said.

  “I never lied to you. I told you there were secrets being kept from you. Please open the door and let me explain. I didn’t want to hide anything from you, but I’d made promises. Please let me in so we can talk.”

  She started to tell him to leave, but she knew he was telling the truth. She moved the chair away and he opened the door, closing it behind him, but he didn’t come inside any farther. It did help that he looked deeply worried.

  “You let me guess that everything had to do with my mother,” she said. “But then I didn’t think my father would … would …”

  “Betray you?” Jared asked. “Would it help if I told you that it was all your mother’s doing? She made Ken swear to say nothing to you about Nantucket.”

  “But why?”

  “She—” He broke off. He had no right to tell about the journals that were the basis for all Victoria’s novels.

  “Are you trying to decide how much to lie to me?”

  “I’m not going to lie, but some secrets are not mine to reveal.” He took a step closer to her. “I’m sorry that I can’t sit down with you and tell everything that I know, but I owe all that I am, all that I have, to your parents. If it weren’t for your father I’d probably be in prison now—or dead. And as you so shrewdly guessed, your mother paid for the bulk of my very expensive schooling. Your dad helped with that but …”

  “Mom has the money,” Alix said.

  “Yes, she does. But I learned everything that’s made my career from your father.”

  Alix’s eyes widened. “Master builder. You said a ‘master builder’ let you design a remodel when you were just a kid. Was that my father?”

  “Yes, it was. That was right after your mother took you away from Nantucket. Ken was very depressed because his wife was divorcing him and he wasn’t going to get to live with his beloved, and may I add, his adorable, daughter.”

  “And you’d lost your father not long before that,” she said softly.

  “It had been two years but I still didn’t believe that Dad wasn’t going to walk through the door and force me to give up my evil ways.” Jared gave a tentative half smile. “Not that I would have relinquished all of them.”

  “I’m glad of that.” She paused, knowing that everything he was saying was true and actually, she liked that he’d honored the vows he’d made. But his vows weren’t hers. She was going to find out all that she could. “I just don’t understand why my mother didn’t want me to know about Nantucket.”

  “You expect me to explain Victoria to you?”

  “Are you evading my question?”

  “Completely. I’ll tell you a secret. Your dad can yell at me until his face turns purple, and an hour later I’m fine. But Victoria … She can make me feel like a worm.”

  “Really? It’s the opposite for me.” She looked at him. “This whole thing is very strange. To think that you know both my parents so well … It’s difficult for me to comprehend.”

  “They were like second parents to me. Well, actually, your dad was like a father to me, but Victoria doesn’t seem like anybody’s mother.”

  “She does to me,” Alix said, then her head came up. “You don’t think this makes you and me brother and sister, does it?”

  At her ability to make a joke, Jared looked greatly relieved and pulled her into his arms, her face buried against his chest. Alix could hardly breathe, but she didn’t mind.

  “I would have been a horrible older brother,” he said.

  “Ha! You were wonderful with the Legos.”

  “Come on,” Jared said. “Let’s go downstairs and talk to your father. He’ll want to go out to get some seafood for lunch.”

  “Did you teach him how to clean fish?”

  “I did,” Jared said. “When he first got here, he didn’t know top from tail.” He had his arm firmly around Alix, as though he was afraid to let her get even inches away from him.

  Alix halted at the top of the stairs and looked up at him. “How many more huge, enormous secrets are you keeping from me?”

  “Two,” he said.

  “And they are …?”

  Jared gave a groan of pain. “If I promise to go with you to get whatever Izzy needs for her wedding, will that make you pre-forgive me for not telling you now?”

  Alix thought about that for a moment. “Are you saying that you will go with me to pick out flowers?”

  “Sure. Toby can—”

  “No, you and I will go to a florist together. You’ll have to look at photos of flower arrangements that I can send to Izzy.”

  Jared winced but he nodded.<
br />
  “And you’ll help me choose the cake to show Izzy?” she asked.

  “You mean one of those tall things?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’ll have tiers.”

  “Tears?” He ran his fingertip down from his eye.

  She gave him a look.

  “Okay. Wait! How about making a cake that looks like a Gaudi building? Or I could design something—”

  “No buildings in sugar,” Alix said. “Izzy is very traditional. She’ll probably want pink and lavender roses.”

  With a look of horror, he grabbed the newel post for support. “What else?”

  “Tent, food, a band. A dress for me.”

  “I see a ghost,” Jared blurted out as he broke under the pressure.

  “Who wouldn’t, living in this house?” Alix said as she started down the stairs, then looked back up at him. “Come on, it won’t be that bad.”

  “I’d rather swim in a pool of sharks,” Jared mumbled as he followed her down the stairs.

  “Good idea,” she said. “Hey! Maybe we can get some reproduction lightship baskets and fill them with flowers.”

  “Reproduction?” Jared whispered, the word catching in his throat as though it were poison. “You’re going too far.”

  Laughing, Alix slipped her arm in his. “Where can I get shoes suitable to wear to a wedding? You like kitten heels?”

  Jared looked like he might start to cry.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Three weeks, Ken thought. He’d been on Nantucket for three whole weeks and he didn’t think he’d ever been happier in his life.

  At first he’d stayed in the guest bedroom of the big house. Not Victoria’s Palace of Green but in the one across from Addy’s, now Alix’s, bedroom. Over the years, he’d often stayed there. He liked being near Addy in case she needed him during the night. Smiling, he thought of the many times he’d heard her voice when she was alone in her room. He’d thought she’d been talking in her sleep, but one night over their rum drinks—she could easily drink Ken under the table—she mentioned Alix and Caleb. He knew she was talking about his daughter, but who was Caleb? Another Kingsley relative he’d yet to meet?