True Love

by Jude Deveraux

  Victoria wanted to know if Jared was temporarily using her daughter or was serious about her. As for Alix, was she starstruck or could she see past Jared’s fame in the architecture world?

  A little after noon, Victoria heard the back door open and her heart soared. They were here! She took a step forward, but then her cell rang. There was only one person whose call she’d take even if it meant postponing seeing her daughter and that was her editor. The ID said it was.

  “I have to take this,” Victoria called out and headed up the stairs. She needed quiet to be able to formulate her lies to her editor. She wasn’t about to tell the truth, that she hadn’t even started her overdue novel. At least this time she could say she was “almost” finished and it wouldn’t be a total lie. After she’d spent a month reading Valentina’s journal and writing the detailed outline, she would be on her way to turning in a finished product. “Almost” was a relative term.

  Victoria spent twenty minutes exaggerating everything to her editor—not quite lying, but not honest either. She used words like “complicated” and “best I’ve ever written” and “dealing with deep emotions in this book.” They were phrases editors loved to hear.

  When she got off the phone, her first impulse was to run to tell Addy about it. She would have laughed hysterically.

  A tear came to Victoria’s eye, but she wiped it away. She couldn’t tell Addy, but she did have her dear daughter. Alix had always loved her mother’s stories.

  Smiling, Victoria went down the stairs to the dining room, preparing to make a grand entrance. But they weren’t sitting at the table. Alix’s cardigan was folded across the back of a chair and Victoria picked it up as she went toward the front of the house.

  She found Jared and Alix sitting side by side on the little couch, leaning toward each other, just their fingertips touching. Victoria was about to announce her presence, but didn’t. Instead, she stood and watched in shock.

  Since Alix had been on Nantucket they’d talked on the phone often, and her daughter had riddled her conversation with what Jared said and did. Victoria had known that Alix was beginning her first real love and she’d been glad of it.

  But Victoria was not prepared for this. Alix and Jared were looking at each other as though only they existed. There were no other people in the world, just the two of them.

  Victoria stepped back out of the doorway, leaned against the wall, and closed her eyes. It was the way she’d always wanted a man to look at her. There’d been hundreds of men through her life as she’d attracted them, but she’d always held back. They looked at her as a prize to be won, something to conquer. And if she let them get too near, they ran away. Victoria wasn’t at all helpless, as they’d assumed.

  She peered around the doorway. They were kissing now. Sweetly and gently, smiling, utterly content to be together, needing no one else. Certainly not a mother who wanted to tell them about some novel she was trying to write.

  Victoria was still holding Alix’s sweater and she buried her face in it. She had lost her daughter! As completely and totally as though Alix had flown away to another planet, she was gone.

  Victoria knew she had to calm herself before she appeared. Quietly, she went back up the stairs, but she didn’t go to her own room. She went to Alix’s bedroom—what had once been Addy’s. That one of Jared’s shirts was on a chair seemed to drive a nail into Victoria’s heart.

  She put Alix’s sweater on the foot of the bed. I can stand this, she thought, but then she looked at the big portrait of Captain Caleb and went to sit on that side of the bed. Was the man’s ghost really in the house or was it something Addy had made up?

  “Now what do I do?” Victoria whispered as she looked at the portrait and more tears came to her eyes. “Do I help them? Do I make it easier for them to leave me?” She took a tissue out of the box on the bedside table and blew her nose.

  “Ken just met this woman Jilly but already her eyes light up when she sees him. And he was ready to do battle to protect her. Alix and Jared … those two look like they’ve merged into one being. My daughter …” The tears came stronger. “My beautiful, precious daughter is leaving me. How do I live without her? She keeps me sane; she is always there. She is …” Victoria swallowed.

  “She is his.”

  She looked at the portrait. “What do I do? I need some advice. Do I go back to my big empty house and learn how to bake cookies in hope that I’ll get a grandchild soon? Do I …?” She took a breath. “Do I now get old? Is that what’s left for me? To sit on a porch and grow old alone? Where is my True Love?” She was crying hard.

  Suddenly, Victoria was overwhelmed with sleepiness, and it was as though someone was gently pushing her down on the bed. The bed was so very comfortable and the instant her head touched the pillow, she fell asleep.

  When she awoke, it was an hour later and she was smiling. She knew what she had to do. It was almost as though someone had instructed her while she was sleeping. It was a man’s voice and it sounded very familiar. “You have to help them,” the voice said. “Now is not the time to think of yourself. Love can’t be selfish; it can’t be one-sided. This is Alix’s time and Jared’s, and you’re going to give it to them.”

  Smiling, she got up and went to the bedroom door, but then she turned back and looked at the portrait of Captain Caleb. “If you want to show yourself to me, please do. I may not be your Valentina, but I could use some of what you gave to her.”

  She left the room, closing the door behind her. She had a plan, and the very first thing she was going to do was call Izzy. Everything depended on being able to persuade her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jared had never been so frustrated in his life. He was frustrated mentally, physically, psychologically—any way it could be thought of, he was feeling it.

  He’d always liked Victoria. Well, maybe not that first summer, but back then he’d hated nearly everyone. Since then he’d enjoyed her visits. But right now he wanted to wring her neck.

  In the nearly two weeks since Victoria arrived, Jared had hardly seen Alix. They’d gone from living together extremely comfortably to not being together at all. In the past this wouldn’t have bothered him; he would have just gone fishing. But he’d found that working, babysitting, socializing, everything he did had been easier and certainly more pleasant with Alix around.

  Yesterday his business partner, Tim, had called and said that he’d had enough of Jared’s absence and he needed him to get back to New York. “Everybody in the office likes me so much they’re standing around the watercooler and chatting. Sharing. Making playdates with one another. Since you left, two office romances have started and I can hardly wait for everyone to take sides when they break up.”

  “Tell them to go back to work,” Jared said, but there was no real interest or conviction in his voice.

  “I tell them, but they pat me on the shoulder and show me their kids’ photos. And Stanley! Without you here, he doesn’t have enough to do. Last week he sent out a memo saying that from now on all files were to be color coded.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Jared said.

  “You think not? Stanley has twenty-one categories and twenty-one colors. What the hell color is cerise? Jared! You have to return and put this place back in order. I’m the money guy, remember? You’re the tyrant.”

  Jared snorted. “If I’m a tyrant, how come I’m being run over by a little woman in high heels?”

  “Do you mean Alix?”

  “Hell, no! I never even see Alix. It’s her mother who’s driving me insane.”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “I know about girls’ mothers. Before I got married my mother-in-law was a monster. Now she’s … Actually, she’s still a snake. I bought a book about a tribe that doesn’t allow the wife’s mother to speak to her daughter’s husband. Want me to send you a copy?”

  “No, thanks,” Jared said. “After Izzy’s wedding, I’ll return. It’s less than a week away now.”

  “Are you planning t
o bring your new girl back here with you?”

  “Alix is not just my ‘new girl,’ ” Jared half shouted. “She’s more than that.”

  “Don’t take my head off! Save it for the kids around the watercooler. Maybe I should start handing out balloons when they do their work correctly. Think that will inspire them?”

  “I get your point. The wedding is this Saturday. I’ll be in the office on Monday.”

  “Is that a pinky promise?”

  “Go count your coins,” Jared growled and clicked off.

  After that call Jared felt worse—which he wouldn’t have thought possible. At first he’d been amused by what Victoria was doing. Ken had arrived at the chapel site with Jilly and he was in a fury over what Victoria had tried to do.

  “She wanted to use Jilly as her maid! Can you imagine that?” Ken was steaming in anger.

  “And your solution was to move Jilly in with you?” Jared asked.

  “I had to protect her, didn’t I?”

  Jared had turned away to hide his smile, but the next day he was frowning. Victoria had banished him from Alix’s room. At the time it hadn’t bothered him as he thought he’d go up the secret staircase later, but he’d underestimated Victoria. She’d locked the downstairs door from the inside. It was annoying that she knew the house so well, and he wished he could let his aunt Addy know what he thought of her telling an outsider about that staircase. That Jared had shown it to Alix, and that Ken had been allowed to help repair it didn’t matter to him.

  Worse than physical locks was what Victoria had done to Alix’s mind. Victoria had made Alix become obsessed with Izzy’s wedding. Everything she’d done before had to be redone and presented to Victoria for approval.

  “Perhaps just a few more roses,” Victoria would say as she looked up over a cup of tea, then Alix would go back and do it all over again. As far as Jared could tell, Alix was having to do each task about four times.

  This morning he’d tried to talk to Alix about it all, but that hadn’t worked out well.

  “It’s just until the wedding is over,” Alix said, “then things will go back to normal.”

  “What does ‘normal’ mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked at her watch. “I have an appointment with the tent people in ten minutes. I have to go.”

  He caught her arm. “Alix, after the wedding your mother will hunker down with Valentina’s journal and she’ll probably start searching for the ones Aunt Addy wrote.” If Victoria is still alive, that is, he thought but didn’t add. That secret was gnawing at him more every day.

  “I don’t know why that’s a problem,” Alix said as she started down the stairs.

  “It’s just that you give in to your mother and obey her like you’re still four years old.”

  She stopped on the stairs and glared at him. “What exactly are you saying? That I shouldn’t give up some of my time to help my friend have a happy wedding?”

  “No, of course not. It’s just that I’m at the end of the hall and you’re not there with me.” He gave her a little smile.

  “This is about sex, isn’t it? You want me in bed with you and my friend can take care of her own wedding. Is that what you’re saying?” She took another step down but Jared extended his arm and blocked her. She stopped but didn’t look at him.

  “Alix, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that I miss you.” He leaned forward to put his lips near her ear. “I miss our talks, how we work together. I miss seeing you.”

  She turned to face him. “I miss you too, but I’m also a realist. You’re going back to work in New York soon and I’m going to stay here with Mom for the rest of my year in your house. She’s asked me to help her with her outline. She’s been having trouble with her eyes so I’m going to read Valentina’s journal aloud to her.”

  For a moment Jared couldn’t speak. “And you believed that story?!”

  “Believe that my mother has trouble with her eyes? Really, Jared, why would she lie to me about something like that?”

  “To keep us apart,” he said.

  “That makes no sense! I’m in this house because of your aunt’s will, my mother is here because she needs to earn a living, and you won’t be here because you have a business to run. How is any of that my mother who is keeping us apart?”

  “I mean now. Today, tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Alix said. “I see. You’re angry because I’m not jumping into bed with you right now. You’ll be fine when you’re in New York wearing a tux and dating your supermodels, but now, today, you want me because … well, because I’m here.”

  “That’s ridiculous! I have a week before I go to New York and I always come home. Often.”

  That statement made Alix so angry she was afraid to reply. She gave him a look up and down. “I have to go!” She hurried down the stairs.

  It took all Jared could do to keep from ramming his fist into the wall. This is why he never brought his girlfriends to Nantucket, he thought. Start being nice to them at home and—

  And what? he thought. They run off and help their friends instead of spending every minute with him? “So who’s the four-year-old?” he mumbled and plodded back up the stairs.

  Standing at the top of the staircase was his grandfather, so solid, so real, that Jared knew that if he touched him he’d feel it. The man was wearing a smirk that screamed “I told you so!”

  Jared hadn’t seen his grandfather for weeks—and he missed him almost as much as he did Alix. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Everything has been said,” Caleb answered, then walked away. He didn’t vanish in a poof, but walked. Jared was sure he heard the creak of the old floorboards, which was impossible since Caleb’s ghostly body had no weight.

  By the time Jared got to the top of the stairs, the wide hallway was empty and Victoria was just leaving her bedroom.

  “Jared, you gave me a start. Did I hear you and Alix arguing?”

  “Of course not. What would we have to fight about? What have you got planned for her to do today? Arranging dolphin rides?”

  Victoria smiled sweetly. “Why no, dear, I thought we’d have the guests go on a Nantucket sleigh ride.” She swept past him.

  A Nantucket sleigh ride was when, long ago, the sailors harpooned a whale from their rowboats, then the enormous creature would drag them across the sea in a terrifying, life-threatening rush.

  Gritting his teeth, Jared watched her until she went down the stairs. When he looked back, he saw his grandfather again, but this time he was smiling broadly. “Do not leave!” Jared ordered, but Caleb just laughed and walked away.

  Jared leaned back against the wall. This wasn’t his day!

  “Are you all right?” Victoria asked her daughter. It was evening and they were sitting in the family room. Victoria was on the couch with a stack of printed papers on her lap, a rum cocktail in her hand.

  Alix was on a cushion on the floor, her legs under the coffee table, and she was tying little green ribbons into bows. Yesterday her mother had declared that they absolutely, positively must give Izzy a baby shower on the day before the wedding. Since then, Alix had been drowning in baby things. “I’m fine,” Alix said.

  “You don’t look happy. If you don’t want to do this, I can get Lexie or Toby to help. I’m sure they’d be willing.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just …”

  “It’s Jared, isn’t it?” Victoria said.

  “Actually, it is. We had an argument this morning and I was pretty harsh. He was saying he missed me.”

  “I’m sure he does. When does he return to New York?”

  “Next week. After the wedding, I guess.” She grimaced. “But he says he’ll visit Nantucket often. I guess I’ll see him then.”

  “Alix …”

  She put up her hand. “It’s all right. I knew this was coming. I hoped it wasn’t, but … I don’t know what I expected.” She ran her hand through the box of bows. “Do you think this will be enough?”


  “More than enough.” Victoria was studying her daughter. “Why don’t you walk down to see Lexie and Toby? Maybe they’ll cheer you up. And I think Jared’s outside with his head under the hood of his truck. Maybe you could hand him tools.”

  “No, thanks,” Alix said as she got up. “Seeing him now will just make the inevitable harder. I think I’ll go upstairs and read for a while. I suddenly feel very tired.” She kissed her mother’s cheek and left the room.

  Victoria put her manuscript pages on the coffee table and sat there frowning. So far, the plan that had come to her in her sleep wasn’t happening as she’d envisioned. “Jared,” she said aloud, “you’re an idiot.”

  Outside, Jared looked up from his truck to see the light in Alix’s window. He’d calmed down from this morning enough to see that she was right. He’d promised Tim that he’d be back in the office on Monday and he planned to be there. Then after that, well, he would start working toward keeping Alix with him forever. He smiled at that idea. It would take a while and they’d have to work out some things together. For one thing, there was New York. His office and his work life were a big part of him and Alix needed to realize that.

  He glanced back up at the window and saw her shadow moving about. Who was he kidding? Alix could probably run his office better than he could. And she got along with people better than he did, so that wouldn’t be a problem.

  The truth was that he couldn’t think of any aspect of his life that Alix wouldn’t improve.

  His question was how she felt about him. She certainly hadn’t seemed upset about his going off to New York while she stayed here on the island.

  Jared picked up a wrench. Tim was going to be furious because in the coming year his business partner was going to be out of the office a lot.