Alaskan Sweethearts (16 page)

“That doesn’t look right,” he said as he looked up at her. “Are you sure it’s the right one?”

“Of course, I’ve had it around my neck ever since I left this house last Friday,” Scarlett protested. “Besides, I know it’s Grandma’s ring. The setting is tarnished just a bit right on the left side.”

She’d grown up with that ring. It had been their security in hard times. If things ever got too tight for them to make it financially, they all knew Grandmother would sell the piece of jewelry and everything would be fine again.

“May I?” Jimmy asked as he reached for the ring.

Scarlett slipped the chain off her neck and gave the whole thing to him.

The policeman studied it for a minute. “We need to have this checked. I don’t think it’s a real diamond.”

“What?” Scarlett asked in shock. “Why would you say that?”

“I took a class in jewelry and thefts,” Jimmy said. “It just doesn’t look right.”

“But that’s the ring. I know it is.” Scarlett looked at her grandmother, expecting the other woman to echo her statement. No one knew the ring and its story as well she did. Scarlett and her sisters used to gather around her grandmother as girls and listen to the story of how her grandfather had proposed, using that very ring. It was five carats and had taken her grandmother’s breath away. It was the most romantic story Scarlett had ever heard.

A minute passed before Scarlett felt something inside her waver. Her grandmother was looking down at the floor.

“Gram?” Scarlett asked softly.

“I’m so sorry,” her grandmother said then, her voice cracking as she tried to hold back tears. “I never meant to tell any lies, but—”

“What happened?” Scarlett’s mind was numb. Had her grandmother sold the ring at one time and replaced it with a fake?

“I should have told you girls, but I couldn’t face it,” the older woman said as she looked at Scarlett. “I was so foolish when I was young. Your grandfather gave me that ring and told me how valuable it was. I believed him. It wasn’t until later, after he died, when I was going to sell it that winter your father left us. Times were so hard and you girls were all sickly, especially little Carly. But I took it to a jeweler and found out it wasn’t real. Never had been. The money they offered me for it wasn’t enough to help at all so I didn’t take it.”

“But...” Scarlett protested and then let her words trail off.

One of the securities of her youth was crumbling. She had trusted in her grandmother, God and that ring when she was small. And, sometimes, the ring seemed the strongest of the three. In her mind, it was what had been standing between her family and poverty all those years. She always felt they had hope as long as they had that ring.

Scarlett heard a gasp and turned to see the elder Jacobson clutch his grandson’s arm to steady himself.

“You mean—” the old man whispered. “I left Nome and didn’t propose because of that ring.”

Hunter’s grandfather looked at her grandmother, his expression stricken. “I thought I couldn’t compete with Murphy because he had that ring. I thought you’d be better off with him—that he must be overflowing with money if he could buy that ring. I thought you’d have a life of ease I could never give you. I thought I was sacrificing my happiness for you.”

Everyone was silent.

Scarlett heard the sound of footsteps as Bobby Sharpe approached the front door. The refrigerator hummed, a little unevenly, in the kitchen.

“You should have asked me anyway,” Scarlett’s grandmother said finally, her eyes drawn to the older man. “I would have said yes. I loved both of you, but you were—”

Scarlett had never seen her grandmother like this. Agitated and relieved all at the same time, as though she’d finally spoken something she’d kept secret for too long.

“You were my true love,” her grandmother added.

The tension in the room was broken by the sound of the door opening.

“I called in the break-in,” Bobby announced. “We’ll want to gather any evidence we can and take it back to the station.”

“Yes,” Jimmy said as if the spell of her grandmother’s story had been broken. He gave the chain back to Scarlett and nodded to her grandmother. “I’m sorry I pried. It was none of my business.”

Her grandmother smiled at him. “It’s your job and you’re good at it. Don’t apologize for that. Besides, it’s time I told the girls.”

Scarlett felt as though her life was shifting under her. For some reason, she took a step closer to Hunter. He looked as stunned as she did and that gave her some comfort.

“I guess we never know the truth about all the things we believe as children,” she murmured softly enough that only he could hear her. He nodded. “It makes me realize how we let things that are not important—or even true—determine our lives.”

She looked at him then. The house was dim and his eyes were dark. She could still feel their intensity, though, as he gazed at her. There was a kindness in them that she hadn’t noticed before, as though he wanted her to know that he understood she’d had a shock.

Scarlett glanced away first. The story of the wicked partner and the irresistible diamond ring had been embedded into her mind as a girl. She thought she’d known the truth. Instead the star-crossed lovers had let a fake ring stand between them decades ago and, looking at them now, it was apparent that they still didn’t trust each other. Without that trust, the ring was only incidental. If it hadn’t been Murphy’s romantic proposal, it would have been something else that stood between them. Scarlett wondered if, more than the ring, the lack of trust hadn’t been her legacy.

Hunter took a step closer and she could feel the heat from his body. But she was not ready to trust another man again. So she took a step back. Maybe later, she told herself. She had to sort everything out before she made any moves she would regret.

Chapter Eight

H
unter felt Scarlett withdraw from him, but he wasn’t sure if that was because of him or the shock of discovering her grandmother’s ring was fake. Either way, now was not the time to talk with her about it.

“Are you going to be looking for fingerprints?” Hunter asked the officer to divert everyone’s attention.

“Why?”

“I thought I could at least put the books back on the shelves,” Hunter said. “Everyone is going to be on edge around here as long as the evidence of what happened is so clear. But I didn’t want to get in your way. Not if you plan to collect any evidence.”

The officer nodded. “We wouldn’t be able to get much of a fingerprint off the books anyway, so I guess it would be okay to put them back. Just let me know if you find anything unusual left behind.”

The policeman’s hesitations about Hunter and his grandfather had obviously lessened.

“You think they left something?” Scarlett’s grandmother turned from his grandfather and looked at the policeman in alarm. “A bomb or something?”

Hunter could see the thought hadn’t occurred to Jimmy until then.

“People who ransack houses don’t generally leave bombs,” the officer said quickly as he turned to Hunter. “I was thinking more along the lines of a candy wrapper or something. But you don’t need to put the books back. Bobby and I can do it. Keep it all official, you know. Just for the record in case anyone ever asks.”

Hunter nodded. “I’ll sweep up the spilled dirt in the kitchen then. They wouldn’t hide anything in the plants they turned over.”

The officer nodded his approval. “That would be helpful.”

Hunter needed to be doing something. He always worked out problems best when his hands were busy.

“I’ll show you where the broom is,” Scarlett offered as Hunter took a step toward the kitchen.

“Bobby and I are going to go around and check all the windows to be sure they didn’t enter that way,” the officer said as he stepped closer to the bookshelves.

“If it’s all right—” Hunter’s grandfather had walked over and stood with his hand on Joey’s shoulder “—the boy wants me to go to his room with him to make sure everything is okay in there.”

The question was addressed to her grandmother, but Hunter saw Scarlett frown.

“We packed his things in a hurry before we left,” Scarlett said. “There will be some disorder.”

“Joey will know what’s what,” the older man said. “That won’t bother us.”

Scarlett’s grandmother added, “We appreciate your care for him.”

The police officer nodded. “Just don’t touch the windowsills or anything that’s glass. A fingerprint would help us know who we’re dealing with.”

“I guess I’ll go put some tea on then,” Scarlett’s grandmother said.

Hunter watched his grandfather stop and turn around. “I remember your tea. Summer or winter, it didn’t make any difference. You always made tea when you were upset.”

There was a gentleness in his voice that hung in the air waiting to be acknowledged.

“It’s good for you,” the older woman finally said. Her cheeks were pink. “Steadies your nerves.”

“I remember you used to put honey in it,” he replied with a smile. “Everything was sweet.”

The woman blushed even deeper and Hunter decided his grandfather was renewing his courtship rather successfully. He didn’t say anything, though. He just followed Scarlett and her grandmother into the kitchen.

“We’ll need a dustpan, too,” Hunter mentioned when all three of them were in the small kitchen.

“Careful of my geraniums,” the older woman said as she stepped over to the stove. She picked up a teakettle and walked with it over to the sink.

“I’ll take care,” Hunter assured her.

He and Scarlett worked together, her picking up the plants and him sweeping up the dirt left behind on the floor.

“We don’t have any state-of-the-art dishwasher here,” Scarlett said after they’d worked for a few minutes. “Not like you have on your ranch.”

“I didn’t think you were listening when my grandfather mentioned the selling points to marrying me,” Hunter said wryly.

“Oh, I was listening all right,” she said with a twist to her lips that left him wondering whether she thought the appliance had been a sufficient enticement or just an amusement. “But I’m planning to teach Joey how to wash dishes the old-fashioned way. I think it builds character.”

Hunter realized she was teasing him. Not many people had ever done that.

“Some people say I already have character enough,” he replied with a smile.

The whistle on the teakettle blew then, bringing on a flurry of activity from Scarlett and her grandmother. Everything would wait until after a cup of hot tea. Hunter liked the way the women worked together. Such harmony was hard to find in his family, but he had hope it would come someday.

Teasing gave him hope it might.

Bless them, Father,
he prayed as he watched the two women’s heads bend over the box of tea as they selected the bags they wanted. He realized that the all-male Jacobson family was missing a gentleness that came from women. For the first time since his grandfather had told him about this scheme of his, Hunter thought it had some merit apart from the justice of it. Maybe it wasn’t so much about righting the past as it was about making the present better.

After tea, the rest of the day was spent putting the house to rights. The house was too small for any privacy, but Hunter noticed a lightness in Scarlett’s reactions to him. She wasn’t holding herself defensively as often, as if she expected him to hurt her or to betray her somehow. The grandparents were still wary of each other, but Hunter thought maybe that was because their wound had been old and was opened and exposed to the air for the first time in decades.

Everyone headed to bed early that evening. Scarlett had invited Hunter and his grandfather to stay with them. The sofa in the living room pulled out to make a bed and enough floor space remained for an air mattress that Scarlett had in her camping supplies. Hunter was giving his grandfather the sofa bed and he was taking the floor.

The old man was reading a bedtime story to Joey and they were in the boy’s room. It was not fully dark outside even though it was nine o’clock that night.

“Here are some extra blankets,” Scarlett said as she came into the living room where Hunter was making up the beds. “You can use them for more padding if you don’t want them for warmth.”

Hunter looked up. Scarlett had her hair pulled into a ponytail and it made her look like a teenager. “Thanks. We’ll be fine—don’t short yourself.”

He liked seeing this new side to her. She’d grown more playful as the day had worn on.

Scarlett set the blankets on the side chair and studied the windows once again. Earlier she had pulled all of the shades down and made sure there were no cracks where someone from outside could see inside.

“They won’t try anything with me and my grandfather here,” Hunter assured her. “We’ve got the front door covered from here and I’m positioning the air mattress so I can see the back door off the kitchen.”

“Thank you,” Scarlett said as she sat in one of the straight-backed chairs around the table. “I know we’ll all sleep better with you and your grandfather here. Especially Joey.”

Hunter nodded as he walked over and sat at the table, too. “Have you said anything to the principal at the school about those boys? They are probably terrorizing other kids, too.”

Scarlett sat in silence. They could hear soft laughter coming from Joey’s room and a muted television playing in the other bedroom. Hunter could tell she was tired.

“I don’t know what to do,” Scarlett finally admitted. “It might be something to do with the school, but it might just be related to Victor...”

She hesitated and Hunter wondered if she would continue.

“My husband used to deal drugs,” she finally said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper. “I was totally taken in by him. I didn’t know and by the time I found out it was too late to do anything. The police didn’t have any solid evidence, but I think the boys might have some connection to my husband that way. We received a letter saying Victor had stolen forty thousand dollars from the people he was working with—that’s the one where they threatened to kidnap Joey.”

Hunter hadn’t heard about that, but it explained some of her son’s anxiety.

“Would those teenagers come here looking for that money?” Hunter asked. “Maybe they’re working against Victor. Money like that would be more than enough temptation for them. We need to tell the police.”

“Jimmy knows about the letter,” Scarlett said. “Since he found some fingerprints on the outside windows, he can run them and find out if they do belong to any of those boys. But it doesn’t make any sense that they would do that to the house and then ten minutes later be laughing and talking with Victor on Front Street. I don’t think those kids have those kinds of acting skills.”

Hunter thought a moment. The brief impression he’d had of the boys when he’d seen them on the street was that they were immature for their age. “No, that doesn’t seem likely. I’m not even sure they’d be smart enough to pretend they hadn’t done it. They’re more likely to brag about it in some local bar.”

“They seem more confrontational to me, too,” Scarlett agreed. “And Victor might not care if they broke into here, but if they were looking for something of his, he would not be pleased.”

“I expect not,” Hunter said, keeping his voice as mild as possible.

Scarlett sat there thinking for a minute, looking down at the table.

Finally she looked up at him, a pained expression on her face. “You’re probably wondering how I could have married someone like Victor—”

Hunter shrugged. “We all make mistakes.”

He just hoped she thought it was a mistake.

Scarlett gave him a stiff, pinched smile. “Some of us make bigger ones than others do, though. I think that’s why I fret so much about my sister and her fiancé. I thought I knew Victor when he asked me to marry him. But I clearly didn’t know him at all.”

Hunter nodded sympathetically this time.

“I wonder if my whole family has been blinded by that diamond ring,” Scarlett said as she continued to look at him. “We are all easily fooled by men who make big romantic gestures. I know with Victor it was when he borrowed a friend’s dogsled and took me out into the tundra for an ice picnic under the northern lights. He had a small tent for us to eat in and a propane heater. The top of the tent opened up to the night sky and we could see everything. He’d brought steaks to grill and gave me fresh red roses that had been flown in that day. He put it all together so quick and I felt like a princess for the first time in my life. It just seemed more heartfelt than if he’d planned it for a long time. Like it was his heart speaking to mine just for that moment. He took my breath away.”

Hunter felt a jolt of jealousy go through him, but he tried not to react. The dreamy look on her face didn’t last long, though.

“I assumed he was sincere because he did something spontaneous like that—something like what my grandfather had done when he used all his money to buy an engagement ring,” Scarlett finished up. “My grandmother thought he’d put everything on the line for her.”

“Not all men are given to dramatic spontaneous gestures.” Hunter certainly had never done anything like that. He always needed to stop and think first. And then the moment was gone. He knew it wasn’t so much that he wasn’t brave, as in facing the fire in that accident as a boy, it was more that he wasn’t always able to move fast enough to make a difference.

“Of course, as it turns out, my grandfather didn’t risk anything in buying that ring,” Scarlett said in a quiet voice. “It was all just smoke and mirrors. He might have bought it for a few dollars. And, Victor...well, he was impulsive, but that didn’t mean he had much substance.”

They were both silent for a moment, sitting there as the day grew darker.

Finally, Hunter’s grandfather stepped into the room, coming from the front bedroom.

“Joey wants the two of you to go kiss him good night,” the old man announced, a pleased sound in his voice. He had a faded robe over his flannel pajamas and slippers on his feet.

“The two of us?” Hunter questioned. He wouldn’t put it past his grandfather to have prompted Joey to make that wish as a way to throw him and Scarlett together in a sentimental moment.

“That’s what the boy said,” the older man replied gruffly as he walked over to the sofa bed he was claiming for the night. “I wouldn’t make it up.”

“You go ahead,” Hunter said to Scarlett. “Tell Joey I’ll see him in the morning.”

The smile on Scarlett’s face dimmed. He didn’t want to force her to be more involved with him than she was ready to be, though. They both knew that Joey liked him and he liked the boy. But that wasn’t part of what needed to happen between him and Scarlett if they were to have a future together.

His breath almost caught on the thought. He hadn’t made any decision, but it felt natural for him to want to bond with her. He hoped that, in time, she would trust him enough to want the same.

“Don’t be like me,” his grandfather said from where he sat on the sofa bed.

A small lamp beside the sofa shone like a spotlight around his grandfather. The old man’s tousled white hair sparkled, but his eyes were shadows still.

“What do you mean?” Hunter asked.

“I let the best woman I ever knew get away from me because I was too proud to ask her if she’d have me.”

“It’s not the same,” Hunter protested. “Your Maggie was yours first and you just didn’t pay enough attention to know it. Scarlett is still trying to decide if she trusts me. I can see it in her—the hesitation.”

“You think everything is so cut and dried,” his grandfather said with a shake of his head. “Folks don’t always know when they’re in love. Some folks, it hits them over the head like a two-by-four. Others it’s a slow-growing thing that needs encouragement. Like a wildflower growing on that tundra out there.”

“Well, I’m not much for being hit by a two-by-four,” Hunter said. No wonder the old man was so heavy-handed in his matchmaking efforts. “But I do want to be encouraging. Maybe I’ll buy Scarlett a present.”