True Love (27 page)

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 deteriorate 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?”

He started to protest that, but then smiled. “I think I can handle the business by myself.”

She ignored his joking tone. “You did all that with Wes because …?”

“You think I’m going to let a lech like him spend the day with my girl?”

“Your …?” She took a deep breath. “While we’re being honest, I’d like to add my own piece of truth. My father is also an architect, although he mostly teaches now, and he’s been on my case about you.”

“How so?”

“Your reputation with women isn’t good.”

“Or private,” Jared mumbled.

“You’re too public a figure to be private. You go through models and starlets and—”

“What’s your point?” Jared asked.

“There was a time when I imagined having an affair with the Great Jared Montgomery, but—”

“But what?”

“When I was dumped by Eric it hurt, but a good cry and a few pounds of chocolate healed me. Then, seeing you, the Great—”

“Don’t say it again.”

“Okay. The truth is that I don’t see you that way anymore.”

“How do you see me now?” he asked softly.

“As a human. A living, breathing man who is impatient, who manipulates conversations and information to however he wants it to be seen, and as a designer who sometimes falters in his visions.”

“Anything good in there?”

“A man who generously shares everything he has and everything he knows with others. Food, money, work, whatever is yours, you share it. I’ve seen that you’re a man who protects the people he loves, and you love hard and with all your heart.”

“An absolute saint.” His words were light but his tone wasn’t.

“Not quite,” Alix said as she looked out at the sea. “Eric I could recover from with some chocolate and a poem, but you …” She took her time before she spoke. “You I could love. If I had a … a fling with you and you tossed me aside, I’m not sure I’d ever recover.” She took a breath. “There. I’ve said it and I think it’s much more than you ever wanted to hear. I think—”

She stopped talking because he kissed her. Gentle, sweet, a meeting of the lips that was soft and … and promising.

Pulling away to look at him, her hand on his cheek, she searched his eyes. She needed to find the truth within herself. Was she attracted to this man because of who he was? She’d been in awe of him for so many years.

But now she knew the man, had met his friends and relatives, had seen him in his own country, so to speak. She had an idea that she’d seen what no other woman had: the real Jared Montgomery Kingsley the Seventh. Truly and completely, without armor of any kind, she had seen
both
sides of him. There was the internationally famous man who was asked for his autograph, and there was the man an old couple sitting on the porch asked to look at their furnace before winter came.

Jared was waiting in silence, his face close to hers. He seemed to know that she was asking a question and when she said the words he’d be ready to answer.

Which man did she like better? she wondered. The brilliant designer or the man who was part of a community and family that she had an idea could sometimes be overwhelming?

“I like both of you,” she said, her hand caressing his cheek, feeling his whiskers. For days now she’d been looking at him and hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted to touch what she saw. The strong Kingsley jaw felt good against her skin, his whiskers soft.

He turned his head to kiss her palm—and the blue fire returned to his eyes.

The hairs on her body stood on end. She’d never before felt such desire for any human being.

“We need to take this slowly,” she said as part of her seemed to scream,
This is real. This could be forever
.

Jared dropped his hand from her face. “No touching. I understand.” His voice seemed to weigh a thousand pounds.

“No!” Alix said. “Touching is fine. It’s great. In fact, I’m for it. The more touching, the better. It’s just promises that we need to think about.”

Jared smiled. “You are my kind of girl. I suggest that we go home. Now. I’ll get someone to give us a ride back.”

“What about the old truck?” She knew it was still covered with food.

“Lexie can return it.”

Only their fingertips were touching, but it was like a current of high voltage electricity was going from Jared to her. It wasn’t just that they were touching, they were
connected
. Mind, body, souls seemed to be flowing one to the other. It was almost as though she could read his thoughts and she could see, well, the future. It was the two of them. Designing, arguing, traveling. Years together. Joy shared and laughter. A great, great deal of laughter. There was more but she was almost afraid to look.

“I feel like I know you, that I know us,” she whispered.

“I feel the same way,” Jared said as he stood up, took her hand, and pulled her to him.

She wanted to slide her arms around his neck, but she knew that if she did she wouldn’t be able to stop. They’d end up rolling about in the bushes on a public beach. Not a good start to forever, she thought.

Jared seemed to understand. He stepped away, breaking contact. “Let’s go home.”

Alix started down the beach to the road that led to the stairs, Jared behind her. Twice she stumbled, but then her legs weren’t stable. “I think maybe I saw our future,” she managed to say when they reached the stairs.

“I can believe that. Was it good?”

She nodded. “Very good.”

“Odd things happen to people who hang around the Kingsleys.”

“Are you talking about ghosts?” She was trying to sound light but it wasn’t easy.

“I think maybe we should talk before we go any farther.”

Alix stopped on the stairs and turned to look at him. His face was even with hers. “If it’s all right with you, I’d just as soon not talk any more right now. Tell me the awful things later, after we—you know.”

Jared laughed. “Okay, let’s go home and, uh … later, we’ll talk about our future. You know, goals and that sort of thing.”

“That sounds exactly like what I’d like to do.” Their eyes were laughing.

Chapter Fourteen

W
hen they got within sight of the crowd, they dropped hands. Touching or not, Alix knew that everything had changed. She stood back as Jared told Lexie they wanted to leave right now.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?” Lexie said. “Toby and I have that big SUV with us and we have to get all this into it, and then what do we do with that old truck?”

“One of you can drive the SUV and one of you can take the truck back to Polpis.” Jared’s voice was of exaggerated patience.

“Great idea,” Lexie said, smiling. “I assume it’s an automatic, as I’ve never driven a manual, and I can hardly wait to take it down Nantucket’s wide lanes. I saw Mrs. Ferris a few minutes ago. Think she’s driving today?”

“Lexie …” Jared began but didn’t finish his sentence. He turned back to Alix with a helpless look on his face.

“Who’s Mrs. Ferris?” Alix asked.

Lexie answered. “She’s our neighbor, lives right on Kingsley Lane, and what’s especially great about her is that she drives smack down the middle of every road. Even tourists get out of her way. Hope I don’t pass her in your fancy old truck. Wouldn’t want to scratch it, but then I’ll probably tear the transmission out when I try to shift gears, so what do scratches matter?” She turned toward the food, but as she passed Jared she said, “Hate to mess up your afternoon, but you know what they say about anticipation.”