True Love (46 page)

“If Alix what?” Jilly asked.

“If I had to leave the earth, I wouldn’t be selfish enough to take her with me. I wouldn’t think that my happiness was more important than her
life
.”

“What does Caleb want to do?”

“He says he has no choice in the matter. He didn’t choose to be a ghost and he isn’t going to be able to choose what happens when he leaves.” He looked at Jilly as though asking for her advice.

“I think you need to keep Victoria away from here until after the wedding,” Jilly said.

“I agree,” Jared said, “and I believe I’ve done it.” He told her about Aunt Addy’s journals that Victoria wanted but couldn’t find. “As long as she thinks staying away from here will get her access to the precious Kingsley journals, she won’t come near Nantucket.”

“Good,” Jilly said.

Neither of them said the obvious: that death could find you anywhere.

Chapter Twenty-six

I
t was nearly six when Jared and Jilly left Lexie’s house. Neither she nor Toby had yet returned from work. Jared had changed back into his own clothes and he was feeling better after having talked to Jilly. Now he wanted to see Alix. Maybe he could clear his mind enough to think about a design project.

“Mind if I walk back to the house with you?” Jilly asked. “Ken will be home soon and I promised to make dinner.”

“You two seem to have hit it off,” Jared said.

“Very well,” she said, smiling.

“I’m sorry for dumping so much on you today. You must think—” He stopped talking as he looked out onto Kingsley Lane. It was usually a quiet little street. The only busy house was Sea Haven Inn and parking for it was entered through another street.

But now Kingsley Lane was anything but quiet. Delivery trucks were bumper to bumper and side by side. They had to drive over curbs to be able to pass one another. The signs on the trucks were of florists, caterers, a seafood shop, a wine merchant.

The deliveries could mean only one thing. Victoria had arrived!

In a state of shock, Jared just stood there and looked at all the chaos. He had no idea how she had managed to get all these places to deliver to a private residence. In between the trucks were half a dozen cars with male drivers. Two kids on bicycles had baskets full of flower arrangements.

“Hey!” one of the boys on a bike yelled at Jared. “You know where Kingsley House is?”

Jared was frowning too hard to answer.

“It’s number twenty-three,” Jilly answered and pointed. “The big white house.”

“Thanks,” the boy said as he got back on his bike and rode away.

Jilly looked up at Jared. “Is someone having a party?”

“Yes and no,” Jared said. “Only Victoria arriving could cause this much commotion.”

Wide-eyed, Jilly looked at the long line of vehicles. In the distance there were two men angrily shouting at each other. She looked at Jared, who was standing in place, staring at the trucks and seeming to be immobile. “Will there be a fight?”

“Probably,” Jared said. “There usually is around Victoria.” He turned to her. “Why don’t you go through that fence to the back and walk to the guesthouse that way? Let me deal with Victoria first.”

“Good luck,” Jilly said as she crossed the street.

Jared stood there for a moment as he tried to collect his thoughts. They had just over two weeks before the wedding. He knew Victoria well enough that there would be no way he could get her to leave before the wedding of a young woman she cared about. And besides, distance wasn’t going to stop what might happen.

Jared looked up at the sky. Such a beautiful day, but each thought he had was more dismal than the one before it. What if he told Victoria
what he feared? Right away, he knew that wouldn’t work. If he told Victoria the truth about his grandfather, there was no doubt that she’d want to
see
Caleb. Talk to him, interview him, ask him how he
felt
about everything. “How did you
feel
when you drowned?” “How did you
feel
to know you’d caused the deaths of hundreds of your friends and relatives?” Victoria would say her painful questions were for her novels—as though that was all the justification she needed.

And then there was the magnificent love story. All his life he’d heard of the love between Caleb and Valentina. His father had told the story, Aunt Addy had, and his grandfather had told him. Each telling had contained different elements, but they’d all been the same when it came to the great, deep love that Caleb and Valentina had for each other. A love so deep, so
true
, that nothing on earth could break it. Neither death nor time had been able to stop their love.

As Jared watched the trucks moving slowly, dropping off their deliveries then leaving, he wondered if he’d ever seen his grandfather with Victoria. Caleb often occupied a chair nearby when Ken was there, but what about when Victoria was near? Jared couldn’t remember. He did remember his grandfather saying that he’d watched Victoria undress. “But only Victoria,” he’d said.

As another boy rode past with yet another bouquet in the basket on the front, Jared ran his hand over his face. He had no idea how to handle this. He took his phone out of his pocket and held it for a moment. What he wanted to do was call Alix and suggest that they fly up to Maine. Now. Maybe he could persuade her to stay with him there until after Izzy’s wedding. Lexie could be the maid of honor. They’d return when it was all over.

He put his phone away. Kingsleys weren’t known for cowardice and he wasn’t going to start.

He put his shoulders back and slowly walked to his house, pushing his way through the many delivery men. There were three of them waiting inside the kitchen. Jared took out his wallet, gave them
all tips, and told them to leave the flowers, booze, food, whatever, and go.

It took a while, but he got rid of them. He could hear Victoria’s laughter drifting in from the front parlor and he grimaced. How in the world was he going to get her to go away without telling her the reason?

After Jared put the food that had been delivered in the fridge, he looked at the cards on some of the flowers. “Now the summer can truly begin,” one said. “Same place, same time?” It wasn’t signed. A huge bouquet that took up the whole table was from Lexie’s boss, Roger Plymouth. Jared didn’t know Victoria even knew him. “My jet is yours.” “Could you please do an autographing for us?” “I dream of you …” was another one that wasn’t signed.

Jared didn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted. He was leaning toward the latter.

He tried to fortify his courage as he started down the hall toward the front parlor. He and Aunt Addy used to laugh about people who marveled that Jared was never intimidated by anyone in the business world. Even when he was a young architect just starting out, he’d never been nervous when going into a meeting.

“That’s because you’ve spent so much time around Victoria,” Aunt Addy said. “She has a way of making most people do what she wants. If you can handle Victoria, you can handle the world.”

When Jared got to the doorway, he halted and looked at the scene. Sitting in the center of the couch was the beautiful Victoria. As always, she was perfect. Her glorious red hair was artfully messy, arranged to look as though she’d just stepped out of a breeze. Her green eyes, with their thick black lashes, managed to look at once seductive and innocent. And her body … He knew from having spent a lot of his life near her that to keep the shape she’d been born with she worked out as hard as a professional bodybuilder. But she managed to look as though she was unaware of her extraordinary figure.

Four men surrounded her, all of them leaning forward as Victoria lounged back on the cushions. Aunt Addy’s good tea set was on the table, the cups filled, and there were pretty plates full of tiny sandwiches, cakes, cookies, pastries. Jared would have bet his next year’s salary that Victoria hadn’t done anything to prepare the tea.

He was about to step forward when, turning, he saw his grandfather standing to the side. To Jared the man was as clear as sunlight, but no one else seemed able to see him. When Caleb looked up, what Jared saw made him draw in his breath.

On his face was an expression of absolute love. Melting, soul-touching, raw, unbridled love, the kind a person dies for, sacrifices and suffers for. It was the kind of love that a person would wait two hundred years to see fulfilled. It was True Love in its purest form.

Jared’s face must have registered what he’d seen, because in an instant, Caleb removed that love-struck look from his face. He showed his grandson his devil-may-care half smile, then was gone in a flash.

“My darling Jared,” came Victoria’s voice. “You’re here at last.”

Jared cursed his luck and his life, and gave a prayer for help, all at the same time. When he turned to face her, he was smiling.

When Victoria engulfed him in her arms, he couldn’t help feeling glad to see her. She was kissing his whisker-stubbled cheeks and running her pretty hands over his long hair.

“Is all this for my Alix?” Victoria asked. “She has always liked the motorcycle-gang look. Or is it Nantucket fisherman that she’s grown to like?”

“I think it’s dirty architect,” he said as she slid her arm through his and he let her lead him toward the couch. Reluctantly, the other men made way.

“Yes, my Alix would love that. You know everyone, don’t you?”

Jared looked from one man to another. Yes, he knew them all. He gave looks to the three married ones to let them know they should leave—which they did, leaving only Dr. Huntley, who looked as though he’d taken root.

“What a bad boy you are,” Victoria said to Jared after she’d said goodbye to the other men, her eyes laughing. “Freddy was just telling me how he and Alix had such a lovely time together. I had no idea you and she were looking into the family history.”

Jared swallowed. He was going to tell Victoria as little as possible.

Freddy—a.k.a. Dr. Frederick C. Huntley—sipped his tea. “Young Alix was looking for Valentina.”

“Oh, yes,” Victoria said. “The elusive Valentina. Did she make any progress?”

“None at all,” Jared said, putting a large cream tart in his mouth.

Victoria smiled at him in a way that said she would eventually get everything out of him. She made Jared want to run upstairs and hide. Or maybe to grab Alix and fly back to New York.

She turned to Dr. Huntley. “Freddy, you’ll have to tell me everything on your next visit.”

“Oh,” Dr. Huntley said and it took him a moment to realize he was being dismissed. Quickly, he put his cup down, took one more sandwich, and stood up to say goodbye.

As soon as they were alone, Jared gave a yawn. “I’ve been up for hours, I think I’ll—”

“Jared, darling,” Victoria said, “we need to talk.”

He stood up. “Sure, it’s just that your visit was unexpected and I have a lot of things I need to get done. If you’d told me you were coming—as you seem to have told the entire island—I could have blocked out some time. As it is …” He couldn’t think how to lengthen the lie. He took a step toward the doorway.

“I want to know what your intentions are toward my daughter.”

Jared looked back, his face showing surprise. “You want to know about Alix? And me?”

“Yes, of course. That’s why I came. I know you warned me not to and I plan to be a quiet little mouse while I’m here, but I absolutely must know about my dear daughter.”

Jared gave a pointed look at what had to be half a dozen flower displays about the room.
This
was being “a quiet little mouse.”

“Oh, well,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t arrive on a yacht.”

“Not this time.”

Victoria smiled sweetly and patted the seat beside her. “Please sit down, Jared darling, I haven’t seen you in months and Kenneth has been his usual beastly self and won’t tell me anything about my own daughter. And look at this.” She reached under the couch and pulled out a white box that he recognized. “I saved these just for us, and …” She removed a bottle of twenty-five-year-old rum from behind a cushion. “This is to spice up Addy’s blasted tea. What do you say? Downyflake doughnuts and rum?”

Jared shook his head. “Victoria, I swear you could charm the devil.” He sat back down on the couch beside her.

“From what I’ve been hearing about you with my daughter, that’s just what you are. You aren’t planning to run back to New York and leave her behind, are you? Alix isn’t like me. She’s as serious as her father.”

“No,” Jared said as he took the cup of tea she offered. It was half rum. “I’m not planning to leave Alix.”

Victoria smiled. “Does she know that?”

“I’ve dropped enough hints, so she should.”

“Hmmm,” Victoria said as she broke off a tiny piece of doughnut and delicately nibbled at it. “We women aren’t good at hints. We like solid declarations of love and forever.”

Jared put his cup to his mouth.

“And we like rings,” Victoria said. “Anything but an emerald, and size five.”

“Victoria,” Jared said, “I think I’m old enough to make decisions about certain aspects of my own life.”