True Love Read online

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