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  Chapter Thirty

  It was two days later when Victoria saw Jared walking up the path to the kitchen door. It looked like he had just stepped out of the shower and he had a big bouquet of flowers in his hand. Obviously, he was coming to apologize.

  Ken said Jared had been out on his boat all day yesterday. “The chapel’s almost done but we could have used his help. And what have you done to Alix to make her look so gloomy?”

  Victoria put her hand behind her back and crossed her fingers. “This time it wasn’t me. Jared and Alix had a rip-roaring fight.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” Ken said. “They act like they’ve known each other forever.”

  “You’d like to think that they’re clones of you,” Victoria said in disgust, but Ken smiled.

  “So what did they argue about?”

  Victoria shrugged. “He told her he’s going back to New York and Alix is staying here. Looks like it’s over between them. Actually, she’s so down she’s hardly speaking. You think I should take her to a doctor to get her some pills?”

  The hot blood of anger crept up Ken’s neck to his face. “I’ll murder that boy!” he said under his breath, then turned and stomped out of the house.

  As Victoria watched him go, she could only shake her head. “So now you listen to me? I lie, you listen. I’m honest and you run off to play tennis with Toby’s dad. Men!”

  Now, coming toward the house with his arms full of flowers was a contrite-looking Jared. Maybe Victoria should be glad of the sight but she wasn’t. What happened next? He and Alix would make up? That would change nothing. After the wedding Jared would go to New York and Alix would still remain behind. Stay to read Valentina’s journals to her mother?

  Deliver me! Victoria thought. She’d never be able to concentrate with someone reading aloud, and besides, Alix would be lovesick. She’d be looking at her phone constantly, waiting for HRH to call.

  No, it would be better if Victoria hurried this whole thing along. Jared was nearly at the door, so she opened it a bit so it wouldn’t make any noise, then she went into the family room.

  Alix was standing by the window looking at some house plans, but when she heard her mother’s footsteps she shoved them under three bridal magazines.

  “You must be relieved to be done with a man like Jared,” Victoria said rather loudly.

  “We just had an argument. Nothing is ‘done.’ Mother, sometimes I think you don’t really like him.”

  “But, darling,” Victoria said, as she saw Jared come to a halt, flowers in hand and just out of sight, “I adore Jared. I always have, but do you think he’s right for a girl like you?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s a man of the world, dear. He’s used to yachts and all-night parties and those plastic girls who remind him that he’s famous.”

  Alix felt the blood rushing through her body, and just like her father, it was moving upward to her face. “Jared also likes to work and I do too. And that man who sails on yachts also takes care of a lot of people on this island. If anyone needs help, Jared is there to give it.”

  “But how do you fit into this?” Victoria asked, an eyebrow raised in skepticism. Her tone implied that Alix didn’t know what his life was really like.

  “He needs me,” Alix said, half shouting in her anger. “I see the person underneath the public man, behind the famous one. You know something? I think that before me Jared led a very lonely life, with people wanting him for what he could give them or do for them, not for who he is.”

  “But isn’t that what you want from him? To further your career? To become a great success on his coattails?”

  “No!” Alix shouted, then just as suddenly the anger left her. “I did. When I first met him all I wanted was to work for his firm, but not now. Now I want to share my life with him. If he wants to go build huts in Africa, I’ll go with him.”

  “And give up setting the world on fire with your designs? Do you love him that much?”

  “Yes,” Alix said softly. “Yes, I do. I love him more than all the buildings in the world. More than I thought it was possible to love.”

  Victoria’s beautiful face lost its haughty look and once again she was Alix’s mother. “That’s what I wanted to hear.” She opened her arms and Alix ran to her to be enclosed in a loving embrace. Victoria looked over her daughter’s head at Jared, who was silently standing in the doorway.

  With a smile of such warmth that it seemed to illuminate the room, Jared turned away and went outside.

  Jared started to get into his truck, but what he’d heard had left him a little too dazed to be able to drive. When he realized that he was still holding the flowers, he tossed them in the open window and kept walking. He went down the streets of his beloved town, oblivious to the tourists pointing and staring at the perfection of the old houses.

  He went down Centre Street to the JC house, took a right past the bookstore. It was a short walk to Jetties Beach, a place where he could see and hear the ocean.

  He’d just reached the edge of the water when his cell rang. Maybe it was Alix, he thought, but it was a number not in his contacts list. Usually, he wouldn’t pick up, but this time he did. A woman’s nervous voice said, “Mr. Montgomery? I mean, Kingsley. I mean, Jared?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Izzy.”

  “Alix is okay,” Jared said, “and I’m sorry I made her so miserable.”

  “Oh,” Izzy said. “I don’t know anything about that, but I’m sure you are. That’s not what I called about. Do you have time to talk right now?”

  “Sure,” he said. “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t want to upset Alix, but I’m going to do a terrible, awful thing to her. I’m not going to show up for my own wedding.”

  “You’re going to leave Glenn at the altar?” Jared asked.

  “No, no! Of course not! He’s going to be with me. The people I’m leaving behind are our parents and relatives who do nothing but constantly bicker and fight.”

  “I don’t understand what you want to do.”

  “Wait, here’s Glenn and he can explain it better.”

  When her fiancé got on the phone, his voice was firm. He was a man protecting the woman he loved. “It’s been bad here, with both our families fighting all the time. I thought for a while it was solved, but it wasn’t. It was just brewing under the surface and it’s erupted again. I didn’t know how awful it was since Izzy usually handles everything, and she could now if she weren’t pregnant.”

  He paused, then began again. “Izzy hasn’t even been able to get rid of those repulsive bridesmaids that were chosen for her. She tried but … Anyway, I feel like a jerk because I didn’t pay more attention to all this, but I thought it was what women did so …” He took a breath. “That’s not what’s important. Yesterday the doctor said that the stress she’s under is causing physical problems. If Izzy doesn’t get some relief from all this, it’s possible we could lose the baby.”

  Instantly, Jared said, “What can I do? Name it and I’ll do it.”

  Glenn said they wanted everything to go ahead as planned, that their relatives would go to Nantucket, but that at the time of the ceremony someone would tell the guests that there would be no wedding. “You—or someone—can say that Izzy and I have eloped to the far ends of the earth. They’re paying for everything so let them enjoy the food and music. It’s just that they won’t have my bride there to torture.”

  “I understand,” Jared said.

  “There’s another thing. Izzy’s afraid to call Alix because she knows how hard she’s worked on this wedding, especially since Victoria showed up. Izzy’s also afraid you’re going to think she’s a bad person for letting everyone down.”

  “Could I speak to her, please?”

  “Yes?” Izzy asked tentatively.

  “Izzy,” he said slowly, “I think this is the wisest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And any woman who’d choose her child over a weddin