“Do you remember any people?” he asked, not looking at her as he put fish in a hot skillet. They were standing quite close together, not touching, but she could feel the warmth of him.
“Mainly just the older woman, who I assume was Miss Kingsley,” Alix said. “And the longer I’m here, the more I seem to remember about her. She and I walked on a beach and I collected shells. Is it possible that I called her Aunt Addy?”
“Probably. It’s what all the younger relatives called her. I did. Was anyone else with you? Not on the beach, but here in the house.”
Alix held her hand above the pot of oil to see if it was hot enough before she began to drop in globs of batter. “Sometimes I …”
“Sometimes you what?”
“I remember hearing a man laugh. A very deep laugh and I liked it.”
“That’s all?”
“Sorry, Mr. Kingsley, but that is all I remember.” She glanced up at him, her eyes asking him to invite her to use his first name, but he didn’t respond. “What about you?”
“No,” he said, then seemed to come out of his trance. “My laugh is high pitched, breaks glass, not deep at all.”
She smiled at his self-deprecation. “I meant, who do you remember? Did you grow up on Nantucket?”
“Yes, but not in this house.”
“Who gets it after my year is up?”
“Me,” he said. “It nearly always goes to the eldest Kingsley son.”
“Then I’m taking away your inheritance.”
“Postponing it. Are these done?”
“Yes,” Alix said as she took the hush puppies out and drained them on paper towels.
“What china do you want to use?”
“The wildflowers,” she said without thinking, then looked at him in surprise. “Before I came here I told Izzy I didn’t remember anything about being here. But it seems that I even remember the china patterns.”
He was reaching up to a top cabinet and pulling down dishes that Alix knew she’d always liked.
“Maybe something bad happened later that made you forget.”
“Possibly. I know my parents were separating then, so that could have traumatized me as a child. My dad and I have always been close. He and I have traveled all around the world to see the most magnificent buildings. Have you ever seen—?”
“There’s salad in the bag if you want some.”
Alix had to turn away to hide a flush of anger that she knew was showing on her face. She wanted to say, “Okay, I get it. You’re a famous architect and I’m a nobody student. You don’t have to rub it in.” She went to the liquor cabinet and busied herself with making a drink from one of the rum recipes taped on the back of the door. She didn’t bother asking him what he liked.
Jared put the dishes and the hush puppies on the table, dumped salad in a bowl, and put out a bottle of dressing. Then he sat down and watched Alix at the liquor cabinet as she made some fruity drink. He liked her. He liked that she’d pitched in and cleaned the fish. Liked her ease at whipping up the batter for the bread. He liked the way she drank the rum. No giggles, no flirtiness. Just straightforward and good company.
Most of all, he liked how attracted he was to her. He hadn’t expected that. He remembered her as an intense little girl sitting on the rug in the family room and piling up things his ancestors had brought home from their voyages around the world.
Back then he’d been unaware of how valuable the objects were. To him they were just things he’d seen all his life. Jared still remembered all those years ago how Dr. Huntley, the young man who’d recently been made the head of the NHS, the Nantucket Historical Society, had nearly passed out the first time he’d visited Aunt Addy and seen little Alix sitting on the floor.
“That child is playing with …” He’d had to sit down to get his breath. “That candlestick is early nineteenth century.”
“Perhaps earlier,” Aunt Addy had said calmly. “The Kingsley family lived on Nantucket long before this house was built and I’m sure they used candles.”
The director was still pale. “She shouldn’t be allowed to play with those things. She—”
Aunt Addy had just smiled at him.
“Where did you live?” Alix asked as she set two drinks on the table.
“What? Oh. Sorry, I was miles away. My mother and I lived in Madaket, on the water.”
“I don’t mean to be nosy, but why didn’t you grow up in Kingsley House?”
Jared gave a little chuckle. “When Aunt Addy was a girl she found the man she was to marry in a compromising situation, knickers down, knees up, that sort of thing. My dad told me that she used her father’s sympathy to get him to change his will to leave the house to her instead of to his son. Everyone thought that he would eventually come to his senses and change it back, but there was an accident and he died young, so Aunt Addy got the house instead of her brother.”
“Was the family angry about that?”
“No. They were relieved. Her brother probably would have sold the place. He wasn’t good with money and didn’t care about the house. He would have let the roof cave in.” What Jared wasn’t telling her was that Caleb had worked with Addy to make it all happen. It was because of the two of them that Kingsley House had stayed in the family all these years.
“But now the house is to come back to a son who is very good with roofs.”
“I like to think so,” Jared said, smiling.
Alix could see the pride in his eyes and she thought about what he must have felt when he was told that his ownership was to be postponed for a whole year. “Is where you grew up a town?”
“Not like you mean. Madaket is more of a place than an actual town. But there’s a restaurant there and of course there’s the mall.”
“A mall? What stores does it have?”
He smiled. “It’s commonly referred to as a dump, but we have a big take-it-or-leave-it area and …” He shrugged. “It’s Nantucket.”
They ate in silence for a while and Alix began to think of the reality of being alone in a place where she knew no one. “What are the wedding facilities like on the island?”
He paused with a fork on the way to his mouth. “You’re getting married?”
“No. My friend is, and …” She trailed off, her face red with embarrassment.
“What’s wrong?”
“I told her she could have the wedding in the garden here. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t own this house, you do. It was presumptuous of me.”
Jared bit into another hush puppy. “These are good.” He found he rather enjoyed the way she was looking at him in question, waiting for his answer. “You have my permission to have the wedding here. This house could use some music and laughter.”
Alix smiled at him so warmly that he leaned his head toward her, almost as though he expected a kiss in thanks. But she turned away.
Jared pulled back. “I’ll get Jose and his guys to clean the place up for you.”
“They’re the gardeners? I was worried that I’d have to mow and rake and everything else. Not that I couldn’t do it, but I don’t think I’d be good at it. I want to spend this summer working.” She waited for him to be polite and ask what she’d be working on, but he said nothing.
Suddenly, Alix had had enough. It was clear that he didn’t think the two of them shared a love of land and buildings. To him, she wasn’t even worthy of telling the truth about his profession.
She knew he was physically attracted to her—a woman always knew that—but as sexy as he was, she wasn’t interested. She didn’t want to be just another one of the Great Jared Montgomery’s conquests. Bottom lip or not, she liked a man as a whole. Not just a piece of him.
She stood up. “I’m sorry to leave you with cleanup detail, but I’m very tired and I want to go to bed. If I don’t see you again, thank you for dinner, Mr. Kingsley.” She said his name pointedly.
He stood up, looking as though he meant to shake her hand or kiss her cheek, but Alix turned
away and left the room.
For a moment Jared stood there staring after her. He knew he couldn’t be right, but it was almost as though he’d made her angry. How? By asking her about his aunt? That didn’t make any sense.
He sat back down and picked up the pineapple and rum drink she’d made. It wasn’t to his taste, but it reminded him of his great-aunt. As he poured himself a shot of very old rum to sip, he expected his grandfather to appear in the room and bawl him out, but there was only silence. It was just like the old man not to warn him that Alix Madsen was in the house, that she’d arrived early—and that she’d been “working.” Designing some fanciful structure that a person would need a magic wand to be able to build?
As he leaned back in the chair with the drink, he ate the rest of the hush puppies. They were the best he’d ever had.
He knew it was thoroughly stupid of him to be attracted to his aunt Addy’s beloved Alix. When she’d first been here, she was four and he was fourteen. She was a cute little girl who liked to sit on the family room floor and build things. After the NHS president had nearly come unglued to see the child piling up valuable scrimshaw, antique tea caddies from China, and netsuke from Japan, Jared had gone home and rummaged through the attic until he found his old box of Legos. His mother had insisted on running them through the dishwasher. He remembered how pleased she’d been that he was doing such a kind thing for a little girl. But back then, Jared hadn’t exactly been a model son. His father, the sixth Jared, had died just two years before and he was still very angry about it. His mother had made him personally take the Legos to Alix.
The little girl had never seen the building blocks and had no idea what they were, so Jared got down on the rug and showed her how to use them. She’d been so pleased that when he was leaving, she threw her arms around his neck. Aunt Addy, sitting on the couch and watching her beloved Alix, said, “Jared, someday you’re going to make an excellent father.”
His grandfather Caleb, hovering in the background, snorted and said, “But he’ll make a bad husband.” Back then his grandfather didn’t have much faith that Jared would do anything but spend his life in jail. As Jared had learned to do, he didn’t react to his grandfather’s comments when his aunt was near.
But Alix, who’d heard it all, looked up at Jared with serious eyes and said, “I would marry you.” That had made Jared jump up, his face red, and Caleb had given his great bellow of a laugh.
Later, Jared saw the intricate Lego structure Alix had made, and he was impressed. Caleb said that Jared had never made anything that good when he was four years old. Alix gave him a bunch of flowers from Aunt Addy’s garden to thank him for his gift. That night Jared went out with his buddies, got drunk, and ended up spending the night in jail—which wasn’t unusual for him back then. He never saw little Alix again, as soon afterward her mother’s first novel was accepted for publication. Victoria had immediately taken her daughter away, and never brought her back to Nantucket.
Jared’s thoughts returned to the present. He thought it was definitely better that he leave the island. He’d tell Dilys about Alix, she’d introduce her to his cousin Lexie and her roommate, Toby, and within a week Alix would be deep in the Nantucket summer social whirl. And Jared would be back in New York creating … he didn’t know what. And right now he was between girlfriends so he’d … Damn! He kept envisioning Alix’s eyes, her mouth, her body.
This wasn’t good. Alix Madsen was a young, innocent girl and he couldn’t touch her. Yes, he’d better leave as soon as possible.
Chapter Five
Alix was in bed, trying to keep her mind on a murder mystery she’d found in a table drawer, but the words seemed to blur. All she could think about was Jared Montgomery—or was his name Kingsley? Everything about him seemed to be a lie, up to and including his name.
Why did he have to lie like that? As she went over every word of their conversation, she saw how he’d eluded her many hints. If he didn’t want to answer her questions, he could have said no. He could have—
Her cell phone rang and cut off her thoughts. It was her father. Why, oh why, had she told him that Montgomery was staying in the guesthouse?
She took a breath and tried to smile. “Dad!” she said cheerfully. “How are you?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Nothing is wrong. Why would you ask that?”
“Because I’ve known you all your life so I know your false cheerfulness. What happened?”
“Nothing bad. It’s just Izzy and her wedding. Both her mother and mother-in-law are making her miserable, so I told her I’d put on the wedding here. But how can I do that? What do I know about weddings?”
“You love a challenge and you’ll figure it out. What’s really bothering you?”
“That’s it,” she said. “I think making a wedding for someone else is impossible and I’m thinking about leaving Nantucket and returning home. I’m Izzy’s maid of honor, so I need to help her choose cakes and flowers and everything else. Or maybe I’ll stay with you for a while. Would that be all right?”
Ken took a moment before answering. “It’s Montgomery, isn’t it? Did he show up?”
Alix felt quick tears come to her eyes, but she wasn’t going to let her father know. “He did,” she said, “and we had dinner together. He cleans bass just like you do.”
“What did he say when you told him you were a fan of his?”
“Nothing.”
“Alix, he must have said something, so what was it?”
“He didn’t say anything because I didn’t tell him. He pretended he wasn’t who he is.”
“I want to hear every word of this. Don’t leave out anything.”
Alix told him as succinctly as she could manage. “Maybe I would have been a pest to him or whatever he thought I’d be—if that’s the reason he didn’t tell me who he is—but to just sit there and tell one lie after another was … was …”
“Despicable,” Ken said, and she could hear the anger in his voice.
“It’s okay, Dad. He’s a big shot and I can see why he wouldn’t want to announce to a student that he’s the Jared Montgomery. He was probably worried that I’d kiss his ring or do some groupie thing. And to be fair, I would have. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’s leaving in the morning and he won’t be back while I’m here.”
“Are you saying that you’ll be alone in that big house for an entire year?” Ken asked. “You know no one on that island and you’ve promised to put on a wedding for your friend. How are you going to do that?”
“Dad, you’re supposed to cheer me up, not make me feel worse.”
“I’m being a realist.”
“Me too,” Alix said, “and that’s why I think I should return to the mainland. Besides, this house belongs to Mr. Kingsley and he wants it back, if for no other reason than for the big sink.”
“Who’s Mr. Kingsley?”
“Jared Montgomery.”
“He told you to call him Mr. Kingsley?” Ken was aghast.
“No, Dad. That’s what the lawyer called him. But I called him that and he didn’t correct me.”
“That upstart!” Ken said with his teeth clenched. “Look, honey, I have something I have to do. Promise me that you won’t leave the island before I talk to you again.”
“All right,” she said, “but what are you planning to do? You aren’t thinking of calling his office, are you?”
“Not his office, no.”
“Dad, please, you’re going to make me sorry I told you. Jared Montgomery is a very important person. When it comes to architecture, he’s in the stratosphere. It’s understandable if he doesn’t want to deal with a nothing, nobody student. He—”
“Alixandra, it may be a cliché to say this, but you have more talent in your little finger than that man has in his whole body.”
“You’re sweet but that’s not true. When he was my age, he—”
“It’s a wonder he lived to be your age. All right, Alix, how about this?
I’ll give him twenty-four hours to come to his senses. If he’s the same this time tomorrow and your feelings are still being hurt, then I’ll come and get you. And furthermore, I’ll help you and Izzy with the wedding. Is that a deal?”
Alix thought about telling her father that she was a grown woman and could take care of herself, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. “That sounds like a bet you don’t want to lose,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. She had no hope that Jared Montgomery was going to change anything about himself.
“Good! I’ll call you this time tomorrow. Love ya.”
“And I love you back,” Alix said, and hung up. She was tempted to call Izzy and tell her there was going to be a change in the wedding venue, but she didn’t.
Jared was bent over his drawing board, working on what had to be his fiftieth sketch for the house in California, when his cell rang. Since so few people had his private number, he always answered it.
Right away he recognized the very angry voice of Kenneth Madsen.
“When I met you, you were a fourteen-year-old juvenile delinquent. You’d been in and out of the local jail so many times they knew your breakfast order by heart. Your poor dear mother was on six medications because you were driving her insane. Am I right? Am I saying anything wrong?”
“No, you have it right,” Jared said.
“And who straightened you out? Who dragged you out of bed in the mornings and put you into a truck and made you work?”
“You did,” Jared said meekly.
“Who searched under your bad-boy act and found your talent as a designer?”
“You did.”
“Who paid for your goddamn schooling?”
“You and Victoria did.”
“Right! Alix’s father and her mother,” Ken said. “Yet you made our daughter cry?! Is that how you repay us?”
“I don’t know what I did to make her cry,” Jared said honestly.
“You don’t know?” Ken took a breath. “Do you think my daughter is stupid? Is that what you think?”
“No, sir, I never thought that.”
“She knows who you are. She saw you on the day she arrived and she recognized you right away. Heaven help me, but you’re some sort of hero to her.”