True Love (18 page)

“He would make them just like that,” Alix said as she tried to pull her mind away from the soap.

Jared stopped walking and turned to look at her.

“The Danwell house,” she said. “It has dormers exactly like that.”

Smiling, Jared started walking again.

Alix ran to catch up with him, tripping once over the uneven sidewalk. He turned down an alleyway that didn’t look wide enough to get a motor scooter down, but there were cars parked on both sides. He was walking fast, his long legs eating up the distance.

Alix nearly had to run to keep up with him.

Abruptly, he stopped at a house that was close to the road, reached into his pocket to withdraw his keys, and unlocked a door. Alix followed him inside.

“I think the electricity is on,” he said as he felt along the wall and flipped a switch.

They were in a downstairs kitchen, an old brick wall to the right. Through the doorway she could see what was probably a dining room with a big fireplace on the far wall.

Jared was glad to see that finally the faraway look had left Alix’s eyes. The house seemed to have overridden her thoughts about his family and her mother’s novels and how they were connected.

“This house is quite old,” Alix said, her voice low and full of the reverence such a house deserved. She looked into the far room, saw the huge fireplace, then looked back at the old kitchen. There was an old Tappan range, a scarred and chipped sink. The cabinets had been made by someone who had never heard of a mortise and tenon joint.

“Maple cabinets and granite?” Jared asked.

“I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I’d—” She broke off as she remembered who she was talking to. “Whose house is this?”

“My cousin’s. He wants me to do a design for a remodel, he’ll do the work, then sell the house. Want to see the upstairs?”

She nodded and they went up the steep, narrow stairs to see a rabbit warren of rooms. The house had been added onto in a very haphazard way. Some of the rooms were beautiful, but others had been cut apart by ugly Sheetrock partitions.

Jared sat down on an old couch that was propped up in the back by phone books and waited while Alix wandered from room to
room. He saw her looking up at the top of the walls and knew she was figuring out what was old and original, and what had been thrown up in the sixties in an attempt to make as many bedrooms as possible.

He let her have about twenty minutes, then the growling of his stomach made him stand up. “You ready to go or should I go home and get you a measuring tape?”

“Like you don’t already have the whole floor plan on paper,” Alix said.

Jared gave a one-sided grin. “Maybe I do. I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

“We have lots of groceries and we could—”

“Takes too long. Let’s go to The Brotherhood.” He led her outside by another door and into what looked to be a horribly overgrown garden.

“Are you going to do the landscaping?”

“Not me,” he said as he began walking, Alix close behind him. “I thought I’d try to sweet-talk Toby into doing it. Keep it in the family.”

“Oh? I didn’t realize she was related to you.” Alix couldn’t help feeling an itty bitty bit of joy at hearing that the Toby whom everyone loved was off limits to him. She was glad her feelings weren’t in her voice.

But Jared did hear it. “She’s related through my heart, not by blood,” he said as he put his hand on his chest and gave a deep sigh.

“You idiot!” Then she realized what she’d said—and who she’d said it to.

Jared laughed. “Only about Toby.” He opened the door to the restaurant for her.

Shaking her head, Alix went in ahead of him and entered an old-fashioned pub sort of place, only she knew the walls and fireplace were real. “Nice,” she said.

They were escorted to a booth in the back, with Jared saying hello to people as they walked through the restaurant.

“You couldn’t sneak around and have an affair on this island, could you?”

“A few people have found ways,” he said as he looked at the menu, “but they’re usually found out.”

The waiter came and they gave their orders, and Alix thought about what he’d said. “I bet Aunt Addy heard all the gossip. Even if she rarely left the house, she had people over often and they’d tell her what was going on. Maybe my mother heard about—”

Jared put a paper napkin and a pen in front of Alix. “So what would you do with that house?”

“You’re trying to distract me, aren’t you?”

“I just thought your own future would interest you more than your mother’s past. I guess I was wrong.” He reached out to take the napkin away.

Alix put her hand over it and began to sketch the layout of the house. “When I was a kid my dad used to take me to visit houses, then when we got home he’d have me draw the floor plan.”

Jared wanted to say that her father had done the same thing to him, but he didn’t. When Alix found out the truth, he really hoped she wouldn’t be angry at
him
for not telling her that her father also spent a lot of time on Nantucket.

The restaurant was dark and he looked at the top of her head as she drew. Dilys had said he was “comfortable” with Alix and it was true. Maybe it was because they’d both been taught by her father, or maybe it was because they were interested in the same thing. Whatever it was, he enjoyed being with her.

But it wasn’t easy to suppress his physical desire for her. He liked the way she moved, liked to watch her lips when she spoke. He kept having fantasies of touching her—and it wasn’t easy to keep his hands off her. In the grocery when she’d been so cold he’d wanted to put his arms around her. But all he’d done was put his hands on her arms and rub. On the street he’d turned her toward the house. They were tiny touches, and he shouldn’t have done them as they just made him want her more.

“Is this right?” she asked as she pushed the napkin toward him.

He barely glanced at the drawing, but then he’d been doing this since he was a teenager. “This wall isn’t right. It should be over here.”

“No, you’re wrong,” she said. “The fireplace is there.” She drew it.

“Your scale is off. Wall here, fireplace there.” He didn’t draw it, just ran his fingertip where the lines should be.

“Absolutely not. You are—” She broke off, yet again thinking of who he was. “Sorry. I’m sure you know better than I do.”

“What is that disgusting thing you called me?”

She had to think what he meant. “An American Living Legend?”

“That’s it. That makes me sound like a pre-Revolution artifact.” He held out his hand. “I’m warm. Flesh and blood. I
can
make mistakes.”

Alix put her hand on his and his fingers closed over her hand. For a moment her eyes locked with his and sparks seemed to fly through her body.

They broke contact when the waiter brought their sandwiches.

“So how would you remodel it?” Jared asked as soon as they were alone again.

Alix looked down at the sketch and forced herself to put her mind back on it. “It depends on what the owner wants.”

“He left it up to me,” Jared said. “It’s for resale.”

“Carte blanche. What an intriguing idea. My dad said the hardest part of being an architect was dealing with the clients. Think Montgomery had any problems in that area?”

“I think he told them that if they wanted a Montgomery design they had to do it his way or get out.”

“That’s a road to starvation.”

“It was a better economy back then, and he had enough anger in him to pull it off.”

Alix looked across the table at him. The restaurant was dark, very atmospheric, and his eyes had a look that she couldn’t read. She
could imagine that his anger, talent, and looks were a lethal combination.

Jared was having a difficult time remaining still when Alix looked at him like that. If she were any other woman he would have said, “Let’s get out of here,” then taken her home and to bed. But this was Ken’s daughter.

“You don’t have any ideas for the remodel?” He sounded as though he was disappointed in her.

Alix looked down at the drawing and tried to control her frown. She felt almost like she’d just had a man tell her no, that she’d made a pass at him and he’d turned her down. She told herself to get a grip. For all she knew he had a serious girlfriend, maybe even a fiancée.

But still … he could have
pretended
he was interested.

“If I were Montgomery,” she said firmly, “I’d change this door and widen these dormers. Inside I’d remove this wall and this one, and in the kitchen I’d put the sink over here.” She made marks as fast as she talked, and when she finished she looked up at him.

Jared was staring at her with wide eyes. It was
exactly
the way he’d planned the remodel, even down to the sink position.

It took him a moment to recover. “How would
you
do it?”

“Softer,” she said. “Less invasive. Leave the kitchen alone except to put an island here. Take out the downstairs wall, and upstairs, take out the frame walls here and here.”

“And the exterior?”

“Leave it alone but add a room here. Dig down so it doesn’t block the upper windows, then put windows all along the south side. Door and stairs up into the garden here.”

She halted. The drawing was barely readable with all the marks on it. “That’s what I would do.”

Jared could only stare at her. If he’d fallen into a rut so deep that a student could predict what he was going to do, that was bad. But then this student was what he once was—and her design was better than his.

It ran through his mind that he should leave the island immediately,
get away from this upstart girl who thought she was better than the famous Jared Montgomery.

In the next second, he leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Alix had seen the emotions pass across his face and for a moment she thought he was going to walk out of the restaurant and she’d never see him again.

“It’s yours,” he said, still smiling at her.

“What is?”

“The house. It’s yours to redesign.” He’d told his cousin he’d do the work for free but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “I’ll make sure you get credit for it and you can put it on your résumé.” He leaned toward her, his face serious. “Which I truly and sincerely hope that you’ll submit to
my
company when you apply for a job. It will have my personal endorsement on it and since I own the place, I’m quite sure that you’ll be employed by me.”

Alix just sat there blinking at him, not quite able to comprehend what he’d just said.

“If you start crying and embarrass me, I’ll take back my offer.”

“I won’t,” she said as she blinked faster.

Jared signaled to the waiter to come over and ordered two chocolate desserts and two rum and Cokes. “With double lime,” he added.

“Drunk and fat,” Alix murmured and started to pick up the napkin to wipe her eyes.

“You might need that later,” he said and handed her a clean one that he took off an empty table. He put the napkin with the jumbled drawing in his shirt pocket.

Leaning back in the booth, he watched Alix as she ate all her chocolate dessert and half of his. With his encouragement, she chattered about her childhood and what it had been like to grow up around two extraordinarily talented parents.

While she talked, he thought that maybe his designs had become predictable, that he had become a sort of trademark. Alix, new to the world of architecture, brought with her an energy that he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“You ready to go home?” he asked. “I have an overwhelming desire to look at some house plans I made over the winter. I think I need to change them. They’re too much like what I’ve already done. I don’t have a CAD system here, but maybe together we could—”

“Yes,” Alix said.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“I don’t need a CAD or a computer. You had me at the word ‘together.’ ” She stood up. “You ready to leave?”

“I think I should pay the tab first, all right?” He was smiling.

Reluctantly, she nodded.

Chapter Nine

J
ared wasn’t sure what woke him, but the first thing he saw was his grandfather hovering over him. Sunlight was flooding the room and going through his grandfather’s body. When Jared was little and his aunt was out of the room, he would run through his grandfather, then laugh hysterically. His mother, who couldn’t see Caleb, thought it was funny that when they visited Aunt Addy her son would run back and forth across the room and laugh so hard at something imaginary.

Jared’s father, who could see Caleb, smiled indulgently. As a child, he’d done exactly the same thing.

When Caleb disappeared, Jared saw Alix sprawled across the other couch and sound asleep. An empty plate and glass were on the rug; piles of papers and great rolls of blueprints were scattered everywhere.
It looked like they’d again fallen asleep while working. But then they’d been at it for four days and nights and had slept only twice.

Jared sat up on the couch, running his hands over his face, and looked back at her. He knew from experience that she slept hard. The first time she’d fallen asleep on the couch he’d played the gentleman and tried to get her upstairs.