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.”
“Oh, Lord,” Jared said. “I didn’t know. I thought …”
“Thought what?!” Ken half yelled, then calmed somewhat. “Look, Jared, I understand that she’s just a student and that someone like you might see her as a pest, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to treat her like one.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Jared said.
Ken took a couple of breaths. “My daughter only agreed to go to Nantucket so she could spend the time there assembling a portfolio of designs. Right now it’s hard for me to stomach the idea, but she wants to apply for a job at your firm. But tonight you—” He had to pause for a moment. “So help me, Jared Montgomery Kingsley the bloody Seventh, if you ever again make my daughter cry I’ll make you regret it. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you do spend any time with my daughter I don’t want your usual shenanigans you pull with women. This is my daughter and I want her treated with respect. You get what I mean?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Do you think you can be nice to a girl and leave her clothes on? Is that possible with you?”
“I’ll try,” Jared said.
“Do more than try, do it!” Ken clicked off the phone.
Jared just stood there, feeling like he had when he was a teenager and Ken, the man who’d been a second father to him, had bawled him out. Again. Just like old times.