True Love (Nantucket Brides 1)

“Reproduction?” Jared whispered, the word catching in his throat as though it were poison. “You’re going too far.”

Laughing, Alix slipped her arm in his. “Where can I get shoes suitable to wear to a wedding? You like kitten heels?”

Jared looked like he might start to cry.

Chapter Sixteen

Three weeks, Ken thought. He’d been on Nantucket for three whole weeks and he didn’t think he’d ever been happier in his life.

At first he’d stayed in the guest bedroom of the big house. Not Victoria’s Palace of Green but in the one across from Addy’s, now Alix’s, bedroom. Over the years, he’d often stayed there. He liked being near Addy in case she needed him during the night. Smiling, he thought of the many times he’d heard her voice when she was alone in her room. He’d thought she’d been talking in her sleep, but one night over their rum drinks—she could easily drink Ken under the table—she mentioned Alix and Caleb. He knew she was talking about his daughter, but who was Caleb? Another Kingsley relative he’d yet to meet?

It took several nights and multiple bottles of rum before he got Addy to tell him the whole truth.

It seemed that his dear daughter, Alix, at four years old, used to regularly converse with a ghost. If Ken had known back then what was happening, he would have … The truth was he didn’t know what he would have done. At that time he’d been so angry and depressed that he wasn’t rational. If he’d been given any reason to do so, he feared that he would have taken his wrath out on Victoria, which could have meant that the rage would have filtered down to little Alix.

As it was, Ken had shown only Jared his fury at what life had done to him. Oh, but the shouting matches the two of them used to have! Never before or since had Ken yelled like that. Cursed like that. But then he’d never again been so unhappy. Nor had Jared.

There was one night when Ken found Jared crying. He was a six-foot-tall teenager who had an attitude of Don’t Mess with Me, but he was sitting by a pond on land his family owned, and crying. Ken reacted naturally and put his arms around the boy. They didn’t say a word but Ken knew of the boy’s continuing grief. Jared’s mother had told him what a good and loving man her husband had been, and how he’d doted on his son.

“I couldn’t have any more children after him,” she’d told Ken. “I begged Six to divorce me and get some healthy girl who could give him a lot of babies. But he said that one perfect son was all he needed.”

When Ken met Jared—or Seven, as his mother called him—the last word he would have used to describe the boy was “perfect.”

Somewhere in there, he and Jared stopped fighting. Ken was sure it was when the boy showed his extraordinary, dazzling talent for architectural design. Only by accident did Ken see Jared drawing in the dirt. No one else paid any attention to the marks, but Ken recognized them as a rudimentary floor plan.

Ken discussed it with Jared’s mother, and she showed him a whole drawer full of sketches her son had made. “He and his dad were planning to add a big room to this old house. Six told him that he could design it. But after … afterward, Seven put it all away.”

Ken had to push Jared to get him to show his ideas. As Ken looked at the drawings, he acted as though he was just thinking about them rather than ready to set off cannons in praise. Slowly, Ken showed the boy how to put on paper what he saw in his mind. And since Jared knew nothing about construction, over the years Ken taught him how to build what he envisioned.

But no matter that Ken had made a life for himself on Nantucket, he knew that if he wanted to see Alix regularly he had to leave the island. He felt torn in half. He had a daughter in America and an honorary son on Nantucket—and his ex-wife was decreeing that Ken couldn’t openly have both of them.

The day Ken left, he saw in Jared’s eyes that he didn’t think Ken was coming back. But he had. Every holiday he wasn’t with Alix, Ken was on Nantucket. Vacations, accumulated sick days, playinghooky days, whatever time he could manage to scrape together, he spent on the island.

Even after Jared left for school, Ken still visited as often as possible. By that time he and Addy were good friends and he knew a lot of other people on Nantucket. It was natural that he began to look after the houses owned by the Kingsley family. He’d tell Addy what needed to be repaired, then she’d tell Victoria, who would pay the bills. At first Ken hadn’t liked that arrangement, but Addy said that all Victoria’s money came from the Kingsley journals, so why shouldn’t she pay? Ken didn’t argue. Roofs that didn’t leak took precedence over his pride.

All in all, Ken thought everything had worked out well—except that Alix had been left out. Victoria never budged on her rule that her daughter was not to go to Nantucket, not even to hear about it. At first Ken had fought her, argued with her, questioned her, but she never showed the slightest weakness in her resolve.

It was on a snowy night when the big old drafty house was colder than the outdoors and Ken had made a roaring fire that Addy had told him about Alix and the ghost.

“Does Victoria know about this … this person?” Ken asked, not sure whether to believe or not.

“No,” Addy said, smiling. “Victoria thinks I’m a boring old woman. She thinks I’m …” She leaned toward Ken. “Victoria thinks I’m a virgin.”

Laughing, he told Addy that she was much too sexy for men to be able to stay away from. She’d laughed in delight, poured them both more rum, and told him that none of the other women had written about Caleb. “They could see him but they never told about him.” She took a drink. “They wrote about their affairs and even about murders, but they told no one about seeing and talking to a ghost.”

“But you did,” Ken said, smiling as the rum coursed through him.

“Oh yes, I did,” Addy said. “And when Victoria finds out, she’s going to look hard for my journals.”

“Where are they?” Ken asked.

“I’ve hidden them quite well,” Addy said, smiling. “And Caleb and I worked out a plan so that someone who can see him will be told many things. But that will be after I’m gone.”

At the time Ken had been too mellow to question her, and he’d only found out at the reading of Addy’s will that “someone” was his daughter.

It was after that conversation that Ken thought about what he’d been told. Years before, even if Victoria didn’t know about a ghost that Alix could see, she’d known something was wrong. After that, Ken quit badgering her to tell Alix about Nantucket. They never spoke of it, but it seemed they had reached an understanding.

When Addy died and her will decreed that Alix could stay in the house for a year, Ken was fairly sure he knew why and he hadn’t liked it at all. As a father, he wanted to protect his daughter.