“Yeah, right.” He chuckled.
Instantly she stiffened. Startled, he glanced around the room and realized everyone was looking at him. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Leona said, returning her attention to the decorations.
“You were laughing, Uncle Jarrett,” Anna Jane said. “I’ve never heard you laugh before. It sounds nice.”
Chapter Six
Jarrett closed the book and set it on Anna Jane’s nightstand. She gazed up at him and sighed. “That was a great story. Are we going to start a new one tomorrow?”
“Sure. You have one picked out?”
“Of course.”
Her sweet grin touched his old, battered heart, stirring the rusty organ to life. He hadn’t thought he would ever care about anyone, but it was surprisingly simple to love this child. Maybe being her guardian was going to be easier than he’d first thought.
He bent close and kissed her cheek. “I figured as much. Now go to sleep.”
She touched his arm. “Uncle Jarrett, has anyone called about Ariel?”
He thought about his daily talks with his hotel manager. So far there had been no word. He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“I know she’s sad about it,” Anna Jane said. “She’s sad because she thinks no one wants her.”
“I’m sure she has family and friends somewhere. They just don’t know that she’s missing.” He knew that had to be true. A woman like her couldn’t exist in a vacuum.
“But what if she doesn’t? What will happen to her?”
The possibility existed that her friends knew exactly where she was and what she was doing. That would be true if she’d come to St. Alicia with the express desire to get in touch with him. But he didn’t share that possibility with Anna Jane. Not only because he didn’t want to upset her, but because in the past couple of days he’d become less sure what he believed about their mysterious visitor.
“She’ll figure something out,” he told his niece. “Don’t worry.”
“If she doesn’t have any family, can we keep her?”
“She’s not a stray puppy. We can’t ask her to stay.”
Anna Jane laughed. “That’s what Ariel said. Why can’t we ask her to stay? She likes it here. She likes us and we like her.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, I like her, but sometimes I don’t think you do.”
“I like her just fine,” he said, barely acknowledging the lie. He had a lot of conflicting feelings for Ariel, and none of them involved “like.” Now, if his niece had asked about want—that he could have answered.
“You don’t like her the way Mommy liked Daddy.”
“No. Your parents had a very special love.” One he wasn’t sure he could believe in. And even if he was willing to believe, he wasn’t sure he was willing to take a chance on it.
“Mommy and Daddy loved each other more than they loved me,” Anna Jane said, her voice matter-of-fact.
Jarrett glanced at her sharply. Her face was calm, without a hint of pain. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true. Nana B. told me that it was better that way. That mommies and daddies are supposed to love each other more than they love their children. One day the children are going to grow up and leave and the parents are left with each other. So they have to love each other more.”
Her voice had grown wistful with the telling. Jarrett knew enough to read between the lines. Anna Jane didn’t object to her parents loving each other more, but she wished there had been something left over for her.
He brushed the bangs from her forehead and wondered what it must have been like when Anna Jane had lost first her nanny, then her mother. Her entire world had been turned upside down. Then she’d found herself here—on a strange island with a man she didn’t know. How was he going to make it all right with her?
“Ariel’s very nice,” she said.
“Are you matchmaking?”
Anna Jane smiled. “What’s that?”
“You don’t fool me, kid. You have the vocabulary of a forty-year-old, so don’t pretend you don’t understand me. I’ve told you. Ariel has her own life, and when she gets her memory back—” or he figured out who she was “—she’s going to return to where she belongs. That’s how it has to be.”
Anna Jane nodded slowly. “But she’s here for now, right?”
“Right.” He kissed her cheek. “Now go to sleep.”
He turned out the light on the nightstand and left the room. As he walked to his office, he thought about Anna Jane’s question. What if no one came looking for Ariel? He told himself eventually someone would. Or, assuming she was faking it, when she figured out he wasn’t going to fall for her, she would leave on her own.
But he didn’t like the thought of her faking it as much as he once had. There was a part of him that wanted to trust her. He told himself it was because she was spending so much time with his niece. He didn’t want the child influenced by a liar. Yet he knew in his heart he was the liar. He wanted Ariel to be who she claimed because he couldn’t stop wanting her.
“Hell,” he muttered as he went down the stairs and crossed to his office. He had it bad. There was only one solution, and that was work.
As he entered the room, his fingers paused by the light switch, but he didn’t touch it. A flicker of movement outside the window caught his attention instead.
He walked toward his desk. With the subtle illumination from the pool and from the patio, he could make out a familiar shape. Ariel sat on the low stone wall that separated the pool area from the beach. There was something about the way she’d pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. She had her back to his office, so he couldn’t see her face, but he sensed she was upset.
Without considering that he was already in over his head, he moved quickly through the downstairs, circling through rooms and finally exiting by the kitchen. He cut across the path and onto the grass where the thick growth would muffle the sound of his footsteps.
He walked up behind her. In the distance, night creatures called to each other. Waves broke gently on the sand. “Enjoying the view?” he asked.
She jumped slightly, then lowered her legs to the sand and quickly wiped her face. Had she been crying? The thought of her tears caught him like a punch to the gut.
“It’s a beautiful night,” she said, her voice husky. She was still wearing what she’d had on at dinner. A bright green silky tank top with a ridiculously large parrot pin by her shoulder. Her skirt was long and nearly reached to her ankles. She was anything but sophisticated. She wasn’t like the cool, remote beauties he was used to, yet he had a nearly overwhelming urge to take her in his arms.
“Are you waiting for the stars to come out?” he asked.
“Not really. I—” She shivered. “I’m sorry, Jarrett, but I’m not very good company tonight. I know as a guest part of my responsibility is to be witty and entertaining. Would you settle for a rain check?”
Just when he thought he had her nearly figured out, she surprised him. She was trying to chase him off. Not exactly the actions of a woman determined to get her hooks into a man. Was he wrong abut her? Was it possible the situation was as simple as she said—that she’d just lost her memory? Would it be safe to believe her?
He drew in a breath. He knew the price of trusting someone and being wrong. He knew the results could be fatal.
“I don’t need to be entertained,” he said, and moved to the sea wall and sat next to her. Maybe he could let go enough to talk about something safe. “Although I would like to discuss my niece for a minute, if you don’t mind.”
“Anna Jane? Is she all right?”
“Yes. I just left her and she’s fine. I was reading her a story before tucking her into bed. I worry she’s a little old for that, but I guess it’s not a bad habit.”
Ariel glanced at him. Her long curly hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, exposing her face. Light from the kitchen window illuminated the right side,
while the left was in shadow. She was incredibly beautiful.
“I’ll admit Anna Jane seems a little grown up to want to be read to, but I don’t think this is about the story. She just wants contact with you. It’s your special time together and she treasures that.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I worry about her. This is so strange for her. She’s had to leave everything behind. Her school, her friends. It would have been easier if her former nanny had been able to accompany her, but that wasn’t possible.”
“Anna Jane mentioned that to me,” Ariel said. “Something about a medical problem in the family.”
“Exactly.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his feet at the ankles. “Those two were very close. Not that the situation would have been much better if Tracy hadn’t used a nanny. After all, Anna Jane lost her, too.”
“Tracy is your sister?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in an awkward position,” Ariel said. When he glanced at her, she shrugged. “Your niece told me a couple of things a few days ago. She didn’t ask me to keep them confidential and I don’t think she would mind me telling you, but I feel funny about it.”
“Do you want me to force it from you?”
Ariel smiled. “No, but thanks for asking. I guess I’m saying I’d like you to keep me out of any discussion you have with her about this. I don’t want her to feel I’m ratting on her behind her back, or that she can’t trust me.”
Again she surprised him. Her obvious concern for Anna Jane didn’t fit with the personality of a gold digger. “I’ll be diplomatic,” he promised.
Ariel nodded. “I’m going to have to trust that you know how. I guess you must, if you can run a business successfully enough that you live here. Anyway, Anna Jane is feeling very guilty. She misses her nanny more than she misses her mother, and she believes that’s wrong.”
“The poor kid,” he said. “What did you tell her?”
“That her reaction was normal. It’s okay to love more than one person. I tried to explain that she and her nanny had shared day-to-day moments, so it made sense she would miss those more than special occasions with her mother.”
“Did she understand?”
“I hope so, but I’m not sure.”
Jarrett rubbed his temple. “Just when I think Tracy made the right decision in leaving her daughter with me, something like this happens and I know I’m going to mess her up without meaning to. I have no training at parenting.”
“Neither do most first-time parents.”
“Yeah, but at least they start out with an infant. I’ve got a little person sleeping up there and I don’t know what to do with her.”
“Love her, Jarrett. Maybe you could talk about her mother and Nana B. and try to explain it to her again, so she knows it’s okay.”
“That’s a good idea.” He drew in a breath and smelled the salty spray from the sea. While he didn’t have to explain, a part of him felt obligated to make Ariel understand the unique relationship Tracy and her husband had shared. “Tracy and Donald weren’t like most couples.”
“In what way?”
“They loved each other to the exclusion of the rest of the world. When it was just the two of them, that was fine, but once Anna Jane came along, they still weren’t willing to come up for air. Then Donald was killed in a car accident. Tracy never recovered. In a way, Anna Jane has been an orphan since birth.”
“At least she had Nana B.”
“You’re right. Nana B. loved her as if she were one of her own children. That stability got Anna Jane through.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Ariel turned toward him, resting one knee on the wall and tucking that foot under her opposite leg. “Have you ever loved anyone like that?” she asked.
“No. Have you?”
She shook her head, then paused. “No, I haven’t. I’m sure of it. Of all the things I had to remember, why was it that?” She gave him a forced smile. “I would rather remember a great love I’d lost than to have never loved anyone. What a sad statement on my life. Don’t you think?”
“It sounds more sensible than sad, if you ask me.”
“Sensible? So you don’t believe in love?”
“I think it’s overrated.” Again his mind drifted to Charlotte. She’d been on his mind a lot these past few days. Something about these circumstances, he supposed, hoping she would again become a distant memory very soon. Whatever lesson he might have wanted to learn from his sister’s one true love had been negated by the reality of Charlotte’s destruction.
“Do you still think I’m lying?” Ariel asked unexpectedly.
He looked at her, at the curve of her cheek and the fullness of her mouth, at the bruises that had nearly faded. “Are you?”
“You ask that question so easily, as if you’re actually willing to believe my answer.” She sighed. “I’m not lying. I have no reason to lie.”
“I have no reason to believe you.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Why won’t you believe me?”
He glanced back at the sea, a dark, murky mystery blending with the horizon until it was impossible to see where one ended and the other began.
“It’s a long, ugly story,” he said.
“I’m willing to listen if you’re willing to tell it.”
He understood that by simply offering her the truth, he’d already made a decision of sorts. On some level he was willing to trust her. Dear God, don’t let him be wrong again.
“My parents died when I was eighteen,” he began, blocking out the view in front of him and instead staring into the past. “I don’t remember much about that time except it rained during the funeral and that it was unusually cold for August. Tracy was already in college and I was due to start in a few weeks. The Wilkenson family has been in hotels since they came over from England in the early 1800s. In nearly two hundred years fortunes had been made and lost. Fourteen years ago we were in one of the bad times.”
He spoke the words without thinking, almost as if he’d told this tale a thousand times before. But the truth was, he’d never told it. Business associates learned bits and pieces from rumors and gossip. He’d discussed specific areas of his past when they were relevant to his work, but that wasn’t often.
“Things have changed,” Ariel said. “You’re obviously very successful.”
He shrugged. His ability to turn the company around wasn’t the point. “I finished college in three years so I could get right to work,” he went on. “For a while there was talk of Tracy taking over instead, but she was never interested and once she met Donald, she didn’t want to spend time working. It took me five years to get the company back on its feet.”
“Let me guess,” she said softly. “You worked twenty-hour days and never came up for air.”
“Exactly.” He turned toward her. “I didn’t have time for anything else. Then, when I finally could draw a breath, I realized the world had taken notice of me and everyone wanted a piece of the Wilkenson genius.” He grimaced. “It was hell.”
“Even the women?” she teased.
Her question shocked him, then he remembered she didn’t know the truth about what had happened. “Let’s just say there were downsides to that. I was emotionally still a kid. My college class load hadn’t left a lot of time for socializing, and neither had my work schedule. I wasn’t prepared to be that popular. In the end, I withdrew so I could stay whole.”
“Is that why you moved here?”
He nodded.
“You’re so cut off from everything. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“I prefer to think of it as one long vacation.” He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t go back. But he was lying about the vacation. He recognized his home on St. Alicia for what it was—a very beautiful, very secure prison.
“You’re trapped here,” she said, surprising him by reading between the lines. “Are you staying because you want to or because you don’t have a choice?”
“Both
,” he admitted.
She tucked a loose hair behind her ear. “What about Anna Jane? You can’t keep her here forever.”
“I know. I’ve thought about sending her back to the States. Maybe to a good boarding school.”
“She’s already afraid of that,” Ariel told him. “Are you familiar with a children’s book called The Little Princess?”
He shook his head.
“Anna Jane has read it several times. The story is about a young girl who is sent to boarding school in England while her father stays in India, searching for his fortune. She has beautiful clothes and is treated like a little princess. Then her father dies and she’s left penniless, until her guardian finally finds her. Actually, she finds him, but that’s not the point. Anna Jane is worried that if she goes to boarding school you’re going to die and she’s going to be penniless and forced to live in an attic.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“She’s only nine, so don’t expect her to believe you right off. We’re not talking about logic. This fear is based on the fact that everyone she’s ever cared about has left her. This isn’t about being poor, but being abandoned. It’s going to take time for her to trust caring again.”
So he and his niece had something in common. Yet he wanted more for her than the solitary existence he was forced to endure.
“She needs an education,” he said. “What’s the solution? There’s a day school on a neighboring island, but she would have to board at least during the week. I suppose I could hire tutors.”
“I think you should talk to her,” Ariel told him. “You can’t separate her from other children, and you can’t let her think she’s been abandoned.”
Returning to the States was an obvious solution, but not an option.
“You know a lot about children,” he said.
“Isn’t it odd? I’ve been thinking about it and I can’t explain it. Maybe I’m a child psychologist or a teacher. I hate not knowing things about myself. I’ve been trying to define my life, so I started making a list.”
“Tell me what you have so far.”
The Mysterious Stranger (Triple Trouble) Page 8
