True Love Read Free

“Your motives are pure and clean. You’re waiting for the return—or the reincarnation, whatever—of the woman you love, your precious Valentina. And you’ve always been faithful to her. I’ve heard it all before. Heard it all my life. You’ll know her when you see her, then you two will go off into the sunset together. Which means that either she dies or you come back to life.”
    Caleb was used to his grandson’s disrespect and general insolence. He’d never say it, but this particular grandson was the one most like himself when he was alive. He kept the frown on his face. “I need to know what happened to Valentina,” he stated simply.What he didn’t add was that he now knew there was a time limit. He had until the twenty-third of June, just weeks away, to find out what had happened to the woman he loved so much that even death couldn’t separate them. If he didn’t put it all back together, he didn’t think that any of them—all the people who had been involved so long ago—would find the happiness they deserved. All he had to do was make his stubborn, never-listens-to-anyone grandson believe .

Chapter One

    A lix continued weeping as Izzy handed her one chocolate after another. So far it had been two doughnuts, one of those flat bars of sixty percent cocoa, a whole Toblerone, and a Kit Kat. If this kept on Alix was going to start in on chocolate chip cookies, which meant Izzy would join her and would probably gain ten pounds and not fit into her wedding dress. Wasn’t that above and beyond the call of friendship?
    They were on the fast ferry that went from Hyannis to Nantucket, sitting at one of the tables by the snack bar. All sorts of delicious, fattening things were within their reach.
    Alix had done well in the past few weeks as she and Izzy finished their last semester of architecture school. They’d turned in their finalprojects, and as always, Alix had been praised by the teacher to the point of embarrassment.
    It was that night that Alix’s boyfriend had broken up with her. Dropped her flat. Eric said he had a different plan for his life.
    After the disastrous date, Alix went straight to Izzy’s apartment. When the knock came, Izzy and her fiancé, Glenn, had been snuggled on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn. She wasn’t in the least surprised when Alix told her what happened—she’d even prepared for it by having two quarts of chocolate caramel ice cream in the freezer.
    Glenn kissed Alix on the forehead. “Eric is a stupid man,” he’d said before heading off to bed.
    Izzy thought she’d be in for a whole night of misery, but an hour later Alix was asleep on their couch. In the morning, she was quiet. “I guess I better go pack,” she said. “Now there’s no reason for me not to go.” She was referring to spending a year on the island of Nantucket. A few years before, right after Izzy had met Glenn—and she’d immediately known she was going to marry him—the girls had made a pact. After their last semester of school, they would take a year off before going job seeking. Izzy wanted time to just be a wife and to think about what she wanted to do with her life.
    Alix had always known that she wanted to prepare a portfolio of designs that she’d present to a possible employer. Since most students went directly from school to a job, all they had to show was the work they’d done for assignments, all heavily influenced by the likes and dislikes of a teacher. Alix wanted to show her own work, all of it original.
    When Alix was told of the year in Nantucket, she had been reluctant. Going somewhere she knew no one was too much. And then there was Eric. Could their relationship stand so much separation? Alix began to come up with excuses for why she couldn’t go, starting with Izzy needing her for the wedding.
    But Izzy had said that this was a once in a lifetime chance and Alix had to take it. “You have to do this!”
    “I don’t know,” Alix said. “Your