“No. They’re straight down that aisle, and be sure to open the carton to see if any are broken,” he said.
Alix stood up from the cart and looked at him.
With a sigh, he hurried down the aisle to get the eggs.
When Alix fi
nished unloading, the young woman at the checkout said, “Are you and Jared a couple?”
For a moment Alix was speechless. Did everyone on this island know everyone else? “No,” she said at last. “We just met yesterday.”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “You two argue like you’re married.”
Alix started to say something but Jared returned with the eggs.
“Did you get any Greek yogurt?” he asked. “I can’t stand those little cartons with all the sugar in the bottom.”
Alix, very aware of the woman watching, held up the Greek yogurt.
“Good,” he said, smiling. “That’s just the kind I like.” Ken had introduced it to him.
She glanced at the checkout girl, who again raised her brows. Jared held out his key ring with the Stop and Shop card on it, then paid.
Outside was warmer than inside and they hurried to the truck. Alix handed him bags and he put them in the back. When they were inside the truck he took one look at her and turned on the heater. “How are you going to survive winter here in a drafty old house?”
“I’m going to get a fat boyfriend,” she said.
When Jared didn’t reply she looked at him. He was pulling out of the parking lot and saying nothing. It looked like boyfriends were another subject she wasn’t supposed to mention. But the truth was that if she didn’t get a man to distract her, she was going to make a fool of herself over Jared Montgomery slash Kingsley.
“How about if we go home, put the groceries away, then walk around town for a while?” he asked.
“And maybe you’ll see someone you know.”
He looked at her quickly and saw she was joking. “We all know each other now but that won’t last long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Theeeey’re commming.”
She couldn’t help laughing. He sounded like an announcer on a horror movie trailer. “Who is coming?”
He turned down a street that looked too narrow to have even one-way traffic, but another truck was coming right at them. Neither Jared nor the other driver seemed to think anything about passing one another in such a narrow space and of course they lifted their hands in greeting.
“You’ll find out,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer.
When they were back at the house they carried in the groceries and quickly put them away. Alix knew where everything went in the lower cabinets, and that made them laugh. Twice she ducked under his arm to get to the fridge. All in all, they worked well together.
Twenty minutes later they were back outside and walking through the streets of Nantucket. She followed Jared as they went down one gorgeous street after another, stopping now and then to comment on a door or some other extraordinary feature of a house.
After a while he stopped in front of a small house and for a moment Alix didn’t know why he’d halted. But then she looked over his shoulder and her eyes widened. “You did that, didn’t you? I mean, Jared Montgomery remodeled that house.”
“He did,” Jared said, his eyes twinkling. “And I happen to know that he was just fifteen years old when he designed it. Of course this is nothing compared to his later work, but it is his.”
“Are you kidding?” Alix said. “I knew it was his. Look at the way that door is set into the wall. That’s pure Montgomery.”
Jared lost his smile. “Are you saying that he hasn’t changed in his whole career?”
“I think he has very wisely stuck to what works.”