He pulled the gnome from the box on his back seat, unwound the protective bubble wrap, and situated it in the bushes beside his pickup to be discovered later. Not unlike the ivy-stamped metalwork amid the rest of the wrought iron fence. Well, okay, maybe gnomes weren’t quite as subtle.
Theo stuck his hands into his pockets, strolling toward Emma’s garçonnière. Indigo Pointe already looked so much better, and Emma had only been working on the landscaping for a short time. So far, much of it had been taming and cleaning up overgrowth the previous owner had permitted, but Emma was also starting to make forward progress as well. The designs she’d shown him for the front entrance were phenomenal. Far better than he had pictured. He was thrilled that he’d hired the exact right person for the job, but he knew it had more to do with luck and timing.
He was even more gratified that she’d fallen into his life, yet he couldn’t help wondering, again, exactly what the nature of the dispute between the Treagers and the Lamberts was. Why would they both claim the treasure? What was worth fighting over? Perhaps he and Emma would discover it when doing their research today.
Theo hoped whatever it was wouldn’t push Emma away from him. She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would allow an old family feud to taint their relationship, not when she’d known nothing about it before. Hopefully as she learned more, it wouldn’t put a rift between them, even if it ended up being something that absolutely had to stay with Indigo Pointe. Would she blame him for keeping it from her family? And which did he care about more now—the ownership and preservation of the plantation, or his budding relationship with the most amazing woman he’d ever met?
Arriving at the cottage before Emma emerged for the day, Theo settled himself on the porch’s top step. He leaned his forearms across his knees and stared down the brick path to his cottage. His eyes followed the soft moss that grew between the bricks; the once-shaggy hedges that lined the brick path were now trimmed into crisp lines. The overall effect of the formal garden from the upstairs window had always been breathtaking, but with Emma’s loving care, it had become the bright jewel of the property. Website hits had doubled in the past two weeks alone, and he attributed it to Instagram and Facebook posts from pleased guests, Emma’s handiwork, and the new tour guide, Maurice.
When the door behind him creaked open, Theo didn’t say a word but simply leaned back against the porch post, allowing today’s gnomes, two tough-looking gnomes in leather bomber jackets and combat boots, to do the speaking for him. One chubby guy was kicked back in a hammock suspended between two resin stumps, and the other held a picket sign that read On Strike.
“My helpers are looking rather lazy today.” Emma’s voice floated like a summer scent on the breeze—light and happy.
She plopped down on the step next to him and muscled him with a stare. Unable to look away, Theo threw his hands into the air. “If they’re not working in the gardens, neither should you.”
“And what do you suggest instead?”
“I have an idea.” He gave Emma his best smoldering look with a hint of a smile. Or at least he hoped it came off that way. He wanted her to think about sharing another kiss or two—or ten—but he really had something completely different in mind. For now. “I thought today might be a good day for research at the historical library. See what we can find out about the Treagers, Indigo Pointe, and the church fire. You game?”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
The excitement on her face made him happier than his morning cup of protein shake. Not that it took much to do that, but still, he knew he’d chosen the day’s plans well.
“Mind if I change?” She looked down at her clothes, which, while they fit her well and she looked as beautiful as ever, were admittedly all wrong for the day. Her cheeks colored again, as if she needed to be embarrassed for wearing gardening clothes for work.
The woman blushed way too easily, but he liked that she couldn’t hide anything, including her emotions. “Of course.” He made a show of looking at his blank wrist. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
He watched as Emma turned back to her door. There was something so light, so right, about her, and he knew he could spend a lifetime admiring her.
He shook his head. Wow, he was getting sappy for someone the community considered to be a beast. If his business associates knew how soft he was getting, he’d be wickedly taken advantage of.
It wasn’t long before Emma stepped from her cottage completely transformed. She looked resplendent in a blue and white sundress, her hair cascading in loose waves across her shoulders, the deep brunette setting off her porcelain skin. Even when she caught him staring, he didn’t look away.
She smiled briefly, but then a serious look settled on her features. “Theo, I’m afraid I’ve been thinking about that gnome on strike.”
“That could be dangerous.” Theo matched her grave tone.
“I know.”
They started walking toward his pickup back at the office lot. Their hands bumped, and he grabbed hold, squeezing slightly, so she would know it was intentional.
“He must be protesting something.”
Theo hadn’t thought that one through all the way. “You did call him and his friends lazy. Employees don’t take to being treated so poorly.”
She laughed, and he tried to hold on to the sound, to memorize it so he could hear it as he fell asleep that night. “You may have a point. No one wants to feel underappreciated.”
Did she feel he didn’t appreciate her? He chanced a look, but didn’t find an answer. “Would you feel I’m being insincere if I told you your plans for the main entrance are inspired?” He hoped she knew he really meant it. “Since you showed me, I’ve spent some time online looking at other plantations, and I feel your designs are creative and elegant and, well, perfect.” He swallowed, allowing the rest of his thought to come out as a whisper he almost hoped she wouldn’t hear, “Just as you are.”
They were almost to his pickup when Emma noticed the last gnome of the day. She dropped his hand and sprinted to the little guy. “Is that …?” She crouched to inspect him, standing to face Theo when he caught up with her. “A gnome with a camera?”
“What? A paparazzo gnome hiding in the bushes?” He tried to sound shocked, but quickly had to camouflage his mirth. He opened the door for her. “At least now we know how they’ve overheard so many of our private conversations.” He raised an eyebrow.
Before he could close the door, she leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the lips. He sure liked this woman.
Chapter 18
Already familiar with the public narrative about Indigo Pointe, the only place Theo could think of to learn more was the local public library. Emails and phone calls to the local historical society had gone unanswered, and their Facebook page hadn’t been updated in six months, but he hoped that by going in person, they could find a librarian who would be able to point them in the right direction.
But he’d been wrong. The genealogy section of small Nouvelle Foix Library was stuffed into a windowless conference room, two tables ringed with bookshelves. While there was a desk for a librarian, the chair was empty, and a half-full mug of coffee waited beside a hibernating computer. He assumed that pointed to a temporary absence, but after half an hour, no one had reappeared.
The only other person in the room was an elderly woman, curled like a comma around a corner of the table. She looked far more comfortable in her sleep than the hard edge of a table should afford.
Absent any guidance, Theo and Emma perused the room, finding only four books that looked promising enough to snatch off the shelves. In a room full of books with everything from family crests and tartan patterns to maps of faraway townships, there wasn’t much else other than actual books of genealogy, which would be more searchable online.
He and Emma spread out on the unoccupied table, Emma cracking open the first dusty tome before he’d even pulled out his tablet computer and logged on. The room was
dim, the air musty, and Theo tried hard to concentrate on his screen rather than the lack of light and suffocating dust. If he needed something beautiful to look at, she was right there in front of him.
“I’m glad the original documents are typed out for me,” Emma whispered, pointing at a black-and-white photo of a handwritten ledger. The writing was neat and uniform, but also flat and thin, almost to the point of being indistinguishable.
“It’s hard enough to understand what they’re talking about without having to decipher it in the first place.” Emma kept her voice quiet, obviously in deference to the sleeping woman, whose mouth sagged open, her breath whistling when she inhaled. The dust must have been bothering her as well.
Emma looked longingly at Theo’s computer and he pulled it to his chest, protecting it in case she was thinking of negotiating a trade.
“Now you know why I gave you that job.” He looked down at the note he’d started. When he was ready, he would right-click and the computer program would convert his handwriting into type. The irony of Emma’s complaint wasn’t lost on him.
He already had a couple of internet tabs open—one with Family Search to track down the first name of the Treager from the gravestone, another to search archived newspapers from the Library of Congress.
“Are you finding anything?” Emma interrupted his searching.
Theo laughed. “Give me a chance; I just got started.”
“Every internet search I did at home was useless. And so are these.” She patted the stack of books. “Don’t get me wrong. I love books.” She looked around her, her eyes sweeping every volume on the shelves. “Are you a reader, Theo?”
He scanned the top hits, looking for something more than he already knew. “I haven’t had a lot of time since I graduated college, but I listen to my fair share of nonfiction audiobooks.” It helped him fall asleep when he was recovering from jet lag.
She gave him a look of Really?
“What?” he asked. She was probably someone who read the classics for fun, and he had a sudden desire to pull out some of his favorites, like maybe a King Arthur tale.
“Fiction’s where it’s at—there’s no better escape.”
“Escape?” What was she trying to leave?
“It’s like traveling, only never leaving home.”
“Leaving home is the point of traveling.” He loved debating with her. Behind her witty quips was an intelligence and appreciation for the world and people that he admired. “How will you ever see the gardens at Vigeland Park in Norway if you never leave home?”
“Some people use their imaginations, Theo.” She smirked at him. “And Google images.”
“Reading’s great, but you’ll like it better in person.” He shook his head at her. “Let’s get back to work, smarty pants.”
She couldn’t actually mean that she didn’t want to travel. And if she was impressed with this dingy library, she would love the opulence of his collection in New Orleans. Theo opened his mouth to tell her about it, but changed his mind. He’d show her in person so he could see her expression when she walked through the door. Saturday. He’d ask her on a real date for Saturday, take her out for some classic Cajun cuisine, and then surprise her with the library.
She’d finished with the first book and pulled another toward her.
“I was a history undergrad,” Theo explained, “so I learned some nifty research tricks.” Not that he put them to use very often. There wasn’t much need for it in real estate investing or wills and trusts, and if there was, usually his assistants did the legwork.
He changed his internet search to fire + Indigo Pointe, but no relevant hits surfaced. He considered how he might need to alter his keywords. “I’ve missed this.” It was like a puzzle.
“I bet your search is going faster.” Emma didn’t look too happy. He watched her scan through the index and then fan the pages to the correct location. Her finger traced the book, marking her progress as she skimmed. When she didn’t find what she wanted, she pursed her lips to one side for about two seconds and then went to the index again for another entry. “At least yours has a digital search.”
He smiled at her, completely forgetting he was supposed to be doing half of the work. “You’re the one who said you couldn’t find anything online.”
“Well, did you?” Her look challenged him.
“Yes, and no.” He kept focused on the computer, not ready to share anything quite yet. “Still working on it.”
In his periphery he saw that she closed the second book and hesitantly pulled another toward her, opening the pages as if afraid what might be on them. As she read, her shoulders slumped and creases formed between her eyebrows. A sadness pulled about the corners of her mouth, her eyes shiny with unspoken emotion.
“Emma?” When she lifted her eyes, all he saw was pain. “What did you find?”
She swallowed hard, and instead of answering, turned the book for him to see. Each page had a date with names, ages, and descriptions, followed by a dollar amount. A record of sales at another plantation within the same parish as Indigo Pointe.
His throat froze and a lump formed like a glacier in his stomach. He closed his eyes against the sight.
Intellectually, he understood that neither he nor Emma could choose where they came from or who their ancestors were, but it didn’t soften the blow.
Desperate to pull her from the emotional descent he saw her spiraling into, Theo vowed to find something positive about the next article he found. He flipped through a string of photos until one caught his eye. Clicking on the black-and-white image, he saw two women, probably in their fifties or sixties, their skin contrasting each other’s, standing shoulder to shoulder. Each woman had what looked like a son or daughter and a grandson at their sides. The young boys, around six or seven years old, sat playing in the dirt, forever frozen in a giggle. “Pruning the Lambert Rose.” It was the caption that snagged his attention. Theo scrutinized the building behind them.
“This is the church on Indigo Pointe, isn’t it?” Theo turned the computer to face Emma.
As she closed her book, a tear leaked out of the corner of her eye, but Theo pretended not to notice as she brushed it away. After a long moment of examining the photo, Emma spoke, a false cheer in her voice.
“It has to be, and it matches what your parents said about the roses. After all these years, it still looks the same.” She picked the computer up and walked around the table. Taking the seat next to him, she replaced the computer where they could both see. “I think the picture was taken in the twenties, don’t you think? Look at the woman’s hair.”
He nodded. “Sometime around that, I would think.”
Emma tried to enlarge the photo, but it was at its maximum size, so she drew the screen closer, squinting. “I wonder … could that boy be my Opa?”
Commandeering his keyboard, Emma copied and pasted both the image and the link into an email to herself and sent it before she relinquished the tablet. Instead of returning to her books, she shut them, sliding them to the furthest corner of the table.
“I’m not finding anything. Mind if we look together?”
Mind? The only thing he minded was that he had to keep his eyes on the screen. Most of the time. At least this way he could feel the heat of her next to him, her thigh touching his when she leaned.
“Let’s start with the easy one.” Theo returned to the Family Search website and entered the last name Treager. “What were those dates again?”
She told him, and within seconds he had full birth and death dates as well as a first name. “Ivette Treager. Born 25 Jan. 1862. Died 17 Oct. 1925. Both life events recorded as happening at Indigo Pointe. It has to be her.” He glanced at the next closest names, but none of them matched better than Ivette.
“Wow. That was easy. I should have just done that at home.”
Emma jotted the information down in a spiral notebook that already included a printed copy of the doorknob photo she’d taken inside the house.
It was taped on a page with some other notes in her neat handwriting, and he cringed, remembering when it was taken. If only he hadn’t reacted that way. But then again, if he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be here, sitting beside him. She wouldn’t be working for him and he wouldn’t see her every day.
“I know you would have, but we just found the dates a couple of days ago.” And she’d been pretty busy with other things. “But I was hoping we’d find something more in those books than we couldn’t find online.” He shrugged. Apparently libraries weren’t all that helpful anymore. “What’s next?”
Palms up, she looked for his advice. “The church fire? Did you say you could search back copies of local newspapers?”
“Yes. Let’s try that.” Theo clicked on the Library of Congress tab to reveal a website with digitized historic American newspapers. He narrowed the search to Louisiana and entered Indigo Pointe into the search bar. With less than sixty hits, he decided to go through each, skipping only the ones in French. Articles spoke of everything from crop yields to a fatal accident in the fields. One story caught his eye, and he zoomed in, turning his computer so Emma could read.
“A ball? At Indigo?” Seeing the joy on Emma’s face reminded Theo of the lightning bugs several nights before.
“I know. Can you imagine?” A soiree like in the main house’s small rooms would have been squished and hot.
“It must have been extraordinary.”
Of course they would see it differently. Theo imagined couples chatting on the balconies, all the furniture moved from a room or two so there would be space for dancing. The band could have set up on the back porch. It could have worked.
He watched as Emma clicked through a couple more newspaper articles. Freckles, pale as star shadows, splayed across her nose. “I can’t believe how much this family did.” Her family, she seemed to forget. “They were into everything—government, military, civic groups. In a world without social media, it’s amazing how often they ended up in the paper.”
Beauty and the Billionaire Beast Page 11
