The Owner's Secret (A Secret Billionaire Romance Book 4)

by Kimberley Montpetit

  Shaking her head to clear her mind, she moved down the foyer to snatch up her handbag and the keys on the foyer table.

  “You’re driving to the parish offices right now?” Britt said, pausing on the way to his office. “They’ll be closing in thirty minutes.”

  Melody halted mid-step. “Right. I should have thought of that. Took all day to do New Orleans. Guess that shows how anxious I am to research.”

  “You must be exhausted, too,” Britt said sympathetically. “Not just the long drive back and forth, but the emotional toll of seeing your home and business nearly reduced to rubble.”

  She gave him a feeble smile, fatigue hitting her as if with a sledgehammer. “I’m trying not to think about it.”

  “Maybe you should just go take a nap before dinner instead of trying to search through the attic.”

  Melody chewed on her lips, thinking of Mirry at the hospital still muttering about White Castle. “I feel strangely anxious. Maybe poking around the attic for a bit will help my restlessness. Since I can’t do anything else today.”

  “Go have fun. I trust you not to take off with the family silver.”

  “Ha! What’s for dinner?”

  “Pork chops in a frying pan with steamed veggies?”

  “Sounds perfect. Got any applesauce and corn bread?” Melody asked with a grin.

  “I think I can rustle that up. Go enjoy the house.”

  He waved her off and seconds later she could hear him at his computer keyboard again.

  Turning around, Melody started at the beginning of the downstairs rooms. She hadn’t really explored them all that thoroughly. And now that she was searching for more pictures or old family ties, she had a specific mission.

  The sitting rooms were mostly filled with polished old furniture, Victorian knickknacks, and cut-glass lamps. Shelves and shelves of old books in the library, including ledgers from its sugar cane plantation days, and tomes about Louisiana’s early history.

  A handsome but out of tune pianoforte stood next to the bay window in the music room. Melody touched the keys, remembering a few tunes from her piano lesson days with Granny Mirry. When she plucked at the ivory keys, the computer clacking paused as if Britt were listening to her playing “Moon River.” For a prank, she played “Chopsticks" and Britt’s booming laughter filled the grand hall.

  He called out from the end of the hallway, “It’s probably safe to say that the pianoforte has never heard ‘Chopsticks’ in the last hundred and seventy-five years.”

  “You have a maestro in the house and you didn’t even know it.”

  “You have additional talents in many other areas,” Britt shot back.

  “Okay, ssh! No talking. I’m trying to focus.”

  That just made him laugh louder as Melody strolled to the ballroom to gaze at the old picture of her grandparents.

  Sitting under one of the twelve-foot windows, the gauzy damask draperies flowed around her like a wedding veil. She put her elbows on her knees and held the picture in her palms, astonished once again at its presence here in such an unexpected location.

  Perhaps her grandparents had visited White Castle long ago and had their photo taken by a visiting photographer. And some unknown person decided to keep it here because it gave the mansion ambience.

  But that decision didn’t settle right. It just seemed odd, and if the purpose of the mansion was to remain firmly in the antebellum era of the 1850s and 1860s, why have a few stray photos of visitors in the first decades of the twentieth century?

  A flash of lightning went off in Melody’s head. White Castle wasn’t even open for tours in the 1940s and ’50s! Granny Mirry must have been a personal acquaintance of the White Castle owners and visited the mansion as a friend.

  She had to get to the parish record offices and figure the history of this house out once and for all. Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.

  Meanwhile, Melody was itching to do some fresh exploring.

  She ran up the stairs on stockinged feet and passed the various guest rooms, slipping into each one to peruse any photographs sitting in frames on the tables or fireplace mantles. There weren’t many. Most were in the main rooms downstairs and the few that hung on walls were just period replicas of unknown people and flower gardens.

  At the end of the hall, just like Britt had told her, there was a single door next to the windows overlooking the Mississippi. She turned the handle and the door squeaked open. A light switch was on the wall and she flipped it, flooding the stairwell and revealing a set of narrow, wooden steps that ascended steeply up toward the roof’s low ceiling.

  At the top of the stairs, Melody stopped and turned in a circle, astonished at the sight.

  The place was packed with boxes and trunks and various miscellaneous items—as if the place was a movie set with dressmaker dummies, an old rocking horse, old chairs, a lumpy sofa, stripped bed frames, and a stack of mattresses shoved up against the far wall.

  Moving slowly, Melody walked the length of the attic, stopping to inspect a trundle bed, and then running her hand along the straps of a trunk. She opened the lid and the musty scent of mothballs rose up from its depths.

  “Wow, that’s potent,” she said, waving her hands to disperse the strong scents of more than a century earlier. “And so much saved here. Why didn’t they get rid of some of it?”

  In past years, cleaning out houses of outgrown or worn out furniture and belongings was probably more difficult before refuse centers and landfills were created. Wealthy plantation owners kept everything, as if knowing they needed to document their lives, as if looking into the future to generations that would be curious about what life was like two hundred years ago—just as she was.

  Shafts of light from the dormer windows spilled across the length of the dusty floors. Thankfully, Melody could stand erect, but the ceiling was low and she found herself ducking occasionally, afraid she’d bash the top of her head.

  Opening up two trunks that sat side by side, she dug through the stacked and folded women’s clothing. Long dresses from at least the 1870s with bustles. A wooden hoop for wearing under the wide skirts and dresses, now broken and folded over onto itself.

  At the bottom lay dresses from the Edwardian era with lace filigree and pretty necklines. Boxes of beads and bobbles, necklaces and earrings. Such delicate finery! Nightgowns. Chemises. Stockings. Buttoned shoes. Shoes with high heels. Fans and feathers and boas and hats.

  A wave of dizziness suddenly assaulted Melody, images flickering past her eyes like a dazzling kaleidoscope of color and movement.

  It was almost like an out-of-body experience. She stood in the middle of a large room packed with adults dressed up in fancy evening wear. Everybody was talking at once and the sound hurt her ears. She clapped her hands over her ears to block it out, but most of it got past her fingers and she looked out from under her bags to complain to her Granny Mirry about the loud grownups and raucous laughter.

  Looking down at herself, Melody saw that she was wearing a pinafore dress and glossy black Mary Jane shoes that pinched her toes.

  Music was playing somewhere and couples were dancing across the humongous hallway.

  Moving closer, she wound her way through the press of people, and Melody came to see that it wasn’t a corridor at all. It was the great hall of White Castle.

  Why was she suddenly at a party at White Castle? And why was she a child again?

  It was hot and Melody began to sway dizzily, before plopping straight down to her bum on the foyer carpet. Where was Granny Mirry?

  But Mirry was kind of like her mama now since Mommy and Daddy had died in a car crash on the way home from a party. Melody had stayed up too late waiting for them.

  Was it this party? Is that why she felt so disoriented and her stomach hurt?

  “Melody,” someone called, jiggling at her arm. “Melody, wake up!” And then more sharply, “Melody!”

  The waves of all those past memories crashed over her and then suddenly v
anished.

  When Melody opened her eyes, she was lying on the dirty, cobwebby floor of the attic, and Britt Mandeville was staring down at her. Concern—or was it fear? —in those mesmerizing eyes.

  “Can you hear me, Melody?” he asked.

  “Of course I can hear you. But what am I doing on the floor?”

  “I think you fainted. Are you feeling all right? Perhaps it’s been too long since we ate.”

  “I’ve never fainted in my life. I think I was having a dream. Or a memory … or something.” She sat up and Britt grasped her arm firmly in his as she scooted into a sitting position. He dragged a chair over and helped her into it.

  “Is this chair all right to sit in?” she asked, teasing him. “It’s not two hundred years old and liable to break underneath me?”

  “It’s a regular folding chair that was probably left up here sometime in the last ten years,” he told her wryly. “What happened? Did you hit your head, or lose your balance?”

  Melody shrugged her shoulders, not sure at all, although her head didn’t hurt. “I saw—” Melody looked up into Britt’s face. “I think I saw the past. But I was myself when I was a little girl. Which means it was actually a memory.”

  Britt folded his hand around hers, kneeling next to her. “Where were you, what did you see? Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I was here,” she said simply.

  Frown lines creased his forehead. “Here in the attic?”

  “No, silly. I—oh my gosh, I was here at White Castle. And I was looking for my grandmother. It’s all coming to me now. But I’ve never been to White Castle before. I’d never heard of it before Mirry urged me to come.”

  “What was happening in your flashback?”

  “A gathering, or a party, a soirée or something.” Melody’s voice trailed away as she tried to hang onto the memory. “It was hot and full of people and I was looking for my grandmother—no, my parents. Now I can’t remember for sure. Goodness, Britt, am I losing my mind?”

  “Not at all. Maybe you fell asleep and were dreaming.”

  “It was more real than a dream, the details so specific and in full color. Why wouldn’t I be my own age now, an adult?” Lifting her chin, a sudden certainty washed over her. “No, I was a child, I’m not even sure how old, but young. And I was at the mansion. I have been here before. Maybe it was seeing all these old party dresses in the trunks that brought it all back.”

  “Sounds like a possibility,” Britt mused, leaning back on his palms, his fingers making prints in the thick dust. “Could this explain why your grandmother wanted you to come, perhaps?

  “But what does White Castle have to do with anything now? Gosh, that childhood memory is almost thirty years ago. I was really young, probably not more than three or four.”

  “Perhaps Mirry was confused and a little mixed up from the high fever. Old memories of attending a party or a wedding surfaced in her mind. A time that was happy and safe, so she sent you here to be safe and happy. In a mixed-up sort of way.”

  “Maybe, but she was so urgent about it. Like a deathbed promise.”

  “She’s been very ill,” Britt added, squeezing her cold hand in his. “So do you feel safe here at White Castle? And happy?”

  Was he teasing her now? Or was there more to his question? Their eyes locked in a meaningful gaze, as if he discerned her heart and the sorrows of her life.

  Melody tried to shake off the urge to melt into his arms and let him explain everything away as coincidence, but she held back. Staring down at her lap, she saw that their fingers were locked together. When had that happened?

  A sizzling lightning raced like a whirlwind through her entire being. Far beyond anything she had ever experienced before. Her heart and mind and soul were completely overwhelmed by Britt Mandeville.

  But touching him wasn’t right. Not while her sister assumed Britt was still her fiancé and she wore his ring. Slowly, she slipped her hand from his and clasped her fingers together in her lap.

  Britt stared down at their broken bond. “I understand what you’re trying to tell me, but I’m still not thrilled about it.”

  Her shoulders lifted. “It’s the way it has to be for now.”

  “I’ll respect that—for now. But a man can fight back in other ways.”

  “Oh, really?” she teased, lifting an eyebrow.

  “It’s really adorable when you do that.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Let me help you downstairs,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Dinner is probably burning.”

  She made a face. “Yikes, sorry. But I’m glad you found me up here. For a moment, I thought I was losing my mind. I know that Mirry was here many decades ago with my grandfather because I have their picture. But now I also know that I have been here, too—as much as that blows my mind.”

  Melody dusted off the back of her jeans. Her eyes narrowed as she squinted across the darkening room as sunset fell. “What’s that over there?”

  “I need to spend more time poking around up here,” Britt said, following her gaze to the far corner of the attic.

  Behind an old rocking chair stood a wooden table, scarred with scratches and dirt. But on top of the table stood a doll house with cupolas and dormer windows and an imposing entrance with a big veranda porch. It was a beautiful plantation mansion, painted a pearl white, with massive greek columns running the breadth of the house.

  “It’s White Castle,” Melody breathed, a powerful prickling sensation running down her spine. “It’s a dollhouse replica of White Castle. Look at the miniature rocking chairs on the porch.”

  Peering around the back of the table, she peeked into the open back of the house where an exact replica of the grand foyer lay, complete with carpet and paintings on the wall.

  “There’s the library,” Britt said, touching a finger against the desk and along the library shelves with papier-mâché books. “You can even read the titles—with a magnifying glass,” he added, grinning.

  “Um, yeah, maybe I need glasses, but I can definitely see that the spines have real letters and words, not just a scribble. Oh, look at the music room! A carved pianoforte with the tiniest, prettiest ivory keys! All the upstairs bedrooms are accounted for too, with real glass windows.”

  “Those logs in the fireplaces are pretty awesome. The staircase running up through the house is incredible. Such detailed replicas of the actual house.”

  Melody rocked back on her heels, stunned. “Whoever received this dollhouse as a gift was a lucky girl. It should be on display in the front parlor, or the second story playroom for tour visitors to enjoy.”

  “I’m adding this project to my growing White Castle To Do list. Before we move it anywhere I need to examine it more closely. Plus, it’s pretty dirty and needs paint and a few repairs.”

  Melody pressed a hand against her lips. “It’s a work of art. Carved and crafted by someone with loving, talented hands.” She stopped talking and rolled her eyes at her own words. “Here I am worried about an old dollhouse when I have no place to live and no means of income. It’s going to take a year to reconstruct the bookstore. I need to spend my time figuring that out. Even though the dollhouse would be much more fun to play with,” she added, laughing at herself. “Meanwhile, I’m stuck spending my time getting bids and assessments done.”

  Britt’s eyes caught hers. “This is a great project to distract you. And me.”

  “I’m not supposed to be distracted by you,” she said softly.

  “But you distract me every day, every moment, every glance, every laugh.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like this.”

  “Then just take me out back and put me out of my misery.”

  “You’re in misery?” Melody teased, quirking her lips.

  Britt cupped his hand around her head, playing with the strands of her hair as his gaze raked over her face, and drank in her eyes. “Hey, it’s a good kind of misery because being near you is all I want. Until I can convi
nce you to give me a chance.”

  “You may be waiting until hell freezes over, sir.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “My, you are a patient man, then.”

  Their faces had moved closer as they talked and Melody found herself breathing Britt in, his masculine aftershave, the warmth of his body, and the deep timbre of his voice. She reveled in the touch of his hand on her neck. It would be so easy to give in, to lose herself in him, to spend hours kissing him.

  Britt’s eyes glanced down at her mouth and Melody shivered with delight and anticipation, wanting to feel his lips on hers again. It had only been one full day since he’d kissed her in the Ferrari. Hours and hours too long.

  As if reading her mind, Britt said, “Almost a whole day without the taste of heaven.”

  Melody tried not to giggle. “You are so very bad.”

  He broke into a wide grin, enjoying her insult. “I thought the word was incorrigible.”

  “Maximum incorrigible, sir.”

  “Then this will have to do,” he said, taking her hand in his. Bending over, Britt kissed the back of her fingers. “Milady, may I have the pleasure of your company at dinner tonight?”

  Melody glanced down at her clothes. “After the lady changes out of her dusty attire.”

  “I will await you in the dining room, then.”

  Chapter 20

  After breakfast the next morning, Melody headed across the gardens to the garage. Britt offered to accompany her, but she insisted that she could do it on her own.

  She hadn’t actually told him what she was doing. Only that she wanted to find out why her grandmother had come here so many decades ago when she was a young woman—and then again to bring Melody as a child.

  Mirry had known the owners—or was friends with someone who knew the owners of White Castle. Most peculiar of all was the fact that before last week, her grandmother had never mentioned this house.

  “You’re being very secretive,” Britt had said at breakfast, hinting broadly. “Where exactly are you going?”

  “Only ten miles up the road,” she said simply. Her old memories were a jumble of shadowy images—all laced with Mirry’s urgent request. “It’s probably nothing at all. Just my grandmother’s fevered brain at eighty-six years old remembering an old party of no consequence.”