As for the last job applicant, she hadn’t even shown up for lunch. Lanny, extremely pleased with the first young woman, had volunteered to go look for her. To him, the more women around him, the better.
When asked about the third candidate, Mrs. Frazier had said, “Leave her where she is,” in a way that made Colin groan. It looked as though his mother had already made up her mind about who she was going to hire and she didn’t need to know anything more about the third one. But Colin’s hope was that the other student was interested in something besides the family possessions.
“Mother,” Colin said as they were going in to lunch, “I think the other woman should be here too and that you should talk to her.”
“I’ve already found out everything I need to know about her. Let’s just have a pleasant lunch, shall we? Kirk and Isla are such fun, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, hilarious,” Colin said as his mother swept past him. He caught up with her. “I just think—”
His mother turned on him. “If you’re so interested in the other girl, then you can go get her. I left her in the guesthouse, and I assume she’s still there.” Mrs. Frazier went into the dining room.
Colin started after her but paused in the doorway. The dining room had been set with the best china, and their housekeeper, Rachel, was wearing a white uniform. She looked up, met Colin’s eyes, and gave a shrug that said the getup was his mother’s doing.
Colin’s parents took their places at the ends of the table, and Mr. Frazier looked as though he’d rather be anywhere else in the world than there. Lanny was next to the lovely Miss Isla, with the handsome Kirk on his other side.
Across the table were three settings, one occupied by Shamus, the other two for Colin and the third candidate.
Mrs. Frazier motioned for her eldest son to take his seat.
Colin took a step forward, but he couldn’t make himself sit down. “I . . . ,” he said. “I’ll . . .” He pointed over his shoulder, vaguely in the direction of the guesthouse, then escaped. He jumped in a utility truck and sped off.
By the time Colin reached the guesthouse, his frown was so deep his dark brows were nearly touching in the middle. He parked the little truck on the grass and walked the last steps to the guesthouse. Based on what he’d seen of the others, he thought it would be better to check on what the third student was up to. All least her car wasn’t parked nearby and she wasn’t filling the trunk with whatever she could carry. What had possessed his mother to leave a stranger alone in the little house? It was full of valuable antiques—all of which had come from England and arrived in a moving van weeks after the documents came.
Colin had his hand on the door handle of the library, ready to burst in, when he saw her. She was sitting on the old carpet, her back against the cabinets that had been installed only last week. Around her were six boxes of the documents his mother had bought.
Her face was turned away, but he could see that under her loose clothing she was small and trim, with shoulder-length dark blonde hair. There was a pen clipped to her sleeve, one in her hand, and three pens of different colors on the floor. By her knee was a thick notebook open to a page filled with writing.
As he watched, she bent forward, put what looked to be an old letter on the floor, and began to write in her notebook. When she made a note in the margin, she used a different color.
When she glanced up, he thought she’d seen him through the glass, but her eyes held a glazed look, and he realized she was seeing only what was inside her mind.
Her movement let him get a clearer view of her face. She was pretty, not beautiful like his friend Jean, or ethereal like his cousin Sara, but nice-looking. He thought that this young woman looked like . . . like she belonged in a library. She was the girl who went to church on Sunday and made pot roast on Friday.
What struck Colin most was that he had never in his life seen anyone look so . . . well, happy. If he’d ever before seen anyone doing exactly what he should, when he should, she was it. If Shamus were to draw her portrait, he’d label it Contentment.
Colin’s frown went away. Now this is what he’d envisioned when his mother had first talked of hiring someone to research the family history.
Smiling, he turned the handle and opened the door. Now, if he just didn’t scare her when she saw him . . .
The sound of the door opening startled Gemma out of her trance, and she looked up to see a very large man standing in the doorway. He was quite handsome, with his thick, dark eyebrows and his square jaw.
He had on a shirt that verged on being too tight; it clung to his muscles—and Gemma thought she probably knew every exercise he did. She’d had four years of working with athletes, so she knew what it took to get a body into the shape his was in.
He wore the same look she’d seen on the faces of “her” athletes. When first meeting someone they held back until they saw how their enormous size might affect that person. It was her guess that this man, with his thick brows and his big body, often intimidated people.
But not Gemma. The truth was that because of “her boys” he was familiar-looking to her, someone she was comfortable being near—which was a contrast to her encounter with Mrs. Frazier with her diamond earrings.
As Gemma stood up, she gave him a smile that came from her heart. “Hello. Did you come to get me for lunch?” She glanced at her watch. It was one-thirty. “Oh dear. I missed it, didn’t I?”
“Completely,” Colin said as he closed the door behind him. He nodded toward the open boxes on the floor. “Find anything interesting?”
“Love, tragedy, and something that people believed was magic,” she said.
He sat down in the big chair by the door. “You found all that in such a short time?”
Turning her back to him, she held out her arms to the bookcases. When she did, her trousers tightened a bit, and Colin had a better look at her shape. She didn’t get legs like that from sitting around all day.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said, “but I think there might be real treasure buried in here.” She looked back at him. “Are you one of Mrs. Frazier’s sons?”