Windswept (9 page)

She walked back to the office only to shut off the computer and the lights. Between the food and her very long day, she knew she would accomplish nothing for the rest of the evening. She didn’t even watch any television, simply fell into bed and a satisfied sleep.

***

The next morning Barrett rose early and went first to the dining room, then through the door below the balcony. She had assumed correctly; that way lay the kitchen.

She stepped into a sun-lit space and looked around at the glass-paneled oak cabinets, the stainless steel appliances, the butcher-block countertops, the windowsill holding two big red ripening tomatoes and four small pots of green herbs. Yellow-and-blue Mexican canisters sat along the multi-colored tile backsplash. A cozy bay window held an oak table and padded chairs. Past the kitchen on the other side of the open counter, she could see a normal family room with comfortable chairs, a big sofa, a television and a card table.

She blinked. The two rooms did not look like they belonged with the rest of the house. Real people lived here.

Gonzales and Eva were seated at the table, and both rose to their feet when she entered. “Good morning,” Gonzales said. “What would you like for breakfast, Dr. Browning?” Eva inquired.

“Good morning.” She fell into teacher mode. She’d decided last night she had to gain control of the situation or be doomed to the chilly dining room--alone. “First, I’d like to eat in this cheery kitchen instead of the lonely dining room, except when Mr. Jamison is home, of course. I assume I’ll be eating with him for dinner. Otherwise, I’d be honored to share your meals.

“Second, I’d like to have a newspaper to read with breakfast. The
Houston Chronicle
you have here would be fine, if you’re finished with it.

“Third, I’d like some grapefruit juice, Cheerios if possible with bananas or some fruit in milk, and a big mug of coffee to finish. And I’d like the two of you to relax and join me. Please call me Barrett. I’m not a pretentious person.”

The Gonzales were staring at her with scandalized expressions, so she added, “Please go along with me on this. What I’m doing with the records can get lonely, and having human companionship around can be helpful. Okay?”

After they slowly nodded assent, she sat down at the table, picked up the comics section from the newspaper, and started reading. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gonzales and Eva look at each other.

Eva nodded and told her husband to bring in the place setting from the dining room. While he went for the dishes, Eva poured a glass of juice and set it in front of Barrett. “Jesus tells me you speak Spanish,” she said to Barrett in that language.

“Si, señora.”

“Muy bien.”

After their exchange, all conversation was conducted in Spanish. By the end of the meal, Barrett and the Gonzales had reached a compromise on names. She was
maestra
, Gonzales was
don
Jesus, and his wife was
doña
Eva, but only when nobody else except Ricardo was around. In deference to Gonzales’s sensibilities, formality was to reign otherwise.

Barrett and Ricardo finished the sorting late Wednesday and arranged the boxes in the conference room in the order in which she would catalog their contents. In a back corner were the two barrels and a couple of locked trunks. She’d worry about them later. After the young man left, she walked around the room a couple of times admiring their handiwork and planning her next steps.

If she did nothing but inventory and organize box contents for the next two days, she could get a jump start on the process, establish her rhythm and make sure her methodology worked. The records began in the 1830s. If she could work her way well into the decade, she’d have some good leads for her own articles. Or, at least she hoped so. She’d follow those leads over the weekend and go back to the inventory on Monday.

She knew two items she was particularly looking for. Edgar Preston Jamison had shown her two journals as a starting point, one, the diary of Windswept’s first Jamison master, Edgar John Jamison, and the other, a household account book kept by Mary Maude Jamison, Edgar’s wife and mistress of the plantation. Barrett’s cursory look into the boxes had not revealed either, but she knew they were there somewhere.

She looked at her watch and then at her hands. Almost five o’clock. And her hands and arms were filthy from handling all the old papers, her jeans were streaked from ancient dust, and her T-shirt smelled like old cardboard. She felt totally grimy. Walking out into the hall, she gazed at the blue waters sparkling in the swimming pool. Just the ticket--a swim to work off Eva’s cooking, then dinner, then back to work on the first box. She headed for her bedroom and her swimsuit.

Chapter Six

A little before two on Thursday afternoon, Davis watched his house come into view through the limousine windshield. Damn, he was glad to be home from Washington. Meeting with all those Congresspeople and their staff members about the trade and overseas investment bills had been exhausting in the extreme. The talks had been partisan wrangling on one side and all the special interests jockeying for position on the other.

He wondered how his historian was doing and shook his head at the term, “his historian.” When had he started thinking of her that way? He’d not talked to her when he called the house on Tuesday, but Gonzales had apprised him of what was going on in the office wing. He had been puzzled about Barrett’s attempt to move all those cartons by herself until he hypothesized that she must not be used to calling on others for help. She just went ahead and got the job done. Totally unlike most of the women he socialized with. Those women usually wanted to be waited on hand and foot and didn’t lift a finger if they didn’t have to.

He still wasn’t sure how he felt about someone living in the house with him, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Not without going back on their contract. He’d never reneged on a deal in his life, so the little professor was here for the duration of the project. He’d just have to put up with it.

Gonzales came out to take charge of the luggage while Davis paid the driver. In the foyer, the houseman said, “I put your messages and the mail on your desk as usual, sir. May I get you anything else?”

“Thank you. No, I’m fine. Where’s Dr. Browning?” Davis asked, taking off his coat and tie and handing them to Gonzales.

“
La maestra
is in the office.”

“How are y’all getting along?”

“Muy bien.”

Davis picked up his briefcase and strode toward the office. When he opened the door to the wing, he heard music. Sounds like Beethoven’s Ninth, he thought. The normally open door to the secretarial office was closed also. When he opened it, he ran right into a wall of sound. The symphony had reached the section with the “Ode to Joy.”
“Freude!”
the baritone sang.

Barefoot and wearing cut-off jeans and a University of Minnesota T-shirt, Barrett Browning was sitting on the floor surrounded by letters radiating out in all directions over a carpet of white paper. One hand in a white glove seemed to be conducting the symphony, which poured out of an iPod. The other, also gloved, held a piece of light-blue paper covered with spidery handwriting. Barrett studied the item briefly, rose to her knees, stretched far out over one string of papers, held herself up with her conducting hand, and laid the page between two others.

Lust gave Davis a low blow. She stretched like a cat, every muscle taut, then recoiled and relaxed. He ran his eyes over her long wonderful legs and curvy little butt . . . and reined himself in with an effort. This wasn’t the time or place. He took a step into the room.

Barrett must have seen the movement out of the corner of her eye because she jumped. She turned and hit a button on the iPod. The music stopped abruptly. “Oh! Mr. Jamison! I didn’t hear you come in. It’s good to see you. How are you? How was the trip?” She stood up, another cat-like move, and smiled in welcome.

“It’s good to be back home. The trip was boring. What is all this?” He waved at the papers strewn over the floor.

“Sometimes the floor method of organization is the only way to get the job done. This way I can see the contents of an entire box and easily put them in chronological or alphabetical order. Besides, leaning over the conference room table was killing my back. Gonzales thoroughly vacuumed the carpet, and we laid down the butcher paper to protect the documents. This box appears to be all business correspondence. Let me clear a path so you can get to your office.” She knelt and started picking up stacks.

“Don’t bother. I can go this way.” Davis moved around behind the desk. “Do you always play music so loudly?”

“Depends on the music and what I’m doing. This type of work is tedious, and music helps get it done. Don’t worry. I have earbuds, so you’ll not be bothered.”

It wasn’t the music bothering him. He shifted his briefcase and said, “No problem,” as he walked into his office.

At three, Davis heard Barrett thank Gonzales. He stood up from the desk and came into the outer office just in time to see Gonzales deliver a glass of milk and a large brownie on a plate. The floor was clear and Barrett was at the computer with a stack of correspondence next to her. She carefully moved the papers away from the food.

“What’s this?” he inquired.

“Mrs. Gonzales decided I needed fattening up and when she discovered I liked chocolate, well, you see the results. Want a piece?” Barrett held up the plate for inspection.

“Sure. Eva’s brownies are delicious.”

“I’ll be happy to bring you one of your own, sir,” Gonzales interjected.

“No, I think I’ll just have a bite of this one.” Davis took the piece Barrett offered after she broke the brownie in two. “Thank you, Gonzales.” The houseman left.

“How’s the food been?” Davis asked as he watched Barrett take a bite of her piece. He did the same with his.

She chewed, swallowed, and took a sip of milk before answering. “Very good.” She rolled her eyes. “Too good. I’m not used to eating so much. I’ve almost convinced Mrs. Gonzales to serve me what I consider to be a normal portion--about half the amount she was fixing. I’ve been using your pool to work it off. I hope it was all right.”

He nodded while he finished the brownie. “Fine. Can I have some of your milk?”

She took two more sips and handed him the glass. “Take the rest.”

He drank the remainder of the milk and gestured toward the computer monitor. “Is this your cataloging table?”

“Yes, sir. Would you like to see it?” She swung around toward the screen.

He moved to look over her shoulder.

Barrett explained the table, displaying the various columns and pointing out the possibilities for sorting. “I created this column to flag any document you or I might be specially interested in. If there’s any particular item or subject you want me to watch for, just let me know. When I have the box inventoried, I run off a copy and place it in the notebook on the table, and I put another copy in the box itself.”

“No, there’s nothing I know to look for,” Davis replied. He certainly didn’t want to tell her about Lloyd’s speculations of “something horrible” lurking in the records. He rested a hand on the desk and leaned over to read the screen more closely. “Looks like this one is mostly correspondence about cotton prices.”

“Yes,” she answered. “See here and here.” She pointed out her designations for various business subjects.

His chest was almost touching her shoulder, and when he inhaled, Her spicy feminine scent wound around inside his lungs and made him want to nibble on her neck to see if it was spicy also. Luckily, or maybe not, she moved her chair closer to the desk out from under his nose. He blinked to clear his head and straightened abruptly.

She must not have noticed his reaction because she scrolled the display down and indicated two more entries. He stepped back. The movement brought his eyes to her hair. All those dark brown curls beckoned to his fingers. He wondered if they were as silky as they looked, and he fought the impulse to run his hand through them.

This was ridiculous, he reprimanded himself. He hadn’t had such an immediate reaction to a woman in . . . years . . . hell, never.

She turned and looked up at him. “Do you have any questions? Is there anything else I can show you in this?” She waved at the screen.

“Nothing I can think of at the moment.” Not, that is, in the papers. As for the other things he would like to see . . . . He cleared his throat. “Carry on. I have more phone calls to make.”

He went back into his office, feeling like he was retreating. Damn, he had been right from the first: she was going to be a distraction. Then he licked his mustache to remove the last brownie crumbs and the action made him think of licking something else entirely. He shut his door firmly to block out temptation.

As his door closed, Barrett breathed a huge sigh of relief and slumped against the back of her chair. When Davis had leaned over her, his closeness had brought every single nerve in her body to attention. She’d almost gasped aloud, and a swift intake of breath only worsened her reaction because she could smell him, a blend of soap, woodsy after-shave, and himself.

She’d concentrated on keeping her voice and her hands steady. She had looked only at the screen and tried to keep her body very still. She thought she had done a pretty good job of hiding whatever this was rattling her to her core.
Be professional, Barrett
, she scolded silently. The words were becoming her mantra.

She shook her head and pulled the stack of correspondence closer. She needed to get back to work. It was way too early to break for her swim.

***

That evening Barrett joined Davis for dinner in the dining room. Its coldness seemed to have retreated somewhat with both of them in the room. He was still in his shirtsleeves, and she had put on into a pair of chinos and a cotton short-sleeved shirt after her swim. She hadn’t been sure what to wear to dinner, but, since she was going to work tonight, she didn’t want to put on anything the papers might soil. It looked like she’d made the right choice.