Page 58 of Where I Found You


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She dropped her gaze to the shelf below and counted dried stalks on the fern. Five. Six. Seven?—

“So this is your position?”

She nodded soundlessly.

He tapped a pencil against his calendar. “Even though his family did what they did?”

“Dad, with all due respect, I’m not concerned about land rights from a hundred years ago.”

His eyes morphed to steel as he tossed the pencil into its holder. “What about Aunt Rhonda, huh? You concerned about her?”

Elisa clamped her mouth shut. She hadn’t prepared for him to play that card, which was foolish, because her dad always kept it tucked under his sleeve. She braced for the inevitable. Nothing short of another hurricane blowing through the bay was going to stop her father from saying his next sentence.

His words turned to ice. “You’re not concerned with the fact that the Heberts killed your aunt?”

fourteen

His grandfather would roll in his grave if he knew how many times Noah had attempted to fix his hair before meeting Elisa that afternoon.

He scowled at the bathroom mirror as he ran damp fingers through the dark strands, attempting to make that one stubborn patch lay flat. Then again, Grandpa was the one who had thrown him and Elisa into the whole treasure hunt in the first place. The hunt Noah didn’t want to finish. He was going through the motions out of some deranged sense of moral obligation that made zero sense except…He sighed. Except he didn’t want to be a quitter.

That fact unfortunately made plenty of sense.

Noah stepped back from the newly installed vanity. Forget it. That cowlick wasn’t going anywhere, and he wasn’t about to gel up like Cade. He headed to his closet and grabbed his favorite navy ball cap instead—the one he’d gotten from a Louisiana landman convention last year—and tugged it on his head. There. Problem solved.

Now to see which to-do list item he could check off before meeting Elisa. Owen hadn’t called with any update from the bank yet—not that he expected same-day approval, but a man could hope—and the mold repair would start next week. Until the mitigation crew determined what all needed to be done, it was pointless to work on any of the finishing touches inside the inn.

Of course, he could finish cleaning out that walk-in closet in Grandpa’s old room—which he’d intentionally put on the backburner for months because the other chores around the inn seemed more urgent.

And because, though the closet was small, the task felt enormous.

Before he could change his mind, Noah headed down the stairs to the original master bedroom on the bottom floor that his crew had turned into a luxury suite. He’d be fast about it. Sort through Grandpa’s things, put aside anything worth keeping, and toss the rest. No reason to get emotional about it.

A text chimed on his phone, and Noah paused on the staircase as he glanced down. It was his project manager from work.

CHAD

Hey man, did you fall in a swamp?

He shook his head and texted back.

Noah

The alligators are all in NOLA, don’t worry.

CHAD

When you coming back? I got a new project I’m parsing out. You want in?

Noah hesitated. His bank account balance wanted in, but he didn’t have the time to work on anything outside the inn and this treasure hunt. He typed back.

Noah

Not yet. I need a few more weeks. I’ll be in touch.

Chad

Roger that. And watch our for those swamp puppies.