That was my first muddled thought as I awoke, and as my head started to clear I realized that it wasn’t just the different sounds—more trilling and chirping from songbirds, fewer coos of doves and pigeons—but how clear the sounds were, unobscured by the blaring horns and thumping wheels of traffic outside the window.
Hunter’s plantation manor was definitely not as bustling as D.C. In theory that should have made it easier to work.
In practice, this bed was ridiculously comfortable, and I had a feeling that I was going to be using up almost all of my energy just to get out of it.
I was alone in the bed, by the way.
I’d arrived on a late flight the night before, and hadn’t seen anyone besides the housekeeper, who’d ushered me into my room, where I’d taken a shower and then passed out from exhaustion. It wasn’t just the late flight that had tired me out; I’d been prepping for this trip for a week with research into past Knox ad campaigns, their financials, and their media presence.
The fact that there wasn’t a lot of material to work with—Hunter’s grandfather had apparently considered advertising a sin, and federal income-reporting laws a barely avoidable sin—just meant that I had to dig harder for what was out there. My eyes were worn out from staring at microfiche well into the early hours of the morning, and my inbox was crammed full of e-mails from academics regretfully informing me that their archives didn’t contain any of the materials I’d asked about.
I squinted at the clock beside my bed: six hours of sleep. That was about as much in one night as I’d had all last week.
Hopefully, there’d be more information for me to work with in the family library. But to find that out, I’d have to get out of bed.
Sometimes, succumbing to my mother’s plan to get me married off to a wealthy man and never lift a finger again didn’t seem too bad after all.
I groaned and rolled off the mattress, hitting the floor with a thump. That woke me up slightly more, and I managed to stumble to my suitcase and paw at my clothes. What to wear? The sticky heat meant that my pant-suits were right out; I’d be fine within the air-conditioned manor itself, but my current guesthouse and the library were in separate buildings, and I’d be wanting to tour the fields of grain and cotton so I could snap pictures to send to Sandra, that way she could get some sketches to me as soon as possible. Immersion was the name of the game for this campaign; Hunter was commissioning a new message, new branding, new artwork. It was exciting and terrifying all at once, and I couldn’t wait to get started, and what the hell was I going to wear?
I looked around the guesthouse in exasperation at my own indecision, noted for the first time with my rested eyes how sumptuous and simultaneously homey it was.
The bed had simple but clean lines, a frame of solid oak with Egyptian cotton sheets and a hand-stitched red and blue flannel quilt on top. The warped glass in the windows looked as if it stretched back to the War of Northern Aggression, but each pane was as pristine as the day it had been made. The wooden floor glowed like carmine gold with fresh floor polish, and a portrait of a humble soldier—one of Hunter’s ancestor’s—hung over the granite stone fireplace, along with a well-loved rifle.
All in all, it made me glad I had taken Hunter up on his offer, even if it brought us into awkwardly close proximity.
Oh, Mr. Knox, I don’t want to put you out, I can stay at a hotel—
And make you have to commute an hour a day, wasting valuable time? That guesthouse is just sitting empty. You’ll be doing me a favor, giving me a reason to keep Chuck from using it for bottle storage.
I hadn’t seen Hunter yet, but like I said, I only arrived last night. I probably wouldn’t see him for quite awhile anyway: I had research to do, and the last terse e-mail he sent me said he was busy sorting out production problems with the distillery, something about the recipe being off in the last batch, potentially a problem with carelessness, dissatisfied labor, or even industrial sabotage. He certainly didn’t have time for anything as unimportant as settling me into my current digs.
I definitely wasn’t disappointed or anything. Nope.
And I was totally not freaking out about what I was wearing because we had sort of kind of a little bit slept together.
I just wanted to look professional, and not die of heat at the same time.
And of course I didn’t want to remind him of what had happened that night, but if I just happened to pick an outfit in which my legs looked particularly stunning...
No. No. No! I was here to work. That was all.
I settled on a light cotton floral skirt that swirled modestly around my knees and a sleeveless blue blouse, and then had a quick cup of coffee in my guesthouse’s mini-kitchen. Afterward, my brain finally starting to function properly, I squared my shoulders, grabbed my briefcase, and set out to find the library.
Just stepping out of the guesthouse took my breath away. The sun glowed golden over the rolling green fields, sheltered at their edges by oaks and willows hung with curtains of Spanish moss, and a stream gurgled blue and pristine along the western edge, its banks dotted with pink and purple flowers.
The main house rose like a triumphant monument at the very center, circled by lilac and honeysuckle whose heady scent swam through the thick, humid air. My own guesthouse was bedecked with climbing morning glories in pale violet, and the others next to me were garlanded with rows of sunflowers. Just behind them I could see the stables, hear the horses whinnying as grain flowed into their troughs.
And to the east—a lake, glimmering like liquid sapphire, and on the horizon the edges of the distillery barns and sheds for the production of the famous bourbon. The wind shifted, and a scent of burnt caramel drifted across the air, sweet and sharp and full of promise. It was like I’d actually walked right into a dream.