“No, of course not,” she said as she took the plate with the thick sandwich on it. “This looks great.”
“If you just had lunch with Ramsey, how come you’re hungry now?”
“I couldn’t very well stuff myself in front of him, could I?”
“Shades of Miss Scarlett,” he said under his breath.
“What does that mean?”
“The barbecue,” Luke said. “Ashley likes her with a healthy appetite.”
“Oh, yeah, I think I remember that. This is good. What kind of mustard is that?”
“I don’t know. Ask Aunt Ellie. I think you should tell me what Ramsey told you and if you even hint that I’m going to tell the world, I’ll punish you as only a gardener can.”
She smiled at his allusion to one of their first conversations. “Where do I start? Before or after WWII?”
Luke’s eyes widened. “Interesting. Start before.”
“Ramsey told me that something terrible happened in 1941, just before we entered the war, that made Alexander McDowell so grateful to Miss Edi that after she retired, he set her up in an expensive house in Boca Raton and let her manage a lot of his money. I’m no financial genius, but even I can see that that’s not the normal thing to do. Besides doing charity work, she used the money to add to my ordinary public school education and to support her lazy brother. So what happened to make him do that?”
“Why are you asking me?” Luke asked. “This is the first I’ve heard of any of it. Didn’t Rams tell you what Miss Edi did for his grandfather?”
“He doesn’t know, nor does his father. I think the story went to the grave with the people involved.”
“What does this story have to do with the money?”
“Whatever happened, Alex McDowell spent a lot. I can’t imagine why he paid so much. Did he give it freely?”
“Freely?” Luke asked as he finished his sandwich. “You don’t think Miss Edi was blackmailing him, do you?”
“It did go through my mind,” she said softly.
“Well, get the idea out of your devious little brain,” Luke said as he picked up the two empty plates and put them in the sink. “You didn’t know Alex McDowell, but I did. He scared all of us kids half to death and most of the adults. ‘Gruff’ didn’t begin to describe him. He yelled at his employees and kept a tight rein on everything that he had a penny invested in. If somebody had tried to blackmail him, he would have picked him up by his neck and thrown him across the room.”
“Yet he was married to a woman who looked as angelic as Sara.”
“She was as sweet as he was sour. No one ever understood the two of them—except that ol’ Alex adored her. Just plain adored her. It was close to worship.”
“That would do it,” Jocelyn said as she poured herself another cup of tea. It was no longer hot, but it was still good. “If a man adored me, that would go a long way to making me overlook his bad points.”
“So marry Ramsey,” Luke said. He was at the sink, with his back to her.
“Don’t you think it’s just an itty bit early to think of something like that? I only met him a few days ago.”
“You lie to him about how you feel, about what upsets you, even about how much you eat. Sounds like the beginnings of love to me.”
“I didn’t lie to him!”
Turning, he looked at her.
“Okay, so maybe I put on a brave face in front of him, but it wasn’t lying. I like him. He’s everything I ever wanted in a man.”
“So marry him. He’s rich. Let him support you and this house. Your problems would be solved.”
“For your information, Ramsey hasn’t come close to asking me to marry him. Besides, if I married him now I’d always be grateful to him. When I got angry at him for something, I’d say nothing because I’d know I have a lifelong obligation to be grateful to him for saving me, so then I’d develop ulcers and probably die young when they all ruptured.”
Luke took a moment to digest all this information. “I’m glad to see that the idea of marrying my cousin hasn’t crossed your mind.”