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“Oh?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, I decided to look for her in Paris.”
He stilled. “And?”
“There is an Isadora Fiore in Paris. She lives in a nursing home there.”
“Why wouldn’t her family tell us this?”
“Well, I don’t think they’re still in contact with her.” Caroline winced. “But I don’t think our next step is Paris just yet. I’ve been thinking … Salvatore said his father told him that the family wasn’t cursed anymore because the vases no longer belonged to them.”
“And?”
“Well,” she continued, “was that because the groves didn’t belong to them anymore?”
“What are you saying? That Luigi sold the vases and the land at the same time to uncurse the family?” he asked. He wasn’t sure where her logic was headed with this.
“Sorta. If he sold the vases, then there would’ve been some rumors about someone else owning them, right?” Her eyes fixed on him. “But there’s never been any hint of someone else owning them until recently. Not a peep and a secret this good would’ve never stayed quiet all these years.”
“So are you saying hedidn’tsell them with the groves?”
“I’m saying that the land and the vases are somehow connected. The cursed family was uncursed at the same time the land was sold.”
Ah, now he understood. Salvatore did say thefamilywas cursed and not the land. “So if the vases and land no longer belonged to the Bonettis, yet no one else had possession of the vases, could Luigi have hidden the vases in the grove and the new owner not know it?”
“How could the owner not know about six vases? He would’ve come across them when harvesting or planting the fields.”
“Not if they are buried deep.” How that idea popped into his brain, he didn’t know, but it was the only logical answer to the vases not being discovered.
Caroline jumped up, excitement on her face. “Oh my god! That’s it. That’s why Luigi sold all the land. Because he didn’t want anything to do with the vases anymore. He believed the land would be cursed because the vases were buried there., setting his family free. We should go back to the groves. Talk to Salvatore Bonetti again.”
He considered this. “It’s possible you’re right …”
“But?” she closed her laptop and watched him carefully. “I definitely feel like there’s abutthere.”
“I think you should stay here,” he said carefully.
She glared at him and jumped to her feet. “We have sex a couple of times, and you think that gives you the right to change how we’ll do this?”
He sighed, but instead of railing back at her, he closed the distance between them and cupped her face in his hands. The gold of his eyes was soft as he said, “Is it possible that I care about you, Caroline? I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Don’t go soft on me now,” she said, but there was no anger in her voice.
“Me? Soft? Nah. Never.”
“This is my case too.”
“But you’d be safe here.”
She rolled her eyes. “If you were all that concerned with my safety, you would have left me in New York.”
“Not true. You’re safer with me.”
Caroline grinned, victorious. “Exactly. And if you’re digging around the olive groves, that’s where I need to be too.”
“Caroline,” he sighed.
“Ryland,” she returned. “I am going with you, and that’s that.”
