And he called her naïve! They lived in the same country, yet he had no idea how people in the Great Plains lived.

“The nearest general store to our farm is an hour by wagon,” she said as she draped a napkin across her lap. “It sells everything from plowshares to horse feed to bolts of cloth. Their seasonings are limited to vinegar, salt, and pepper. For such a worldly man, you don’t seem to know much about life in the United States,” she teased. “The real United States, not a fancy east coast city that has papayas from Mexico and vanilla from Madagascar.”

Dinner was superb, with herbed potatoes, asparagus with fresh ginger, and wonderfully seasoned lamb. Every bite was an explosion of flavor. The evening finished with the most divine vanilla tart she’d ever tasted. Everything served had a complex, multi-dimensional flavor that would have been fit for a king, and she told him so. It would be foolish to deny the value of what he bottled and sold.

Gray sent a triumphant look Luke’s way. “See? Delacroix Global Spice has a long way to go in extending our reach right here in America. More than half of the population still lives in rural communities, and there’s no reason we can’t ship our spices to them.”

“Aren’t you the one who warned me not to talk business at dinner?” Luke asked. “That we were to act like gracious hosts?”

Gray sent her an apologetic glance. “Guilty. It appears I’ve spent too many years with my head buried in shipping invoices and contracts.”

“We could talk about orchids,” she broached. “I’m still eager for a chance to see your orchid house.”

Luke shuddered. “It’s humid in there, and all those plants look alike.”

“But one of them is extraordinary,” Annabelle told him. “Have you seen it? The original vanilla orchid?”

“What makes that one special?”

She explained the historical mystery behind the orchid that hadn’t been seen in over a hundred years. “Botanists and orchid hunters have been looking for decades but can’t find it. Rumor claims that your brother has one, which would make it the only known survivor anywhere in the world.”

Luke leaned forward, his voice intrigued. “Do you mean my brother has some rare plant in that greenhouse and has yet to capitalize on it?”

“This has nothing to do with money,” she rushed to assure Gray, who remained annoyingly impassive. “It’s a scientific mystery we are dying to solve. We’d like to see what the original vanilla orchid was like before it was hybridized overseas.”

Gray said nothing, and the silence began to stretch. Only the sound of a grandfather clock ticking somewhere down the hall broke the quiet. She held her breath, for if she could find that orchid, a permanent job at the Smithsonian was waiting for her.