A home is more than just a house...

Allison Bell loves her grandmother. What she doesn’t love is her Gran’s once-stunning house in Georgia turning into a money pit. Fortunately, handsome Kyle Mitchell is happy to help out. Or so she thinks. Allison quickly learns that both Kyle and the historical society want to block her plans to modernize.

Kyle is determined to preserve the original houses in town, even if it means butting heads with a certain stubborn redhead. Yet with every argument, something is awakening beneath their words. Something new and fragile that will shatter if they can’t resolve their differences...

“Where are you off to?”

The huskiness in his voice surprised Kyle.

“I—I dunno.”

The crickets and frogs ramped up to a crescendo as he debated the wisdom of what he was about to do.

“How many couples do you think sat on this porch, maybe even in this very seat, just as we’re doing now?” he whispered, tracing Allison’s cheek with his finger. He liked it when she smiled and how the pulse jumped at the base of her throat.

“Hmm. That’s over a century and a quarter. Got to be a lot.”

“I wonder if they felt the way I do.”

Now it was her finger sliding along his arm. “And how exactly do you feel?”

“Happy. Yeah. And...like I’m in the calmest place on earth.”

She stared at him, and then she looked away. For a moment, he felt the connection between them break and all his earlier doubts and misgivings begin to flood in.

He didn’t want to think about all of that, not the variance, not the house.

Impulsively, he craned his neck to meet her eyes, muttering, “I’m probably going to get slapped for this...”

And then he kissed her.

Dear Reader,

I was blessed to grow up amid sawdust and boards and nails; my mother was the type of woman who moved walls around furniture, not furniture around walls. I took for granted that, once I reached adulthood, I would naturally know how to wire light fixtures, do plumbing and frame walls.

Alas, I’m the least handy person in my family, and at the tender mercy of any contractor willing to put up with me...yet I’m still cursed with a love of old houses and the knowledge of how easy my mom made it look to renovate.

So I empathize with Allison and Kyle as they negotiate not just their growing love for each other, but the crises that arise from the renovation of the beautiful old Victorian in What the Heart Wants. No doubt you have your own stories of renovations—and how the true test of a relationship is a good house remodel!

I hope you enjoy Allison and Kyle’s story.

Cynthia Reese

What the Heart Wants

Cynthia Reese

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CYNTHIA REESE

lives with her husband and their daughter in south Georgia, along with their two dogs, three cats and however many strays show up for morning muster. She has been scribbling since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and reading even before that. A former journalist, teacher and college English instructor, she also enjoys cooking, traveling and photography when she gets the chance.

To strong women everywhere who don’t have “quit” in them...including my two favorite octogenarians, Eloise Baker and Rose Pierce.

Acknowledgments

This book couldn’t have been written without loads of help—first from my terrific editors Kathryn Lye and Victoria Curran and all the Mills & Boon Heartwarming staff, and from my critique partners Tawna Fenske and Karen Rock. But others pitched in as well: Leah Michalek of the Savannah (GA) Metropolitan Planning Commission’s Urban Planning and Historic Preservation Department for her endless patience with my research, Adrianna Friedman of the DeLorenzo Gallery of New York City and her kind help with my research on sculptor Jean Dunand, my sister Donna’s continual encouragement, my family’s patient endurance of my absence while I wrote and researched, and the cheering from my fellow Heartwarming sister-authors. To all of you, I owe you loan-shark big.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

KYLE MITCHELL DESPERATELY wanted to distract the woman in front of him. He could see the way her lips parted softly, the way her eyes grew wide as they drank in every detail. No, this would not do.

He tugged at Cecilia Simpson’s arm—politely, respectfully, but still a tug. “And as you can see on the street on your left, across the road, we have a late Queen Anne style, recently restored—”

“But Dr. Mitchell, I want to know about this house. This perfectly gorgeous house.”

Kyle heaved a sigh and gave up any pretense of ignoring Cecilia’s fixation. He faced the house in question: three stories, peeling paint, lawn a little patchy, front walkway showing some weeds poking out of its hexagonal paving stones.

Who was he kidding? Nobody could ignore Belle Paix. It was the house that had hooked him but good when he’d first toured Lombard five years ago.

Back then, Kyle had hoped to see the inside of the house, convince the owners to renovate it and bring it back to life. Five years later, he’d yet to get more than halfway up the front walk.

Today, on his walking tour with the Southern Homes folks, he’d just hoped he could distract Cecilia, not to mention her accompanying photographer. Cecilia was doing a tourism piece on Lombard for Southern Homes Magazine. A two-page spread of Lombard’s historic section would give an extra-big boost to this year’s high season.

No such luck. He might as well get it over and done with.

“Of course you recognize it as a Second Empire—and there’s the rare sweeping S curve of the Mansard roof. Plus, you see that the wrought-iron cresting is still intact—that’s really rare, because people tended to remove it rather than repair or replace it. Originally, the house would have been a much brighter color than its current pale yellow—newspaper reports of the day said it was a deep canary yellow with four different trim colors.”

Cecilia clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, it’s so beautiful! It could be such a showstopper! You hardly ever see Second Empire examples in the South. But why hasn’t it been restored? It’s the only home on this street that isn’t.”

Kyle decided it wouldn’t do to be perfectly, bluntly honest and reveal that the home owner had never responded to a single, solitary invitation to attend so much as one historical society meeting. Or that, when she found out how much it would cost to paint the house in historically accurate colors—five different shades including all the trim paints—she’d harrumphed and said, “Why, thank you, sonny. That’s a little more than I wanted to spend.”

To his dismay, Kyle heard the electronic click of the photographer’s digital camera, after which the man scurried off to the street corner to get a better angle. Right. Just what Kyle wanted Southern Homes readers to see, a house in need of a makeover.

He swatted at a bevy of gnats that were swarming around his face. It was late spring in south Georgia, and hot and muggy to boot. But Cecilia had her feet planted firmly on the carefully restored sidewalk just his side of Belle Paix’s wrought-iron fence, and she was apparently waiting for him to answer.

“Well? Why not?” she prompted.

“The home owner is elderly, the house has been in the same family since it was built, and she’s...well, I’ll leave it to your imagination.” Kyle looked past Cecilia to see a striking redhead about his age striding down the sidewalk.

The woman, tall and long-legged, in running shorts and a tank top, with an iPod draped around her neck, looked as though she’d just finished a morning walk. As she skirted around the photographer, who was still kneeling as he fired away with his camera, she lifted her dark auburn hair off her neck, apparently as bothered by the steaming temps as Kyle was. He knew all the home owners along this street, but he didn’t recognize her.

And he would have if he’d ever seen her before. One look, and he would always remember that face.

Beside him, Cecilia was still nearly swooning over the house, despite its disheveled appearance. “In the same family! All this time? It looks like something off one of those fantastic animated films! When was it built?”

Kyle yanked his attention back to the house and Cecilia. “In 1888—well, that was when it was finished. It was built by a wealthy timber-and-railroad baron as a present for his wife—”

The other woman must have heard him, because she threw back her head and laughed. “A timber baron? A present for his wife? Yeah, right. That’s exactly how it went.”

Cecilia turned to her. “So it wasn’t like that?”

The redhead shrugged as she closed the gap between them. “Ambrose Shepherd was a carpetbagger born to a shopkeeper in New Jersey, and he was determined to get rich. He came south at the right time and made pots of money by getting timber down the Altamaha River, but he was no baron. He married a country girl from Darian, Georgia, during his timber days, and then moved her up here when the railroads started expanding. He always had his eye on making money, Ambrose did, and when he saw that the railroads would make the river obsolete, he invested in the Central Railroad. But when he got to Lombard to make sure the railroad expansion was going like he wanted it to, nobody would receive his country-girl wife. So he decided he’d build the biggest, showiest house Lombard had ever seen.”

Cecilia’s attention was rapt. Kyle started to interrupt, to say that wasn’t exactly historically accurate, and that he’d never heard this version of the story before, when she burbled, “And did they receive her then?”

The redhead’s eyebrows lifted. “It got the society ladies in the door, all right—but then they went away and snickered over the idea of anybody spending ten thousand dollars on a house. Not to mention having two indoor bathrooms, or the scandalous idea of a billiard table in one’s very own home, and, well...it turned out about how you’d expect.”

Cecilia seemed a little crushed that this wasn’t the happy ending she was primed for. “Oh. How sad.”

“No, it wasn’t.” The redhead’s mouth curved in a wide, satisfied smile. It lit up her face and made her seem friendly and approachable, despite her earlier crankiness. “Davinia Shepherd had no use for the society ladies, and she was pleased as punch that they weren’t bothering her.”

Now Kyle cleared his throat. “I’m Dr. Kyle Mitchell, a history professor at the college and president of Lombard’s historical society. And you are...”

“Allison,” she said, offering her hand.

Kyle took it, liking the way her handshake was firm and professional. “That’s, ahem, an interesting retelling, Allison,” he said. “I’ve never heard that version before. How do you know so much about Belle Paix?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Family stories.”

“Oh, gossip, then. I thought you had access to some primary sources that I wasn’t familiar with—”

“Not gossip.” Now the smile retreated, and Allison’s chin lifted. “I guess you historical types would call it oral history. They’re the same tales my grandmother told me, the ones her mother told her—passed down. Plus there’s a set of journals.”

“Journals?” Kyle’s brain buzzed as the possibility of a new, undiscovered set of turn-of-the-century documents brought up all sorts of ideas. “You have journals?”

But Allison pushed past him and opened Belle Paix’s wrought-iron gate. “Sure, Davinia had to do something with her time once she married money and became a lady of leisure. She’d grown up dirt poor, with ten brothers and sisters, so she was used to hard work. But Gran’s made it clear that the journals are private, for family only. And as for how I know about the house, I grew up here.”

The gate clanged shut, and Allison strode up the walk away from them. Halfway up, she paused and turned around.

“I don’t mean to be standoffish, and it wouldn’t bother me at all, but Gran doesn’t much care for trespassers. You can take all the pictures you want from the street, but she’d be mad if you put so much a pinky toe this side of the fence, okay?”

Allison didn’t wait for their reply. Instead, she continued up the walkway, bounced up the steps, paused at the dark mahogany double doors with their arched glass inserts, and swung one open. It soon thudded shut behind her, leaving Kyle tantalized and frustrated. He’d not gotten so much as a peek inside the house, and it didn’t seem as if that would change anytime soon.

* * *

ALLISON PEEKED OUT the door’s beveled glass pane and saw to her satisfaction that Kyle Mitchell and his historical house fans were staying put on the street side of the fence. Good. She wouldn’t have to confess to Gran that she’d let an interloper in, although he’d seemed respectful enough.

He’d surprised her when he’d said was a professor. Obviously, professors could come in all shapes and sizes, but Kyle Mitchell landed closer to the more outdoorsy and overtly masculine end of the spectrum than the tweed-jacket stereotype. Dark blond hair cut short, tanned, with a big wide smile...

She squinted to spy some more. He was tall—a good head taller than her, so that meant he had to be well over six feet, since she was five foot seven. And yeah, he was wearing a jacket, but it was a navy one that fit him well.

A flying fur bullet zoomed from behind her, probably from the formal front stairs, and landed at her feet, yowling. Allison jumped, still not entirely used to Cleo’s ninja ways. The Siamese wound around Allison’s bare legs, then must have realized those legs didn’t belong to Gran. She backed up, sat down and glared at Allison.

Allison let her heart settle into a more predictable rhythm before attempting to pet the cat, which skulked backward.

“Cleo...” She knelt down and crooned, the way Gran always did with the stubborn feline. “It’s been a month and a half. You have to trust me. I’ll get Gran back home as soon as I can.”

But the cat, from all appearances, remained unconvinced. She turned and stalked off toward the dining room, her seal point tail hiked high with disdain. She would accept food and water from Allison, and sometimes, when she got desperate, would snuggle up at the foot of Allison’s bed. But that was only after she’d kept her awake half the night, yowling piteously for Gran.

“Hey! I miss her, too!” Allison called after the cat.

Good grief. I’m getting more and more like Gran every day. This house will send me to the loony bin.

No point in wasting time wondering when insanity would make its appearance. Allison had planned to rip out the carpet in the dining room this morning, and she still had time to get it done before her afternoon visit with Gran.

The carpet was the reason Gran was in rehab to begin with. The seam at the dining room and library had raveled, and Gran had caught her shoe in it.

Allison crossed the length of the long hall, the formal stairs rising above her in a graceful curve. She stood in the dining room doorway, surveying what had to be done.

Before she could rip out the carpet—a Mamie Eisenhower pink design, which Gran had laid in the dining room and library in the early 1950s, after she’d married Pops—Allison had to move a few things.

Starting with Cleo, who’d taken a seat on the dining table and was grooming one long, slender hind leg. The feline paused, gave Allison a mild hiss with no bite to it and succumbed to the inevitable—she knew she wasn’t supposed to be on the table. That taken care of, Allison went upstairs to change into jeans and a T-shirt, determined to get the carpet ripped out before she visited Gran.

CHAPTER TWO

AN HOUR LATER, however, Allison was completely stymied. She’d been able to move the heavy, ornate dining chairs, original to the house, and even the table. She’d managed to move the marble-topped sideboard with no disasters, save for scaring one of Cleo’s remaining lives out of her when the handcart fell over with a bang.

But the china cabinet, even with all the dishware removed and put on the kitchen table, even with the little Teflon slides she’d bought for the purpose, was not cooperating.

Allison rubbed her eyes and glowered at the hulking piece of mahogany that remained the last obstacle between her and an empty dining room. Who could she call in the middle of the day to help her move the thing?

The phone rang in the kitchen. She worked her way around the dining room chairs and sideboard she’d temporarily shoved into the kitchen, then stretched across stacks of her great-grandmother’s 1920s formal china and plucked the phone off its hook on the fourth ring.

“Thomas residence,” Allison said, as she managed to rescue a wobbling soup bowl. “Oh!”

“Pardon?” a male voice on the other end asked.

“Sorry, just a disaster averted. I almost broke a J & G Meakin 1920s bowl. Last time I did that I was ten, and in trouble for a week.”

A warm, rich chuckle came over the line. “That’s good. That you didn’t break it, I mean. I’m Kyle Mitchell. We met earlier, I think, if you’re Allison.”

His voice, still brimming with amusement, made her temporarily forget her bone-deep weariness. She pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and collapsed in it. “Yes. I hope I didn’t come across as rude this morning. Some years ago, my grandmother made the mistake of allowing the house to be photographed for a field guide of old homes, and after it came out, she had a flurry of people knocking on her door, thinking the house was open to the public.”

“Perfectly understandable. Listen, I just wanted to extend an invitation to you. Our historical preservation society meets once a month, and I thought you might be interested in joining us this Thursday evening.”

That voice... Over the phone, with nothing to distract her from its smooth baritone, Allison soaked in its resonance, its hint of good-natured humor. For a moment, she was tempted—not just by his voice, but her memory of him on the sidewalk. Kyle Mitchell had looked friendly enough earlier, and totally unlike her memories of the typical historical society members who’d visited with Gran during Allison’s teen years. Maybe it would be nice to meet some folks in Lombard who weren’t ten years past retirement age.

The stacks of china and the glut of furniture in the kitchen reminded her of her priorities. “I don’t know. I’m a little busy now—Gran’s in a rehab facility and I’m trying to get the place in shape for her to come home.”

“Oh, well, of course.” His voice dimmed with just enough disappointment to be flattering. It made her wish she’d said yes. “If you need some help or advice, just let me know. I love working on old houses.”

Allison snorted, startling Cleo, who’d curled up atop the fridge. “You must be a masochist, that’s all I can say. Right now I’m trying to rip up old carpet, and really struggling to move a china cabinet. You don’t know of any moving companies that would send out someone, do you?”

“Not a moving company...but I’ll help. I don’t have to teach classes today, so I’d be glad to. I know how heavy those things can be.”

“Oh—I wasn’t hinting—”

“No, no. Give me ten minutes. That okay?”

“Thanks! I won’t say no.”

Ten minutes later, she opened the door to see Kyle. He’d ditched the jacket and button-down for a T-shirt that, unlike hers, was clean and dust free. Automatically, she realized what a fright she must look like.

“I’ve been—”

“Working. No problem. Anybody who does anything on an old house knows it’s a dirty job. Lead me to this china cabinet.”

But Kyle stopped short in the front hall. He stared up at the ornate cornices and moldings, at the staircase, then craned his neck to see in the front parlor. Allison tried to view the home as he must, but she was at a disadvantage, having grown up here.

He grinned. “This blows me away. A perfect example of a side-hall Second Empire. So often these old houses have been wrecked inside—too many ‘modern’ improvements.” He shook his head.

“Right. Luckily, our family’s motto has always been ‘If it was good enough for Ambrose, it’s good enough for us,’” Allison told him. “Hardly anything has changed.”

Just then, Cleo zipped past Kyle with a yowl, and Allison warned, “You’d better watch out. She always makes a return trip.”

“Wow. That’s—”

“Ninja cat.” Allison moved on to the dining room and swept a hand around. “As you can see, one of the few things that Gran did change was to put carpet in the downstairs.”

“Get a load of that pink. Now that is pure, bona fide original, Mamie Eisenhower pink.”

“Yeah. I don’t quite think that shade was what Pops had in mind when he told her to order it—”

“I don’t see why not. That was every woman’s dream color in 1954.” Kyle stepped into the dining room, gawked at the floor-to-ceiling bay window with its intricate cornices, and turned around to take in the space. His eyes lit on the chore before them: the hulking, huge china cabinet.

“Oookay.” He shook his head. “That cabinet took a small forest of mahogany to build.” He crossed the room and slid his palm against its smooth dark wood. “This is late Victorian? Is it original to the house?”

“Yep. Bought brand-spanking-new in 1888 and shipped all the way from Philadelphia. Like I said, what was good enough for Ambrose...”

Kyle caressed the mahogany, then trailed a finger down the intricately carved panels alongside the breakfront. She couldn’t help but notice his large, strong hands, with neatly trimmed nails. They seemed more suited to handling an ax than a professor’s red pen.

He glanced up at her, the amusement in his voice now crinkling the corners of his eyes. “They did believe if one carved flower or cherub was good, two would be better, didn’t they? When I offered to help, I was thinking of a china cabinet built in the thirties or forties, a colonial reproduction. Maybe I was a bit ambitious and rash in my offer. I mean, I do work out a little, but...”

Ah, yes, the evidence of that was right before her eyes. Kyle’s T-shirt couldn’t hide nicely defined biceps and a well-constructed chest. Whatever he was doing in the way of weightlifting was working well. Allison grinned, glad for his muscles to assist her with this job. “If you can help me move this, I think you can skip working out for a week. Or three.”

“So what was your plan? Originally, I mean?” he asked her, his eyes back on the heavy Victorian china cabinet, which was a good eight feet tall.

She walked over to stand beside him. Her hands, too, traced the smooth dark finish. Maybe it wasn’t to her taste, but she could admire the craftsmanship that some gifted cabinetmaker had poured into his labors, and she liked how Kyle could appreciate it, as well. “I didn’t think I had a prayer of moving it very far, but hoped that I could shift it enough to take the carpet off the nail strip behind it, cut the piece out, then move the cabinet back. Most things I can at least wiggle and wobble. But that critter? Uh-uh.”

“It’s not fastened to the wall, is it? For support?” Kyle bent to examine the rear panel.

“No. I know Gran has had it moved before—you know, for carpet cleaning. It was a bear then.”

He turned around, studied the room again and nodded slowly. “I think your plan is the best one. So how about this? Why don’t we start ripping up the carpet, get it all torn out except for under the cabinet, and then use a piece of the discard upside down to protect the floor? That will make the cabinet easier to shift into place, too.”

“Ahh.” Allison smiled in appreciation. “That’s a brilliant tweak to my plan. I was worried about scarring the floor. I have no idea what sort of shape it’s in, but I didn’t want to add work. However...”

“You see a problem?”

“I’m all for free labor, but you didn’t sign on to help me rip out carpet.”

“Hey, I’m curious. I want to see what that atrocious carpet is hiding. Unless...are you too tired? You’ve been moving all this furniture this morning. Maybe you want a break?”

Allison chuckled. “We Shepherd women never tire. We have Davinia’s blood in us. If you’re game, I’m game. It’s not often I get a sucker to help me out.”

Soon after cutting, yanking and tugging, they both oohed and ahhed as Allison rolled back a swath of the Mamie pink to reveal the heart pine floor.

“A good cleaning and a coat of wax, and this will be good as new,” Kyle said, clearly admiring the dusty but still intact planks.

“And nothing for Gran to trip over.” Allison knelt beside him and skimmed the satin smooth surface of the wood with her index finger. “It’s definitely pretty. The upstairs floors aren’t nearly in this good a shape.”

“This is the original? From when the house was built?” After her nod, he said in a low voice, “Almost a crime to have covered this up in the first place.”

She frowned and sat back. “I don’t think it’s so bad to make a house your own. I mean, like you said, in 1954 it was every woman’s dream color. Gran didn’t have her own house, and this was her way of making it hers and new and modern.”

“If you’d seen some of the hideous updates I’ve witnessed, you’d understand what I meant,” Kyle said. “At least this was carpet and not permanent. The worst I saw was when someone decided they didn’t like their oak because it wasn’t ‘uniform’ in color, so they poured concrete over it to transform it into a really bad do-it-yourself terrazzo. Didn’t even try to salvage the old floor. Awful.”

Irritation pulled at Allison. She tried to smother it, tried to attribute it to the fact that she’d been working like a dog almost the entire morning and was tired, hungry and dirty. Kyle was helping her. She shouldn’t be annoyed with him.

But then he added, “Yeah, people don’t know what they have with these old homes. They just don’t appreciate them properly.”

“Oh, really,” she snapped. “I know what I’ve got on my hands—a huge old place that’s two times the size Gran needs, filled with plumbing and wiring that are obsolete and that I can’t get anyone to work on.”

He held up both hands. “Easy, easy. I live in an old house myself—a Sears kit home built in 1926. So I know how aggravating living in an old house can be.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ha. You’ve got a house fifty years younger than this one...and think what technological innovations came in that half century. Electricity. Plumbing. Real, modern plumbing. And drywall. An amazing invention, drywall.”

“Okay. Truce. I can see you love the old place,” he said. “Now how about we finish this job?”

“Sorry. I get so frustrated with this house. I want it safe and nice for Gran. That’s all. And here I am, chewing on the nice guy who got roped into more than he offered.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Gran would not have approved of how rude Allison had been. Even when her grandmother was telling someone off, she did it with impeccable manners.

Kyle laid a hand on her arm. “It’s okay. People are allowed one meltdown per afternoon when they’re renovating a house over a century old. And I’ll spot you a bonus daily mini-tantrum, since Belle Paix was built before the turn of the century.”

Allison smiled, warmed by his good nature, and patted his hand.

An hour later they returned from dumping the last section of carpet by the side street bin. Allison stood beside Kyle as they stared at the big china cabinet, still in its original place.

“Are you sure,” she asked, “you don’t have a bunch of historical committee buddies just like you? You know, with strong backs and accommodating ways regarding free labor?”

The corners of his mouth quirked. “Sorry, no. Looks like it’s just you and me.”

“Good thing we’ve got a great team approach going, then. Let’s do this.”

Allison watched, her breath catching, as the ropy muscles in Kyle’s arms flexed when he used the hand truck to lever up his end of the cabinet. Would they be able to move it?

“How am I doing?” he asked.

She pressed her hands against her side. “Good—careful! Careful! It’s wobbling—not so high!”

Kyle didn’t argue, but lowered it. “Better?”

“Yep! Thanks for not arguing—most guys would.”

His breath came in a grunt of effort as he walked the end of cabinet the few inches to the carpet strip. “No point. Saving. My. Breath.”

Finally, after a few more near misses, the cabinet was on the scrap of carpet. Allison knelt in the close confines between it and the wall to start the task of ripping up the last section. She jumped when Kyle squeezed by her.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. Here, let me give you a hand.”

His nearness seemed to cause her fingers to slip. All she could focus on was his scent, clean and crisp and slightly citrusy. She stared down at the carpet and tried to smother a helpless little laugh at how such a small thing rattled her.

“Having trouble?” he asked. Without another word, he leaned over her to tackle the carpet edge. Of course, it came loose without any hesitation, and she felt her cheeks flare doubly hot. “I think I got lucky,” Kyle told her.

He was close enough that she could see a nick where he’d cut himself shaving that morning. Close enough to allow her to drink in that divine clean scent of his. Her pulse hammered in her throat.

“I’ll take this piece out,” she mumbled, and managed to move away to give him—and her stupidly sensitive nose—space.

A few minutes later, the carpet was cleared, and they tackled the china cabinet once more. It landed with a solid thunk where it belonged.

Her heart racing from exertion and stress, Allison wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans. “That thing can stay there for another hundred years as far as I’m concerned,” she commented.

“I’ll second that.” Kyle had collapsed on the floor, his formerly pristine T-shirt now as grimy as hers. “How they cleaned under that thing, I don’t know.”

“Oh! I forgot to wax the floor under it!”

Kyle lay back on the oak planks, his eyes closed. “I promise, if the floor police come put you in jail, I’ll bail you out. That thing is not moving. At least, not by my hands.”

“Well, it’s not like anybody will see under it. Okay.” She joined him lying on the floor, staring up at the coffered ceiling. “Thank you.”

They lay there, exhausted, quiet. Every muscle of Allison’s body was quivering with fatigue. She wondered if Kyle felt as weary as she did. Probably. He’d had the heavy end.

The clock in the hall let loose a mellifluous series of chimes. “Look at the time. I’ve got to get cleaned up to visit Gran.” Allison scrambled up, adrenaline coursing through her. “If I don’t hurry, she’ll be in physical therapy, and after that she’s too tired for a good visit.”

“Let me get out of your hair, then. That is, if I can manage to find as much pep as you have,” Kyle told her. “You’ve worn me out.”

She extended a hand down to him. “Least I can do is help you up,” she said.

His hand in hers felt strong and capable, but she knew that already from their work together. He certainly wasn’t the stuffed shirt she’d thought him, when he’d been on her sidewalk a million years ago this morning. Maybe she should offer him supper one night in appreciation.

Kyle stood, took in the windows and the expanse of the dining room. “I can imagine that I’m back in 1888, and this room is brand-new. Those windows...wow.”

“Yeah. Those windows. They’re going. I’m getting Gran some double-paned ones that won’t leak air like a sieve.”

He stared over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows drawn. “You can’t.”

“Yes, I can. I have the money. A window guy’s coming out next week.”

Kyle’s frown deepened, out of concern, not anger, she thought. “No. We have rules. Ordinances. Any exterior change to a house in the historic district has to be approved. By the historic preservation committee. Didn’t you know that?”

“But as long as they look right, I don’t really see a problem, do you? I mean, I’m not putting in art deco glass block windows. I’ll pick out good-looking ones. Maybe get vinyl-clad. Easier to take care of.”

“Whoa, no.” He shook his head, then held up a hand, as if what she’d just said pained him deeply. “No. You can’t do that. We have a list.”

“A list?”

“Yeah. Of manufacturers to provide historically accurate windows. And no double-paned ones. Plus, these look to be in pretty good shape, I’d advocate repairing them instead of replacing them.”

Allison crossed her arms over her T-shirt and surveyed him. “Whoa, yourself. You can’t tell me what I can do with my own home—well, Gran’s. This house has been here forever. Surely it’s grandfathered in.”

“These ordinances protect you, protect the value of your home. Trust me, you’d hate what the house looked like with modern windows.”

“I hate seeing the power bill every month, that’s what I hate. Do you know how drafty these things are?” Allison realized her hands had moved to her hips and her voice possessed an edge to it. She tried to drop the attitude raging through her. Still, Kyle’s know-it-all tone irked her.

“I hear that all the time. And my house is the same way. The price you pay for living in a place that has character.”

Allison took in the stubborn jut of his jaw. This guy wasn’t budging. Surely, though, these rules couldn’t be as cut-and-dried as he made them out to be. Surely she could figure out a compromise, a workable solution. The city couldn’t dictate that she remain in a house exactly as it was in 1888.

She decided to change the subject. No point arguing about this any longer, at least not today. “I appreciate your help, but I’ve got to get cleaned up and get out of here if I’m going be on time to visit Gran.”

“I’ll see myself out. Thanks for letting me help.” Kyle’s smile was easy, free from the momentary irritation she’d spotted earlier.

“Thank you. I couldn’t have managed without you.”

He was halfway up the hall, but called over his shoulder, “Sure you could—you’ve got Davinia’s blood running through you, right?”

“Right,” she said. The front door closed behind him, and through the beveled glass inset, Allison stared at Kyle’s departing back as he strode down the walkway toward the wrought-iron fence.

Well, blast. She was probably in for a fight with the historical committee if he was anything to go by. A guy who thought it was a crime to put down carpet on heart-pine flooring would definitely think vinyl siding—even the very high-end vinyl siding she’d been looking at—was a mortal sin.

CHAPTER THREE

AS USUAL, the old house showed her who was boss. By the time Allison managed to coax hot water out of a cantankerous set of hundred-year-old pipes for a bath in the claw-foot tub, she had managed to shift from on-time-just-barely to well-and-truly-late.

She rushed down the narrow back stairs to the kitchen, all the while making a blood oath to find a plumber. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be one insane enough or broke enough or some combination of both to tackle the old house’s hodgepodge of patched pipes, and yank that upstairs bath into the twenty-first century.

How had Gran survived? Allison hadn’t remembered the house being so...obstinate. Okay, she thought to herself as she pulled out of the drive and made the turn toward Gran’s rehab facility, so houses don’t have souls, exactly, but this one sure does have a cantankerous personality. In the rehab facility, way down the hall from the physical therapy suite, she could hear her grandmother—just as cranky and stubborn as those old pipes had been, Allison thought with a chuckle.

“Young man, in my day, people didn’t rush their elders, no sirree! I’m moving, yes, I am, but I don’t trust that contraption.”

Allison heard the poor physical therapist’s low, conciliatory mumble, and in response, her gran came roaring back with, “Why, yes, I do want to go home! I’m doing these exercises, aren’t I? My goodness, you are a strong fellow, aren’t you? Are you single? My granddaughter is in need of a good husband—but notice I said good, not just any old husband. A girl would do worse to have the wrong fellow than none at all, if you ask me.”

Allison paused outside the door to allow her cheeks to cool off from the embarrassment. Her grandmother, huffing and puffing from her exertion, spoke up again. “That girl is a hard worker—a nurse, so you two ought to have plenty to talk about, you being in the medical field. She’s given up a big career in Atlanta to come back to Lombard to live with me, so that I can go home. And that’s why I’m doing these ridiculous exercises! As if I need to be on a bicycle at my age! Do you know how old I am? I’m eighty-nine! And before I broke my hip, I lived by myself and drove myself and did all my shopping and housekeeping. Oh, but these old bones...What’s that? Save my breath?”

Allison covered her mouth to hold back her giggle. Poor fellow. Some people might call Gran standoffish, but once she decided she liked you, you couldn’t get her to hush.

Allison decided she’d better rescue the therapist. Sure enough, he looked as done in as Gran when she came in the room. Still, Allison was glad to see her tiny grandmother with her fluffy white hair, pink-cheeked and determined. That was Gran—a tiger when it came to any sort of goal.

I guess I got that honestly, huh?

The therapist called it quits soon after Allison had taken a seat near Gran’s stationary bike to cheer her on. “You’re doing good, ma’am,” he told her. “Let’s give you a chance to recover.”

“Now, I’m no wimp,” Gran assured him. “I’ve got Davinia Shepherd’s blood in my veins, I have. And I’ve got to get back on my feet. I am determined that I’m going to be strong enough to climb the stairs to my old bedroom. No more sleeping in the library for this old gal.”

It took the man another ten minutes to convince Gran of the law of diminishing returns, and that he wasn’t going easy on her because “you think I’m some frail old lady.” At that point, Allison helped her to her walker and assisted her down the hall.

Halfway to Gran’s room, Allison had to tactfully suggest that they take a seat.

“No, no, I’ll get there—”

“No, Gran, it’s not you. I’m tired out from working on the house this morning. Can’t I have a little bit of a break?” Allison didn’t like lying to her grandmother, but what choice did she have?

Gran gave her a sharp-eyed glance. “Well, maybe a few minutes. Help me to that bench over there.”

Allison noted how Gran blew out a long breath as she lowered herself onto the bench. Yes, the physical therapy had worn her out. Still, she gave Allison a beautiful smile and patted the seat beside her.

“Sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing to the old place. I can’t believe how much I miss it. How many days is it until I can go home?”

“Now, Gran,” she hedged. “You know the deal. You work hard on the therapy and I work hard on the house, and when both of us get done—”

“Pish-posh, that house has been standing since 1888. It’s tougher than I am. It doesn’t need much—just a good airing out, most likely.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “No, not much—just new wiring, a new heat pump, about four tons of insulation, and new windows. And a swimming pool’s worth of paint.”

“Now, did I raise you to be sarcastic? Oh, heavens, I guess I did. You have taken up my sharp tongue, haven’t you?” Gran folded her hand over Allison’s, and it shocked her afresh to see how thin her grandmother’s fingers were. Lillian Shepherd Bell Thomas had always seemed a force of nature. Now Allison could detect a new frailty—as though her grandmother’s eighty-nine years had caught up with her in two short months.

She’s much stronger than she was. I have to remember that. The rehab facility wouldn’t let her plan on going home unless they thought she would be well enough.

It was as if Gran had read her mind. “Not much longer until I can be home—and don’t you worry too much about fixing up that old white elephant of a house, Allison.”

She squeezed her grandmother’s hand. “I have to do some things, Gran. You fell because of that old place—”

“I fell because I was stupid and forgot about that ragged edge on that carpet. I knew it was there.”

Allison decided not to rile her with another debate about whether it was the carpet that had tripped her. “Never mind, I fixed it. That’s what I was doing this morning—ripping all that stuff out, and it’s down to the heart pine again.”

“Land sakes.” Gran shook her head. “It’s a wonder with all that fat light wood the place didn’t go up in smoke years ago. I’ll bet it looks pretty. Once I had the carpet installed, I never did like that old mess your Pops talked me into putting in. Too much vacuuming. But he teased me so much about the color, I didn’t want to let him know I regretted it.”

“It was a lovely shade of pink,” Allison observed in the mildest of tones, knowing what the comment would provoke.

Her grandmother harrumphed. “Whatever possessed me to think Mamie pink was the cat’s pajamas, I’ll never know! Thank goodness I didn’t have the money to redo the bathrooms then—else it would look like somebody had spilled Pepto-Bismol over everything.”

In a more serious tone, Allison broached the topic she knew they had to discuss. “Gran, another reason I was late was that I had to talk with the man about installing the chair lift. He came first thing this morning, and that put me behind.”

“The chair lift?” Gran’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “We don’t need to bother with putting in that. These legs will do all the lifting I need.” She patted her thigh, which was much too bony to reassure Allison. “That’s money wasted. My grandmother never had to have a chair lift.”

Allison swallowed and prayed for some patience and more of that tact. “It’s not anything permanent, Gran. And we’ll put it on the back staircase, so it won’t be ugly, like you were afraid of. But it would mean you could come home sooner.”

Gran appeared appeased by this. “Well, now...”

“But...” Might as well say it. “The man told me the wiring needs to be updated before he could install it.”

“I’ll say. Not enough outlets in that house—never were. That’s going to be a bear of a job, sweetie, and pricey, even if you can find somebody willing to tackle it. Why, I’ve had electricians and plumbers not even get out of their trucks when they got a gander of the old place. They knew it was going to be a nightmare.”

“I have some money. And...Gran, I’d like to put in better windows...and maybe some siding.”

“Vinyl siding? Now that’s an idea. I’d looked at some—they got a kind that really looks good these days, made for old houses, not that stuff on double-wides. No more painting to have to contend with.”

Allison let out a breath. She had expected her to blow her top over the siding, but apparently pragmatism had won out. Sometimes Gran would surprise her like that.

Her grandmother’s expression soured and the lines in her face seemed to be etched more deeply.

“But it won’t get you too far,” she told Allison. “Not with the historical committee running roughshod over you, no sirree. Ha. More like the hysterical committee. Tried to tell ’em I needed to put siding on the house, to save on painting, but no-o-o. Got to have historically accurate paint, you do. Five colors!”

“I think the siding is probably doable—just a lot of paperwork, maybe talk to the committee members—” Allison stated, but her grandmother broke in.

“You’d better just skip all that, Allie, girl. Because that what’s-his-name—Mitchell? Some sort of professor, he is, but he’s the head honcho of that committee. He’s never going to approve any of that.”

“Kyle Mitchell? I met him today—”

“Well, then, you know what I mean, don’t you? Surprised he didn’t run off the chair lift guy, because they didn’t have such things in 1888. They didn’t have air-conditioning or penicillin back then, either, but I don’t imagine Kyle Mitchell would like to go back to those days, now would he?”

“I can’t believe the committee won’t see reason and use common sense,” Allison protested. “If I explain the situation—”

“Common sense? That’s why I call it the ‘hysterical committee.’ It doesn’t matter what the committee members think. It only matters what Kyle Mitchell tells ’em. Nope, I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you, not when dealing with that Kyle Mitchell.”

CHAPTER FOUR

KYLE RUBBED HIS eyes and groaned as he took in what had to be the most horrendous response to his essay question on the causes of the Boston Tea Party. “Because they were ‘tea’d’ off,” the freshman had scrawled. To better his chances at getting at least partial credit, he had doodled a drawing of a stick figure in a passable tricorne hat, shoving a crate.

Kyle squinted. Yep. That was steam coming out from under the brim.

The student wouldn’t remain a freshman for long with answers like that, Kyle thought. He riffled through the thick stack of exams and saw he still had at least two dozen left to go. If they were all like this one, at least grading them would be quicker than the first twenty-five test papers.

Just appreciate the fact that you’re not in Afghanistan like your big brother. Or even herding teenage football players around the state like your little brother. Teaching history is a lot cushier than either of those two jobs. Plus, you could have graded papers yesterday instead of volunteering free labor for Allison.

Ah, but then he wouldn’t have been granted admittance to the mysterious Belle Paix. And it was worth every sore muscle and the double dose of ibuprofen he’d gulped down this morning.

Beautiful.

For a flash, it wasn’t Belle Paix’s intact side hall with its intricate carved banister that came into his mind.

No. It was red hair. Yards of it. And the barest hint of freckles. And how her dimples danced when she smiled.

Kyle yanked his attention back to the next essay question. The hapless freshman had made a better stab at describing the opening battles of the American Revolution, but had still managed to make a total hash of it.

Unbidden, Allison ambushed Kyle’s thoughts again. He liked her. And that surprised him, because she didn’t seem to appreciate historical preservation in the slightest.

Amazing how one woman could invade his mind. Why, he could almost swear he heard her voice now, floating down the narrow hall that ran the length of the social sciences faculty members’ offices. With a determined sigh, Kyle fixed his focus back where it belonged. He was just bored with grading, that’s all.

But then a sharp rap brought his attention to his open door. He looked up—to see Allison.

She wasn’t in jeans or shorts today. No, today she sported a light summery dress just right for the unseasonably hot temperatures. Her long legs were beautifully punctuated by delicate, strappy sandals that showed off her toned calves.

“Don’t look so blown away.” Her mouth quirked a bit at the corners as she seemed to smother a smile. “I promise, I’m not here to ask for help moving another china cabinet.”

“Good, because I don’t think my muscles will cooperate,” he admitted. “No, I’m zoned out by these absolute hideous exams I’m grading. I think I should have done a better job teaching the course material.”

Allison wrinkled her nose. “It’s not your fault. It’s the topic. History. Lotta dates. Lotta names. No offense, but history’s a dead subject. I never could get interested in people who lived a hundred years ago.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d been told that. He’d heard it so often that it was the kiss of death for any blind date that his ever-hopeful colleagues kept setting up for him.

Usually the comment inspired a guilty feeling of superciliousness, as if he was somehow wiser than whoever it was talking to him—that and the sure knowledge that no serious relationship could really develop between two people who didn’t appreciate the same things.

But Allison...Allison made him think differently. He wanted to drag Allison to the chair by his desk and keep her there until he could convince her that history was interesting. History was a story, and he was addicted to a good story.

She, however, seemed fairly convinced already—of the opposite, unfortunately. Kyle bit back a tart response. “Well, if it’s not a burning need to hear a good history lecture,” he asked, “what does bring you to my corner of the world?”

Allison beamed. “Ah! Thought you’d never ask. Is this a good time?”

“Yes, of course. Have a seat.”

She dropped down into the chair he had for students during conference sessions, and gazed around. “Somehow this is not what I expected,” she commented.

“Oh. You were thinking that it would be the typical history professor’s lair—stacks of papers and books and—”

“Junk,” Allison interjected. “It’s wonderfully bare. Did you just move into this office?”

“No. I’ve been chair here for, mmm, about three years now. I just like things neat. Easier to concentrate.” He followed her gaze.

The office was bare. Yes, he had the requisite diplomas up, and a bookshelf filled with texts and other sources. But he needed the quiet that a Zenlike bareness helped him achieve.

“I was expecting a lot of artifacts. Isn’t that what you history folks call them? The detritus you collect over the years?”

“Oh, I have artifacts. See?” Kyle pointed to some shadow boxes mounted on the wall. “My collection of bullets rescued from battlefields. And that center box has political campaign buttons. And then for the prehistory folks, I’ve got a middling collection of arrowheads.”

“My college history professors’ offices were a nightmare. Really gosh-awful,” Allison said. “But this? This is nice. I like it. Very modern. Very clean. No gewgaws anywhere.”

Kyle regarded her for a long moment, detecting an unintentional insult to his profession, but certain from Allison’s winsome smile that she had meant no malice. “So...”

“Oh! You must think I’m an idiot. Here I am, blabbering away about interior design choices and wasting your time.” Her smile widened. “I stopped by the historical society office. Good thing I went this morning, as it closes at lunch.”

“Yeah, we can only afford a part-time secretary.” Was Allison thinking about taking up his invitation to attend some of the society’s events? Maybe there was hope, after all.

“The very nice lady there...Trish? Yes. Trish. She told me that I would need to see you about some of the paperwork I need,” Allison said.

“Paperwork? You don’t need to fill out any paperwork to attend a meeting.” What had Trish gotten so confused?

“No, no...very nice of you to invite me, and maybe I’ll get around to it, but you know...well, yeah, you do know that I’ve got my hands full, what with working on the house and getting it ready for Gran and all. No, a waiver request. I need a waiver request.”

“A what?” Now he was the one totally confused. What on earth was Allison talking about?

“There’s gotta be a way, right? To request an exemption? From the ordinances? You know, the ones you were telling me about earlier. I looked at the code, and it did say that any exemption was to be made by the city council at the recommendation of the historic preservation committee.”

“Wait.” Kyle had managed to ground himself back in the present, not distracted by the way the sunlight from the window bounced off Allison’s red hair, nor by the way her smile made him want to smile right back at her and say, “Yes, anything, just name it.”

“Trish said she wasn’t familiar with any sort of paperwork like that. But there has to be, right? I mean, come on, you’re a bureaucracy—oh, not you, I mean the committee. No offense.”

“None taken.” That was a tiny fib. But Kyle didn’t think it counted against him too much. “Honestly, I can’t think—oh. Oh. Wait.” He held up a hand. “I know what you mean. Sorry. It took me a minute.”

He turned back to his computer and gave the mouse a nudge. The screen flickered to life, and he typed “historical variance hearing request” into the file search. A few whirs from the printer, and he pulled a thick sheaf of paper from the hopper.

Allison blinked at the pile. “That’s a lot of paper. I think my application to grad school was thinner.”

“Yeah, probably. It’s...it’s an intensive process,” Kyle told her. He decided he’d better not confess that he’d intentionally made the process as hard as possible to discourage people from even applying. It had been one of the suggestions he’d made when the committee had asked him to come up with ways to safeguard the historic section and the tourist dollars the area brought in.

“Okay. So...any pointers?” Allison reached for the application.

He didn’t give it to her. “Are you...sure?”

“Sure?” Now some of yesterday’s determination slipped by the cheery “I’m game” mask that she’d kept plastered on her face for the past few moments. “Yes. If this is how I have to get a waiver approved...”

“I’m just saying...” Kyle cleared his throat. He glanced down at the application. “This is a request for a hearing. And basically we—the historic preservation committee members—ask that you explain the project, describe how it is at variance with existing ordinances and historical integrity, and then tell why you feel the need to depart from that.”

“In five hundred words or less,” she joked.

“Oh, no. The, er, more detailed, the better.” He couldn’t help but glance back at the unfortunate essay response about colonists being ‘tea’d off.’

“So I work through all this, and then I get my variance?”

“Not exactly,” he said. Why did he feel guilty about this?

Belle Paix would look horrid with modern windows. Allison’s zeal for “modernizing” the house reminded him strongly of the man who’d bought his family home. A sour taste rose in the back of Kyle’s mouth as he remembered how the new owner had quickly stripped the venerable old structure of its character.

A perfectly good house. Ruined.

“Then what? Exactly?” Her cheerfulness had a distinct half-life, and it was approaching that point fast.

“Then you get your hearing. If the application is thorough and well thought out.”

“That makes no sense. Why can’t I just go before the committee and explain it? Rather than write it all down?”

Because then we’d have to tell you no. This way, you don’t fill out the paperwork, you don’t get the hearing and you blame yourself. Not us.

But Kyle didn’t say that. He cleared his throat again. “It’s a way to make sure you’ve thought it all through and explored your options.”

She harrumphed. “Busywork.”

“What?” He hoped that note of guilt in his strangled response hadn’t been as evident to her as it had to him.

“Okay. Hand it over. If this is what I’ve got to do, this is what I’ve got to do.” She stood up and reached for the paperwork again.

“Would you...like me to help you with it?”

“You would?” Allison’s face lit up. Her smile was absolutely breathtaking.

That. That is why you offered.

“Sure. On one condition.”

She frowned. “What?” she asked suspiciously.

“That you come to the historical society meeting. You’d find it interesting—this month’s program’s about Victorian homes. And you could share your story about how Belle Paix was built that you were telling me when we first met. That was fun. Entertaining. Our members would love it.”

“I dunno,” she said. She put a hand to her head as though warding off a sudden headache. “I was really never good at history.”

“I promise you won’t have to remember a single date. Or name. Except mine.”

Allison laughed. “I wouldn’t forget the guy who volunteered his elbow grease to help me out.”

“So?” Kyle couldn’t believe that he was holding his breath in hopes she’d say yes.

“I was planning on painting Gran’s room Thursday—I feel fairly confident in tackling the interior paint job on my own, though the exterior, what with three tall stories and all that scraping, well, that’s a horse of a different color. Anyway, you did say when you first mentioned it that the meeting was Thursday, right? I have to work this weekend—I’m a nurse on weekends at the ER at the hospital. So...I really need to get some work done at the house.”

“I love to paint. And I’ve been told I’m very good at it. If I help you tomorrow night, and maybe Friday afternoon when my classes are done...then you’d be free Thursday?”

“You don’t quit, do you?” Allison gave a bemused chuckle. It made his heart skip a beat.

“I just think...” He looked down at the paperwork. The meeting would be a way for history to come alive for her, to help her understand why people in Lombard were so passionate about protecting their architectural treasures. Not only that, the historic section was an economic engine for the community, bringing in tens of thousands of tourist dollars each year. “I think that anyone who grew up in that marvelous house ought to know about the time the house was built.”

“You really don’t mind helping me paint? Or...” Allison pointed at the stack of papers he had clasped in his hand “...working through that monstrosity of an application?”

“I really don’t mind.”

“Okay, then. That’s a deal I can’t refuse. Wow.”

She took the papers from him. He saw her skim through them, frown in puzzlement and then shake her head. “I really am going to need your help. Half of this reads like a foreign language.”

Again, a twinge of guilt assailed him. He’d made the language as opaque as possible to intimidate would-be variance seekers.

And until now, it had worked. Not a single person had ever actually taken an application once he or she had seen it.

But Kyle had a nagging suspicion that Allison wasn’t like anybody else he’d ever met before.

CHAPTER FIVE

ALLISON DUG HER nails into the palms of her hands.

Nope. Not enough pain. Her eyelids were still drooping.

Time for the old bite-your-cheek trick, she thought.

She risked a peek at her watch and saw that she’d been trapped in the historical society’s meeting room for an hour and forty-five minutes. And there was still no end in sight.

When would this meeting end? Didn’t these people have to eat? Go to sleep?

In the front of the room, a petite woman of about seventy with impossibly dark hair pulled tight into a bun fiddled with her bifocals. “No, no, Eunice, we can’t possibly plant that particular variety of flower in the public sections of the district,” she said. “It is a more modern variety—why, it wasn’t around until 1898!”

To Allison’s sleep-deprived brain, the woman’s shrill, nasal accent drilled into her as insistently as the tools of the trade of any dentist.

So why on earth was she still nodding off?

Okay, so it probably hadn’t been the smartest move in the world to soldier on and come to this meeting after she had been called in to work last night at the last minute. She’d managed to snatch three hours of sleep when she’d gotten home this morning, but the lift-chair electrician was supposed to have shown up.

He hadn’t. Of course not. That would have broken her perfect record of repair guys who hadn’t shown up for their appointments. Five of ’em. No shows, all.

But this last guy? The electrician? He’d sworn that he’d come, that he needed the work. And she’d crawled out of bed much too soon and even showered to make sure she was presentable.

It made Allison demented enough to want to call the guy up in the middle of the night and wake him up.

She should have told Kyle that she needed to sleep. But he’d stayed at the house painting until after 9:00 p.m., and he’d been so excited at the prospect of her coming. And then this evening, when he’d stopped by to walk her over to the library, and she’d started to tell him no, he’d been like a kid. Bubbling with enthusiasm about this person he wanted her to meet, and that expert on Victorians and...

And, well, she hadn’t had the heart to let him down. She hadn’t even admitted to working all night at the ER. Allison was sure he’d think she was making an excuse to wiggle out of the meeting.

He’d done his part. She hadn’t thought one historical society meeting was too much to ask for the help he’d given.

Ha. This is worse than any clinical staff meeting I’ve ever endured. No wonder Gran steered clear of these gatherings!

She stole a look at Kyle, who appeared to be riveted by this minutiae. He’d actually been paying attention, because now he was weighing in with his own opinion.

“Ladies, both of you are right,” he said, smiling.

Even in her sleep-deprived condition, the warm tug of his lips and the way his teeth flashed bright in his tanned, lean face sent a zinger through Allison’s body.

What a charmer. Those two old gals are eating him up.

And they were—when they weren’t glaring at each other. They turned their attention back to Kyle, who continued. “While that particular rose was very popular at the turn of the century—strictly speaking, toward the end of the historic district spending spree—it hadn’t been bred when some of our earlier houses were built.”

That drew a smile from the lady with the dye job. Kyle’s next words, though, elicited a told-you-so grin from Eunice, defender of the 1898 rose. “But who’s to say that some of the owners of the older homes might not have added new varieties? After all, none of us are content with the things we started out with. We keep adding new ones, right?”

Just as Dye Job’s smug smile soured, Kyle did something that really amazed Allison. He smoothed over the whole thing and left both ladies nodding thoughtfully. “Still,” he said, “we can always skip the roses and do a nice bougainvillea instead. Properly trained, it would do quite well, and it was popular and widely available during those years.”

I am going to scream. Hot pokers in the eye wouldn’t be this bad. How is he enjoying this? Allison made the mistake of catching Kyle’s attention. He grinned. Winked, even...no. Maybe that wasn’t a wink. Maybe he had something in his eye. Yes. He was rubbing it. Was he was sleepy, too?

Best prescription in the world for insomnia, one Lombard Historical Society meeting. It had been bad enough hearing the featured speaker, who’d droned on and on about trains and the expansion of the Central Railroad.

True, the speaker had mentioned Ambrose Shepherd, and even pointed out Allison at the beginning of his remarks. He’d called on her to stand up as he’d introduced her. She’d gotten quite the golf clap from all these folks in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes.

But there was only so much discussion of board feet of lumber and innovations of cold rolled steel and railroad ties that Allison could endure.

And then? When the speaker finished and Kyle opened the floor for new business?

Distinct turn for the worse.

Allison stared with longing at the ice bucket loaded with bottles of soft drinks that awaited the close of the session. The ice had melted, and tiny puddles had formed on the paper tablecloth around the bucket, but even a lukewarm soft drink would still give her a welcome jolt of caffeine.

She barely managed to cover a sneak-attack yawn that caught her unawares. Allison didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. These people really were passionate about all this history; it just wasn’t her cup of tea.

As she lowered her palm, she noticed Kyle gazing quizzically at her. In a rush, he brought the meeting to a rather abrupt end.

“It looks like we’ve gotten so excited about our public gardening spaces that we’ve run over our time. I suggest we adjourn and head for the refreshments.”

“But—but we haven’t even gone over the list of sources for antique plumbing supplies,” one fellow protested.

Now, why didn’t we do that first? Allison thought. Because that would have been useful. And maybe to go along with it a list of plumbers crazy enough to work on old houses. Maybe what I really need is a support group for renovators.

Despite the man’s irritation, Kyle assured him that he had just the list for him. By the time he’d promised to get it to him, Allison saw that the majority of the crowd had stampeded to the refreshments table. They hadn’t had to be told twice.

Kyle started across the room toward her, but got waylaid by first one and then another attendee. As she held on to the back of the chair in front of her to keep from falling over, she felt a tug on her elbow.

A tall gentleman with a luxurious crop of snow-white hair and a suntanned face peered down at her quizzically. “Well, now,” he said, then cleared his throat and began again. “Well, now. Stimulating stuff, no?”

Allison blinked. Lying was not her style, not even teeny-tiny white lies, if she could get away with the truth. “Er, they are very detail-oriented,” she commented.

“Got to be,” he said with a satisfied nod. “Got to watch every jot and tittle. Don’t want any anachronistic details to spoil the effect, you know? And people will try you. They’ll test you. Got to hold the line.”

“You mean...about the flowers?” Allison asked. It was as if the man could peer into her very soul and know that she was conspiring to slap vinyl siding onto Belle Paix.

“About it all. I’m on the preservation committee. I should know. All manner of wild-eyed schemes come before us. People wanting to paint their Victorians white. Put Georgian columns on ’em. Enough to turn my stomach, I tell you.”

Allison’s own stomach sank like a stone at the news that this hard-liner was one she’d face at her variance request hearing. If she ever managed to fill out all that paperwork. Please...don’t have any clones on the board just like you.

“I can see you take this very seriously,” she said.

“And well I should! That young Kyle, he’s turned this place around. You ought to have seen the mess this neighborhood was in...well, you can! Let me show you the before-and-after gallery—it’s right out in the hall. You’ll be astonished!”

“Uh...” She looked down at the man’s hand, which he’d wrapped around her arm. Likely planning to take her to the display whether she wanted to go or not.

“Ease up, Herbert, will you? Don’t want to frighten her off on her very first visit, do we?” Kyle’s welcome voice interrupted them.

“Oh! Kyle! I was waiting for you.”

There, that was true. She was. She wanted to be a polite guest and say her goodbyes, and then totter off to her bed.

Herbert shot her a disappointed glance, but covered it up with a good-natured dip of his head. “I’ll show you next time, how about? It will be something to look forward to.”

“Yes. It will be something,” she said brightly.

As soon as Herbert had drifted off to join the others at the table, Kyle said, “You look all done in. Did you stay up late painting after I left?”

“Uh, actually...about ten minutes after you left, the hospital called and begged me to come in. They were short an RN for the ER last night. What could I say? I’m the new kid in town.”

“You worked all night? With no sleep today?” His eyebrows shot up and he shook his head in disbelief. “If I had only known.”

“No, no. I got some sleep. Would have gotten more if I hadn’t had to wake up to meet the electrician.”

“So you’re rewiring the house?” Kyle asked. “Who’d you get?”

“Nobody yet. The guy was a no-show. Let’s face it. He probably Google-Earthed it, saw what a disaster the place was and didn’t bother coming.”

“How frustrating. Listen, I have a list of good electricians who are willing to work on old houses. Let me go grab it for you from the office—no, no, I insist. I have to get that source list for Paul, anyway.”

“Ahem, can...can I come with you? Because I’m really not up to small talk right now. It’s all I can do to get out guttural cave-woman speech. Even the weather is beyond me, as tired as I am.”

He laughed and jabbed his finger toward her, then back at his chest. “You, Jane, me Tarzan. You come.”

“Sold!”

The two of them made their way to the office, where Kyle deftly picked a few sheaves of paper from two pigeonholes. “Commonly requested items—pays to keep them handy,” he explained.

“You are just too organized. You make me feel like a complete slob. You know, you didn’t spill a single drop of paint last night, and your paintbrush, when you cleaned it, looked brand-new.”

“Didn’t yours?” he asked.

“Er, no. Mine wound up looking more like one of those troll dolls. I’ll probably toss it and buy another.”

“I did happen to notice it wasn’t a very good quality brush,” he said.

“Aren’t brushes brushes?” she asked.

“No. A good brush is something to go to war over to protect. Trust me, after you’ve done all the trim work on your house—outside and inside—you’ll have found the right brush for you. And you’ll threaten to kill anybody who so much as lays a finger on it.”

“Does this violent propensity extend only toward paintbrushes? Or should I be worried about touching other things that belong to you?” she teased.

He blushed. He really, honestly blushed. She hadn’t meant anything risqué with her comment, but now could see the double entendre.

“Mainly paintbrushes,” he muttered. “I’ll give you...fair warning about the other stuff.”

To take her mind off her own flaming face and Kyle’s awkwardness, she stared down at the pages. “Well, I guess I should be—”

“I’ll walk you home. Let me hand this to Paul.”

And in a flash, though she wouldn’t have expected it two minutes earlier, Kyle’s hand was on her back as he ushered her out the society office’s front door and toward her house.

“You didn’t much care for the meeting, did you?” he asked.

“Really...I couldn’t say.” For sure. Because then I’d hurt your feelings, and you seem like a nice guy. Probably you share Herbert’s hard-liner approach about historical accuracy, but even so, you’re a nice guy. “Maybe I was too tired to give it a fair shake?”

He didn’t say anything for a few steps. The silence stretched between them, interrupted by the sporadic rush of a car barreling down the street past them, and crickets and a dog barking when the car had passed.

“I liked the idea of going over the antique source guides,” she said at last. “That would have been really useful. I mean, to someone like me.”

“We should do that. Form a group of people who are in the middle of renovating. So many of our older folks have already done their time in the trenches. They’ve got all their work done, and they tend to be jealous when it comes to sharing information. I hate to say that.” He glanced her way, as if to make sure she didn’t instantly hate him for speaking so bluntly about the society members. “But it’s true.”

“Why would they be that way?” she asked.

Kyle shrugged. “Who knows? Honestly? Sometimes I think it’s a sport to some of them. Take Herbert, for instance. He’s a great guy, really believes in historic preservation, but...”

“Ya know, I kind of got that vibe, too,” she said. “But you have to admire people who stick up for what they believe in. One of Gran’s tenets, and mine, too.”

“He’s done a marvelous job with his house. There it is, up ahead.”

Allison came to an abrupt stop as she let her eyes follow Kyle’s finger. A huge Queen Anne encrusted with all manner of gingerbread trim stood back on a picture-perfect lawn.

“The old Kilgore house! That’s his? Wow. Back when I was little, the place was empty and the windows boarded up. My friends teased me, claiming that it was haunted, and that mine was, too. But that one especially.”

“Herbert has worked hard on it. He bought it about ten years ago, when he retired. Gutted the whole place and renovated it from stem to stern. He’s one of the main ones who got me involved in having the initial preservation ordinances passed.”

Allison smothered a snort. It would be someone like Herbert who’d had the idea to make things supremely difficult for her. “I can definitely see that.”

“A lot of the neighborhood has changed. You know, in the last three years, we’ve started drawing serious numbers of tourists, and that’s having a huge impact on our local economy. We have walking tours and ghost tours and Christmas tours of homes. Let me take you on—no, I’m sorry. You’re tired. I should get you home.”

But Kyle’s easy company and the sweet scents of gardenias, night phlox and petunias in the cool evening air had banished the worst of her exhaustion. “Really, I’m better now. Why don’t you tell me about the ones on the way home?”

“Yeah? You’d like that? It wouldn’t...bore you?”

“No. I have to admit, I am impressed with how neat and clean and picture-postcard the old neighborhood looks. It didn’t look like this when I was growing up.”

“No. It didn’t. It was in a sad state. And it’s been only in the last two or three years that we’ve seen real progress. There are just a few holdouts left and they’ll—” Kyle abruptly clamped his mouth shut, stopping himself in midsentence.

“Cry uncle? Sell out? Or get with the program?” she teased. “Or...or do you make them...” she grinned and used her fingers to form air quotes “...‘disappear’?” she asked in a mock-sinister tone.

“Now, how did you guess what we do with the really stubborn ones?” Kyle said with a laugh.

“It’s probably right out of The Stepford Wives manual,” Allison teased. “A complete reeducation program in the renovation camps.”

“No!” He played along with a theatrical gasp, and clutched his chest. “You can’t have tumbled to the secret of our success! Why, now I’ll have to make you disappear!”

But then the next house came into view, and he suddenly grew serious. “Oh, this is one of my favorite stories—this house got rescued from the wrecking ball. Literally.”

“That’s gotta be one dramatic tale. Sounds like something on TV.”

“It just about was. It was horrible, the condition the house was in. Vinyl siding. The wrong windows. A cheap asphalt shingle roof. Oh, and glass blocks in a back bathroom window. Ugh. Walter and Mary, the couple who own it now, found out that some guy had bought the property to make a parking lot out of it. There used to be a—”

“Law office next door, I remember. Really snarly guy.”

“Yeah. He’s gone. You don’t have to worry about him anymore. I disappeared him.”

Allison chuckled and punched Kyle on the arm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.”

“They bought it. The day the wrecking ball was due to knock it down. And they started, bit by bit, to restore the old girl to her glory.”

Allison gazed at the massive Georgian, with its white columns and its side porches. “It’s gorgeous. They must have sunk quite a lot into it.”

“Labor of love. But they wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Kyle...” She couldn’t look at the Georgian anymore. She stared off in the opposite direction, only to find that another old house, this time a beautiful Victorian, stood in perfectly restored, accusing beauty.

“Yeah?”

“Not everybody has the money or the time or the inclination to do that.”

“Allison...” He took her hands in his. It was an astonishing move that normally would have weirded her out. But it felt right to have him touch her like this, even though they didn’t know each other very well. “I know. I know.”

“You know...” About the vinyl siding?

“How overwhelmed you feel. I’ve been there. It’s okay. You’ll get through it. I’ll help you. We’ll get Belle Paix looking just as good—no, better! Better than all of these. She’s the jewel of the neighborhood. And you’re going to polish her up until she positively gleams. I promise. It will happen.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. To Allison, the earnest honesty in them was as guilt-inducing as the picturesque houses all around them. Instead, she focused on his hands, strong and capable and holding hers.

No. No. You have no idea. If you knew how ridiculous I thought this whole rigmarole is— Oh, Kyle. I am not the girl you think I am. All I want is a good roof over Gran’s head.

CHAPTER SIX

KYLE HESITATED BEFORE he pushed the tarnished brass doorbell a third time. Allison surely would have come to the door by now. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe the historical society had scared her off. Maybe his little tour last night of the old neighborhood had backfired and left her feeling overwhelmed instead of motivated.

She said she’d see you this afternoon. And there’s a car in the side yard.

But the only sign of life that he could find was through the wavy, 126-year-old glass in the mahogany front door: Cleo glaring at him, her blue eyes filled with contempt.

What did Allison call her when the Siamese sprang out in a full-frontal attack every time he walked through the door? Ninja cat? Yeah. No need for a Doberman when you had a guard cat like Cleo.

Kyle stepped back from the door and walked down the porch steps. Yep. The vehicle in the side yard was her little compact car. So she wasn’t at the hospital. Maybe she’d gone for a walk? Or she was asleep? He hoped the hospital hadn’t called her again last night, because she’d been so tired she could barely stumble up the steps.

He surveyed Belle Paix from his vantage point on the front steps. It was in amazingly good structural shape, really—yes, it needed an accurate paint scheme, and he’d spotted some dry rot in a couple places. But the siding still seemed sound, the windows looked intact, and the wrought-iron porch posts Ambrose had used in lieu of his own heart pine showed only the need for a good scraping and painting.

There were home owners who would kill for a house in this near-perfect shape, where all they had to do was refresh. His own house’s renovation had been a scavenger hunt for missing pieces and obsolete moldings or parts.

He glanced at his watch. Still no sign of life. Okay. He pivoted on his heel and headed for the front gate. He’d go pay the water bill and then swing by again to see if Allison had gotten back—

Suddenly, from above him, came a horrendous screeching of long-stuck wood and a shout. “Kyle! Hey! Don’t go! I’m coming down!”

He looked over his shoulder and saw Allison framed by the open window above the porch. Her face was swathed in pale blue paint and something white covered her nose and smeared across her cheek. “I thought you were gone.”

“Only in my dreams! Just a minute.” But the stubborn window resisted her efforts to close it as vehemently as it had resisted opening a few minutes earlier.

“Sounds like you need a little graphite on that,” he called up.

“Dynamite, you say? Bring it on! This old house—” The rest of her grumble was shut off by the sudden cooperation of the window. Kyle could hear the powerful slam reverberate in the afternoon air.

Allison opened the door, a very unhappy Cleo wriggling in her grip. “No, Cleo, you must learn some manners. Nice Kyle, see? No, you cannot bite the guests—or me, for that matter!”

Kyle shut the door behind him, and Allison released Cleo. The cat streaked off with a series of unhappy yowls.

“You’d think I tortured the creature,” she said.

“So you were upstairs, then?” he asked. “I wondered if something had happened—”

“I heard the bell, but I was in the middle of something that I couldn’t let go of...and so I just crossed my fingers that you’d be patient. Well, mentally crossed my fingers. I had a problem with a wall in Gran’s room, but I think I’ve got it licked.”

They started up the stairs. Kyle saw that, unlike last night, Allison had some spring in her step. A few hours’ sleep must have put her to rights. He couldn’t help but reach over and touch the white stuff on her nose. It was a chalky paste.

“What is this?” he asked, stopping at the first landing to examine his fingertip. “It feels like...not quite wood filler...drywall putty?”

“Yeah, I’ve got holes. I started scraping, just like you showed me the other night, and all of sudden this huge chunk of plaster came out. I just about freaked, let me tell you. I didn’t know what to do. And then I got smart, went down to our friendly home improvement store, and a guy there told me this stuff would fix it right up.”

“Wait. He told you to patch the holes? With drywall putty?”

Kyle tried very hard to keep any judgment out of his voice, but what kind of idiot would advise someone to do that?

“Yeah. Seems to be working.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no.” He took the rest of the stairs two at a time and barreled through the twisty turn of an upstairs hall to reach Gran’s bedroom.

It was a big airy room that took up nearly the entire back part of the house. With direct access to the single upstairs bathroom, and plenty of windows, it had probably been Ambrose’s master bedroom.

The two interior walls they’d painted stood pristine and the barest shade of periwinkle blue, her grandmother’s favorite color, Allison had said. The back exterior wall?

A huge patch of grayish-white putty painted a bull’s-eye in the middle of the wall equidistant between the windows. Already Kyle could see signs that the putty was shrinking at the edges, ready to pull away from the hole. Eventually it would dry up, fall out and maybe take an even bigger piece of plaster with it.

“What a colossal mess!” Kyle swore. “Who would do such a thing?”

The pitter-patter of Allison’s feet behind him came to an abrupt stop. “I beg your pardon?”

He looked around to see her eyebrows arched and her chin raised a fraction of an inch. Her arms were crossed over her T-shirt.

“Not you. Whatever dumb salesperson told you about this. It won’t work. It will just make things worse.”

“It won’t?” The haughty look was chased away by a crease of worry between her brows.

“There are patches for plaster...but not drywall putty. Fiberglass is a good way...” Kyle walked over to the wall and ran his fingers over the nubby surface around the patch. He checked for the telltale signs—the way paint can feel over failed plaster, the give of the crumbling, damaged material underneath.

Shoot.

He stretched higher.

Double shoot.

“Better get the ladder,” he mumbled to himself. Jerking it over from where she’d been using it to scrape, he propped it by one of the windows and climbed up the rungs. Systematically, he began to inspect the wall surface.

“Kyle?”

Not good. He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand and considered how to break the news.

“Kyle?” Allison said again, this time from the base of the ladder.

“Okay. This corner of the house has a northeastern exposure. Back wall here faces north. And the side wall—” He jabbed a finger toward the other exterior wall, which formed a right angle to the one she was working on. “Well, it faces east.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she asked.

“It’s Georgia, right? A hundred twenty-six summers of high humidity and heat, a hundred twenty-six winters of cold wet rain. The temperature difference, over the years, tends to create dampness. And dampness is not plaster’s friend. So...probably on every exterior wall, especially in stretches like this, where you’ve got lots of windows, you’re going to have at least some huge sections of plaster that will crumble at a touch.”

“Oh. I guess...” Allison eyed the little tub of putty she’d been using. “I guess I’d better buy a bigger bucket.”

“Not of that stuff. And this wall—and probably the other? Well, I’d advise carefully ripping out the plaster in the damaged sections down to the laths, and re-plastering it. Big chunks are damaged, so it’s going to be a pain to patch. But by ripping out the plaster, you can inspect for structural damage, check the wiring and even put in new insulation.”

She stared at him and blinked. “Do what?”

“I know it’s overwhelming. I know just how you’re feeling, because I had to do the same thing...”

Allison didn’t answer. She just sank down onto the paint-spattered tarp on the floor and stared some more. Her eyes went from Kyle to the wall, back to him, back to the wall. It was almost like watching a concussion victim trying to shake off a good case of having his bell rung.

“Can’t I just patch it?” she whispered.

Kyle came down off the ladder and knelt beside her. “Trust me. You’ll spend more money in the long run trying to patch it. And it won’t look right. You’d never get the texture to match.”

“I don’t care about the texture.” She banged her palms against her forehead. “Just once. Just one single time, can’t even the simplest thing actually be simple? Gran’s going to come home soon, and I haven’t even managed to repaint her room.”

“I know.” Kyle patted Allison’s arm, not quite sure what to say to her.

She didn’t respond right away, so at least he hadn’t said anything to aggravate the situation.

“And—and...” She lifted her head. Her eyes glistened with tears of frustration. “I can’t do this. I don’t know how. And nobody. Will. Come.”

“What?”

“Workers. Repairmen. Anybody but you. You’re the only one willing to help me. I call people, and they say they’re gonna show up, and they don’t. Ever. Not even if I offer to pay for the estimate. It’s like I’m blackballed.”

“Oh. Oh!” Kyle let out a huge breath. “Is that all? Sheesh. That I can help with. That I can fix.” He fished out his phone and scrolled though his contacts. Punched a number and smiled to reassure her.

A moment later the ringing stopped and a voice came over the line in a gruff greeting.

“Hey, Jerry! Glad I caught you! I have a restoration job you might be interested in—1888 Second Empire.”

On the other end of the line, Jerry whistled. “You mean Belle Paix. You have got to be kidding me. Somebody bought Belle Paix off the old lady? Who are the new owners? Can I see it? Can I come now?”

“Not new owners, exactly. The granddaughter. She’s, er, trying to renovate, and has run into a plaster issue. We could use your expertise.”

“Just give me five minutes. No. Four. I’ll be there.”

Kyle listened to the dial tone in his ear and then lowered the phone. Allison’s hopeful expression died on her face.

“See. I told you. Nobody.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” He gave her what he hoped was a look of reassurance. After she met Jerry, though, she might not be reassured at all. “He’s coming. Right now.”

“What? Really?”

“He’s...Jerry’s a character. Just warning you ahead of time. He’s devoted to old houses, really loves them. I got to know him through my work with the historical society and the preservation committee. He works all over the state, and it just so happens that he’s finishing up a restoration on a house here.”

The peal of the doorbell resounded up the stairs. It had rung three times by the time Allison and Kyle managed to get to the landing, and Jerry was starting on the fourth ring as she opened the door.

“You’re the granddaughter? What’s the budget? Where’s the architect? Can I see the plans? We can make this old girl shine!” Jerry told her. “I can see the new paint now, and I’ll bet Kyle can find us pictures of the front lawn to restore all the shrubbery to what it looked like then— Wow, this place is amazing! She’s...Kyle?” Jerry pivoted in the hall, his head craned back. “Do you see that trim? That carving? This is all original. Man. They didn’t mess her up, Kyle. They did not mess her up. This is gonna be so much fun!”

Allison furrowed her brow and cocked an eye at Kyle, past Jerry’s pirouettes.

Kyle lifted his hand in what he hoped was a “wait, he’s not totally crazy, give him a minute” way. “She’s in great shape, you are right. Pretty much untouched. Amazing. But...let’s start with some introductions. Allison, this is Jerry Franklin, the restoration expert I was telling you about, although he’s not always this, er, exuberant.”

Kyle shot a warning look at Jerry to stop acting like a kid let loose in a candy store. It had about as much effect as he expected, which was slim to none. “And Jerry, I’d like you to meet Allison Bell. She’s the owner’s granddaughter.”

Jerry grabbed her hand and pumped it briskly. “This is an incredible opportunity. I have wanted to restore this house for years. Years, I’m telling you.”

Allison carefully withdrew her hand. “I see. Well, first I should tell you that I don’t really have a huge budget, and so I’m trying to keep things as cheap—”

Kyle saw Jerry’s eyes round in horror at the word cheap and shook his head vigorously to signal to Allison to avoid it at all costs.

“Uh, I mean...” she paused “...as inexpensive as possible. I need to stretch my dollars...and focus on the priorities.”

Jerry seemed comforted by that deft shift in Allison’s wording. “Yeah, yeah.” He rubbed his hands together. “So...”

“So...I have this plaster problem. Upstairs. And Kyle said you could take a look at it.”

“Sure. Upstairs.” The man was up the stairs like a jackrabbit.

Kyle sighed. “Listen. Don’t—he’s not usually like this. But he’s been obsessed with Belle Paix for years. And he just wants to see her treated right.”

Allison lifted her brows. “Yeah. And I just want to treat my very finite bank account right. If this guy thinks I’m a sucker and want to make everything the way it was in 1888, well, you’d better set him straight.”

“Jerry is a bit...temperamental,” Kyle warned. “If he thinks you’re not...well, he’s been known to walk off jobs. You don’t want to see him angry.”

“How does he keep his business then?” Allison asked. “I mean, if he argues with the home owner.”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time he’s right, and they know it. They try to do it the cheap way, and then have to call him back in. Because...well, because he’s a genius, and because he’s one of the few contractors in the state who specializes in old homes.”

“You’re saying...you’re saying he’s my only hope?” Allison sank onto the bottom step. “Good grief. He probably charges a fortune, too.”

“You get what you pay for, believe me. And with Jerry, you get a lot of experience and know-how. Plus he won’t cheat you.” Kyle sat down beside her.

“And how do I know you’re not getting kickbacks? That the two of you aren’t working some kind of scheme here?”

But he could tell from her tone that she didn’t really believe that.

Above them, Jerry bellowed, “Who on earth put this stuff on plaster?”

They looked up to see his bright red face hanging over the railing of the landing, the putty gripped in his meaty fingers.

Allison raised her hand. “That would be me. The guy at the hardware store told me it would work.”

“Figured. Idiot.”

Minutes later, upstairs, Kyle watched as Jerry went through a much more thorough examination than he had.

“Yep. Condensation. I assume that the roof doesn’t leak?”

“No.” Allison shook her head in response to the contractor’s accusatory squint. “That’s the one thing that works in this house. It’s slate, and it has never leaked a drop.”

“Testament to when houses were built right,” Jerry pronounced.

She made a harrumphing noise in her throat and mumbled something that Kyle thought might have been, “you try living in this old place.”

Then she schooled her expression and clasped her hands behind her back. “So your advice would be?”

“Tear out. Tear it all out, all the damaged sections. Down to the laths. Replaster it after you check the wiring—probably needs to be brought up to code, and it’s easier to do it then. I’d plan on doing every exterior wall up here, but downstairs, you might not have to. I’d have to look. But it’s the temperature changes and the way heat rises—that sort of stuff.”

“How...much? And how long?” Allison seemed to stiffen in anticipation of a blow.

“I’ll get you a bid. But I can tell you, it ain’t gonna be cheap. You don’t want cheap. Cheap’s bad. Cheap is the most expensive way to go. Trust me. As for how long. Well.” Jerry rubbed his chin. “First we got to put in the abatement procedures.”

“Abatement? For what?”

“Lead paint. That there? It is lead paint, lady. Not the top layer. Probably not the last three or four or five coats. But underneath? Definitely lead. Lots of it. Big believers of it in the 1880s. So we got to contain the dust, and use breathing masks, and then properly dispose of it...that won’t take that long. Say, three weeks?”

“Three weeks? Just to get rid of the lead?”

“And the plaster. Might do it in two. But you want it gone. Trust me. And it’ll be gone when I’m done. And then we’ve got it all nice and bare and we can see the ribs of the old girl. Do some checking. Make sure that condensation hasn’t messed up the framing. You do get it sprayed for termites, right?”

“Every year. Gran has a contract with a pest control company. She loses the discounted rate if she skips a year.”

“Good. Good. So probably no big surprises under there, but I can’t promise. And while we’ve got it out, we can put in some insulation—that’d be real good to cut down on the utility bills, keep the old girl nice and toasty, help with that condensation problem, too. And we’ll check on the wiring, of course. No telling how they wired this thing when electricity came on line here. It’s probably pretty scary to look at.”

“And you’d...you’d do all this?”

“Well, I’d be the lead contractor. I’d subcontract part of it, a job this big.”

“Two walls? Is big?”

“No. The whole house. You gotta do the whole house. Wouldn’t be right. Like giving an old lady half a face-lift. Or putting in one new hip joint when she needs both replaced.”

“Jerry...Jerry.” Allison smiled at him. It was, to Kyle, the most angelic, heart-melting smile he’d ever seen. “I don’t have that kind of money. And my grandmother, she’s in a rehab facility and needs to come home. I don’t have a lot of time. So...what’s a...”

Kyle could see her lips change from “cheaper” to “work-around” to finally “an alternative way. You know. Out of the box.”

Jerry swiveled his head toward Kyle. “Kyle? I thought you said this was a restoration job?”

“You didn’t exactly give me time to explain. Can you help her with this? She’s trying to do a lot herself.”

Jerry’s face crumpled. “Dang. Got my heart broke. I thought for sure...”

The three of them stood in silence, with both Allison and Jerry staring at the wall in question.

Suddenly Allison brightened. “Hey! Hey, I know! Why can’t I just put in drywall? You know, over the plaster? I could do that, right? Smooth surface. It’d go up quick. No patching. No disturbing the lead. And it would be easier to fix later on.”

Jerry practically hissed. Kyle rubbed his forehead again. “Allison,” he began.

“I’ll have no part in putting drywall in a 126-year-old house,” Jerry told her, his back ramrod straight.

“But—but why not? Just because it’s not authentic? I can’t afford authentic! Not in time. And certainly not financially.”

The contractor opened his mouth, started to speak, stopped, started to speak again. Finally, he growled at Kyle, “Tell her. I’m too—too...” He couldn’t finish his thought.

“Jerry is saying... Uh, what he means is it’s not going to solve the problem. The issue is the unstable plaster underneath. From the condensation. And...if you put drywall up, the plaster may hold. For a little bit. But then it will come down. In chunks. And cause cracks. And mess up the drywall, since the moisture in the plaster is probably still there. But Jerry would put a vapor barrier up when he removed the plaster... Are you listening? You are not listening, Allison. Allison? Where are you going?”

But she had left. She stalked out into the hall. He thought she was going to march down to the front door and throw them out, but no. The footsteps were on the back stairs, not the front, and they were going up, not down.

So what was he supposed to do now?

CHAPTER SEVEN

ALLISON REACHED OUT a hand to steady the Victorian dressmaker’s form before the stained linen-and-wire monstrosity toppled. A cloud of dust billowed out and she sneezed. With the form as steady as it could be on its wobbly center pole, she pushed past it and several hulking pieces of furniture to her object.

The window seat.

The cushions released another cloud of dust from their faded damask upholstery fabric when she sat on them.

The little window seat, overlooking the front lawn from the highest point in the house, had been her favorite bolt-hole when she was a kid. For a home ec project in high school, she’d redone the cushions. It was probably the newest upholstery in the whole house.

She inspected the wobbly seams and the clumsily installed zipper with none of the starry-eyed sense of accomplishment she’d had as a sophomore. What was she thinking? She couldn’t fix this house, any more than she had any business trying to cover seat cushions.

Allison curled up on the cushions and waited for the reverberation of the bangs of the door. They’d go, of course. They’d bail on her, once they saw she was in over her head, with no money to get out of this hole.

All I wanted to do was paint Gran’s room.

Her embarrassment faded with the first flare of anger. What had she expected, anyway? Of course Kyle would bring in a restoration-nut as a contractor—it probably was some sort of scheme. Not an out-and-out con, but more paternalistic—an “oh, we know better” sort of deal.

She heard thumps on the stairs—thumps coming up, not going down. Her irritation grew. They were coming up here? To her bolt-hole?

“Go away,” she called. Yeah. It was rude. Probably juvenile. No, definitely juvenile, but if she’d wanted to talk, she would have stayed in Gran’s room.

A golden ray of sun hit the crest of Kyle’s head as it appeared in the stairwell. A pang of regret coursed through Allison—but only for a moment. It was snuffed out by more irritation.

Because obviously he was not listening.

“Allison?” She could see him blinking in the dim light. He coughed from the dusty air. “Where are you?”

She didn’t answer, just pressed back into the recesses of the dormer, away from the window so that he couldn’t see her outline against the bright sunlight. The dressmaker’s form offered her the cover it had back in her teen years when she’d been escaping Gran’s hard-to-combat common sense.

Nevertheless, he stumbled in Allison’s direction, following a narrow path through over a century’s worth of her family’s junk—and they’d been good about throwing things out, it occurred to her. What if they’d been garden-variety hoarders?

He stopped, poking his head into the billiard room. “Wow. Is that the original billiard table? And...oh, this is a mint-condition spittoon—well, not quite mint.”

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