What the Heart Wants

by Cynthia Reese

  “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.”

  Oh, good grief. He’d never leave, especially if he found Gran’s dad’s collection of pipes.

  “You don’t listen very well, do you?” Allison groused.

  Kyle turned back toward her, craned his head around the open door, and spotted her at the window. “There you are.”

  She noticed he didn’t answer her question, proving her point about him. She uncurled herself from the window seat. If she was going to have the house to herself again, she’d need to dispense with the evasive action and go for some proactive moves instead.

  “Thank you for getting Jerry here,” Allison stated in a very formal tone. “But I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

  Kyle bumped up against the wobbly dressmaker form. She saw it tilt and start to crash to the floor. Allison leaped to save it at the same time he did, and they wound up in a three-way hug with the mannequin, hands and bodies pressed against each other. Allison was suddenly way too aware of the taut muscles in Kyle’s arms...and there was that divine, clean scent that he always wore.

  Stupid nose of hers.

  “Uh, this is awkward,” Kyle observed after a moment. He carefully backed away. “You got it?”

  Allison didn’t say anything. She righted the dressmaker form and dusted off her hands. Great. In addition to looking like a complete idiot, she now looked like a dusty idiot.

  “So,” he murmured, obviously unsure what to say to her at this point.

  “Yes, right. Like I was saying. Thanks, but...I think Jerry isn’t quite what I’m looking for.”

  Kyle rubbed at his eyes. “Allison...Jerry’s just what you’re looking for. Believe me. I know he comes across strong, but you have no idea what kind of experience he has in these situations. You’d be a—” He broke off.

  “I’d be a fool not to snap him up on the spot? Is that what you were about to say?” Her earlier anger returned, full force. “No, I’d be a fool to turn a guy like that loose on this house. He’ll find a dozen different ways to prolong a project. He’d break me.”

  “He’ll get it done the right way, and it will cost you less in the long run—” Kyle started.

  She broke in. “You’re used to working with rich retirees who come back with plenty of money and plenty of time and plenty of patience, and I’m fresh out of all three, Kyle.”

  “Allison, you’ve got it all wrong. Most of the people in the historic district aren’t rich. They’re like you. They struggle to find the money. They borrow it, they scrounge around for grants, they use tax credits... It’s hard work, I won’t lie, and it’s time consuming. But in the end, when they see the finished project, they’re glad they dug deep. People—and I say this from personal experience—people don’t regret what they do, Allison. They regret what they don’t.”

  For a moment, he seemed to be fixed on something far removed from the dusty, junk-filled room around them. What on earth had he neglected to do that made him give her that speech?

  Whatever memory Kyle was entertaining didn’t matter, not now. She had no time to dig for funds that might or might not exist. “It’s all well and good for you to tell me what I’ll regret,” she told him. “But I don’t care. I honestly don’t care about getting the texture right! Or whether it’s a grievous sin to put drywall inside a 126-year-old house! I. Don’t. Care.”

  His quick intake of breath and his glower told her the story. She couldn’t have insulted him more if she’d slapped him.

  “You don’t mean that,” he said. He reached out to give her another one of those reassuring pats.

  She waved it away. Allison was not about to be soothed, not when she had managed to work herself up into a proper seething
fury of righteous indignation.

  “Is this what you did to my grandmother? Huh? Did you make this house renovation business seem so overwhelming that she didn’t even want to try? That she let it go downhill to the point she got hurt by it? All because you and your kind want to insist on having things perfect! I don’t need perfect, Kyle! I need fixed. Fixed, I tell you!”

  “Why can’t you do both?”

  “Why can’t you see reality? Get a grip on reality! I have other things besides the authentic texture of plaster to worry about! Really. Believe it or not. Some people have actual, real problems to think about. To solve. Not drywall. Drywall is not a deal breaker for me. And I will find someone who will fix this. Not make it perfect. Not make it authentic. Not worry about what the heck this place looked like in 1888. But just fix it. I just need it...fixed.”

  There. She’d gotten that off her chest. She felt lighter, freer. As though she were floating.

  But then she saw the wounded expression on Kyle’s face, and her elation popped and sank like a deflated balloon.

  “Yeah. Okay. I get it. I was just trying to help.” His tone was clipped. With a quick turn on his heel, he headed back through the collection of trunks and shelves and discarded furniture.

  “Kyle—wait—”

  “No. Honestly. You’ve said it all. I’m sorry if I overstepped my bounds.”

  And then that golden ray of sun lit upon his head again as he disappeared down the stairs, leaving her behind in the middle of all that junk.

  * * *

  CLEO WAS NOT helping matters.

  Allison had filled the cat’s dish with her favorite food, showed the blasted feline the fresh stream flowing from the bathroom sink before she filled up her water bowl, even tried to pet the cantankerous thing...to no avail.

  The cat just kept yowling. She’d yowled in her querulous way ever since Kyle and Jerry had vacated the premises. That had been yesterday afternoon.

  Allison sank her head into her hands and poked her fingers in her ears. “I’ve fed you and watered you and changed your litter. What else could you want?”