The cat yowled again.
“Gran?” Okay. She was officially hearing things now, because she could have sworn the cat had just called Gran’s name. In Siamese, of course.
To add to the surreal, the cat suddenly shut up. Cleo tilted her slender, triangle-shaped face and peered at Allison with those piercing blue eyes. Funny, they were the same shade as Kyle’s.
Allison yanked her thoughts away from that dead end. She would not ruminate about her regrets one more second.
She was rewarded by Cleo crossing the few feet between them and circling her legs. The cat even purred.
“I miss Gran, too, Cleo. And I know you haven’t seen her for a long time...” Tears pricked Allison’s eyes at the whole absurd situation. She’d abandoned the painting job upstairs to research the proper way to patch plaster, and it all seemed beyond her. And here was Cleo, reminding her that yet another warm body was depending on her to bring Gran home.
Lo and behold, the cat jumped up into Allison’s lap, Cleo’s tail encircling her neck like some sort of mink stole. Cleo reached up and touched a paw delicately to Allison’s cheek.
“If you had a magic spot, I’d give you a good petting,” she murmured to the animal. “But you’re the only cat I’ve ever known who doesn’t like being stroked.”
A rapping on the back door sent Cleo streaking for cover. Allison’s heart went into double time. Could it be Kyle?
It wasn’t. But it was Melanie Hutchins, former partner-in-crime and still one of her best friends in the whole world.
“I come bearing first aid,” Melanie told her.
“First aid? Why? I’m not hurt.”
Melanie produced a giant Heath bar and a can of Pringles. “I dimly recall that these two items were the only things that got you over Scott Fisher dumping you just before the prom.”
“Not the big guns!” Allison stood aside and ushered her in. “And for the record, I dumped Scott, not the other way around.”
Melanie set the Pringles on the kitchen table. “This place hasn’t changed since we were in grade school. I keep expecting Gran to yank some warm chocolate chip cookies out of the oven. And about whether Scott was the dumper or the dumpee? Okay, have it your way. But on the phone last night, you sounded about as bleak as you did back then. So...after I sent my twenty-four little heathens to their respective buses, I ditched my lesson plans and about a thousand papers left to grade, made a stop by the first convenience store I came to, and bought provisions.” Melanie waggled the candy bar.
“I didn’t sound that down in the mouth, did I?” Allison reached for the bar, but Melanie yanked it back.
“Nope. Not yet. Not until I see this disaster of a paint job.”
Up in Gran’s bedroom, Melanie regarded the patched plaster in silence, then let out a long, low whistle. “Boy howdy, you aren’t kidding. And History Boy says all the walls will be this way?”
Allison shrugged. “If by History Boy you mean Kyle, then more accurately, Kyle’s buddy Jerry what’s-his-name.”
“I know some folks who used him. They own the Queen Anne up the street. I thought the two of them would get a divorce over that stupid house.”
“Why is that so easy for me to envision?” Allison said. She wandered over to the ladder, still standing where Kyle had left it the day before. She laid a palm on it, wanting to sense some residual warmth from Kyle’s hands. He’d made her feel—well, before he made her exasperated, anyway—he’d made her feel as though she wasn’t alone.
But really, Allison was alone, and she’d known it all along, because her philosophy was not his.
“So...”
The ripping of paper drew Allison’s attention back to Melanie, in time to see her friend opening the Heath bar and taking a huge bite out of it.
“Hey! I thought that was mine!” she protested.
Melanie swallowed and grinned. “I brought two. And you’re right. This is definitely the time for provisions. So...are you going to put in drywall?”
“I don’t know.” Allison banged her head lightly on the ladder. “At first I thought, yeah, why not? Simple, you know? Just rip out all the old plaster and put in drywall...”
“Don’t tell me. Don’t. You’re feeling guilty, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You are actually considering hiring that Jerry fellow because you don’t want to disappoint History Boy—oh, all right. Ky-yyle.” She dragged out the one-syllable name the way she used to drag out Scott’s name in high school.
“Where’s that Heath bar? I need it if you’re going to go all juvenile on me.” Allison headed for the back stairs and the kitchen. Melanie followed close behind. “And, yes, of course I feel guilty. Gran raised me from the time I was three, Melanie. She sacrificed so much for me, took me on when she didn’t have to, and after my parents died to boot. Of course I want the best for her—I want it done right. Well, as right as I can afford. And what do I know? I’ve taken more than one shortcut in the past that turned out to be a disaster.”
“What does your grandmother say about all this?” Melanie asked, as they negotiated the tight turn of the back stairs.
Allison came to a halt and looked over her shoulder. “Uh, she doesn’t know. I haven’t fessed up yet.”
Melanie took another bite of the candy and chewed thoughtfully. She swallowed, but didn’t say anything for a long moment.
Allison had almost given up on whatever was weighing on her friend’s mind, and had turned to take another step, when Melanie asked, “So what’s the worst that could happen if you did? Fess up, I mean.”
Contemplating that scenario required sustenance from Melanie’s provisions. It might even call for the entire can of Pringles. So without replying, Allison double-timed it down the remaining stairs.
She’d popped the top of the Pringles can—oh, that had to be one of the most satisfying sounds in the world—before she’d formed her answer. “Gran won’t yell. You know that. It’s not her way. No, she’ll just ask a ton of questions that she clearly already knows all the answers to, just to make you ponder and reponder the error of your ways. By the end of any of her postmortems, while I clearly know what I should have done, I feel like I’ve stewed in a mortification soup for a couple of hours.”
Melanie licked a smear of chocolate off her fingertip. “She doesn’t mean to mortify you. She’s simply trying to make you—”
“Think. I know. Didn’t I live through that with my teen years? But why do I feel like I’m fifteen again? It’s this house! Moving back here has transformed me into this indecisive kid who couldn’t make a decision if her life depended on it. And that’s not me, now. I mean, I’m a trauma nurse. I’m paid to make the hard decisions fast.”
“And you still make the hard decisions in the ER, right? But living with a parent—or a grandparent who was practically your parent—is hard as an adult. You have to renegotiate boundaries that sheer geographical distance enforced for you before.”
Melanie’s rambling jargon made Allison’s head hurt. “Oookay. You’ve had one too many staff development units on childhood behavior. And chewing over this is not helping.”
Melanie dug around in her purse and produced the second Heath bar. “Chew on this, then. It never fails.”
“And then, I promise, even though Gran had already warned me about Kyle, and she’s going to be horribly disappointed about my screwup and the delay it’s going to cause to her coming home...” Allison let her teeth crunch into the sweet chocolate bar, and chased it with a salty potato chip. She chewed, sensing peace and well-being from all those simple carbs flowing to her brain. “...I’ll go confess all to Gran.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THIS WAS SO not a good idea.
Kyle knew it. He should stay well away from Allison and her grandmother and even that crazy cat. And
most of all, he should stay away from Belle Paix.
Through the spring sunshine, he stared at the rehab facility where Lillian Thomas was staying.
The architects had tried to make it look like a home, with its wide porches and rockers, the end porch pillars covered in English ivy. A plethora of blooming flowers exploded from planters along the main walkway and window boxes on each of the long, double-hung windows.
And it was only a detail freak like him who would become irked that the Georgian columns didn’t go with the Queen Anne shingles, or that the shutters were too narrow for the wide windows. Worse still, the windows had those plastic inserts for mullions, not individual panes.
His nitpicking irritated even himself. He was reminded of Allison’s plea for pragmatism, and her accusation that his pursuit of perfection—well, the preservation committee’s, anyway—had been so discouraging that Lillian Thomas had put off needed repairs.
And that was why he was here. To apologize. To offer his help—as pragmatic as possible.
Couldn’t possibly be because you’re too chicken to tackle Allison head-on, right?
Out of the car, his feet crunched on the pea gravel path. He wasn’t fired up about nursing homes—correction, rehab facilities—and he wasn’t at all sure Allison’s grandmother would even see him. But he could stick his head in after he’d visited with a former historical society member who’d just moved in.
“Hey! What are you doing here?”
The sound of Allison’s voice froze him in his tracks. Slowly, he pivoted on his heel.
“Allison.” Kyle could think of nothing else to say. His guilt at the planned end run around her—and that’s what he’d really been up to, when he was honest with himself—closed his throat.
Now that she’d hailed him, Allison seemed as unsure about what to say as he was. She closed the gap between them. He couldn’t help but admire the light yellow dress she wore and the way her red hair caught the late spring sunlight. More than that, the blush that faintly lit her cheeks made him think she was just as embarrassed as he’d been to see her.
“I—I should apologize for the other day—” she began, just as he, too, stammered out an apology.
They laughed. “You go first, I insist,” Allison said. “A lady always likes to hear a guy say he’s sorry.”
“I should have known better than to bring Jerry in without properly preparing you—and you’re right. Belle Paix is your house—well, your grandmother’s house—and you have your priorities. And I didn’t respect those.”
Allison gazed out at the long, wraparound porch. “I acted like a brat. It’s just...overwhelming. That’s not an excuse, just a statement of fact.”
“Old houses have a way of bringing out the worst in anybody. And don’t worry. I’ve seen far worse.” He didn’t add that, while he had seen worse behavior over the years, it hadn’t bothered him as much as Allison’s wholesale rejection of historical authenticity as a worthwhile goal.
“Got to be a happy medium out there, don’t you think?” she mused.
He bit his tongue before saying that happy mediums produced a mishmash of architecture like the rehab facility behind him. “It’s a question of priorities,” he said instead.
“Right.” She gave him a flint-eyed look of suspicion, and seemed to know what he was thinking. But in the interest of peace and accord, she, too, apparently was choosing her words with care.
For a long moment, neither said anything. Awash in the sounds of the rehab facility even from where they stood at the front door—the squeak of wheelchair brakes, the beep of the keypad by the main entrance, an alarm buzzer insistently going off—Kyle realized that the thin patina of “home” for the residents couldn’t be maintained for more than five minutes. He thought again of Lillian Thomas.
“So you’re here to see your grandmother?” he asked.
“Yes. To, er, tell her about the latest disaster.” Allison’s lips compressed in a wince of anticipatory pain.
“She’s not that bad, is she?”
“No. No, not really. I just...don’t want to disappoint her. You’ve met her, right?”
Kyle rubbed his mouth. “Not—well, not exactly. I mean, if you...”
“Yes?” Now Allison’s eyes lit up with amusement. “I can spot a ‘Gran’ story a mile away. Give.”
“Well, if you have to know, the extent of our acquaintance has been the one time she stopped by the historical society to get a paint scheme approved, and she practically laughed me out of my office. And the only other times...er, does being run off the property twice count?”
Allison threw her head back and laughed. “That sounds like Gran on a bad day. You must be terrified of her.”
Not so much that I wasn’t planning on trying to see her. Yes. To apologize.
“I wouldn’t say terrified,” he muttered. “Just...learned to keep a respectful distance.”
“Let me guess...you wouldn’t have even come here if you’d known you might run into her, right?”
“Not...not exactly. Actually, she’s why I’m here.”
The friendly expression on Allison’s face evaporated into suspicion. “You? Were coming to see Gran?”
“Yes. I thought—” Kyle broke off, ran his finger around a shirt collar that suddenly felt too tight in the warm sun. “Well, I was planning on seeing another member of the historic society who’s here as well, and I thought I’d just stick my head in and—”
“Bug Gran.” Allison’s words were flat.
“No, not...not bug her. I just wanted to properly introduce myself. And to apologize.”
“Apologize? For what?”
At that moment Kyle was given a brief reprieve, as a staff member in pastel scrubs wheeled a resident along the path between them. When he looked back, he saw that Allison was still regarding him with confusion.
“You know,” he said, “what you were saying the other afternoon. I thought you blamed me for your gran being here in the first place.”
“No. Yes. Maybe. If you just wouldn’t make it so hard to get something done!” Allison’s brows drew together over eyes that Kyle realized looked as gray-green now as a stormy ocean. She blew a long corkscrew curl out of her face with a sigh of exasperation. It settled right back where it had been, and Kyle suddenly itched to tuck it behind her ear.
“It’s not me, it’s the—”
She glowered. “If you say the historical committee, I’m going to bean you on the head. We both know that you are the committee, so don’t go hiding behind it like the man behind the curtain, oh great Oz.”
“You make it sound like the ordinances are a bad thing, but they’re there for a reason, Allison—”
“Right. To make it impossible for normal people to repair a house that just happens to be square in the middle of a historic district.” She rolled her eyes.
“That’s not true. That district generates jobs and income for lots of residents. Lombard depends on tourist dollars. And your neighbors need the protection to their investments and their home equity that the ordinances provide.”
She put her hands on her hips and scoffed, “Admit it. You wouldn’t give two figs about Gran’s house if it were a 1980s suburban ranch, now would you?”
The truth of her observation about his interest in Belle Paix stung. Still, he had to defend what he’d helped to create. “Normal people can renovate old houses—there are all kinds of funding options for preserving and restoring old homes—and that’s one thing I’d like to talk to your grandmother—”
“Good. You wanted to talk to Gran? Well, let’s go talk to her. Maybe you can explain to her how she and I are going to be able to afford to fix the mess I’ve made. And maybe she’ll see you and blame the whole thing on you and not me.”
At the prospect, Kyle’s stomach did a strange f
lip-flop it hadn’t done since he’d turned in his doctoral dissertation. “I don’t—if you think—”
“No, sir, buddy, you’re not backpedaling now.” Allison tucked an arm in the crook of his elbow and proceeded to drag him to the front door of the facility.
“But—but are you sure? I mean, you seem so angry—”
They’d reached the door by now, and Allison let go of his arm and punched a code into the keypad. It suddenly occurred to him that he might not have been granted access to begin with had it not been for Allison.
“Seem? Just seem? Kyle Mitchell, you have a lot to learn about me if I just ‘seem’ angry.”
They stepped into a large room filled with badly done Victorian reproduction sofas covered in the wrong print for the era the sofas were supposed to be copying. The detail grated on Kyle’s nerves. But before he could even swallow the remark he knew he shouldn’t make, Allison stopped and gently guided a rail-thin old lady holding a teddy bear back in the direction she’d come from.
“Now, Mrs. Brennan, you know you can’t go out there without a staff member—”
“But Teddy! Teddy needs some air!” Mrs. Brennan protested. She held up the bear in agitation and tried to push past Allison, to make it to the door before it swished shut. As the safety lock clicked into place, she let out a fiendish yowl that sent a tremor down Kyle’s spine.
“Mrs. Brennan, it’s okay...” But the woman wasn’t paying the least amount of attention to Allison, focusing her energy instead on sounding as though she’d been tortured.
“Should I go get a staff member?” Kyle craned his head this way and that to find one, to no avail.
Allison shook her head. She patted Mrs. Brennan, then leaned down close to the bear. “What’s that, Teddy? What? Your head hurts? You wish—you wish what?”
Mrs. Brennan stopped in midshriek. She bent her head closer to Allison’s and Teddy’s.
“Oh! You needed a little quiet, huh, boy?” Allison said to the bear. She glanced up at Mrs. Brennan. “Fancy that. I think he wants a nap.”
What the Heart Wants Page 7
