His crestfallen expression, which he altered in a matter of seconds, heartened her. Had he missed her in spite of not phoning?
“Oh, I see.”
“But I wanted to come,” she hurriedly told him. “I figured you could use some help.”
“And here I was, thinking you’d come just to borrow my modern stove,” he joked.
“I have to say, it cooperates better than Gran’s.”
“Oh, you just have to know how to talk to old things,” Kyle said. “Cajole them out of their cantankerous ways. Smooth out their bad moods and let ’em know you appreciate them even when nobody else can see their value.”
A sudden longing to be loved by someone who was that patient, someone who could appreciate a person or a thing despite how it could let you down at the worst possible moment, filled her. Kyle was that sort of man. He wouldn’t let his head be turned by a trendy, fashion-forward younger woman if he’d committed himself to someone. Allison felt that in her bones.
Now he was up again, busy moving around the kitchen. She heard plates and silverware rattle as she concentrated on the bacon—and tried to block out her confusing feelings for him.
This was a guy who wouldn’t see reason, who wouldn’t use his considerable influence with the committee to help her grandmother. So why on earth would Allison want him to be the guy she came home to?
“If you’ll hand me some eggs...” she started, more to get her mind off her thoughts than real hunger.
But even before she’d finished the sentence, Kyle had the carton of eggs on the counter by the stove. “And you’ll need a bowl...or did you want to fry them? Up to you, as you’re the chef for the day.”
Did he always have to be so considerate of the little things? she mused. That he could be so thoughtful in so many ways magnified the one thing he couldn’t be flexible about.
“But you’re the wounded warrior.” Now she took out her frustration on the bacon in the pan, jabbing it with a fork until the grease in the pan splattered up and just missed her fingers.
“Keep that up and you’ll be joining me. Can’t paint as well with a burn on your fingers.” Kyle leaned against the counter by the stove.
She felt his eyes on her and tried not to wonder what he was thinking. It shouldn’t matter what he thought of her—just her variance request, just what he could do to help Gran get home.
“I’m almost done painting.” She couldn’t meet his eyes, for some reason, so wound up staring at his uninjured hand, which was propped against the counter. Suddenly, unbidden, came the memory of a time he’d used those hands... He’d been helping her paint, and had put down his roller. With his strong fingers he’d massaged her neck and shoulders until all the knots were out.
But that had been before, when things were easy between them, conversation had never flagged and she’d thought he was really going to help her—not just with the house, but also with getting that variance request. When she’d thought she could count on him.
Allison took up the bacon and cracked two eggs into the pan. “I figure fried eggs,” she told him. “Easier.”
“Yeah. That’s you...simplest, most direct solution. No fuss, no muss,” he said. There was no sting in his voice, though, no accusation. It was almost...wistful.
With the eggs done, she started to pull out the stool at the butcher-block table.
He stopped her. “No! C’mon. Let’s eat in the breakfast nook.” Despite his sore hand, he picked up her plate. “Grab our cups.”
She followed him to the butler’s pantry and slid into the seat across from him in the nook. The morning sun spilled onto the table and lit the glass doors of the built-in cabinets. She could see that the panes were old, the glass wavy and rippled, distorting the blue-and-white china stored behind it.
“So you really eat here, huh?” she asked.
“Only with very special breakfast guests who come by to doctor my wounded hand. Not just any riffraff.” He smiled at her over his cup of coffee. “So what do you think of it?”
“It’s...it’s a tight squeeze,” she admitted. But maybe it felt that way only because she was so keenly aware of how close he was. This was no wide table in a restaurant, designed to hold huge platters of food. This was a tiny table that left her no more than a breath away from Kyle.
“Yeah. Made for little ones, I suspect.”
“To give the mom breathing room,” Allison suggested.
But she wasn’t picturing a pair of kids now...she was picturing newlyweds eating their first breakfast together after their honeymoon, and she couldn’t help but wonder if that woman, so many years ago, had felt as aflutter as Allison did now.
They ate their bacon and eggs in silence, though she did notice that every time she sneaked a glance at Kyle, he was sneaking one at her.
“Kyle—”
“Allison—”
At that, they both laughed uneasily. “You go first,” she said, all at once not certain what she would have said.
“Well...it’s just...I’ve missed you,” he blurted out.
Instead of giving her pure and unadulterated comfort, his statement perversely reawakened her earlier irritation. She started to retort that he’d been the one who’d slammed out her back door, and that he’d known where she’d been the whole time, if he’d really missed her all that much.
Kyle’s pinched and miserable face, though, shut that thought down before she could utter it. Maybe he’d used this week to think things through, to come up with a strategy to help her.
“Oh...I—I figured you missed all that work on Belle Paix like a hole in your head.” Her attempt at a joke fell flat.
“I assumed you’d had enough of me.” With his forefinger, he traced a ring on the vinyl tablecloth with its retro kitchen print. “But I thought about you a thousand times a day...what were you painting? What colors did you choose? Did you need help? What sort of complications were you running into...?” He lifted his gaze to meet hers.
Okay, so no heartfelt declarations of undying love, and maybe secretly he really missed Belle Paix more than he did me. But...maybe I should take what I can get?
She chased the last bite of fried egg with her fork. “Sage.”
“What?”
“I painted the living room and library a sage green.” She flicked a corkscrew curl up for his inspection. “See? I even have a handy paint swatch for your viewing pleasure.”
Kyle reached over and twirled the sage-hued lock around his index finger. “That’s—that’s nice,” he said, but without conviction. “How’d you choose it?”
“I chose it because I liked it on the swatch, the same as anybody else, I’d think.” She snatched the curl back and tried to tamp down her irritation. “Let me guess. It wasn’t a popular color back then.”
Kyle wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Nope. Not that particular shade. But it’s what you like.”
She laid her fork across her plate and traced the simple lines on its handle. She would bet that silverware pattern that could have been found in the drawers of the kitchen or here in the butler’s pantry when the house was brand-new. “The wallpaper that was in the house when it was new was particularly gosh-awful, you know. Hideous stuff with big cabbage roses printed on it.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all. Victorian wallpapers could be...garish. But people liked them like that.”
“No, they didn’t, not everybody. Davinia complained in her journal that Ambrose ordered the wallpaper without even asking her. She hated it. In fact, it was Davinia herself who gave me the idea about the sage green. She wrote that if it had been left up to her, she would have painted the entire downstairs the color of the underside of a sage leaf.”
Kyle sat back, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Really? You’d mentioned journals, but I thought they were probably fa
irly dry... Many women were circumspect with what they wrote in their diaries back then, as their menfolk were apt to inspect them. Davinia’s journal might be a perfect primary source—”
Allison shook her finger. “Nope. Don’t even think about it. Gran is very opinionated about keeping Davinia’s journals private. One of the worst times in my life was when she caught me and my friend Melanie giggling over one of them. They aren’t for public consumption.”
Kyle’s face fell. “Oh. Well. It’s so rare that we historians tumble on anything new.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, after all, you study history, and what’s anything but old news about that?” she teased. “Have you always been a history buff? Always liked old things?”
“I’ve always liked a good story,” he said. “That’s what I’m a sucker for, a good yarn.”
“And old houses? You got into that because of your love of history?”
He frowned. “Not exactly.” He stood and picked up her empty plate. “Let me—”
“Wash dishes? I don’t think so, not with that hand.” Allison took the plates back from him and headed into the kitchen. “You didn’t answer my question. What made you the patron saint of old houses?”
She’d begun to fill the sink with hot, soapy water before she realized that, though he’d followed her into the kitchen and stood beside her, he still hadn’t answered her. Allison turned her attention to Kyle’s face and was surprised to see genuine pain there.
“What?” she asked.
“You know, I didn’t always appreciate old houses. As a teenager...shoot, even in college, I just sort of thought they’d always be there. I’d grown up in my father’s home place...nothing fancy, just a folk Victorian that had been built about the same time Belle Paix was.”
Restlessly, he began to prowl around the kitchen, straightening canisters and bringing the frying pan to the counter by the sink. Allison scrubbed a dish twice in order to give him time to put the memory into words.
Her patience paid off. As the frying pan clattered to the counter beside her, Kyle picked up the story. “And then my parents decided, since I’d told them I wasn’t interested in staying in our hometown, that they’d sell. The guy who bought the house...the stupid idiot ruined it. First thing he did was put cheap aluminum siding on it—white, mind you, which turned this awful grayish color. He ripped out the windows, stripped off every inch of the gingerbread trim, tore down the chimneys.”
Allison couldn’t ignore the pain in Kyle’s voice. She let the plate slip into the sudsy water and dried her hands. Turning to face him, she said quietly, “Oh, Kyle. So that’s why...”
“The last time I saw the house, I barely recognized it...and you know what? All those ‘improvements’ he did? They’re falling apart now. That house had lasted over a hundred years with nothing more than a good coat of paint every few years, and now it looks like it’s ready for the junk heap. He could do what he liked—and I couldn’t protect it.”
She reached up to touch Kyle’s shoulder. “That must have been awful, to see your family home so mistreated.”
“My dad regretted selling that house for the rest of his life. If I’d only appreciated what I’d had...if I’d agreed to move back—”
“You wouldn’t be here—or the person you are today, Kyle.”
Now he jerked away from her. “That’s as good as telling me I had to sacrifice my family’s home to gain a little wisdom. Well, I won’t let it happen again, that’s for sure.”
His emphatic words reminded her of the variance, and she wondered if he thought of her plans with the same contempt. Kyle would never be able to judge her choices about Belle Paix as anything but terrible. She turned back to finish the dishes, her hope fading away just like the soapsuds in the sink. “No, I don’t imagine you would.”
He seemed to realize what he’d said and how she’d taken it. “Don’t—don’t let me have spoiled a good morning with you,” he told her. “And we’ve had a good one, right?”
Her heart twisted. She shook the water droplets from the now clean frying pan and began to dry it off. “Yeah. When we can tiptoe around me wanting a variance request, we’re okay—more than okay,” she admitted. She set the frying pan on the draining rack. “But can we really keep doing that?”
She thought about the story that Gwen was working on, and her own plans to harass every one of the city council members until they saw her point of view. If she succeeded, she’d be allowing people the opportunity to wreck Kyle’s accomplishments.
But if she didn’t try, the historical preservation committee would turn her down. She’d be stuck in limbo for another year—a year Gran might not have—before Allison would be allowed to submit another proposal.
And Gran’s house would continue to fall apart.
Kyle ducked his head and avoided meeting her eyes. Part of her was glad he seemed to be really considering this, not just tossing off words he thought she wanted to hear.
“Maybe,” he said finally. “I’ll try if you will. You do what you have to do. And we’ll...we’ll let the chips fall where they may.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear him say. No, what she’d really hoped he’d tell her was that he understood her reasons, trusted her judgment, and knew that Gran was more important than some poky old ordinances.
But it was a sign he was trying. Maybe if he could manage to move that little bit from his position, there was some hope he could meet her halfway. “Okay!” she said brightly. “Okay, then. I guess I’d better take a look at that hand.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
ALLISON STARED AT the chairlift installer, knowing she was gawking at him in disbelief.
“But your salesman assured me that one chair was all I’d need. Now you’re telling me that we really need three on this back stair? Your co-worker told me that you could make the chair negotiate both turns! In fact, that’s the reason that I chose your company, because he said you could do that.”
The cost and aggravation of the one thing Gran had to have in place before she could come home had just tripled at the worst possible time.
Allison wished that she’d spent the past few days, since Kyle’s ER visit, rushing the chair lift installer, instead of painting and sanding.
And let’s be honest, thinking about Kyle.
Not for the first time did Allison wish Ambrose had put at least one actual bedroom downstairs.
But no. Gran had her heart set on her own bedroom, with no way up besides this flight of stairs or the main staircase. She was tired of making do in the library.
Allison dragged her attention back to the long and complex explanation the workman was giving her.
He stopped, wrinkled his mouth a little and then said shortly, “Well, yeah. I mean, it’s on a track, see?” He indicated where the track would lay along the stairs. “So it ends here. And then your granny would have to move to another chair over on these three steps.” He crossed the first little landing and demonstrated. “And then, boom, she moves over to this flight and the last chair. So not ideal, but way better than no lift at all.”
“I could probably put in an elevator for the cost of this!” Allison muttered.
“Hey, we do that, too. Just rip out these old stairs and I’ll put you in a fine elevator, big enough for a wheelchair. Lots of old folks are doing that these days. And we could do it, hmm, for about fifteen.”
“Fifteen thousand?” Now she was gawking again.
“Yeah. But cheap, ya know, in the long run because it will help the resale value of the house.”
Allison laughed as she pictured Kyle’s reaction to an elevator. He’d had to physically lift her grandmother up and down these stairs himself before he’d even begun to consider a chair lift a good idea. “I don’t think so. The only person willing to buy this house would be someon
e who’s a purist, and I’ve met one or two of them.”
The worker shrugged. “Suit yourself. But that’s the nuts and bolts. Three rails, three chairs.”
Allison sighed. She walked to the front hall and stared at the sweeping curve of the staircase there. Her eyes lit on the missing medallion detail, and it bugged her that the design seemed a bit snaggle-toothed without that piece of carving.
Gran would kill her for putting the chair lift here. And Kyle would swear she was ruining the entire effect of the entrance. But needs must...
“What about in here? On these stairs?” she called.
The worker loped into the front hall, squinted up at the stairs and shook his head. “I can do it. But those curving steps up there? See?” He pointed at the gentle curve at the top. “That’s gonna be a problem. And pricey. It will be as much as the three simple rails.”
Allison groaned, but in an irritated flash, she realized she was glad of the news. She didn’t want the chair lift on these stairs—and not because of Gran or Kyle. She didn’t want them because she knew they’d spoil the effect.
I have to stop letting Kyle ruin me, she thought. I wouldn’t have given it a second thought before I met him.
“Okay, well, I guess I don’t have a choice. I’ve gotten bids from three different companies, and you’re still a bit cheaper than the other two. Plus, the rehab facility that Gran is in recommended your work.”
“Won’t be that much more to put in that elevator for ya,” he told her. “What’s another five grand, huh? And you’d have peace of mind and handicap access.”
She pictured shiny stainless steel doors closing off the back staircase, felt the gnawing pain at the anticipation of a part of her childhood gone.
Kyle really has ruined me, she thought. “No, we’ll go with the chair lift. Can you get it done today?”
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