What the Heart Wants

“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.”