“Nope. Sorry, but I’ve got to order those other two chairs. If I’d known at the start I needed three of ’em, I would have brought them with me. I’ve got enough track—at least that idiot measured right. Our sales force...” The guy shook his head. “I tell you, wouldn’t it make more sense for the people installing this stuff to actually come out here and quote you a price? But no. Corporate geniuses, the lot of ’em.”
“So...how long?”
The man cocked his head to one side. She saw pity on his face, but she was beyond pride. Maybe if he felt sorry for her, he’d move a little quicker.
“Let me make a phone call or two,” he said. “If the chairs don’t absolutely have to match in color, I might be able to scrounge them up from some of our other installers in this area. That would mean we didn’t have to wait for them to come from the warehouse.”
He went off to his van to make the calls, leaving Allison to wander outside to the front porch, where she sank onto the steps.
In the harsh daylight there was no mistaking the peeling paint and porch boards that needed replacing. The furniture looked wispy and ragged, as if the basket weave was coming undone, but it had been on that porch for as long as Allison could remember. Gran had managed to have it patched and recaned a time or two, and they had repainted it every summer...but it was long overdue for some serious repair.
I’ll get her home and she won’t even be able to venture out onto the porch. Allison let her chin sink into the palm of her hand. She would not cry. She was tough. She had Davinia Shepherd’s blood in her veins, and she was better than the wimpy, whiney thing this house had reduced her to. She just had to focus on why it was so important to do this.
Gran made the sacrifice for you, when she was already on a fixed income and retired. You have a job, a way to earn money, and all the overtime you want. So this is a piece of cake. Just work harder.
She reached in her pocket for her phone, but just as she was about to see if Melanie was free during her planning period, she heard the front gate clang open.
“Hey, there. Communing with nature?” Kyle asked as he strode up the walk toward her.
Allison felt her heart rat-a-tat in her chest with a ridiculous amount of pleasure at seeing him.
“No, trying to get over the shock of having the chair lift guy tell me it was almost as cheap to install an elevator.”
Kyle stopped short. His mouth literally fell open before he said, “You’re not serious.”
She waved off his slack-jawed reaction. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to rip out the back stairs and put in an elevator. The historic preservation committee really would burn me at the stake for that sin.”
But Kyle had closed the gap and now sank down beside her. “No, I wasn’t even thinking about that—although elevators in that day and age weren’t unheard of, and some larger homes had them. We could make it work, aesthetically speaking. What I was so blown away about was the cost.”
“I don’t think you could get a pretty elevator for the price he quoted me. Besides, we all know that when you start ripping things out, you’re in for a lot of ‘jumpin’ Jehosaphats.’” She dropped her chin into her palm again.
Kyle put an arm around her. “The end is in sight...”
“Kyle, it’s not. Gran’s rehab facility called me this morning. I had a choice. I could either switch her to self-pay status or use up the precious little remaining of her benefits before her long-term care insurance maxed out. And it’s a lifetime cap, so once it’s gone...well, it’s gone.”
“Oh. Wow. How much?”
“They’re giving me a discounted rate, since her health insurance is still covering a portion of her therapy. But it’s still nearly five grand a month. I have to get her home. I can swing two weeks, maybe a month more...but that’s it. Besides...”
“She’s ready to come home, isn’t she?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah. She is. And even the admissions person at the facility told me that she’s reaching the end of whatever in-patient physical therapy can do for her. They want to switch her to out-patient occupational therapy and start working with her here.”
“That sounds good, though. You get the chair lift in and—”
“Look at this place. I wanted it so much nicer for her.” Allison sprang to her feet and faced the house. Every bit of peeling paint and dry rot seemed to accuse her. She couldn’t help but shake her fist at it, melodramatic as she knew that was. “Cursed old house!”
The installer rounded the corner and came to a halt. “Ma’am? You...you okay?”
Allison managed a tight, grim smile. “I will be if you tell me you found those chairs.”
“Well, actually...I got an installer about an hour away, and he’s upgrading the standard chairs in a house with our deluxe model. People do that, ya know, they go the cheap route, and then they realize they should have— Well, anyway,” he interrupted himself. “Long and short of it is if you don’t mind some gently used chairs that are the basic model, I can drive over and get ’em today. We’ll give you a good deal on ’em, too.”
“Great! That’s really good news.”
“All right, then. I’ll go get ’em and be back this afternoon to start work on it.”
With that, the installer loped off in the direction of his van.
“See? Things are looking up,” Kyle told her.
She turned back to him. “Maybe. Until the next jumpin’ Jehosaphat leaps out from around the corner.”
Kyle didn’t say anything to that. He regarded her with so much caring and patience she thought her heart would twist in her chest. What could she do for him that would tell him how much she appreciated his kindness? His willingness to stick it out with her in spite of her attack on his precious ordinances?
You’re just feeling guilty.
“Come on, before I change my mind,” she said.
Allison led him up the two flights of stairs to the third floor. “This was to be extra guest rooms—oh, and the billiard room, too, but since there was no bathroom on this floor, the space was too inconvenient for people to use. I think this floor has pretty much always been used as a huge dumping ground for junk. Mind your step...you’ve got over a century of clutter to negotiate around.”
“And that’s a lot of stuff.” On her way to what would have been the front third-floor bedroom, she heard Kyle clattering behind her, and knew he’d run afoul of a big, chunky wooden carving of a Native American in full regalia that Gran had stashed up here. “Is that a...”
“It supposedly stood outside a tobacco shop at one point, and my grandfather—biological, not Pops—won it at a card game. But who knows? You’re addicted to stories, right? Well, there are a thousand stories up here. It’s in this room, what I wanted to—”
“Wait! These are records!”
“Well, yeah.” She turned around to see him pawing through a stack of vinyl records. “Some of ’em go with a Victrola that’s up here somewhere. But the rest of them are Gran’s.”
“Wow. These are almost mint-condition albums from...looks like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and...” Kyle was flipping through them. “These could be worth some money.”
“Oh, Gran won’t sell them. I’ve tried to get rid of them at yard sales—”
“No, Allison! I mean real money. Collectors love these sorts of things.”
She stared around at the mountains of junk. For a moment, she wondered if any of it could be sold to raise money. Gran would kill her. She’d held on to all these treasures with white-knuckled intensity every time Allison had even gently suggested they clean out the third floor.
She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. As long as Gran is alive, she’s not willing to part with anything up here. And hey, it’s her stuff, and...really, when you think about it, she has managed to purge a good bit. I mean, this is it—t
his floor holds all the detritus we’ve saved from a hundred twenty-six years.”
“Wow. How did she decide what to keep?”
“If she could remember a story about it. If she couldn’t find it anywhere else. If it belonged to Davinia or Ambrose or her grandparents or her parents. She’s a little more ruthless with her own stuff.”
Allison stepped around dusty trunks and boxes to clear a path to a set of bookshelves crammed with leather-bound volumes and old college textbooks. Interspersed among them was a hodgepodge of ticky-tacky porcelain shepherd boys and girls, broken lamps, and more than a few vases of stunningly atrocious colors.
She moved a couple vases to reveal a set of slim, leather-bound books in various muted shades of green. “Voilà,” she said.
Kyle peered over her shoulder, so close she could smell the clean scent of the soap he used. She recognized it. It was the only soap Gran would allow in the house—Kirk’s Natural Castile Soap, in production since 1839.
“What...what are these?” he asked. He reached around her, then drew back his hand before touching one of the books.
“Davinia’s journals. I have one downstairs—I figured it would be interesting to read about the time the house was being built. See? You’ve turned me into one of those renovation fanatics.” She craned her head back to look at him, then wished she hadn’t. His mouth was a mere two inches away, and even though he wasn’t touching her, she could feel the heat from his body.
But Allison couldn’t turn away. The light in his eyes, the O of surprise that touched his mouth, mesmerized her.
It took an inordinate amount of effort—made just a bit easier because Kyle was focused on the books as firmly as she’d been focused on him—to break the spell she was under. She reached out and handed him a journal.
He stepped toward the light spilling in from the front window to examine it. “I shouldn’t even be handling these without gloves—and they really ought not to be up here...”
Now the spell was really and truly broken. “Leave it to you to fuss over how we keep these journals,” she muttered.
He lifted his eyes from the page just long enough to skewer her with one of his famous know-it-all expressions.
“Don’t.” Allison held up a hand, palm out in warning. “Don’t start lecturing me on the proper way to keep historical artifacts, because I know it would either involve giving them up or spending a whole lot of money that I don’t have.”
With that, she shook her head and headed for the stairs. When would she learn? With Kyle, it seemed she could never do anything right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
KYLE EASED HIS way down the stairs, listening intently for any sounds of Allison. He hadn’t meant to offend her—again.
She just never seemed to value what she had.
Simply because something had seen better days didn’t relegate it to the dump, or mean it couldn’t give you enjoyment—just like the items he held in his hand.
He found her in the living room, sitting at the gleaming black grand piano, Cleo the ninja cat beside her. Allison held a photo in a heavy ornate frame, staring at it as though she was listening to it issue important, sage advice.
When Kyle approached her and asked, “Who’s that?” she jumped slightly. She put a hand to her chest and blew out an embarrassed breath.
“Sorry. A tad anxious today, I guess.” She glanced back at the picture. “It’s Gran, when she was young. Her first wedding day. Pops never minded that she kept it—said she was beautiful, and it would be a shame for her to put it away.”
Peering closer, Kyle noted the old-fashioned dress with lace sleeves—clearly out of the 1940s despite a swooping sweetheart neckline. “Wow...that neckline—”
“Scandalous for the time, wasn’t it?” Allison set the photo back on the piano. “Gran loved Rita Hayworth and wanted a dress just like one she wore in that old movie—what was it? You’ll Never Get Rich? Gran said her father very nearly didn’t let her walk down the aisle with that much skin showing. If her fiancé hadn’t been leaving that next week for basic training, my great-grandfather might have called off the wedding. And then, who knows? I might not have even been here. What have you brought down?” She dipped her head to indicate what he was carrying. “I thought you’d have the journals already boxed up, to take them to a proper home.”
“I...” Kyle was confused. Had Allison meant for him to take them? “But you said Gran had strong feelings about them. I didn’t want to plunder until I had asked her permission. But I might bring you an archival box to put them in. That would at least protect them a bit better. But these...” He held up the 45-rpm records he’d chosen. “You looked so depressed and overwhelmed. And I remembered seeing a turntable down here. Does it work?”
“Sure, though even Gran has an iPod these days.”
He lifted the lid, placed the record on the turntable and gently set the needle down. It pleased him to no end how big a smile Allison rewarded him with when the strains of “That’s Amore” filled the living room.
Cleo wasn’t as pleased, skittering out the door as fast as her sable paws could carry her.
“Come on,” he said to Allison. He drew her off the piano bench into the middle of the floor. “You can’t just listen. ”
“I can’t dance—look at me—”
When she would have pulled away, he held her gently but firmly in his arms and shook his head. “I am looking at you,” he told her.
And he was. Her eyes were still a little shiny from some unshed tears, and they glowed green and bright in a face nestled among those beautiful red curls. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup, but she didn’t need to. In fact, he thought she looked wonderful just the way she was.
The blush that touched her cheeks entranced him. For a moment, he found it hard to breathe, until he spun her away from him. The breathing problem came back as soon as she returned to his arms.
Why was it that, when she was next to him, he could forget about all the things that made the two of them such a mismatch?
She laughed as he swung her around and Dean Martin sang about the moon being like a big pizza pie, the accordion swelling to its crescendo. Now her eyes were bright with happiness, not tears. Being with her like this felt effortless and easy. If he could always make her feel this way...
The song ended and the next 45 made its characteristic clunk as it landed on the turntable. The needle fell, unleashing Sinatra and “The Way You Look Tonight.”
“I should be wearing a big swirly skirt for this, not old jeans,” Allison protested.
“Close your eyes...pretend,” Kyle told her. “No, I mean it, close ‘em. Close ’em up tight—no, you’re peeking!” He swung her around in a foxtrot. “You’re very good at this.”
Allison’s eyes flew open. “You sound surprised! I’ll have you know Pops taught me how to dance. He said it would come in useful someday to know how to do an actual dance that had an actual name and that you actually needed a partner for.” Her mouth quirked, and she closed her eyes again.
“Have you visualized me in a dinner jacket yet?” Kyle asked.
“I’m still struggling with transforming my outfit, much less yours,” Allison told him. “No, I’m thinking of Gran and Pops, and how much they loved each other. They were two peas in a pod, you know.”
Suddenly she went still in his arms. Was she thinking what Kyle had been pondering just a few short minutes ago? How different the two of them were in their views of life?
The record changed again, and soon Sinatra was crooning about flying to the moon. Kyle couldn’t bear for her to pull away now. He bent down, with no hesitation, no thinking, just going on impulse, and kissed her.
The blaring brass of Sinatra’s band couldn’t outblast the pounding of Kyle’s heart as Allison kissed him back with an unmistakable intensity. Now they
weren’t dancing. They stood in the living room, on Gran’s ancient faded carpet, wrapped in each other’s arms, hanging on for dear life.
Forgetting everything. And he allowed himself to do that, let himself focus on the here and now rather than the showdown that was coming, the possibility that the city council would even consider repealing his ordinances, the idea that Allison couldn’t bring Gran home to the house she’d hoped to—and that he was the cause of that.
No. He just drank in her nearness, the warmth of her, how she made him feel.
The kiss ended, began again, then was interrupted by the ta-chunk of the needle skipping, as it had no other record to start on. Allison backed away from Kyle. She put her fingers to her lips almost protectively, and stepped over to the turntable to rescue the record. She didn’t face him when she broke the silence, and somehow that spoke more loudly than her words.
“Wow.” Her voice was strained, husky. “That—you’re not just a great dancer. That was amazing.”
“It’s easy with the right girl.”
He made a move to close the gap between them. But he stopped when he saw her wince as though in pain.
“Allison?”
“Kyle—what happens?”
“What do you mean, what happens?”
“Don’t be obtuse. What happens when either I convince the city council members to change their ordinances or you convince them to keep them as they are? Aren’t we lying to ourselves?”
“I think—”
But she obviously wasn’t interested in his answer, because she cut him short. “We are, aren’t we? I am, anyway. I like you. No...maybe more than like. But...I can’t do this, okay? Can’t we just wait until...well, after?”
“So you know the city council will definitely take up the question of the ordinances?” All his early warm, fuzzy feelings had faded, and he felt as though he’d been doused with cold water and awakened from a dream.
She turned now, finally, to face him. “No. I don’t. But if they don’t, it won’t be from my lack of trying. I have to do this, Kyle. I have even less money than I did before, now that I’m footing Gran’s stay at the rehab facility.”
What the Heart Wants Page 18