What the Heart Wants

by Cynthia Reese

  “Oh, you could say that.” Allison was suddenly swept up in visions of Belle Paix’s beautiful, mellow pine floors, the high ceilings, the cheerful brightness of the kitchen now that it was painted yellow. “It’s a Second Empire Victorian built in 1888.”

  “And you’re selling that? Oh, my. No. None of these houses would ever live up to what you have now.” The Realtor’s tight brow remained smooth and unfurrowed despite her frown of concentration. “Tell you what, I’ll go back to the drawing board and see what other homes might...well...” She trailed off.

  “Thank you. I appreciate all your efforts.” Allison choked on tears of her own. The idea of Gran selling Belle Paix had seemed like such a godsend when Greg Draper had first approached her at that meeting. The more houses they looked at, though, made Allison all the sadder.

  She’d be uprooting Gran from everything she’d known, from the support system of friends and acquaintances, and even doctors and merchants that Gran had counted on for years. This couldn’t be good. Gran couldn’t really mean that it would hurt worse to live near Belle Paix.

  In the car, Gran was swiping her eyes with a tissue, no doubt wishing for a proper handkerchief. She straightened up and fixed her eyes straight ahead of her on some point far off in the distance. Her usually smiling mouth was pinched, but her head was high, and Allison detected a resoluteness that she found herself in envy of.

  Maybe Gran knew better. Maybe it was best to sever all ties with the place that would haunt her.

  Honestly, could you ever drive by Belle Paix without the car wanting to turn in and park on its own? Could you ever live in Lombard in any other house and not grieve for her home?

  Now another memory flooded Allison’s brain: of a neat little white house with blue shutters and a bench by the matching blue door. A kitchen with a swing-out stool under its farmhouse sink, and a console in the living room to hide the big screen TV.

  And there, in her vision, was the man who was part and parcel of that house, who’d made it what it was. In her imagination, he was smiling, holding out his arms—not being stubborn and unyielding about stupid standards that sounded logical on paper but caused so much grief in the real world.

  Now how can I miss Kyle when he’s the reason we have to move in the first place?

  She shoved the thought of him away, down into the deeper darker recesses of her mind. She’d cry tonight, alone where no one could hear her, as she had the night before and the night before that. She’d cry for lost chances and could have beens, and maybe even a few should have beens. In any other circumstance, she and Kyle might have had a chance.

  But for now Gran needed her, and Gran came first. Allison’s own heartache would simply have to wait.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “IT’S GOOD of you to meet with me, Dr. Mitchell.” Greg Draper extended the hand not holding a roll of blueprints out toward Kyle.

  Kyle took it, impressed with the man’s firm handshake. “I understand you’re interested in buying one of the historic homes here in Lombard and turning it into a B and B? There are several homes that would be perfect—”

  Draper’s mouth twitched in a suppressed smile. “Not to worry. I’ve already picked it out. Belle Paix.”

  Kyle sank into his desk chair. “Then I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. Belle Paix isn’t for sale.”

  Now Draper’s smile broadened. “Oh, but it is. I spoke with Allison Bell after the meeting, and with her grandmother the next day. They could see selling to the right person...for the right price.”

  Draper’s words took Kyle aback. To regain some measure of composure, he shifted a stack of exams off his desk to the credenza. Gran? Sell Belle Paix?

  He recalled the dark-suited man at the meeting, and realized too late that Draper must have been that man. So for all her passionate talk about her grandmother not wanting to leave her home, Allison had started negotiations not five minutes after the council’s vote.

  “I see.” He didn’t. But he wasn’t going to share that with Draper. “So what can I do for you?”

  “I’m interested in closing on the house before the current home owner’s insurance is revoked. It’s much harder to find insurance if you don’t have evidence of prior coverage, you know, and historic homes can be a nightmare. So I thought I’d cut to the chase and bring my plans to you. That way, we could review them, make sure they are in compliance. I have to have your written approval before the bank will issue the loan.” Draper turned to Kyle’s small table and chairs. “May I?” Without waiting, he spread the blueprints out on the dark wood.

  Kyle couldn’t resist the siren call of unfurling house plans. He rose from his chair and rounded the desk to inspect them.

  What he saw was impressive. The top sheet was a color drawing of the house in the requisite five colors of paint, coordinated even better than Kyle’s own color scheme had been in his slide at the meeting.

  “That—that’s something,” he said. “You work fast.”

  “Well, I admit, I’d been looking for a while now for a property large enough to turn into a B and B, but none had been on the market. So when I saw the news coverage and the photo of Belle Paix, I got out my drafting tools. I’m an architect by trade, but my father was in real estate...so I’ve been able to blend the two vocations together fairly well.” Draper tapped the drawing. “Now, as you can see, I intend to restore the exterior to the 1888 paint scheme, or as close as I can manage. You were exactly right the other night when you talked about the importance of historical accuracy. It really bugs me to see a Victorian painted lady swathed in white.”

  Kyle surveyed the meticulous drawing and marveled. The front elevation even included historically accurate landscaping. No doubt about it, Belle Paix would look every bit as good as the day Ambrose had first turned the key in the lock. “You’ve done a fine job, Mr. Draper.”

  “You approve. Excellent! That’s a good omen. Now, if you’ll bear with me—” Draper set aside the first drawing to reveal a detailed sketch of the interior.

  “So as I understand it, the house is not on the National Register, right? Even though it’s over a century?” he asked Kyle.

  “No...it’s an oversight, really. The family just never got around to requesting it, but it would be a shoo-in—”

  “Oh, no, actually the omission works in my favor. If it were on the register, then I couldn’t do the renovations I plan.”

  Kyle wasn’t sure he’d heard Draper correctly. “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s going to be quite a job to transform a private home into a structure to serve the public. For one thing, we’ll need a bigger commercial kitchen. And for another, even though the rooms are generous, I’ll need larger public areas on the main floor.”

  Kyle pushed back a chair at the table and dropped into it. With a sinking heart, he examined the plans in earnest.

  Gone was Gran’s charming 1930s kitchen with its Chambers range. In its place was a dining area that joined the original dining room, the wall between them replaced with load-bearing columns. Draper’s version had the space jammed with eight-foot round tables.

  “So I’ll use the daylight basement as the commercial kitchen, and we’ll put an elevator in place of the back stairs,” Draper was explaining. “I’d thought perhaps I might add a kitchen onto the back...but the basement is such a generous size. This way, the house can be open to the public for restaurant meals. It would be a perfect place for historical society meetings, mind you.” The man winked. He actually winked at Kyle.

  “That’s...that’s quite a change,” Kyle said.

  “Very necessary, I’m afraid. Now for the upstairs...” Again the pages of the blueprints made their familiar rustling sound as he rolled away the proposed first floor. “As you can see, I’ll have to do some significant renovations, as one bathroom will not be sufficient at all. So e
ach of the rooms will be made just a trifle smaller to incorporate a small but well-appointed private bath.”

  Kyle bent closer to the page. “Is that—are those hot tubs? And...and wet bars?”

  Draper beamed. “Good eye for detail. Yes, indeed. We’ll be catering to a, shall we say, special sort of patron. This is the wave of the future for Lombard, Dr. Mitchell. Our other properties all have at least a three-and-a-half-star rating, and we are striving to bring those up to four-star accommodations. You’ve worked so hard to bring Lombard up to snuff, to attract the right sort of attention, and this will be your reward—wealthy tourists who come to Lombard for a week to take in the sights.”

  Even on paper, seeing Belle Paix’s generous rooms carved up like this, its kitchen gutted, seemed like a nightmare to Kyle.

  He smoothed a ripple out of the blueprints, almost hoping the move would erase the offensive plans. The outside of the home was the only good and decent thing about Draper’s proposal.

  It was inconceivable that such a travesty might move ahead—and it could. It would. There was not a single, solitary thing the historical society could do to prevent Draper from having his way with the house once Gran sold it to him. Their purview ended at the threshold...and Draper had been careful to keep the patina, the skin, of the old house intact.

  But inside? If Draper did this, the house’s very soul would be ripped out.

  How could Allison do it? She could stop Gran... Heck, maybe it was even Allison’s idea to begin with.

  But she loved that old house. He knew it. And Gran wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. So why...

  Because Allison had given up. She’d thrown in the towel. She wouldn’t—or couldn’t—paint the house to match the historical society’s criteria.

  “Do you mind my asking...” Kyle framed his words carefully. “What was the deciding point? What made them move ahead with the sale?”

  Draper blinked. “The council’s decision, of course. And you were apparently very persuasive. Allison went on and on about your presentation and how the house ought to look. She said she couldn’t...how did she put it? Do right by the house. That Belle Paix ought to be in the hands of someone with the funds to look after her properly.”

  “You mean ‘it,’” Kyle muttered, returning his attention to the atrocious proposal before him.

  “Oh, no. Allison was quite charming as she referred to Belle Paix in the feminine. ‘I can’t do right by the old girl anymore,’ she said. ‘We just don’t have the funds. But you’ll look after her, won’t you?’ Yeah, it was sweet—as though the house were an actual person.”

  Kyle’s stomach twisted, and he found himself clenching his fingers into fists. He had done this. He’d finally convinced Allison that Belle Paix deserved a proper exterior renovation...and she was selling the house in order to provide it.

  He pictured the rooms filled with boxes, imagined Gran overseeing the packing of her family’s treasured belongings. That third floor—so jammed with the things she’d salvaged over the family’s history. What would become of all of it?

  The sick lurch of his heart transformed itself into a quick double beat. Yeah. That third floor...

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ALLISON KEPT HER head down, her broom in motion, as Kyle strode up to Belle Paix. She had less than sixty times left to sweep the old girl’s front walk, and she wouldn’t let the man who’d caused her to lose the house distract her from the task at hand.

  The broom straw caught on a cracked paving stone. The jagged break split the stone smack-dab between the “18” and the “88” underneath the paver’s name. Allison jerked the broom free.

  “Allison. I’ve left you about a dozen messages.”

  “Obviously you failed to get the larger message then,” she snapped, and turned her back to him under the guise of her sweeping.

  “You can’t sell Belle Paix.” Kyle told her. He circled around so that she had to face him. “You can’t!”

  She stared at him. Where has this come from? “Weren’t you the one who said if I couldn’t properly take care of her, then I needed to sell her to someone who could? And oh, for the record, it’s Gran’s house, not mine. She’s the one selling it.”

  “You said ‘her.’” Kyle jabbed a triumphant finger at Allison. “You don’t want to sell her, do you?”

  Allison went on with her sweeping. She would not cry. Not in front of this man. “Of course not. But what choice have you left me, Kyle? Where on earth am I going to find another fifteen thousand dollars—and that’s the cheapest bid I’ve found—to paint this house before the insurance is canceled? If you’d just worked with me—”

  “But you can get that money. The attic, Allison!” Kyle wrapped his fingers lightly around her upper arm to stop her from sweeping. His touch reminded her of other times, sweeter times, when she’d thought she could trust him. “Don’t you see? All those things in the attic.”

  She shook his hand off. “So what now? You want me to hold a yard sale and sell all my gran’s sentimental favorites and family heirlooms?”

  “Not a yard sale—we could go through it together, auction them off online, raise the money that way.”

  “Right. Let’s just put the whole thing on eBay.” Allison hated the acid-laced tone her words held, but she couldn’t shake off the regret and sick guilt she felt.

  “Not eBay—well, maybe eBay, but there are other sites designed for collectors. And if you didn’t want to do it yourself, I know of a few auction houses that handle estate sales—”

  Kyle had held her focus until he uttered the words estate sales. That reminded her of Gran—Gran, who barely spoke these days and who had insisted she be allowed to come home to enjoy “the last days I’ll ever be happy.”

  “No.”

  The flat refusal caused Kyle to take a step back, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “Why not? You said you didn’t want to sell Belle Paix. I thought you’d be excited about this.”

  “What happens, Kyle? What happens when we sell part of Gran’s stuff—or even all of it—and it’s still not enough money? Then what?”

  “It would be less to borrow!”

  “Get it through your head,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can’t borrow the money. No bank will do it, not on a house I don’t own. And the bank won’t even think about loaning money to someone as old as Gran unless she either takes out really high priced credit life insurance or if she does a reverse mortgage. Gran can’t afford the first one, and she’s not going to do the second. And I don’t blame her, Kyle.”

  “So...so you checked, then?”

  She gripped the broom to resist the urge to thrash him with it. “Did you think I didn’t? Did you think I just said, ‘Well, gee, I think I’ll sell the only house Gran’s ever lived in?’”

  “I think you’re really scared and really panicked and you’re not thinking through all your options—”

  “Yeah. I’m scared. But no, I’m not panicked. Determined? Yeah. Resolute? You bet. And as far as options, I’ve spent many a sleepless night—or day, because, gee, I still have to work—thinking, thinking and thinking. There’s just nothing. And you know it. You knew it when you were standing in front of that council. You could have petitioned for a hardship waiver to be created. You could have backed me up. And you didn’t.”

  “You know why...”

  He had the nerve to look at her with such patient innocence, as though it had really all been beyond his control.

  “Your precious ordinances? Your precious historic district? Well, you got ’em, Kyle. You protected them. And you know what else you managed to accomplish?” She drew in a deep breath. “You landed one nearly ninety-year-old woman out on the street.” Tears threatened to overwhelm Allison, and she knew she had maybe thirty seconds before she was sobbing. She whirled away from him, determined to
get in the house before he could have the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

  “No. No, I haven’t put your gran out on the street,” Kyle insisted. “You still have an option that you haven’t tried, Allison! You could at least let me look at some of those things in the attic and—”

  Her anger incinerated her tears. She spun back around to face him. “No. You won’t put a foot—not a pinkie toe—inside Belle Paix. If I had followed Gran’s practice of running off the likes of you to begin with—” She bit off her words and shook her head.

  He gaped at her. “That’s—that’s ridiculous. What did allowing me to see inside Belle Paix have to do with you not wanting to spend the money on a proper paint job?”

  Now Allison was the one gawking in astonishment. “Me? It’s not a question of not wanting to spend the money, Kyle—it’s a question of me not having the money. And if I’d never let you in, then—then...”

  Suddenly all those memories of working side by side with him on Belle Paix flooded back. His strong, capable hands holding a paint roller or a spackling knife. The day they’d spent canning tomatoes and beans. All the pep talks he’d ever given her. The million little things he’d done for her that had made her think he cared and she could count on him...

  “Then what?” he retorted. “If you hadn’t let me past the front door that first day, how would this be better?”

  “This wouldn’t hurt so bad!” And with that, she dashed for the sanctuary of the house, slammed the door behind her and wept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A LOUD THWACK sounded over Allison’s sobs. She hiccupped and took her hands from her eyes, to see Gran’s walking stick planted in front of her.

  “May I ask what all this ruckus is about?” her grandmother demanded. “I haven’t seen you reduced to a ball of tears since...well, ever.”

  Allison let her eyes follow the dark wood of the walking stick up to Gran’s face. At least Gran was talking. She hadn’t said more than two words at a time to Allison since she’d come home.