No Place Like Home

by Leigh Michaels

  “And she’s still trying to take care of it.”

  “That’s right. The bank has had it listed for sale with my company for eighteen months, so I’ve been keeping an eye on it.”

  “Isn’t that an awfully long time for something to be on the market?”

  “Not considering the condition of the house.”

  The moon was full, and it was only a couple of miles in light traffic from Nora’s new house to her old one. They drove through the historic preservation district that included some of the grand old homes of Henderson’s history. “It’s in a good neighborhood, at least,” Kaye said.

  Brendan shrugged. “The street she lived on isn’t actually in the preservation area. It could be added any time, or it could be a slum in twenty years.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Kaye said reluctantly.

  Brendan swung the car into a gravel driveway where the snow lay in a smooth blanket, unbroken even by footprints. “It will just take me a second to check the window. Why don’t you just wait in the car? No sense in getting out in the snow.”

  Kaye looked up at the house, and thought about it. Nora’s house was a nineteenth-century Queen Anne, with a shingled tower on one corner and a bay window on the top floor. There were loose clapboards here and there, and the porch floor sagged out of line. It badly needed a coat of paint. And from what Brendan had said, the inside was in even worse condition.

  “I think I will,” Kaye said. “After some of the things I’ve seen this week, I don’t think I can bear to look at another run-down house.”

  “It’s unpleasant even to walk through it. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  It was considerably longer than a minute, and the cold wind seemed to rock the car and creep through the steel to settle in her bones. Kaye saw lights flash on and off in the house; Brendan, she thought, was certainly making a complete inspection.

  She leaned back in her seat and studied the house through half-closed eyes, thinking about the preservation district. Last summer there had been a neighborhood celebration here, with walking tours and some of the houses open to visitors, so everyone could see the marvelous work that was going on in these historic old homes.

  I’d love to do something like that, Kaye thought. And the houses are certainly big enough—maybe Graham would like something in this neighborhood. I wonder if Brendan has thought of that—

  She was out of the car and plunging through the knee-deep snow before she stopped to think that she was being a little hasty. She could tell Brendan about her brainstorm five minutes from now, or tomorrow, just as well. But by then she had reached the front porch, so she went on to the front door. It was oak, with an oval panel of beveled glass, etched in an intricate pattern. Kaye ran an appreciative finger across it, and then went inside, laughing at herself for her own naive eagerness to tell Brendan her new idea.

  He was coming down the stairs. “What are you doing in here?” he asked lightly. “You couldn’t stand being left out in the cold?”

  She giggled and threw out her arms, matching his own teasing attitude. “Hi, honey, I’m home!” she caroled.

  He stopped as if he had suddenly run into a transparent wall and looked down at her, and Kaye stopped breathing. His eyes had gone so suddenly dark that there was no blue left in them, and she had never seen quite the same look in another man’s face as she saw in Brendan’s then. He came down the last few stairs, and across the hall to her, and took her in his arms.

  Her heart was madly skipping beats, and her brain was staggering from fear to ecstasy and back.

  “You’ve been asking for this for a week,” he said huskily.

  And then there was no reason for her heart to beat, because the electric jolt of his kiss was enough to keep her blood flowing. And her brain refused to think at all, merely to feel, as he held her, his mouth alternately demanding and beseeching, seeking and caressing. It seemed to Kaye as if the world had twisted to some new and crazy angle, and the only thing that kept her from spinning out into space was Brendan, holding her crushed against his body, so closely that it seemed there was not room for a whisper between them...

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SANITY returned slowly. “Good God!” she whispered finally, staring up at him in shock. “You shouldn’t have done that, Brendan.”

  “I shouldn’t?” He sounded a little vague, as if he hadn’t used his voice in a month or two. “You’re the one who was issuing the come-hither looks, Kaye. I only accepted the invitation.”

  Fury bubbled up within her. “How dare you suggest that I asked for that sort of behavior!”

  “If it upsets you so much,” he suggested gently, “why don’t you slap my face and go running out to the car? It might make you feel better.”

  Kaye realized that she was not only still in his arms, but still very comfortably pressed against his chest with her hands nestled into the soft tweed of his jacket—the same jacket that had absorbed her tears only a few hours before.

  “Look,” she said, “because I got upset this afternoon and cried all over you doesn’t mean that I wanted to be kissed, for heaven’s sake.” She pulled away from him, much more slowly than she had intended, and tugged her coat collar up around her throat in an attempt to hide a blush that threatened to consume her.

  “If you say so,” Brendan said. He was leaning against the newel post, watching her thoughtfully.

  Kaye looked around, eager to find anything to comment about that might make him stop looking at her like that. She felt absolutely naked under that unblinking blue gaze, and it frightened her. “Would you stop making a criminal case of it?” she asked desperately. “It was only a kiss, after all.”

  “You’re not being very logical, Kaye. First you get upset with me for kissing you, and now you say it wasn’t any big deal. I wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “which way Graham would see it.”

  Kaye’s heart settled into her toes with a thump. “You wouldn’t dare tell him,” she said in breathless horror, and then could have bitten her tongue off.

  If she’d only had the presence of mind to pretend that it didn’t matter! Not that Graham would be angry, she told herself desperately, but if Brendan was doing the telling, she could imagine the way it would end up. It certainly wouldn’t appear as one innocent kiss, broken off the instant that she realized what she was doing.

  No, if Brendan told the story, it would be both painstakingly truthful and absolutely misleading...

  “Besides,” she said firmly, “you’re the one who started it. I have no responsibility in the matter at all.”

  “And I suppose next you’ll say that you weren’t even cooperating? I’ve kissed a few women in my life, Kaye, and I know the difference between one who enjoys it and one who doesn’t. You enjoyed it.”

  He pushed himself away from the newel post, and Kaye shrank back against the front door. What if he intended to try to prove his point? she wondered fear fully. She was alone and defenseless here, with no one to come to her aid.

  “I’d suggest you be more careful with the signals you send in the future,” he said roughly. “Nora’s window wasn’t just left open, by the way. It’s been broken. I’m going to the basement to look for something to block it up with. Will you be all right here, or do you want to come along and continue your explanation? It’s such a charming story.”

  She was determined not to react to the sarcasm in his voice. “I’ll be fine here, thanks.”

  It was warm in the house, at least, she told herself, and it was going to take a while to fix the window. There was no sense in freezing out in the car.

  And there was also no sense in standing in the front hall like a hat rack, waiting for him to finish, she told herself. It might leave a wrong impression.

  She wandered through the downstairs rooms. At first she scarcely saw them; she was still too upset by that kiss, and his accusation that she had invited it. But eventually the house began to impress itself on her, its elaborately carved woodwork darkened
by age, the old and priceless murals water-damaged and hanging loose from the walls of a big sun-room, the carpets stained and splotched. The kitchen was the worst. The ceiling had fallen, and broken plaster lay in heaps over the floor, the old stove, and the sink.

  Brendan was coming up the basement stairs with a scrap of lumber. Kaye picked her way through the plaster and stared up into the hole that had been the kitchen ceiling. What looked like new copper pipes spanned the gap.

  “What happened to this house?” she asked. “It looks like a bomb hit it.”

  For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “That’s one way to put it. I’ve also been told that the only way to improve the decor is to bring a bulldozer through.”

  There was still a slightly-biting tone in his voice, but at least it wasn’t directed at her any more, Kaye thought with relief. Everything had returned to normal. “Surely Nora didn’t live here like this.”

  “Oh, no. When she moved out, you could see yourself in the wax on the hardwood floors.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The bank shut off the boiler last winter to save money and didn’t bother to drain the plumbing. The pipes froze and burst, and when spring came, there was water all over everything.”

  Kaye winced at the thought of gallons of water trickling through the walls and ceilings. “That was pretty idiotic.”

  “It happens. Most of the time, one vice-president doesn’t know what the others are up to, so a perfectly saleable house becomes a ghetto in one fast winter.”

  “Nora doesn’t know about this, does she?” she said slowly.

  He shook his head. “And she isn’t going to know, if I can help it.”

  “You said you’d bring her over next spring.”

  “And next spring I’ll come up with another excuse. Why do you think I came myself instead of bringing her over to take care of the window? If she saw her precious house like this, she’d go straight downtown and murder the president of the bank, just to make her point.”

  “I’d be cheering her on,” Kaye said. She kicked idly at the broken plaster. The dust from the ceiling had settled into the infinitesimal cracks in the flagstone blocks. It would take a week with a fire hose to scrub it out, she thought.

  “Actually,” Brendan said, with an attempt to be scrupulously fair, “a lot of the damage you see wasn’t caused by the water, but by the repairmen. The bank finally concluded that a house without a heating plant isn’t in demand, so they replaced the whole thing. But they didn’t worry much about aesthetics. Wait till you see the upstairs.”

  “I’m not certain I want to.” But she followed him up the wide stairway, past a rose-point window that must, she thought, be gorgeous in daylight.

  He was right. There was scarcely a room that would be habitable without major work. Ugly brown water stains scarred the ceilings. Wallpaper was falling. Carpets had been pulled up and holes sawed in floors to install new pipes.

  “The bulldozer is sounding better and better,” she said.

  “It would be criminal,” Brendan said. “It’s still structurally sound—the foundation is in wonderful shape. But try selling this baby. No one wants it.”

  “What about you, Brendan?”

  “I’m afraid the only future I can see for this house is if someone cuts it into apartments. At least it would earn some of the costs back.”

  “I meant that you might want it for yourself. You said you liked Victorian houses.”

  “Victorians, yes. Life projects—no, thanks.”

  “You just don’t like to be tied down,” Kaye accused. “You want to be free to do whatever strikes your fancy.”

  “I am not your father, Kaye. Don’t tar me with the same brush.”

  She ignored the warning in his voice. “Doesn’t avoiding responsibility get a little old, Brendan?”

  He looked for a moment as if he’d really like to slap her. Then he said, “It hasn’t yet. If it ever does, I’ll let you know.” He vanished down the hall with his board.

  Kaye wandered into a big bedroom. The light fixtures were fantastic, she thought. And the fireplace that was nestled into one corner was surrounded with jade green ceramic tile and topped by a golden oak mantel.

  What a shame, she thought, that such a lovely house had been reduced to such a state. Another year and it might not be repairable at all. Nevertheless, even in this state of disarray, the house had something of Nora’s own personality—an air of dignity that was no less real for being battered.

  Kaye walked through room after room. She wasn’t quite sure when she started counting them and assigning a use to each one. But when she came back into the biggest bedroom, she found herself visualizing her choice of wallpaper, her favorite shade of curtains, and the tall four-poster bed that she had always wanted to own, placed just so against the far wall, so that two people could snuggle there and watch a dying fire...

  It reminded her of what she had come in to ask Brendan in the first place, before he had started to act bizarre and she had forgotten everything else. She sought him out in the sun porch, where he was fitting the board into the empty spot where the pane of glass had been. The missing pane, she thought, felt almost like a toothache did—a nagging soreness that was always there, reminding her that something was badly wrong under the surface.

  “Brendan,” she announced. “This is a wonderful house.”

  “I know,” he muttered. “You think I should buy it, restore it, and live happily ever after in it, spending the rest of my days patching up roofs and pipes.”

  “Not exactly.”

  He looked over his shoulder warily, and when he saw the mulish expression on her face, he groaned. “You’re doing it again, Kaye.”

  “What?” she demanded. “Do you think I’m falling blindly in love with another unsuitable house?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

  “But I’m not blind to its faults. I know it’s got all kinds of things wrong with it. On the other hand, you said yourself that it’s solidly built, and all the structural things are fine.”

  “I may have said that, but—”

  “Look at the space. Look at the high ceilings. Look at the woodwork!”

  “Look at the damage.”

  “There is that, of course. But it can all be fixed, and when it’s finished it will be a beautiful house again—a house to be proud of. I’m sure Graham will think it’s worth the investment.”

  “Let me get this straight, Kaye. Are you telling me that you plan to ask Graham to buy this house and finance a renovation?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? He is my fiancé.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled. “I just thought you might possibly be doing some thinking about changing that.”

  Anger made her stammer just a little. “Get this straight, Brendan McKenna. One lousy kiss doesn’t mean that I’m questioning my engagement.”

  “You should do yourself a favor. Before you settle down to Graham, you should check out all your options.”

  “And do what? Move in with you? Even if I wasn’t going to marry Graham, I’m not about to start playing house with you, Brendan. You’re not my type. Have I made myself clear?”

  He was standing with arms folded across his broad chest, staring out the window into the darkness. He said finally, “Perhaps I should remind you, Kaye, that you weren’t invited to play house with me.”

  It made her furious. “Pardon me for misunderstanding,” she said with awful politeness. “Of course I should have realized you wouldn’t tie yourself down to any woman. She might interfere with your fishing!”

  “She might try,” he agreed silkily. “I think it’s past time to go home, before this quarrel goes any further. You’re tired and emotionally unstable, and you’re making no sense at all.”

  They didn’t exchange a word all the way back to the plaza where Kaye had left her car that afternoon. “Would you like me to follow you home?” Brendan asked.

/>   “No, thank you,” she said stiffly. “I wouldn’t want to trouble you.”

  He nodded. “I’d think about that house a great deal before you talk to Graham about it,” he said.

  She wanted to turn away as if she hadn’t heard, but curiosity interfered. He sounded quite matter-of-fact about it now—not angry at all—and she wondered why.

  He seemed to read the question in her eyes. “I don’t believe it’s Nora’s house that you want at all,” he said. “I think you want an excuse—a long-term project that will postpone the wedding.”

  She gasped. “That is without a doubt the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever said to me.”