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What the Heart Wants
Cynthia Reese
A home is more than just a house…Allison Bell loves her grandmother. What she doesn't love is her Gran's once-stunning house in Georgia turning into a money pit. Fortunately, handsome Kyle Mitchell is happy to help out. Or so she thinks. Allison quickly learns that both Kyle and the historical society want to block her plans to modernize.Kyle is determined to preserve the original houses in town, even if it means butting heads with a certain stubborn redhead. Yet with every argument, something is awakening beneath their words. Something new and fragile that will shatter if they can't resolve their differences…
A home is more than just a house...
Allison Bell loves her grandmother. What she doesn’t love is her Gran’s once-stunning house in Georgia turning into a money pit. Fortunately, handsome Kyle Mitchell is happy to help out. Or so she thinks. Allison quickly learns that both Kyle and the historical society want to block her plans to modernize.
Kyle is determined to preserve the original houses in town, even if it means butting heads with a certain stubborn redhead. Yet with every argument, something is awakening beneath their words. Something new and fragile that will shatter if they can’t resolve their differences...
“Where are you off to?”
The huskiness in his voice surprised Kyle.
“I—I dunno.”
The crickets and frogs ramped up to a crescendo as he debated the wisdom of what he was about to do.
“How many couples do you think sat on this porch, maybe even in this very seat, just as we’re doing now?” he whispered, tracing Allison’s cheek with his finger. He liked it when she smiled and how the pulse jumped at the base of her throat.
“Hmm. That’s over a century and a quarter. Got to be a lot.”
“I wonder if they felt the way I do.”
Now it was her finger sliding along his arm. “And how exactly do you feel?”
“Happy. Yeah. And...like I’m in the calmest place on earth.”
She stared at him, and then she looked away. For a moment, he felt the connection between them break and all his earlier doubts and misgivings begin to flood in.
He didn’t want to think about all of that, not the variance, not the house.
Impulsively, he craned his neck to meet her eyes, muttering, “I’m probably going to get slapped for this...”
And then he kissed her.
Dear Reader,
I was blessed to grow up amid sawdust and boards and nails; my mother was the type of woman who moved walls around furniture, not furniture around walls. I took for granted that, once I reached adulthood, I would naturally know how to wire light fixtures, do plumbing and frame walls.
Alas, I’m the least handy person in my family, and at the tender mercy of any contractor willing to put up with me...yet I’m still cursed with a love of old houses and the knowledge of how easy my mom made it look to renovate.
So I empathize with Allison and Kyle as they negotiate not just their growing love for each other, but the crises that arise from the renovation of the beautiful old Victorian in What the Heart Wants. No doubt you have your own stories of renovations—and how the true test of a relationship is a good house remodel!
I hope you enjoy Allison and Kyle’s story.
Cynthia Reese
What the Heart Wants
Cynthia Reese
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CYNTHIA REESE
lives with her husband and their daughter in south Georgia, along with their two dogs, three cats and however many strays show up for morning muster. She has been scribbling since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and reading even before that. A former journalist, teacher and college English instructor, she also enjoys cooking, traveling and photography when she gets the chance.
To strong women everywhere who don’t have “quit” in them...including my two favorite octogenarians, Eloise Baker and Rose Pierce.
Acknowledgments (#ulink_30530048-072e-55cb-a346-cf97a5bfbdaa)
This book couldn’t have been written without loads of help—first from my terrific editors Kathryn Lye and Victoria Curran and all the Mills & Boon Heartwarming staff, and from my critique partners Tawna Fenske and Karen Rock. But others pitched in as well: Leah Michalek of the Savannah (GA) Metropolitan Planning Commission’s Urban Planning and Historic Preservation Department for her endless patience with my research, Adrianna Friedman of the DeLorenzo Gallery of New York City and her kind help with my research on sculptor Jean Dunand, my sister Donna’s continual encouragement, my family’s patient endurance of my absence while I wrote and researched, and the cheering from my fellow Heartwarming sister-authors. To all of you, I owe you loan-shark big.
Contents
Cover (#u92a948d3-0566-5d69-a3b6-8efc2ce596f3)
Back Cover Text (#u14d85092-0865-5218-a39b-22ec778c6e3a)
Introduction (#uf5463c9f-f07d-5610-94ad-e4686a9e0e88)
Dear Reader (#u780acff7-10f9-50eb-b8af-548a46b38995)
Title Page (#ueac443c1-f9ed-5af1-8c34-150f553b1f41)
About the Author (#ua3216a8f-17ae-525e-a197-0553b7431627)
Dedication (#ue140a58d-c9d7-5b93-8b79-98517173a554)
Acknowledgments (#ulink_14f8ba5e-e005-5518-8256-f97e375ad219)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b611226d-5962-5b6e-83de-8817ec9ea2ac)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ba6fd848-bb0b-54e5-8ee6-60ccdcc04976)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_5005b0d6-1712-5dc1-9871-b4ca2827f965)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_4c734361-ddf6-530d-8df9-ce780300be21)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_145dc145-1c5d-55fe-bc08-1af6cc3795a3)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_56ce2c44-a515-582b-8d70-e0f9f52bd390)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_43c9f1ce-8f7f-5f73-8737-fec0a97633c5)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_a450bb74-857a-5ae7-be85-a5375e2e8a8e)
KYLE MITCHELL DESPERATELY wanted to distract the woman in front of him. He could see the way her lips parted softly, the way her eyes grew wide as they drank in every detail. No, this would not do.
He tugged at Cecilia Simpson’s arm—politely, respectfully, but still a tug. “And as you can see on the street on your left, across the road, we have a late Queen Anne style, recently restored—”
“But Dr. Mitchell, I want to know about this house. This perfectly gorgeous house.”
Kyle heaved a sigh and gave up any pretense of ignoring Cecilia’s fixation. He faced the house in question: three stories, peeling paint, lawn a little patchy, front walkway showing some weeds poking out of its hexagonal paving stones.
Who was he kidding? Nobody could ignore Belle Paix. It was the house that had hooked him but good when he’d first toured Lombard five years ago.
Back then, Kyle had hoped to see the inside of the house, convince the owners to renovate it and bring it back to life. Five years later, he’d yet to get more than halfway up the front walk.
Today, on his walking tour with the Southern Homes folks, he’d just hoped he could distract Cecilia, not to mention her accompanying photographer. Cecilia was doing a tourism piece on Lombard for Southern Homes Magazine. A two-page spread of Lombard’s historic section would give an extra-big boost to this year’s high season.
No such luck. He might as well get it over and done with.
“Of course you recognize it as a Second Empire—and there’s the rare sweeping S curve of the Mansard roof. Plus, you see that the wrought-iron cresting is still intact—that’s really rare, because people tended to remove it rather than repair or replace it. Originally, the house would have been a much brighter color than its current pale yellow—newspaper reports of the day said it was a deep canary yellow with four different trim colors.”
Cecilia clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, it’s so beautiful! It could be such a showstopper! You hardly ever see Second Empire examples in the South. But why hasn’t it been restored? It’s the only home on this street that isn’t.”
Kyle decided it wouldn’t do to be perfectly, bluntly honest and reveal that the home owner had never responded to a single, solitary invitation to attend so much as one historical society meeting. Or that, when she found out how much it would cost to paint the house in historically accurate colors—five different shades including all the trim paints—she’d harrumphed and said, “Why, thank you, sonny. That’s a little more than I wanted to spend.”
To his dismay, Kyle heard the electronic click of the photographer’s digital camera, after which the man scurried off to the street corner to get a better angle. Right. Just what Kyle wanted Southern Homes readers to see, a house in need of a makeover.
He swatted at a bevy of gnats that were swarming around his face. It was late spring in south Georgia, and hot and muggy to boot. But Cecilia had her feet planted firmly on the carefully restored sidewalk just his side of Belle Paix’s wrought-iron fence, and she was apparently waiting for him to answer.
“Well? Why not?” she prompted.
“The home owner is elderly, the house has been in the same family since it was built, and she’s...well, I’ll leave it to your imagination.” Kyle looked past Cecilia to see a striking redhead about his age striding down the sidewalk.
The woman, tall and long-legged, in running shorts and a tank top, with an iPod draped around her neck, looked as though she’d just finished a morning walk. As she skirted around the photographer, who was still kneeling as he fired away with his camera, she lifted her dark auburn hair off her neck, apparently as bothered by the steaming temps as Kyle was. He knew all the home owners along this street, but he didn’t recognize her.
And he would have if he’d ever seen her before. One look, and he would always remember that face.
Beside him, Cecilia was still nearly swooning over the house, despite its disheveled appearance. “In the same family! All this time? It looks like something off one of those fantastic animated films! When was it built?”
Kyle yanked his attention back to the house and Cecilia. “In 1888—well, that was when it was finished. It was built by a wealthy timber-and-railroad baron as a present for his wife—”
The other woman must have heard him, because she threw back her head and laughed. “A timber baron? A present for his wife? Yeah, right. That’s exactly how it went.”
Cecilia turned to her. “So it wasn’t like that?”
The redhead shrugged as she closed the gap between them. “Ambrose Shepherd was a carpetbagger born to a shopkeeper in New Jersey, and he was determined to get rich. He came south at the right time and made pots of money by getting timber down the Altamaha River, but he was no baron. He married a country girl from Darian, Georgia, during his timber days, and then moved her up here when the railroads started expanding. He always had his eye on making money, Ambrose did, and when he saw that the railroads would make the river obsolete, he invested in the Central Railroad. But when he got to Lombard to make sure the railroad expansion was going like he wanted it to, nobody would receive his country-girl wife. So he decided he’d build the biggest, showiest house Lombard had ever seen.”
Cecilia’s attention was rapt. Kyle started to interrupt, to say that wasn’t exactly historically accurate, and that he’d never heard this version of the story before, when she burbled, “And did they receive her then?”
The redhead’s eyebrows lifted. “It got the society ladies in the door, all right—but then they went away and snickered over the idea of anybody spending ten thousand dollars on a house. Not to mention having two indoor bathrooms, or the scandalous idea of a billiard table in one’s very own home, and, well...it turned out about how you’d expect.”
Cecilia seemed a little crushed that this wasn’t the happy ending she was primed for. “Oh. How sad.”
“No, it wasn’t.” The redhead’s mouth curved in a wide, satisfied smile. It lit up her face and made her seem friendly and approachable, despite her earlier crankiness. “Davinia Shepherd had no use for the society ladies, and she was pleased as punch that they weren’t bothering her.”
Now Kyle cleared his throat. “I’m Dr. Kyle Mitchell, a history professor at the college and president of Lombard’s historical society. And you are...”
