What the Heart Wants Read online

  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

  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.

  Books by Cynthia Reese

  HARLEQUIN HEARTWARMING

  6560—SEEDS OF TRUST

  6610—A PLACE TO CALL HOME

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1415—THE BABY WAIT

  1533—FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN

  To strong women everywhere who don’t have “quit” in them...including my two favorite octogenarians, Eloise Baker and Rose Pierce.

  Acknowledgments

  This book couldn’t have been written without loads of help—first from my terrific editors Kathryn Lye and Victoria Curran and all the Harlequin 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

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER ONE

  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...”

  “Allison,” she said, offering her hand.

  Kyle took it, liking the way her handshake was firm and professional. “That’s, ahem, an interesting retelling, Allison,” he said. “I’ve never heard that version before. How do you know so much about Belle Paix?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Family stories.”

  “Oh, gossip, then. I thought you had access to some primary sources that I wasn’t familiar with—”

  “Not gossip.” Now the smile retreated, and Allison’s chin lifted. “I guess you historical types would call it oral history. They’re the same tales my grandmother told me, the ones her mother told her—passed down. Plus there’s a set of journals.”

  “Journals?” Kyle’s brain buzzed as the possibility of a new, undiscovered set of turn-of-the-century documents brought up all sorts of ideas. “You have journals?”

  But Allison pushed past him and opened Belle Paix’s wrought-iron gate. “Sure, Davinia had to do something with her time once she married money and became a lady of leisure. She’d grown up dirt poor, with ten brothers and sisters, so she was used to hard work. But Gran’s made it clear that the journals are private, for family only. And as for how I know about the house, I grew up here.”

  The gate clanged shut, and Allison strode up the walk away from them. Halfway up, she paused and turned around.

  “I don’t mean to be standoffish, and it wouldn’t bother me at all, but Gran doesn’t much care for trespassers. You can take all the pictures you want from the street, but she’d be mad if you put so much a pinky toe this side of the fence, okay?”

  Allison didn’t wait for their reply. Instead, she continued up the walkway, bounced up the steps, paused at the dark mahogany double doors with their arched glass inserts, and swung one open. It soon thudded shut behind her, leaving Kyle tantalized and frustrated. He’d not gotten so much as a peek inside the house, and it didn’t seem as if that would change anytime soon.

  * * *

  ALLISON PEEKED OUT the door’s beveled glass pane and saw to her satisfaction that Kyle Mitchell and his historical house fans were staying put on the street side of the fence. Good. She wouldn’t have to confess to Gran that she’d let an interloper in, although he’d seemed respectful enough.

  He’d surprised her when he’d said was a professor. Obviously, professors could come in all shapes and sizes, but Kyle Mitchell landed closer to the more outdoorsy and overtly masculine end of the spectrum than the tweed-jacket stereotype. Dark blond hair cut short, tanned, with a big wide smile...

  She squinted to spy some more. He was tall—a good head taller than her, so that meant he had to be well over six feet, since she was five foot seven. And yeah, he was wearing a jacket, but it was a navy one that fit him well.

  A flying fur bullet zoomed from behind her, probably from the formal front stairs, and landed at her feet, yowling. Allison jumped, still not entirely used to Cleo’s ninja ways. The Siamese wound around Allison’s bare legs, then must have realized those legs didn’t belong to Gran. She backed up, sat down and glared at Allison.

  Allison let her heart settle into a more predictable rhythm before attempting to pet the cat, which skulked backward.

  “Cleo...” She knelt down and crooned, the way Gran always did with the stubborn feline. “It’s been a month and a half. You have to trust me. I’ll get Gran back home as soon as I can.”

  But the cat, from all appearances, remained unconvinced. She turned and stalked off toward the dining room, her seal point tail hiked high with disdain. She would accept food and water from Allison, and sometimes, when she got desperate, would snuggle up at the foot of Allison’s bed. But that was only after she’d kept her awake half the night, yowling piteously for Gran.


  “Hey! I miss her, too!” Allison called after the cat.

  Good grief. I’m getting more and more like Gran every day. This house will send me to the loony bin.

  No point in wasting time wondering when insanity would make its appearance. Allison had planned to rip out the carpet in the dining room this morning, and she still had time to get it done before her afternoon visit with Gran.

  The carpet was the reason Gran was in rehab to begin with. The seam at the dining room and library had raveled, and Gran had caught her shoe in it.

  Allison crossed the length of the long hall, the formal stairs rising above her in a graceful curve. She stood in the dining room doorway, surveying what had to be done.

  Before she could rip out the carpet—a Mamie Eisenhower pink design, which Gran had laid in the dining room and library in the early 1950s, after she’d married Pops—Allison had to move a few things.

  Starting with Cleo, who’d taken a seat on the dining table and was grooming one long, slender hind leg. The feline paused, gave Allison a mild hiss with no bite to it and succumbed to the inevitable—she knew she wasn’t supposed to be on the table. That taken care of, Allison went upstairs to change into jeans and a T-shirt, determined to get the carpet ripped out before she visited Gran.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AN HOUR LATER, however, Allison was completely stymied. She’d been able to move the heavy, ornate dining chairs, original to the house, and even the table. She’d managed to move the marble-topped sideboard with no disasters, save for scaring one of Cleo’s remaining lives out of her when the handcart fell over with a bang.

  But the china cabinet, even with all the dishware removed and put on the kitchen table, even with the little Teflon slides she’d bought for the purpose, was not cooperating.

  Allison rubbed her eyes and glowered at the hulking piece of mahogany that remained the last obstacle between her and an empty dining room. Who could she call in the middle of the day to help her move the thing?