“Then stop chastising me. I’m not a child.”
Diana reared back. Two spots of color rose in her cheeks. She stiffened as a mask of carefully controlled composure slid down over her face. “No one would ever mistake you for a child. You should do something about your hair. Don’t they have any decent colorists in Paris?”
Her sister’s preoccupation with her hair was the last straw for Hope. “Oh, for pity’s sake! Why are you obsessed with my hair?”
“I am not obsessed with your hair,” Diana said, indignant. “I can’t understand why you want to go around looking...old.”
Hope thunked the coffee cup down on the hood of the car. “I am not old. I’m fifty-one!”
Diana’s eyes went wide and she raised both hands as if she could ward off the march of time. “Hush!”
She narrowed her eyes at her sister’s perfectly coiffed hair. When they were younger, Di’s had been a bright, coppery shade of red. Now, she wore a stunning, but far more muted, shade of auburn. Almost the exact shade her own had been once upon a time.
She’d stopped coloring when John was diagnosed. Devastated and desperate, she’d gone on a tear. She started with eradicating everything non-organic from their lives. She bought only vegetables grown in local gardens, and eschewed all other processed foods. Now she could see the irony in purging everything chemical from the house while the man she loved underwent round after round of grueling chemotherapy. But she did the only thing she could think to do at the time. She needed to protect him, however she could.
Watching John die made Hope realize she had been fooling herself for years. No one was in control of their own destiny. Hand of God, fickle fate, or karma. Didn’t matter where the buffeting blows came from, the only thing that counted was where you ended up when the reeling was over.
She was preparing to light into her sister when a voice from beyond stopped her. “Mrs. Elliot?” Both Hope and Diana turned toward the house to find the fire inspector standing outside the front door. “Looks like you’re okay.”
Okay? She looked okay? Hope glanced down at her clothes. Charcoal slacks and a floaty silver sweater shot through with a thin metallic thread. Usually, the ensemble garnered a number of compliments, particularly on how the colors made the platinum streaks in her hair shine, but that was in Europe, where men appreciated a woman with some...seasoning. Not here in the good old U.S. of A., where youth—or at least the appearance of youth—was the key to eternal happiness.
“Lady Elliot,” Diana replied in her haughtiest tone.
A flush rose up Hope’s neck. She didn’t bother trying to mask her cringe when she realized her sister thought she was schooling this poor man on how to properly address members of the British peerage. She didn’t have the heart to tell Diana title stuff didn’t even play in jolly old England anymore. At least, not with anyone who had anything better to do than keep track.
“Stop, Di,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.
Taking a step toward the house, she smiled at the man. He was small and slender. The kind of man whose physique never quite filled out after puberty. He held out a large clipboard with a number of official-looking documents and gestured for her to come closer.
“Good news and bad,” he told her as she reached out to take the documents from him. “Good news is, this old house is running off three circuit boxes. Most likely because of additions made over the years, and to upgrade to meet modern electrical demands.”
He glanced nervously at her sister. Hope stifled her exasperation as Diana came to a halt behind her and started to read over her shoulder. She’d done the same thing at every meeting they had with the people involved with their parents’ estate.
“The team shut down the main, which will keep the other two breaker boxes safe from a power surge when the service is restored. The big problem was the box at the back of the house. From what I could read on labels, that box handled most of the main floor power with a few exceptions. You’ll want an electrician to look at everything before you even think about switching the main back on.” He paused and scratched his head thoughtfully. “If you need the names of some service providers in the area—”
“Not necessary,” Diana interjected, but Hope cut her off at the pass.
“I already have a referral.”
Both the inspector and her sister turned to look at her, but only one of them appeared pleased to hear the news.
“You do?” Diana inquired, incredulous.
“Excellent!” The inspector beamed at her as he leaned in and pointed at the form on top of the pile. “If you’d sign this acknowledgement, I’ll leave copies of my assessment for you, your insurance adjustor, and your contractor.”
“Who? What contractor?” Diana demanded. “How can you possibly have a reputable referral? You’ve hardly been in town for twenty-four hours.”
“And yet, seems like a lifetime,” Hope muttered as she scrawled her signature on the form.
The gentleman chuckled, but her sister did not. He shot Diana another sidelong glance, then peeled back the first page. “And initial here, here, and here.” He indicated to spots he’d already marked with an X. She did as he instructed, and the man flipped to the last of a thick sheaf of papers. “And sign this last one here.”
Diana made a grab for the clipboard. “You can’t honestly expect her to sign such a document without reading it first!”
Hope yanked the paperwork back. “I’m the reckless and wild one,” she growled. Without sparing her sister a moment to launch into formal protest, she signed her name with a flourish. “Took me less than twenty-four hours to set the house on fire, remember?”
“Hope!”
The inspector took the clipboard and hurriedly started disassembling the triplicate copies. “Thank you, ma’am.” He shuffled a few into a stack. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”
Hope smiled, amused by the man’s haste. He was clearly of a mind to evacuate before any explosion could occur. But she knew exactly how to defuse the D-bomb. Turning to her sister, she widened her eyes imploringly. “I’ll call the referral I have, but I’m sure you and Richard know some others to call. We’ll need more than one estimate.”
Diana blinked, caught off-guard. “Of course.”
“Would you make a few calls?” She waved a weary hand at the stacks of paperwork. “I’ll handle the paperwork, call the insurance, and collect a few things I left behind last night, but I’m sure you know the best of the best when it comes to having work done.”
“Oh, certainly.” Diana sniffed and tipped her chin up a notch. “You can’t be too careful, you know. My friend Melinda hired someone to renovate her kitchen. They came in one day, completely demolished the place, stripped the place down to the bare floor and the studs, then they never came back.”
Hope gasped. “A nightmare.”
“Unbelievable nightmare. Her cook quit.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Refused to work in such conditions.”
The corner of the inspector’s mouth quirked, but Hope kept her expression suitably grave. “Hard to cook without the proper appliances.”
“Her housekeeper left, too,” Diana added, a gleam of glee shining in her dark eyes. “Of course, I didn’t think the housekeeper was much of a loss. I always had to ring the bell twice before she could stir herself to answer the door.”
“Like the postman,” Hope said solemnly. Diana’s perma-smoothed brow tightened in an attempt to frown. Her sister was never quick with the pop culture references. Another thing that set them apart. Hope had been known to hold entire conversations using only lines spoken in movies, and Diana had never