Allison snorted, startling Cleo, who’d curled up atop the fridge. “You must be a masochist, that’s all I can say. Right now I’m trying to rip up old carpet, and really struggling to move a china cabinet. You don’t know of any moving companies that would send out someone, do you?”
“Not a moving company...but I’ll help. I don’t have to teach classes today, so I’d be glad to. I know how heavy those things can be.”
“Oh—I wasn’t hinting—”
“No, no. Give me ten minutes. That okay?”
“Thanks! I won’t say no.”
Ten minutes later, she opened the door to see Kyle. He’d ditched the jacket and button-down for a T-shirt that, unlike hers, was clean and dust free. Automatically, she realized what a fright she must look like.
“I’ve been—”
“Working. No problem. Anybody who does anything on an old house knows it’s a dirty job. Lead me to this china cabinet.”
But Kyle stopped short in the front hall. He stared up at the ornate cornices and moldings, at the staircase, then craned his neck to see in the front parlor. Allison tried to view the home as he must, but she was at a disadvantage, having grown up here.
He grinned. “This blows me away. A perfect example of a side-hall Second Empire. So often these old houses have been wrecked inside—too many ‘modern’ improvements.” He shook his head.
“Right. Luckily, our family’s motto has always been ‘If it was good enough for Ambrose, it’s good enough for us,’” Allison told him. “Hardly anything has changed.”
Just then, Cleo zipped past Kyle with a yowl, and Allison warned, “You’d better watch out. She always makes a return trip.”
“Wow. That’s—”
“Ninja cat.” Allison moved on to the dining room and swept a hand around. “As you can see, one of the few things that Gran did change was to put carpet in the downstairs.”
“Get a load of that pink. Now that is pure, bona fide original, Mamie Eisenhower pink.”
“Yeah. I don’t quite think that shade was what Pops had in mind when he told her to order it—”
“I don’t see why not. That was every woman’s dream color in 1954.” Kyle stepped into the dining room, gawked at the floor-to-ceiling bay window with its intricate cornices, and turned around to take in the space. His eyes lit on the chore before them: the hulking, huge china cabinet.
“Oookay.” He shook his head. “That cabinet took a small forest of mahogany to build.” He crossed the room and slid his palm against its smooth dark wood. “This is late Victorian? Is it original to the house?”
“Yep. Bought brand-spanking-new in 1888 and shipped all the way from Philadelphia. Like I said, what was good enough for Ambrose...”
Kyle caressed the mahogany, then trailed a finger down the intricately carved panels alongside the breakfront. She couldn’t help but notice his large, strong hands, with neatly trimmed nails. They seemed more suited to handling an ax than a professor’s red pen.
He glanced up at her, the amusement in his voice now crinkling the corners of his eyes. “They did believe if one carved flower or cherub was good, two would be better, didn’t they? When I offered to help, I was thinking of a china cabinet built in the thirties or forties, a colonial reproduction. Maybe I was a bit ambitious and rash in my offer. I mean, I do work out a little, but...”
Ah, yes, the evidence of that was right before her eyes. Kyle’s T-shirt couldn’t hide nicely defined biceps and a well-constructed chest. Whatever he was doing in the way of weightlifting was working well. Allison grinned, glad for his muscles to assist her with this job. “If you can help me move this, I think you can skip working out for a week. Or three.”
“So what was your plan? Originally, I mean?” he asked her, his eyes back on the heavy Victorian china cabinet, which was a good eight feet tall.
She walked over to stand beside him. Her hands, too, traced the smooth dark finish. Maybe it wasn’t to her taste, but she could admire the craftsmanship that some gifted cabinetmaker had poured into his labors, and she liked how Kyle could appreciate it, as well. “I didn’t think I had a prayer of moving it very far, but hoped that I could shift it enough to take the carpet off the nail strip behind it, cut the piece out, then move the cabinet back. Most things I can at least wiggle and wobble. But that critter? Uh-uh.”
“It’s not fastened to the wall, is it? For support?” Kyle bent to examine the rear panel.
“No. I know Gran has had it moved before—you know, for carpet cleaning. It was a bear then.”
He turned around, studied the room again and nodded slowly. “I think your plan is the best one. So how about this? Why don’t we start ripping up the carpet, get it all torn out except for under the cabinet, and then use a piece of the discard upside down to protect the floor? That will make the cabinet easier to shift into place, too.”
“Ahh.” Allison smiled in appreciation. “That’s a brilliant tweak to my plan. I was worried about scarring the floor. I have no idea what sort of shape it’s in, but I didn’t want to add work. However...”
“You see a problem?”
“I’m all for free labor, but you didn’t sign on to help me rip out carpet.”
“Hey, I’m curious. I want to see what that atrocious carpet is hiding. Unless...are you too tired? You’ve been moving all this furniture this morning. Maybe you want a break?”
Allison chuckled. “We Shepherd women never tire. We have Davinia’s blood in us. If you’re game, I’m game. It’s not often I get a sucker to help me out.”
Soon after cutting, yanking and tugging, they both oohed and ahhed as Allison rolled back a swath of the Mamie pink to reveal the heart pine floor.
“A good cleaning and a coat of wax, and this will be good as new,” Kyle said, clearly admiring the dusty but still intact planks.
“And nothing for Gran to trip over.” Allison knelt beside him and skimmed the satin smooth surface of the wood with her index finger. “It’s definitely pretty. The upstairs floors aren’t nearly in this good a shape.”
“This is the original? From when the house was built?” After her nod, he said in a low voice, “Almost a crime to have covered this up in the first place.”
She frowned and sat back. “I don’t think it’s so bad to make a house your own. I mean, like you said, in 1954 it was every woman’s dream color. Gran didn’t have her own house, and this was her way of making it hers and new and modern.”
“If you’d seen some of the hideous updates I’ve witnessed, you’d understand what I meant,” Kyle said. “At least this was carpet and not permanent. The worst I saw was when someone decided they didn’t like their oak because it wasn’t ‘uniform’ in color, so they poured concrete over it to transform it into a really bad do-it-yourself terrazzo. Didn’t even try to salvage the old floor. Awful.”
Irritation pulled at Allison. She tried to smother it, tried to attribute it to the fact that she’d been working like a dog almost the entire morning and was tired, hungry and dirty. Kyle was helping her. She shouldn’t be annoyed with him.
But then he added, “Yeah, people don’t know what they have with these old homes. They just don’t appreciate them properly.”
“Oh, really,” she snapped. “I know what I’ve got on my hands—a huge old place that’s two times the size Gran needs, filled with