Page 6 of Claiming the Grump

He could see rot in at least four of the porch floorboards from here, gutters pulling away from the roofline on the east side, and what looked like a soft spot in the porch ceiling. He could see probably sixty thousand dollars in deferred maintenance before you even got to the cosmetics. “I see a money pit.”

She made a sound that was not quite disagreement and not quite dismissal. “I see a home that’s been waiting.”

He rattled the fence, checking the integrity of it, and it held, which was mildly surprising, then leaned his forearms on the top rail. The house was something, he’d give her that. It had the kind of proportions that didn’t happen anymore, everything slightly oversized in a way that felt generous rather than excessive. He could see, if he tried—and he was trying harder than he’d expected—what it might look like with the porch boards replaced and the paint stripped and new put down, some color that suited the period.

“Apparently, the owner never found a buyer he considered worthy,” Keith recounted Jenny’s explanations. “Local lore has it that he lived there with his wife for sixty-two years. When she died, he decided whoever moved in next had to be equally happy—that he’d know them when he found them.” He paused. “And now, according to people who should know better, his wife haunts the place.”

“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard all week.” She said it without irony. “And I’ve been at a bachelorette party for two days.”

He reached into the paper bag and held it out to her. “Salted caramel?”

She looked at it, looked at him, and took one. He took one himself, and they stood there in companionable silence for a moment, leaning against a fence in the late afternoon, eating salted caramels in front of an abandoned Victorian that a ninety-something man was holding for the right kind of love.

She produced two apples from her bag and a small water bottle, and he accepted his share without comment, because somehow this had become a picnic, and he wasn’t going to be the one to fight her about that.

He asked where she was from. He told himself it was the same thing he’d do with anyone new in town—just mapping the landscape—but that wasn’t entirely true, and he was self-aware enough to know it. Tourist or local made a difference to a man not interested in happily-ever-after.

“Austin,” she said. “Event planner. Corporate, mostly. Conferences, product launches. I’m here through Monday for—“ she paused, a slight compression at the corner of her mouth ”—the bachelorette party. Fall Fest.” She bit into the apple and chewed thoughtfully, looking at the house. “And then back to the real world.”

Monday. Four days.

The math was not complicated. An event planner from Austin, here for four more days, with no particular reason to come back. He looked at the house. Possibly the most uncomplicated situation he’d encountered in years.

He turned it over. He looked at the turret.

Rachel elbowed him. “Hey Ginger, you’re thinking very hard about that fence.”

“Ginger?” He pointed at his hair. “My hair is more black than red.”

“I didn’t say ginger-haired. I said Ginger.” She considered him. “Ginger Ale Man. It suits you.”

“Does it?” The corner of his mouth moved. “Do I get to name you, too?”

“Have at it.”

He looked at her. The coat, the lashes, the apple in her hand, the complete ease with which she’d turned an abandoned house into an occasion and a fence into a dining room. The very specific quality of her—like weather moving through.

“Tempest,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable being nicknamed Temptress.”

“Not temptress,” he said. “Tempest. As in—you’re kicking up a storm in me.”

Her expression shifted—warmth and a heat more pointed than just warmth, moving through her eyes and settling at the corners of her mouth. When she spoke, her voice had dropped half a register.

“I’d love that.”

He pushed off the fence.

His apartment was two blocks down, same street. He’d walked it this morning and he could walk it now with his eyes closed. The late afternoon had gone golden and cool around them, and the fallen leaves on the sidewalk were dry enough to make sound underfoot, and the Morrison place stood at their backs in all its ruined, waiting glory as they walked away from it.

Chapter 4

The Frog

The door barely made it closed.

He had the presence of mind to flip the deadbolt, and then her hands were on his back, and all thought dissolved. She tasted like the salted caramel they’d shared, and Keith knew with startling clarity that his most favorite treat from now on would remind him of her.