Page 29 of Cold Case, Warm Hearts

“Oh. Right.” He’d made the house into a prison. This was getting weirder all the time.

Garrett kept right on talking as if she were keeping up. “So if somebody were to come in through a window, they’d have to break the glass. You’d hear that. I’ll grab a couple of motion-sensor floodlights for outside in case somebody decides to approach the house at night. Maybe a video camera. We’ll have to price them. Anything else?”

“Seems you’ve thought of everything.” She was glad of it, too, since she wouldn’t have known where to begin.

“You could always get a satellite phone in case you’re in the woods and need to make a call.”

She couldn’t help the laugh. “That feels a little extreme.”

He studied her a long moment but said nothing.

Before he could convince her that she needed a phone that would enable her to order pizza from space, she glanced at his laptop. “Did you have something you wanted to show me?”

“Right. Yeah. Let’s make a plan.”

Aspen scrolledthrough the images on Garrett’s laptop. Awed.

He could make this old place look likethat?

In the first picture, the old brown siding seemed fresh and new. He’d leveled out the front yard and added a walkway to the door. A few bushes and flowers made it look pretty and inviting.

But it was his vision for the inside that had her jaw dropping.

In the rendering, he’d removed the walls to open up almost the entire downstairs and added a semi-circular island—barstools and all—between the kitchen and living room. He’d rearranged the large appliances and sink so the layout made sense for both cooking and entertaining. In the dining area, he’d removed the small, solid door leading to the backyard and the window beside it and added glass French doors in their place. The adjacent wall held a bay window. The two walls now offered an expansive view of the forest, practically bringing the outside in.

He’d even added furniture to show how it would look when it was finished.

Garrett scooted his chair closer. “I didn’t open up the other space down here. I think the great room is large enough already,and that’d be a nice office. Do you mind?” He inched his fingers toward the trackpad, and she moved to give him access.

As lovely as the house on the screen was, his scent—some delicious combination of cedar and man—was just as attractive.

Maybe more so.

She leaned away and tried to focus on the images as he scrolled. “We’d have to rebuild the stairs to the basement, move the opening closer to the front door. That sounds like a bigger undertaking than it is. But then we could…” Finally, he stopped scrolling, and she saw what he meant.

“If we added French doors here, between the office and the hallway?—”

“I love that.” The office doors would be just around a short hall to the great room, so it would be both private and accessible.

“Or we could build a closet in there and close it off, but since there’s no full bath on this floor?—”

“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense as a bedroom. And there are four upstairs.”

“Exactly.”

She glanced his way in time to catch a little smile.

He scrolled to the next picture, this one of the interior of the office. “Obviously, we have to replace all the old windows.”

“Why is that obvious?”

“Those old wooden windows might as well be sieves. What you’ll spend on the windows, you’ll save in your heating bill.”

“Iwon’t.”

He nodded. “Your buyer will thank you. If you don’t replace them, any buyer with half a brain—and every real estate agent—will know it needs to be done. It just makes sense for you to do it. So, since we have to do that anyway, why not put another bay here? It’d bring in so much natural light, which this place desperately needs.”

She could think of a few good reasonswhy not, the first being the expense. But it could look amazing.

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