Page 49 of Poppy Kisses
“It’s normal. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it. In no time, Poppy’s House of Dyslexia will be open.”
“That’s really bad, Jensen.” Yet I was grinning.
“Poppy’s Brain Time.”
“Nope.”
Linda waited outside of her car. She didn’t stop for small talk but thanked us in her pleasant way and drove away.
I clutched the cool metal keys. This felt like such a monumental moment, even though the house wouldn’t be officially mine for a year after the wedding, which was in a month. What if all the floors needed to be replaced? The roof? The closets. Did closets get replaced? What if the house was that bad?
Jensen waited next to me while I gazed at the house.
“It’ll need a paint job.” I stuffed my thumb through the key ring. “A couple of shutters need to be replaced.”
“The deck looks solid,” he said. “I’ll check it out before we leave, but all in all, it looks good. Shingles are in decent shape, drain spouts are straight, and the fascia and soffits are strong.”
Relief flooded me. Without Jensen, I wouldn’t have known any of that. I could call Dad. He’d be here in a heartbeat, but he and Mom had bailed me out of the mess in South Dakota. They’d given me money to move for my master’s degree. I hadn’t told them about the Wyoming debacle. Alder was a CEO. Violet was a chemist. Jasper used to work some high-paying IT job and now he was ranch manager for Knight’s Cattle Company. Lily had a good job and was raising a family. Clover was a geologist. I wasn’t going to be the first Duke to be a failure to our parents.
He placed his hand on the small of my back. “Ready?”
He couldn’t have known I needed his strength, but I soaked it up from his warm touch. “Ready.”
Nerves exploded in my stomach as I opened the door. This whole place was my responsibility. Linda trusted me with it. The Perez house was a community treasure. And now it was in my care.
Pushing inside, I waited to be impressed. It didn’t happen. “It’s…normal.”
Jensen lightly touched my hips as he skirted around me. I almost leaned into him. He wandered to the stairs across from the front door. They were plain oak stairs. Whatever had originally been installed had been replaced with the look of the time, and the time looked to be?—
“Poor thing is stuck in the nineties,” Jensen said while doing a spin. To our left was a kitchen with a similar style of cabinets, and to our right was a living area with a bay window and the white wispy curtains I could see from outside. “And not the 1890s.”
That would’ve been more ideal. “It’s underwhelming.”
He ran his hand over the square banister. “Most of it’s cosmetic. When you start profiting, you can redo the stairs, replace the banister, put some crown molding back in place.”
“It would look beautiful with crown molding.”
“Eliot has a brother and sister-in-law who restore old homes. She’s an interior designer and they do consulting.” He tested the floor’s squeakiness, pressing his foot in different places as he worked his way to the kitchen.
I followed him. “Lily’s Eliot?”
“Yeah. I’ve done some work for them, but they do a lot themselves, and they’ve slowed down a little since their kids are younger.” He ran a hand over the end of the counter. “Might be worth giving her a call.”
“How much is she?”
“I can write it off as a business expense. We’ll do the remodel in phases. Cabinets first. Painting and cosmetic stuff. Then, after you’re in, we can update the look of the stairs and, I’m guessing, the bathrooms.”
“No.” I crowded close to him. “You’re already giving up time for something that may not earn you money. I can’t have you incurring more time and expense.” Yet I couldn’t afford a consult from specialists on old houses, and we should have one before he started. “We don’t need one anyway. I trust your knowledge.”
He straightened to his full height, towering over me, which wasn’t hard to do—and I liked it.
I ran my tongue over my lower lip. His gaze tracked the movement. “You can’t stop me from calling.”
“Can too.”
“Try it.”
He was putting me up in his house, refurbishing this place, and marrying me so I could own it. “You’re getting way less out of the deal.”
