LITMIR.BIZ

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I could afford,” she admitted honestly, “the front yard had a great orientation for my flower garden and, as they say in real estate, the house looked like it had ‘a lot of potential.’”

      Stone shook his head when she was finished. “That’s usually real estate speak for ‘the house is a real clunker.’”

      “But it does have potential,” Danni insisted. “I can see it.” And she really could. When she walked through the fifty-year-old house, she could visualize the changes she wanted. The transformation would make the two-story house into a showplace.

      Stone merely shrugged. It was her money. “If you say so,” he conceded. And then he got back to something she’d said about the property’s orientation. “You have a flower garden?” he asked. When he’d come up the front walk, he hadn’t seen a single bud and when she’d brought him into the kitchen, he had a view of the backyard—which also barren. Where was this so-called flower garden of hers?

      Her smile held promise rather than embarrassment. “Not yet. But I intend to.”

      Stone took a wild guess. “This is more of that ‘potential’ the property has, right?”

      The woman practically beamed at him, as if to congratulate him that he was finally getting the hang of it. “Right.”

      Why did she feel as if she were on trial? Maybe he was just trying to see if she committed to this and wouldn’t lose interest and send him on his way in the middle of the job. If that was what he thought, he didn’t know her. Once she signed on to something, she remained committed for the duration.

      For the time being, she decided to stop trying to make a personal connection with the man and just get his input on the house. Danni continued showing the contractor around.

      Stone quietly followed the woman through the first floor, listening to the sound of her voice as she pointed out room after room, giving him a thumbnail summary of what she wanted changed or added or redone in each one.

      The first floor was comprised of a living room, a dining room, a kitchen that fed into a family room and a slightly larger than closet-size bedroom that was located all the way in the rear, just off the family room. The entire floor had one bathroom.

      The second floor, with its wide-open staircase and carved wooden banister, contained three more bedrooms, including the less-than-masterful “master suite.” There was a bathroom between the two bedrooms and another bathroom within the master suite. The second floor also had a recreational room which, she discovered when he corrected her, was called a “bonus room” in Southern California.

      Stone listened without comment as she pointed things out, saying things like “I’d like bookshelves all along that wall” when they were in the bonus room, and “a walk-in closet here would be nice,” in the master bedroom. He neither nodded, nor said a word one way or another until the “tour” was over and they came back downstairs to the kitchen.

      Unable to endure the man’s silence any longer, Danni finally asked, “Well? What do you think? You haven’t said a single word during the whole tour.” Did that mean he wasn’t going to take the job? Was she just wasting her time with him?

      “You were right,” he replied quietly.

      She watched him, waiting for him to continue. Right? Right about what? She’d done a lot of talking in the last twenty minutes.

      “Yes?” she asked.

      “When you said ‘everything.’” He’d thought she was kidding at the time, but it was obvious that she had to be serious. Every room needed to be redone in order to make it more useful, more pleasing to the eye and part of the twenty-first century.

      He had one all-encompassing suggestion for her. “You just might be better off tearing everything down and starting from scratch.”

      “Not everything,” Danni protested. “I actually do like the fireplace in the living room, and the staircase. And the balcony in the rec—The bonus room,” she corrected herself.

      In response, she saw what looked like a hint of a smile on his lips. At least she’d managed to make a very slight connection, Danni congratulated herself. It looked like the man was human, after all. And that meant that there was hope. Maybe they would be able to get along in the long run.

      She crossed her fingers.

      Stone watched her for a long moment. Just as she was going to ask what he was thinking, he said, “You like the balcony, huh?”

      The feature, visible from the street, was what had attracted her to the house in the first place. That and the colors it’d been painted: gray and Wedgwood-blue. Like her parents’ house had been, back in Atlanta. It made her a little homesick to see it, even though the actual structure looked nothing like her old home.

      “Yes,” she responded, then after a beat, asked, “You don’t?”

      He dismissed the appendage under discussion with a wave of his hand. “Well, since the balcony doesn’t look out onto anything but the cul-de-sac and the house across the street, I was going to suggest you close that up and extend the bonus room by the balcony’s square footage.”

      Danni rolled the idea over in her head, trying to picture a large window rather than the two sliding-glass doors currently there. The glass doors separated the bonus room from the balcony. The latter ran the width of the room, which in turn was the length of two of the three garages. Because the bonus room ended over the second garage, the third one had never been finished. Something else she wanted Stone to add to his list. She wanted the garage to be finished and to have an attic put in, complete with stairs that folded out onto the garage floor.

      “It’s worth considering,” she told him. “I’ll think about it.”

      The balcony would continue to thrive, he could see it in her eyes. He had one more suggestion for her. “It might be less expensive if you just sell this place and get something more to your liking.”

      She looked at him, confused. Didn’t he want the work? “Are you trying to talk your way out of a job, Mr. Scarborough?”

      He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no. “Just wanted you to be aware of all the possibilities.” He paused, letting that sink in and then informed her, “All those suggestions you made during the tour, they’re not going to come cheap.”

      How dumb did he think she was? “I didn’t expect them to. That’s why I waited before looking into having it done until my contract was renewed,” she told him. “I wanted to be sure the money was there before I started to undertake all this.”

      That was commendable, Stone thought. He’d seen far too many people who harbored grandiose plans, only to allow themselves to get overextended and in over their heads when they neglected to take escalating prices and building costs into account.

      He took another long look at her. The woman might look like one of those fluffy blondes who seemed to be almost everywhere you looked in Southern California—most of them would-be actresses—but she seemed to have a head on her shoulders.

      Maybe they would be able to work things out, after all.

      “When would you want me to get started?” Stone asked, then added a coda. “Provided, of course, that the estimate that I’m going to work up for you doesn’t turn your hair gray.”

      As he talked, she subtly directed him back toward the kitchen table—where the coffee she’d made and the dessert she’d left were still waiting for them.

      “I’m sure it won’t,” she told him. “And even if it did, there’re enough hair-care products out there to restore my hair to its natural shade,” she assured him with an easy, unself-conscious laugh. “Ms. Sommers seemed really sold on you and I trust her judgment implicitly. And I really liked what I saw on your website,” she added for good measure. “Some of those before-and-after photos were absolutely incredible.” That had really impressed her and confirmed the man’s

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