“Nice place,” she said about that one afterward.
“It was,” he agreed. “But I’m leaning toward the second apartment we saw this morning. Good location. Nice, big rooms. Plenty of parking and storage—not that I have anything to store at the moment. Have to sign a year lease, but that shouldn’t be a problem. If I should break the lease for any reason, I’d only have to sacrifice a month’s rent.”
She murmured something he didn’t catch, but there wasn’t time to ask her to repeat it. They had arrived at the final house he had scheduled to tour that afternoon.
He thought he heard a muffled sound from Jacqui when he parked in front of the Craftsman-style house in one of Little Rock’s oldest, still-well-respected neighborhoods. According to his information, this house had been built in the 1920s. It had been renovated several times since but still retained the flavor of that period, as did most of the houses in the historic area.
Although significantly older and slightly smaller than either of the other houses he’d toured, this one was just as expensive, at the top of his price range. He could see why. All the houses on this block were immaculately maintained, the lawns landscaped and manicured. A curving driveway ended in a discreetly placed garage that matched the house. A roomy front porch was furnished with inviting rockers beneath a lazily turning, antique-style ceiling fan. Flowers bloomed in beds around the porch, and a fountain added the sound of tumbling water to the already idyllic setting.
The inside of the house had been just as skillfully staged. Soft lighting from antique lamps and fixtures cast a welcoming glow over the Mission-styled furnishings arranged for comfort and conversation. Because it was July and still hotter than Hades outside, no fire burned in the old site-built brick fireplace, but it wasn’t hard to imagine flames crackling there on a dark winter evening. Built-in shelves held old books and pottery, and antique rugs softened the gleaming wood floors.
The kitchen, though still retaining the flavor of the period, had been renovated into a chef’s dream. A sunroom opened off the back, overlooking the small but appealing backyard. They toured a laundry room, a study and a dining ro
om downstairs, then climbed the wooden steps to explore the three bedrooms upstairs. Two smaller bedrooms were separated by a Jack-and-Jill bath, and the master bedroom included a sitting area in a bay window, a bathroom that was as charming as it was luxurious, and not one but two walk-in closets. Because roomy closets hadn’t been a feature of this style home at the time it was built, Mitch suspected some walls had been removed to create the space, but the construction had been seamless. It all blended very well.
As many amenities as this house offered, it was more warm and homey to him than the newer places they’d toured earlier. Maybe it was the age, maybe the abundance of honey-toned wood in contrast to the white-painted trim of the other two houses or maybe he just preferred this style. Whatever the reason, he liked it better.
Jacqui, he noted, had very little to say about this one. She’d kept up a running commentary at all the other places and it hadn’t been hard to interpret her reactions to them. She studied this house just as closely, if not more so, than the others, but she kept her observations to herself for the most part. She spent an especially long time in the kitchen, gazing at the glass-fronted cabinets, wood-paneled appliances, dark granite countertops and amber-glass light fixtures. If he’d had to guess, he would have said she was transfixed, but it was hard to tell when she made a deliberate effort to mask her thoughts.
She was just stepping out of one of the walk-in closets when he started to enter. Had he not reached up instinctively to grab her shoulders, they would have collided in the doorway. Startled, she laughed. “Oops.”
He grinned down at her. “Careful. Even as big as this closet is, there’s not room for both of us to get through the doorway at once.”
“Then you should move aside so I can come out,” she advised him humorously.
He found himself reluctant to release her. It felt good to have his hands on her, to be standing so close he could see the little specks of amber in her dark brown eyes and just a hint of freckles across her lightly tanned nose.
Her smile faded. “Um, Mitch?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his hands and moved out of her way. She didn’t glance back at him as she wandered off to explore the master bath.
He noted that she looked over her shoulder when he drove away a short while later, her gaze on that house until he’d turned onto busy Kavanaugh Avenue and she could no longer see it. Only then did she turn forward again, adjusting her seat belt and looking through the windshield with a pensive expression.
“That was the last one today,” he said, breaking the silence between them when he stopped at a red light. “I don’t think my brain can process any more choices.”
She smiled faintly, though she didn’t turn to look at him. “I’d say you looked at a nice range of options today.”
“Yeah. I can tell my mom I saw apartments, condos and houses, so she can’t say I’m not taking the search seriously.”
She looked at him then, their eyes meeting for a moment before he directed his attention back to the road ahead. “You’re looking at houses to please your mom?”
“I’m looking at houses because I need to move out of my sister’s guest room.”
“But none of the houses you’ve seen today have excited you. Not even that last one?”
“It’s a house,” he answered simply, though he didn’t miss her emphasis on the last place they’d seen. She really had liked that one, apparently. “A nice house but still just a place to sleep and stash the stuff I’ll eventually reaccumulate.”
“You shouldn’t rush into anything. Maybe you should wait until some place does excite you.”
“Honestly? I don’t think that’s going to happen. I mean, nothing will really change except my mailing address. I’ll still go to work every day at the hospital, still be on call for my mom when she needs me, still hang with my friends when I get the time. A house would add some responsibilities like maintenance and lawn care, but I’d probably have to pay someone to do that stuff most of the time. Mowing and weeding isn’t my idea of a good time when I’m off work.”
“I wouldn’t mind taking care of my own yard, if I had one,” she murmured. “Maybe tending some flower beds. But I guess that’s not your thing.”
He remembered how long she’d gazed at the tidy flower beds around the last house. “No,” he replied with a light shrug. “Gardening isn’t really something I’ve had a strong urge to do.”
“You want to get away from Little Rock, don’t you?”
The seemingly disconnected question caught him off guard, so he hesitated a bit before answering, “I think I’ve mentioned before that I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like to live somewhere else, because I never have. Every time I thought about moving away for a while, something came up with the family and I felt as though I needed to stay.”