It was made of brick, old and mellowed. The windows were tall and well-proportioned on the second floor, square and functional on the third. The four stores on the ground floor all had bay windows and oval glass in the doors. She loved the small-town feel of the neighborhood. It looked like Main Street somewhere in the Midwest, not just a few blocks off the main drag in Austin, Texas.
When she’d first opened her store, there had been a little flower shop between the bakery and the vintage clothing store. Along with a New Age bookshop, they made up the other tenants, but the flower shop had gone out of business long since. She hadn’t thought about it in years. There had been a curving marble stairway leading nowhere that the owner had used to display floral arrangements and garden ornaments, she recalled. And once she’d glimpsed an old-fashioned metal-gated elevator through an open curtain behind the counter. She hadn’t made the connection then—that the space behind the grandiose wooden doors had once been the lobby of an apartment building—but now she did.
And soon it would be again.
That meant people moving into the neighborhood, stabilizing it even more. She liked the idea. Young couples ready to start their families, all of them buying furniture and strollers and bottle sets and rocking horses. She liked that very much.
Lana was smiling when she arrived at Dylan’s door at the top of the stairs. It was open a few inches, as though he was expecting her. She pushed it wider and called softly, in case Greg was asleep. No answer. She walked into the empty main room of the apartment, taking a moment to look around. An archway she hadn’t noticed on her first visit opened into a hallway that must lead to the bedrooms. She wondered if there were two or three.
It would be nice to be living here, so close to her work, without that long commute and the upkeep on her parents’ huge old house. But her parents had loved that house. They’d lived there all their married life. And if she moved in here, the apartment wouldn’t be occupied by a potential customer.
Lana walked to the kitchen doorway. “Hello,” she said softly.
Dylan didn’t answer because he was sleeping as soundly as the baby in the carrier beside him on the table. His elbows were propped on the blueprints of the building, his dark head resting on his hands, a pair of reading glasses dangling from his fingers. Lana hesitated, undecided whether to wake him or to leave as quietly as she’d come.
Greg stirred and sniffled and made adorable baby sounds, and Lana didn’t leave. A moment later Dylan opened his eyes, blinked just like his son and focused on her. “You came back,” he said.
“I told you I would.” She’d explained about the party, that she had to be there. But she wasn’t sure he’d believed her when she said she’d come back. “How did it go?” she asked. His beard had darkened, she noticed, and he looked dead tired, despite his nap.
“Okay. I fed him again. Didn’t try for a touchdown in one run. Got him to burp like you told me. He fell asleep, and I guess I did, too. Damn, I had a lot of work I wanted to get done.” He stood and began rolling up the blueprints.
“Are those the plans for the renovation you spoke of?” Lana asked. She felt awkward standing in the doorway. She felt awkward around him, period. She’d been with Jason Fairmont almost two years, and she hadn’t even thought of dating since they’d broken up. But Dylan Van Zandt was a very attractive man, the kind no sane woman could be indifferent to.
“Yes.” The frown between his dark brows smoothed out a little. “Would you like to see them?”
“Yes, I would.”
He unrolled the blueprints, slipping one edge under Greg’s carrier and holding the other flat with the palm of his hand. “There are four apartments on this floor, corresponding to the storefronts below us. They all have two bedrooms, three if you count the maid’s room, here.” He pointed to a small room at the very back of the apartment layout. “I’m planning to turn those into a bathroom and walk-in closet for the master suite.” He circled the area on the drawing with his finger. “Updating the kitchens and bathrooms will be the biggest expense. Have to bring the heating plant and the electrical circuits up to code, too. And the elevator to comply with the disability laws. That could cost me a pretty penny to renovate.”
“Do all the apartments have fireplaces? And those beautiful high ceilings?”
“Yes, ma’am. But the fireplaces will have gas logs. They make ones so real-looking you can hardly tell the difference.”
“What about the third floor?”
“I figure two big loft apartments. I’m hoping this area of the city will start attracting artsy-craftsy types. It’s close enough to the university that that’s not too big a stretch.”
“And all those Generation Xers who work downtown and at the Statehouse are going to start wanting places where they can spread out a bit, raise a family and still not have the commute they’d get if they moved to the suburbs.”
“Exactly what I told my dad when I talked him into putting a chunk of his retirement money into this place.” He looked at her and nodded approvingly. Lana felt herself color slightly. She hadn’t meant to speak her thoughts aloud. She felt disloyal again, the way she had earlier when she’d been thinking about her birth mother. Her parents had loved their big Tudor in its old established neighborhood with gated driveways and enormous live oaks dotting the lawn. She loved it, too. But it was so much house for a single young woman. And it was a forty-minute drive into the city—on a good day.
“I hope it works out for you.”
Greg began to snuffle into his fist.
“Time to eat again.” Dylan touched his big blunt finger to the baby’s cheek, but the movement seemed forced and wooden to Lana. “Every two hours. Just like clockwork. It’s gonna be a long night and an early morning tomorrow, buddy. No sleeping in.”
“You’re starting the renovations tomorrow?”
He nodded. “Time’s money in this business. The electrical contractor’ll be here at seven, the plumber at noon.”
“That’s a lot of noise and confusion for a baby. And what about the paint?”
“Paint? We’re a long way from paint.”
“No, I mean the old paint. You’ll be banging around, knocking it off the walls and woodwork. It looks really old. It’s got lead in it, I’ll bet. You can’t have Greg here, if that’s the case.”
“Hell, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You said you had nieces and nephews. That means you must have siblings. Couldn’t one of them watch over Greg for a few days?”
“My brother and his wife are in New Jersey, and my sister’s husband’s in the military. They’re in Germany for the next eighteen months. My dad’s got his hands full taking care of Mom.”
“Then you’ll both have to come home with me.”
He spun around. “We can’t do that.”
Lana had the feeling that her brothers’ reactions would echo Dylan’s. They were leery enough of her giving parenting lessons to a complete stranger. When they found out she was inviting him to live under her roof, there would be hell to pay. She almost smiled but didn’t, because for some reason her heart was beating so
