CHAPTER ONE

 

Pasadena, California

Early October, Present Day

 

 

It was a beast of a house.

Well, not exactly a beast, but it was definitely a massive project in the making. It was called a California Mission Revival style and it was built in 1895 on the corner of what had been a major section in a fashionable part of Pasadena, California back at the turn of the century. The entire area was littered with old Victorians and California Craftsman homes, so unique and indigenous to the Crown City.

Since the nineteen forties, the area had gradually seen a decline all through the eighties and nineties, when it had been a hotbed of heavy-duty gangs. Only within the past ten years had the area seen change when young urban professional, seeing the beauty in the run-down old homes, began snapping them up at bargain prices and restoring them to their magnificent beauty. The gangs and their families had taken the money for what they considered dumps and had taken it east, setting up their homes and territories out in the Inland Empire. Now the vast wasteland of San Bernardino County had them. Pasadena was, once again, reclaiming her good neighborhoods.

At least, that’s what she hoped. As Katharine “Kiki” Delohr Conrad sat in the sitting room of the massive, but run-down home she had purchased, she sincerely prayed that she hadn’t made a bad decision. Kiki had been born and raised in Pasadena and she knew the area extremely well, knowing it could be very dicey at times, but her friend at the Pasadena Police Department assured her it was cleaning up.

The house itself sat on over a quarter of an acre, a massive lot strewn with hundred-year-old oaks that was lodged in the tightly-packed residential area. A big fence and hedge surrounded it, protecting it from the outside world. From the street, it looked like the creepy, old house where the neighborhood hermit lived. That’s what Kiki had liked best about it.

So she’d bought it after much deliberation and consultation with her father and brother. Her brother had been against it but her dad had been surprisingly supportive. Her dad had been around the day that escrow closed and Kiki already had three construction companies over at the house to give her an estimate.

That had been a week ago. This morning, the construction companies were dropping by to deliver the bad news. She’d already seen two out of the three estimates and they were a lot more than she’d anticipated. Sitting in the kitchen that was stuck in the gloomy back roads of the nineteen fifties, she begrudgingly awaited the third estimate. He said he’d be by around noon and it was almost that now.

She heard a car door slam outside. It was close enough that she suspected it was the third estimator. Kiki slid off the kitchen stool and made her way to the door like a prisoner making her way to the executioner. Based on the nauseating prices she saw that morning, this one promised to be just as gut-turning.

Maybe she should have listened to her brother. If she received one more astronomical estimate, she was going to have to consider shutting down the project before it even got started. The real estate agent who had sold her the house fed her some bullshit about the house not being in such terrible shape and, therefore, not too terribly expensive to restore, but the truth had been something quite different.

Therefore, Kiki wasn’t looking forward to the third and last estimate. As she looked around the old walls and vintage fixtures original to the house, she still saw what had attracted her to the house in the first place. All of that history right there in front of her, walls that had seen the sinking of the Titanic, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and all of the other significant events of the last century. But it still stood, tall and proud, as if nothing could knock it down, not even those events that had seen worlds changed and destroyed. She saw something solid and lasting.

Much as she wanted to be solid and lasting, too.

She saw hope.

The old gate creaked outside as someone entered the yard. She could hear the iron gate swing back on its hinges. Here it comes, she thought grimly. She had no choice now but to face the inevitable. She was already preparing the speech to give her parents on how the house was too expensive for her to keep and she’d been stupid to want to try. But the truth was that in that house, she saw something that needed her as much as she needed it. The house needed her help to shine again and, in a sense, she needed the house for the same reason. She was afraid of facing an empty future and the house was something to fill it.

More noise in the yard. Her dog at her feet barked at the sounds. She glanced at the cream-colored French Bulldog and pointed to the dog’s bed, which was back in the old kitchen. Obediently, the dog trotted off as she went for the ancient bronze doorknob that was original to the house. In fact, the entire front door was original to the house. But she paused before opening it, thinking that maybe she’d just take a peek out of the window to see who it was. Maybe she didn’t even feel like opening the door. Maybe it was better if she didn’t.

Making her way to the window nearest the door, she cracked open the old shutters that someone had installed forty years ago. Light suddenly poured in from the outside, filling the front parlor. In the sunlight streaming through the heavy canopy of trees around the property, she saw a figure out by the old fountain in the front yard.

The light fell upon the figure, illuminating him, as if the heavens had opened up to emphasize the man now lingering by the antique water feature. Sunlight glinted off his dark blond hair, his back to her. Still, she could see him and her interest grew.

The man milled around the fountain for a moment before turning towards the house. She couldn’t really see his face because of the way the sun was shining but she could certainly see his figure. He was hunky; that much she knew. Nice legs and she liked the way his hair was cut. Suddenly, opening the front door seemed like a good idea.

The man had a folder in his hand so she knew he was the contractor and just not some random guy who had wandered into her yard. Moving away from the window, she went to the front door and jerked it open on its sticky hinges.

It was a moment Kiki would remember for the rest of her life.