Chapter 12

Kelsey blinked in surprise later that afternoon when she pulled into the circular drive of the Raven estate a mere fifteen minutes after leaving for a quick errand. Unlike last time, her surprise wasn’t caused by the protesters. After a few long, quiet days without getting any true attention, the group seemed to be taking a day off.

Her surprise was at finding Kurt twenty feet off the ground on an extension ladder leaned against the north side of the house. He had a tool belt slung loosely around those remarkable hips of his and was working on the frame of one of the second-story windows.

Grabbing the two bottles of IBC Root Beer and the bag of freshly baked pretzels she’d bought, Kelsey left her purse and keys in the car and made a mental note to grab them before going into the house.

So glad he waited for a spotter. She hadn’t even known they had an extension ladder. He’d probably found it while poking around in the garage at the back of the yard. The detached building was framed by cobwebs, and Kelsey had never done more than glance in the dirty windows. After learning from Ida yesterday that it had been built to be a carriage house and converted for cars in the forties, the old building had more appeal, though Kelsey was fine waiting until Kurt had scared away more critters before checking it out further. Not only was it likely chock-full of spiders, but a few months ago, on the first warm summer day, she’d noticed the largest black rat snake she’d ever seen sunning itself in front of the old carriage doors.

As she got closer to the side of the house where Kurt was working, she noticed Mr. Longtail milling around underneath the ladder and rubbing his cheek against its base. “Please, God, say that’s stable.”

Kurt smiled, his teeth gleaming white in contrast to the dark brick behind him. “With the stabilizer, it’s safer than if someone was down there holding it.”

“Let’s hope.” Kelsey shooed the cat out from underneath. “So, tell me, what little fire are we putting out now?”

“A storm’s coming, and the cracks around the side of this window are nearly big enough for a bird to fly through. It’s causing a mess in the front bedroom. The wall around the window is rotting, and the wooden floor underneath has water damage. Not only could we use a new window and frame here, but the brick needs tuck-pointing. For today, a bit of duct tape will do.”

Shifting the bag of pretzels and root beers precariously to one hand, Kelsey pulled her phone from her pocket and clicked open the weather app. He was right. There was a seventy percent chance of thunderstorms late this afternoon. “I was about to ask how you knew, isolated here as you’ve been, but then I remembered you’re now the proud owner of a smartphone.”

He shifted on the ladder, causing it to bounce and jiggle. Kelsey grabbed ahold of one of the lower rungs, nearly dropping her phone in the process. Apparently unconcerned about the jiggling, Kurt stopped taping and brushed a hand over his back pocket, drawing her attention to his fabulous derriere. “If you want the truth, I forgot I had it. Can’t you feel the air pressure dropping? I’m no weatherman, but I can tell when a thunderstorm is coming.”

Kelsey made a face. “When the winds pick up and the sky darkens, I can.”

He chuckled and ripped off another piece of duct tape. From here, the window frame blocked the silver tape from view, so hopefully it wouldn’t be visible from the street either. Not that duct tape would stand out much in comparison to the couple of missing bricks or the peeling paint on the shutters and porch or the run-down carriage house out back.

Kelsey was surprised by the rush of emotion that swept over her as she thought about all the work the house needed to really shine again. At one point, she wouldn’t have cared if the old mansion was torn down and a new one was built in its place whenever it went up for sale, or if, like the dogs, it was rehabbed. Not anymore. Now she’d be willing to put up a battle to make sure whoever eventually bought it was intent on restoring it. The old place had way too much history to be knocked down. Whoever the eventual new owners were, they just had to pump the life back into it that Sabrina Raven had given it for so many years. And hopefully they’d get her garden going again too.

“That should do it,” Kurt said, dropping the tape and X-ACTO knife into the worn leather tool belt.

Kelsey held the ladder for his first several steps down, then backed away as his feet reached chest level. He quite possibly had the best rear end she’d ever seen, and she could feel her cheeks flaming hot to prove it.

“I made a pretzel run,” she said, holding up the bag and hoping it drew attention away from her blush. “And I hope you like root beer. It’s so warm today that I thought it would hit the spot.”

“Sounds perfect. Thanks.” He took one of the extended bottles and twisted off the cap. He slipped the cap into his pocket rather than tossing it on the ground. None of it was intentional, but he was passing so many tests. She couldn’t have a crush on a guy who littered. Or who wasn’t kind and gentle with the dogs. And even though he was cautious about naming them, he was a genuine dog whisperer.

“Want to sit a few minutes?” she asked. “Some part of you has to be tired.”

One side of his perfect lips turned up in a half smile. “Now that you say it, the rocking chairs on the front porch have been calling my name.”

“Awesome. I’ve always wanted to sit in them, but I’ve never taken the time.” Kelsey walked with him around the house and up the wide brick stairs. “Have you heard of Gus’ Pretzels? Depending on how you get off the highway, you probably passed it as you came here. I’d guess you could say they’re a bit of a St. Louis landmark.”

“Like the pizza joints that use a cracker for the crust?” Kurt teased, pulling one of the long pretzel sticks from the bag and then collapsing onto one of the old wooden rockers.

Kelsey took a seat in the adjacent one, wondering how many times Sabrina and Ida had sat here together.

“They’re good.”

“And addictive,” she added. “Which was fine when I was swinging by here to feed Mr. Longtail. It was on my way home, and the place was closed. But now it’s right up the street and so available.”

“You say it like that’s a bad thing.”

“It is if you’re watching carbs.”

“I don’t know why you’d be doing that.” His gaze dropped to her body for only a second or two, followed by one or two seconds when she wanted to disappear. They had to be just empty words. He was too physically perfect not to want someone who could double as a Victoria’s Secret model. Right?

Thankfully, Mr. Longtail jumped up onto the side of the porch and meowed his loud, pervasive meow, drawing Kurt’s attention. The cat stalked over to him and rubbed against one calf.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you switched him with a double. Eight months of trying, and he wanted none of my attention. You’re here a few days, and he’s following you around like a lost puppy.”

Kurt brushed a few pieces of pretzel salt off his thigh, then swooped the cat onto his lap. “I opened an old can of sardines for him last night. He was definitely a fan.”

“Did he sleep with you again?”

“Either that, or someone was trying to suffocate me with a fur pillow around two or three in the morning.”

Kelsey giggled. “Some things you have to see to believe.” The Maine coon was a giant cat and took up all of Kurt’s lap, but that didn’t stop him from getting comfortable. He plopped down and started kneading Kurt’s knees. Kelsey could hear the cat’s sharp claws getting stuck in Kurt’s cargo pants. She pulled out her phone. “Do you care if I take a picture? Megan will never believe me.”

“Knock yourself out.” A second later, he winced as Mr. Longtail’s sharp claws dug into his skin. Kurt extracted the claws carefully from his pants, then began to pump one foot softly, causing his leg to jiggle and Mr. Longtail’s head to bobble like her Chihuahua bobblehead. The movement stopped the cat from kneading but didn’t seem to disturb him otherwise. He curled into a ball, exposing part of his stomach, and began to purr. Kelsey snapped a picture as Kurt’s free hand disappeared into the cat’s mass of thick, gray belly fur.

She inspected her work, promising herself that even though Kurt looked incredibly sexy with his broad shoulders, strong jawline, and shadow of stubble, she wouldn’t pull out her phone later just to stare at the picture.

“Sorry about earlier,” he said after swallowing a bite of pretzel. “My mother’s a bit much, if you didn’t notice.”

“For a second there, I thought you were talking about not naming the dogs.”

“I’m a pretty good judge of when a battle has been lost.”

“So you’re consenting? You’re okay with me naming them?”

“I’m consenting. Let’s leave it at that. And I named one while you were gone. I’ll leave the rest up to you.”

“Who?”

“I’ll let you figure that out later. I wrote it on his crate.”

Kelsey cocked an eyebrow. “I know what I’m doing as soon as I finish this pretzel.”

He smiled and ate a bite of pretzel.

“Your mom was nice. Does she live in Fort Leonard Wood too? I know you said your grandfather teaches there.”

“She’s not too far outside the post. She lives in a trailer park a few miles away actually.” Kurt swigged his root beer, then added, “She left my grandparents’ house when she turned eighteen. I was a little over a year old. To hear her talk, you wouldn’t know it, but my grandparents were the ones to raise me. Back then, she pretty much came and went as she pleased. At least that’s how I remember it.”

Kelsey wasn’t sure how to respond. He didn’t say it like he wanted sympathy, but she’d put the pieces together about the cell phone having been his grandmother’s. If his grandmother had been more involved in raising him than his own mom, her passing had to be especially hard. “I’m really sorry about your grandmother.”

“Me too,” he said, looking at the house across the road. Two carpenters were there today, and somewhere inside the house, a table saw kept going off. “Nobody was expecting it. She was in her late sixties but healthy as can be. She was in the grocery store when it happened. She fell and hit her head, but it was a stroke that caused it.”

If they were closer, Kelsey would’ve put her hand on his shoulder. Instead, she busied herself by breaking off a piece of her pretzel stick.

“She was an amazing woman,” Kurt continued, keeping his focus on the house across the street. “Small in size, lots smaller than my mom even, but she was big in spirit. She was born in Mexico and came from money—loads of it, to hear her tell it. Her father was very proud and traditional and wanted to keep all the money and property in his family line. When she was eighteen, she found out he wanted to marry her off to her third cousin. While the relationship was distant enough not to have any genetic risk associated with it, they’d been raised in the same extended family and she wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

“She and her father were having big rows about it, so he sent her on vacation with her mother and aunt to a beach in Baja, California, in hopes she’d cool down. That was when she met my grandfather. He was a few years older and stationed down in Texas back then. He was on leave and vacationing with his buddies. They eloped after meeting each other three times. She never went home.”

As this last part settled in, Kurt stroked Mr. Longtail, who clearly loved having his belly rubbed. Kelsey could practically feel the cat’s deep, thrumming purr reverberating in her chest.

“Not even for vacation?” she asked. The idea of never seeing her own mom, dad, or brothers again was almost unfathomable.

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “She reached out to them after my mother was born, but her father made it clear she’d been excommunicated. To hear her tell it, my very stubborn and set-in-his-ways grandfather was a pussycat compared to her dad. However, a year or so before I enlisted, she got a letter from her hometown in Mexico. I don’t think she ever opened it. At least if she did, it was something she never shared. She said sometimes too much water can pass under a bridge.”

“Wow. I can’t imagine having my family turning against me because of who I wanted to marry, but I don’t have that kind of heritage either. At least she handled it okay. She sounds like an amazing person.”

“She was the best.” Kurt rolled the side of his empty bottle along the edge of his chair. “She really was. She had endless patience with me, and my mother wasn’t kidding about the ADHD. My grandmother was a saint to put up with all she did. I started a garage fire when I was ten that forced us to stay in a hotel for a month and could’ve been much worse. Then, when I was twelve, I got caught trying to drive my grandfather’s old truck off post property. If it had just been up to my grandfather, I’d have gotten spanked more times than I could count.”

Kelsey grimaced. “I hope that’s a figure of speech.”

Kurt gave her one of the half smiles she was starting to love. “Let’s go with that. Then I became a teenager, and the trouble really started. If it hadn’t been for my grandmother and for the chances I had to work with Rob and his dogs, I’d probably have ended up in juvie.”

“You don’t seem anything like that now.” She held out the bag, offering him another pretzel. The tips of their fingers touched as he took one, giving Kelsey an electric jolt. Yep, she was definitely crushing hard. Learning more about him wasn’t helping extinguish those flames either.

Over to the west, it was starting to cloud up and turn gray. The rest of the sky was still blue and sunny. She wondered how many hours they had before the storm hit and what kind of anxiety it might stir up in the dogs. She was opening her mouth to ask if they should start the evening feeding rounds early when she spotted his grandfather’s truck coming down the street. This time, there was only one person in the cab.

“Looks like it’s only your grandfather this time,” Kelsey said, nodding toward the street.

The slightest hint of a frown appeared on Kurt’s face. He set his bottle on the porch floor and lifted a perturbed Mr. Longtail off his lap. The cat meowed and twitched his tail at having been disturbed, then strode to the center of the top step and started licking his long fur.

“As long as you’re good with it, while you guys talk, I can switch out the dogs in the runs—after I discover who’s newly named.” Offering him a smile, Kelsey made a show of crossing a finger over her heart. “And I promise to handle only the green betas whose names I know you’re going to love using very soon.”

He chuckled and brushed off his pants. “Sounds good. Yell if you need me.”

After waving to Kurt’s grandfather as he pulled into the circular drive, Kelsey headed inside. She couldn’t be sure, but this morning she’d gotten a strong sense that Kurt’s grandfather was holding something back.