I’d rigged up the scaffolding for the inspector to look over the windows, but also for me. I’d needed to get precise measurements for the diagram I was putting together for the glass artist I was interested in. Now I had to prove the house was a good fit for him. He had a waiting list, but he was known to let projects jump the line if they were interesting enough.
Charlie Tarrow was also a craggy older dude and did whatever the hell he wanted.
Something I envied on a level I didn’t want to own up to.
She gestured to the scaffolding. “Tell me you aren’t trying to work on those windows yourself.”
“I prefer workmanship, not ego when it comes to this house, Hellcat. I know when I’m in over my head.”
“Would have been better to realize that before you destroyed the porch.”
And there was the poke. “We’re not going there.”
She gave me a not-so-innocent shrug. “Then what’s with the scaffolding?”
I pulled my notebook out of the dusty bookcase by the window. “For this.” Nerves skittered up my spine as I handed it over. Sketching was something that I’d done since I was five, but I didn’t generally share them with people. It was one of the reasons I used to use a chalkboard, so they never saw the light of day. This was the second time I’d offered one up to her.
She took it and slowly flipped through the crinkly pages. It was an old, bound sketchbook that I’d had since before the accident. It had been waterlogged from the rescue when they’d used a water saw to tear apart my sculpture to get me free. It was also one of the few things I hadn’t been able to cast off into my storage locker.
She glanced up at me. “Nolan, these are...”
“They’re shit, I know.”
“What? No.” She walked over to me to show me the front window I’d sketched during the week. “This is amazing. It would change the front of the house quite a bit, but this...” She tapped her finger on the center of the circular stained glass I’d envisioned. It was a typical six petal design but instead of a geometric circle at the center, I’d drawn an owl. “Where did you come up with this?”
I scrubbed my palm over my thigh. “I saw the owl in the stained glass in Harriette’s room.”
She locked her eyes on mine. “You went back in?”
“No. I looked at it from the roof.”
“Nolan!”
“What?”
“The roof? Are you serious?”
“Worried about me?”
I could practically hear her molars grinding. “I was perfectly safe.”
“Why didn’t you just go back into the room?”
“I wasn’t chancing another trip into that space. Not that I could if I wanted to. The inspector tried to get in to check it out and now the opening won’t budge.”
“Really?” She slipped her finger into the page like a bookmark and closed it. “Maybe we could try again?”
“What makes you so special?”
“I think she likes me.”
“I think you want to believe that.”
She gave me a long look. “Can we try, anyway?”
“No.”
The memory of those books careening around the room was still too fresh. In the center of it, there had been Dahlia without an ounce of self-preservation. What if the bookcases came down? Or the floor gave way? Regardless of the spectral component, which I still wasn’t sure was a thing, it was too dangerous for her to be in there.
A seething Dahlia was rapidly becoming one of my favorite things. I wasn’t entirely sure what that said about me. As reckless as she was, she wasn’t stupid.
At least I chose to believe that.
She flipped the notebook back open. “I didn’t notice the owl. Just the bassinet and the roses in the—” She gasped as she found the study I’d made of the stained-glass ceiling. I’d spent a whole evening up on the widow’s walk, staring down at that glass.
The roof was structurally sound, as was the walk, but it needed a lot of work to bring it back to its former glory. Being in the center of that space had given me a lot of ideas about the more decorative items I wanted to bring to the house.
The whole damn house was a money pit, but it was the first thing to charge me up in too many years to count. The stained glass was one of the things I’d been most excited about working on.
I tried to take the notebook back, but she held it against her chest. “I’m not finished.” She paced away as she flipped pages. I’d done quite a few studies of different parts of the glass and wanted to echo them around the house in different ways.
She set it on the scaffolding and pulled out her phone.
“What are you doing?”
She snapped photos of the sketches. “I want to do some research. I wonder who did the original glass work?”
I crowded into her and reached around her to slam the notebook shut. “Those are my drawings.”
