Crowned and Moldering

I probably should’ve demanded to know what he’d been thinking by flirting with me while seeing some supermodel on the side. But it wasn’t like me to be pushy that way, an obvious flaw in my character. Don’t get me wrong—I could be plenty assertive in other areas, but when it came to men and dating and such, I tended to hold back. Considering my checkered dating history, it made sense. In the past nine years, I’d dated exactly three men. One turned out to be gay, another was a car thief, and the third ended up dead—or, to put it more bluntly, murdered. Was it any wonder that I didn’t want to probe too much? Better to just walk away with my sanity and ego intact.

That was one more reason why I should’ve ended the kiss as soon as it began. Another was that kissing a client on the job probably wasn’t the most professional thing I could’ve been doing right then, especially with my crew guys about to drive up at any second. But did that stop me? Obviously not.

In my defense, Mac was a world-class kisser.

I shook off those thoughts and took the opportunity to study the elegant old porch. It was wide and stretched across most of the front and halfway along the north side of the house, following the curve of the corner tower. Double Doric columns gave the graceful, circular porch a worldly style that belied the mansion’s utilitarian roots. With its incomparable ocean view, the porch could be turned into a wonderful outdoor living/dining space.

Currently, though, it was pretty shabby. The floor planks were dull and a few of the boards around the outer edges were spongy and crumbling after sustaining years of damage from the sun and ocean air. Once those boards were replaced, we could re-sand the surface and add several coats of clear varnish, and all of it would be shiny and new again.

Things wouldn’t go so easy for the beams above our heads. The porch roof had actually begun to sag from water damage, and those rotten headers and crossbeams would need replacing immediately. The sooner we started work on this portion of the house, the better. I figured if I could see the wood decomposing with my own eyes, it had to be even worse beneath the surfaces.

I jotted down more notes on my tablet and then used the device to take some photographs of the decaying beams in order to remind myself how bad the damage was.

Wade’s truck finally came into view and Mac jogged down the steps and over to meet the guys. I took the moment to regroup, breathing in more ocean air and staring at the spectacle of waves tumbling and crashing against the rocky coastline.

Once I’d cleared my head and regained my senses—that kiss really was more potent than I’d realized—I was able to relax and watch Wade’s truck jerk and buck to a stop. There was nothing wrong with his truck; the lurching was due to the timeworn cracks and potholes that pitted Old Lighthouse Road, right up to the edge of Mac’s property. I had a feeling he would want to repave the path eventually, unless he liked replacing tires on his SUV more often than usual.

I waved to my guys, who were unloading their tool chests and ladders, with Mac lending a hand. Since they had things under control, I continued making notes on the exterior repairs needed to make to bring the house back to its former splendor.

For some unknown reason, people in Lighthouse Cove had always called this place the lighthouse mansion. Yes, the house stood within a few yards of the lighthouse, but it was the mansion part of the phrase that had always seemed misleading. That was because our town was famous for its abundance of breathtakingly massive Victorian homes, while Mac’s new place wasn’t all that large. But the home had a quiet, stately presence, unencumbered by the ostentatious gingerbread detailing that Victorians were known for. The term mansion just seemed to suit it.

Despite the lack of decorative clutter, the mansion still had many of the classic Queen A

On the second floor, a shingled overhang sheltered a set of arched Palladian windows braced by more Doric columns. I made a note to check those charming old fish-scale shingles for termite damage. A small balcony off the master bedroom on the second floor cried out for a new railing. The copper gutters circling the third-floor tower would have to be replaced. I could see the gaping holes from where I was standing.

I hadn’t seen the basement yet, but according to the blueprints, it ran the entire length and width of the house. You didn’t see that feature in many Victorian homes, and if Mac wanted to, he could probably create the biggest man cave in town. But chances were good that some load-bearing posts and a beam or two would have to be replaced before any other work could occur. Wind and water damage was the price a homeowner paid to have a house this close to the shoreline.

I took a quick walk down the steps and around to the south side of the house, where a jewel-box-sized solarium had been built to co

The presence of a solarium might’ve seemed frivolous at first glance, but I’d read that the navy had built it specifically to grow citrus trees in pots, in order to provide juice for the sailors who were once stationed here. No scurvy for those boys.

Past the solarium was the root cellar with its thick wooden door, detached, deteriorating, and leaning against the side of the house. As I’d noted on my last visit, there were shutters hanging off their frames and several bricks missing from the chimney at the back of the house. The paint on most of the exterior walls was peeling badly, but there was plenty of other work to be done before we could start scraping, sanding, and painting.

Call me perverse, but seeing all the damage just made me more excited to explore the entire house. I took a quick moment to stare up at the spectacular sight of the lighthouse tower standing sentinel over the town and this stretch of the coast. It never failed to impress me with its clean white surface shooting one hundred feet into the sky. I’d climbed its spiral wrought-iron staircase many times over the years and knew the view at the top was sensational. Gazing up at the glass-walled lantern room at the very top, I wondered if Mac had ever been up there. I would have to remember to ask.

I circled back to the front where Sean, Joh

“Hey, boss,” Sean said, laying his eight-foot ladder down at the far end of the porch and out of the way.

“Hi, guys,” I said. “Are we ready to get started?”

“You bet,” Wade said.

Joh

Even though I had a key to the front door, I gestured to Mac. “You go ahead. It’s your new home.”

He unlocked the door, walked in, and looked around. I knew he was familiar with the first – and second-floor rooms, but he’d never seen the whole place from attic to basement. Mac had bought the house after barely half an hour of walking through a few rooms and strolling around the property. That was all the time it had taken for him to fall in love and make an offer.

“I had the power and water reco