Maggie Moves On(3)

“Ah. Now I get where this is going. You’re Danny Kaye–ing me,” she said, referring to White Christmas, a holiday movie she’d tried to dislike over the years and never quite succeeded.

“I always thought of myself as more of a Bing Crosby than a Danny Kaye.” Dean sniffed.

“Listen, Bing, Danny, or whoever the hell you are, I’m not in one place long enough to even learn a guy’s favorite beer, let alone sexual position or 401(k) balance.”

“But you could be. You could take time off between houses. You could take a vacation and fall in love with your scuba instructor.”

“Or here’s a thought. I could renovate this house, make it beautiful, and we could make an obscene amount of money.” It’s what they did and how she earned the freedom and financial stability she’d always craved.

“You already have an obscene amount of money,” he pointed out.

“I think our definitions of obscene are pretty far apart.”

“Check your statements and get back to me. You’ve leveled up and haven’t noticed yet.”

“Do you want a raise? Because I’ll give you a raise if it stops you from whining all the time.”

“I don’t want more money—I mean, I wouldn’t say no to it. But I want more time. You should, too. What’s the point of making all this money and running your own business if it means you can’t enjoy it?”

“I do enjoy it,” she argued. “I love what I do.”

“Well, you better, because it’s going to take you six years to finish this place.”

“Three months,” she insisted. Then caught his skeptical look. “Fine. Four tops.”

“You pay me to be practical,” he reminded her as he carefully removed a briar that had attached itself to his sleeve. “It’s impractical that your only days off are the ones you take driving between houses. You can’t keep this up forever.”

“Practical concerns noted. In the meantime, you trust me to have vision,” she said, blazing a trail through underbrush toward the one thing that would shut him up.

“Vision. Not hallucinations.”

She said nothing and pointed to the rocky edge of the bluff.

His brown eyes widened. “Oh. Shit.”

“Yeah. Oh, shit.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked across the rolling foothills and canyons spread out before them. The Payette River zigged and zagged below, green and fast with snowmelt. The town, compact and cozy, was tucked into a hard bend to the north. The lake beyond fed the river and the tourism that coaxed travelers off the beaten path, away from the jagged mountain peaks and ski resorts and into Western Idaho.

“Figured we’d open up the view a little bit,” she said, still looking out over miles and miles of rugged country. “Thin out the vegetation. Maybe take down a couple of the trees.”

“The budget isn’t big enough,” Dean said, recovering himself quickly. He wasn’t a romantic who could be charmed with breathtaking views and historical charm. But at least she knew he was willing to flirt with the value of a multimillion-dollar view.

“We could double our money here,” she said, tempting him with his language of love.

“Double? Ha. First of all, you have to decide what’s the absolute minimum to get this beautiful and market-worthy. Then you being you, you have to decide how much over that you’re going to run amok. Then we’ll have to pull a buyer who wants a seven-figure mausoleum in Where the Fuck Are We, Idaho, out of our asses.”

She clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. Oh, and Kinship.”

“Kinship what?”

“Kinship, Idaho. That’s where the fuck we are. Now, if I promise to buy you two huge coffees when we go into town, will you be a good boy and get your fancy drone out?”

Grumbling, he left her there and picked his way through nature. “I hate thorns!” he called over his shoulder. “Son of a—”

She snickered when his dark head disappeared into a wet bed of tall ferns.

“Watch your step,” she sang out too late, following him to the front.

“I’m not too fond of you right now!”

While her partner swore his way back to the backyard, drone in tow, Maggie faced the house. With her thumbs hooked in her pockets and rain dampening the short ponytail pulled through the back of her hat, she studied it. Three sprawling stories. Eighteen rooms. Four fireplaces. Not nearly enough bathrooms.

The paint, at least six different colors that she’d counted, was peeling. The yard had been eaten by weeds and overgrowth. What looked like a very healthy crop of poison oak climbed the north side of the house, which faced the detached carriage house.

The front porch looked like it was a good four inches lower on the right than it was on the left. The warped front door was way too small for a house so grand.

She felt the rev in her blood. The low hum of excitement of a new challenge, an adventure at the starting line. It was like finding a secret treasure in a ruin. Only, the ruin was the treasure. And her favorite part was excavating it piece by piece. Restoring old charm and adding new-world function. Every project was someone’s dream house. And she did what she could to bring it into being.

But this place, the Old Campbell Place—capitalized like a proper noun, as it had been dubbed for over a century—would be special. It already was. And it was even better than she’d remembered.