STRANGE THINGS HAD been happening in Alex’s dreams. Only this morning he’d dreamed of being in Lauren’s bed in the back of her van, Van-Go, or whatever she called it. He hadn’t even realized he’d paid that much attention to the bed while he’d been in the van, but the dream had been awfully detailed. All that red and gold bedding, soft and fluffy and lightly layered, kind of untidy but in a delicate, feminine way.
His alarm had gone off just at the part where a cloud of silky chestnut hair tickled his face and something warm and alive stirred in his arms. It had been a jolt to wake up for real to his barren apartment, which had all the charm of an abandoned storage unit, and an empty bed with threadbare sheets that needed to be changed.
Where was Lauren now? He didn’t know and he didn’t want to know. He wouldn’t ask Dalia and Tony. He would never mention her name again. Another couple of weeks and he’d be in the clear, weaned off the thoughts of her that kept drifting up in his mind, and her surprise appearances in his dreams.
HE RAN HIS hand over the freshly planed wood. Smooth as silk, without a single splinter or rough spot in its tight grain. This was work he loved—it was deeply satisfying, solid, real. His little workshop was like a sanctuary, with its homey smells of wood and lacquer and oil, and walls lined with hand tools as familiar and beloved as old friends. There was no problem here that he couldn’t solve. With enough patience and know-how, and the right tools, he could bring back what was worn, broken-down, abandoned, lost. Nothing could disturb him here.
“Alejandro?”
His hand froze in the act of replacing the hand plane in his tool cabinet. The sound of his name—the full, unanglicized version, spoken in that voice—flooded him with a strange elation.
No. No! It wasn’t possible. She couldn’t be here in this most sacred place.
But she was.
She had her hair piled high on her head in a heap of waves and loops, with some loose tendrils hanging around her face and neck, and she was wearing black leggings, red hightops and a bright turquoise shirt with asymmetrical ruffles. She looked like she’d tumbled out of bed and put on the first clothes she came across.
Rumpled, disheveled and gorgeous.
“What are you doing here?”
The words came out harsher than he’d meant them to.
Lauren took a step back. “Wow, I can see why they don’t have you working the showroom. Your customer service sucks.”
“Sorry. I just thought you’d be gone by now, back on the road.”
“Nope. I’m planning on staying in the area for a few months. If that’s okay with you.”
The edge in her voice irritated him. She had no business being snippy. It wasn’t like he meant anything to her.
He shrugged. “Sure.”
But it wasn’t okay. He’d spent a lot of energy convincing himself he would never see her again, and now he was going to have to start all over whenever she left for real. How many months did she mean by “a few”? Three? More? It was a word that covered a lot of ground.
“So what are you doing here?” he asked. “As in, here at Architectural Treasures?”
“Well, Tony and Dalia are letting me stay at La Escarpa over the winter, and in return I’m going to renovate the bunkhouse. I looked online for sources of old building materials and found this place. What are you doing here? I thought you worked at the auto-and-tractor shop.”
“I do. I have two jobs.” Two paying jobs, anyway.
But he didn’t want to get in to that.
“So you’re fixing up the old bunkhouse,” he said.
Part of him felt a little sore about that, like she’d stolen his idea. But that was dumb. It was the kind of project he would enjoy, but he sure wasn’t in any position to take it on himself. He had more than enough on his plate trying to secure his own property—or what should have been his property.
To do that, he needed money. And to earn money, he needed to keep both his sources of income. And to keep this one, he’d better make his customer service not be so sucky.
He smiled. “You came to the right place.”
She smiled, too—a quick, eager smile that almost made him sorry for being abrupt before. “I know! This store is amazing. I’ve been walking around with my mouth hanging open for the past five minutes.”
Alex’s workshop was in the back of the main room, a straight shot from the front door. “You’ve barely scratched the surface, then. Let me tidy up a bit, and I’ll show you around.”
It was fun seeing the shop through Lauren’s eyes. It was a big downtown building, one of the oldest in Limestone Springs, cavernous and drafty, with room after room of merchandise. The main room, where she’d entered, was mostly old furniture and fireplace mantels. Near Alex’s workshop, a doorway opened into another space as big as the first.
All along one wall ran a sort of long table—really just glorified sawhorses topped with plywood, with smaller sawhorses on top of that—used as a double-decker display for old windows. Everything from diamond panes, leaded glass and stained glass, to the humblest single-paned sash windows. Some were one-of-a-kind; some were matching sets. Lauren was enthralled by the various finishes on the frames, from raw wood through various colors of peeling paint, and all the old latches. She took a lot of pictures.
Another table held boxes upon boxes of doorknobs, door plates, drawer pulls, latches and hinges in brass and bronze, painted metal and glass. Then underneath the table was an assortment of door grilles in bars and filigree of cast and beaten iron, some painted, some not. Old iron gates and fence sections lined the walls.
Alex watched Lauren as they drew near the end of this room, only to come to an opening leading to yet another, this one filled with doors. Her face lit up, just as he’d known it would.
“How far does this place go on?” Lauren asked.
“Pretty far. There are two other rooms after this one, and we have a whole warehouse at a different location that has nothing but old flooring—oak, mesquite, even some longleaf pine.”
“Are you kidding me? My dad would lose his mind if he could see that. So would I.”
She stopped short, shut her eyes and held up her hands, palms out, like she was practicing great self-restraint. “But first things first. I actually do need a front door. I don’t know what happened to the old one, but it’s not there now.”
There was no real rhyme or reason to the door room. The doors were all pretty much chucked in together, front to back like books on a shelf, separated only by dividers every four to six feet that made it easy to get them in and out. The dimensions and prices were written in chalk on the doors’ edges.
Lauren flipped through doors like she was shopping for record albums at some hipster music store. She squealed like a little girl when she came to one arched door made of vertical planks, with a hole in the top for a grille.
“Ooh! I love this one! I wonder if that grille with the ivy filigree would fit in the space. Wouldn’t it look great in the bunkhouse?”
Alex put back his head and laughed. “Can you just imagine the vaqueros coming to the door and opening the little thing and looking out to see who’s there? No, this door is for an alcalde’s mansion, or maybe a mission. The vaqueros would have something more like this.”
He showed her a rugged old panel door. “This was salvaged from an old house on a ranch that got bulldozed to make way for a subdivision. It’s not flashy, but it’s solid.”
“I love it! What color should we paint it? I’m thinking a rich, deep red.”
Alex put his arms protectively around the door. “Oh, no. No paint. Not when the original finish is in such good shape.”
Lauren gave it a doubtful look. “I don’t know that it’s in that good of shape.”
“For a door this age it is. Let me give it a light sanding and a coat of tung oil, and then see what you think.”
“Well...okay. But the exterior of the house needs some color.”
“You have the whole front porch for that. I’ve always thought it was a shame nobody sits on that porch anymore. It runs the whole length of the house, and overlooks that one pasture with the pond where the two ducks and the egret live. You can just see the spire of the old Baptist church sticking up past the road.”
“It is a nice view. Maybe some old wooden chairs and tables arranged in little clusters, with some nasturtiums in window boxes along the rail. I could see that.”
“We have some milk paint in stock. Rich, velvety and period-appropriate. Come see.”
He took her to the display of sample colors. She grabbed the Barn Red and the Sunflower.
“These would be gorgeous, and really pop against the siding. But is milk paint durable enough for outdoors?”
“It is if you use the outdoor additive.”
She put the paint samples back down with that same look of self-restraint. “It’s a great idea. But I’m going to wait on it. I’ve never been in charge of a whole renovation project and I want to do a good job. I mean, if it were just me, I’d putter along and try different things and take forever, but this is for Dalia, and she likes things done in a logical, orderly sequence. I have a budget and a timetable, and I’m sticking with them.”
“That’s a good plan, especially with the baby on the way. When’s it due?”
Lauren looked startled. “What?”
“Tony and Dalia’s baby. January, isn’t it?”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Early January. Dalia’s almost got the baby’s room finished.”
“As if she didn’t have enough going on. But I guess people have to be organized where babies are concerned.”
“Yeah, I guess they do. Hey, will you look over my plan? I could use your input for this project. I mean, I know how to do the work, and I know color and design, but I do want to stay true to the period, without spending too much money. You seem to be kind of an expert, and I’d really appreciate it if you could give me some direction.”
She could not have said anything more calculated to warm his heart, but he kept his voice cool as he said, “Sure, I’ll take a look.”
Lauren’s graph-paper blueprint was surprisingly easy to follow, with all the pertinent measurements clearly marked. And the layout looked good. Simple as the sketch was, it somehow had a very artistic vibe, like it was going to be printed in a magazine to accompany a renovation feature. All the doors were marked, exterior and interior, with in-swing and out-swing, right-and left-handing all specified, and specified correctly. In the margin was a complete breakdown of windows to be replaced or repaired, followed by a list of things to be done, in a sequence that made sense.
“You’re restoring the original windows, I see.”
“Yes. I have one frame in good shape to use as a template. Do you have someone who can make new frames and do the glazing?”
“That would be me. And you’re replacing drywall?”
“Yeah. I’m not looking forward to it, but it has to be done.”
“Maybe not. You could install beadboard in some places. And there’s this clay stuff you can use that looks like old plaster. The color’s mixed in, so you’d do wall repair and paint all at one go. We’re an authorized dealer and we have it in stock.”
Soon they were zipping around the store like a couple of Ping-Pong balls, talking fast. Two spots of color rose in Lauren’s cheeks.
He was leading her past some old fireplace mantels when he got an idea that almost stopped him in his tracks. But he played it cool. Keeping his tone casual, he asked, “Hey, did Tony ever cut up that mesquite that fell on the fence?”
“No, it’s still lying there. The goats like to get up on it and play king of the mountain. Ooh! Claw-foot tubs! We’ve got to have one of these for the bathroom. I could paint the exterior some deep, rich color with superglossy paint.”
“There’s an old cast-iron tub currently serving as a watering trough in the southwest pasture at La Escarpa. If you ask nice, maybe Dalia will let you use part of your budget to replace it with a new galvanized water trough and put the tub in the bunkhouse.”
Her face lit up like he’d said there was Confederate gold hidden in the well. “Oh! I’ll bet it came out of the bunkhouse to begin with! There’s a set of claw feet on the front porch. They must go together!”
Then she saw an ornate wall sconce and stopped dead.
“This,” she said, picking it up and holding it up reverently. “This has to be in the bunkhouse. It’s going in if I have to pay for it myself.”
“It’s too fancy.”
“No, it’s not. Trust me. I’m not talking about putting in a bunch of gilded, curlicued stuff. Just this one. It’s going to go on the living-room wall and it’s going to look amazing.”
“It is a nice piece. I’ve always liked it. But it doesn’t really work historically. The time period’s fine, but it doesn’t make sense for it to be in the bunkhouse.”
“You don’t know that. One of the cowboys could have been really eccentric, or come from a rich background.”
“If he’s so rich, what’s he doing working on someone else’s ranch?”
“Maybe he’s a younger son and his brother inherited the whole estate. Maybe he got dispossessed because his father didn’t approve of the girl he loved, and he defied his father to be with her, but then she died young and he ended up rootless and drifting and alone. Maybe the family fell on hard times and lost their property, but he always remembered his origins and loved fine things, and he started out at La Escarpa as a lowly ranch hand but worked his way up to being foreman. There has to be a story to explain it, even if we don’t know it, because this thing belongs at the bunkhouse. Houses are made by real people with quirks and inconsistencies and backgrounds and personal histories. It makes sense that they would have their odd bits.”
Alex thought about this. “Maybe the cowboy isn’t even a native Texan. He might have come from some other state or even another country. Texas did attract a whole lot of a certain type of man.”
“Like that bumper sticker. I Wasn’t Born in Texas, but I Got Here as Quick as I Could.”
“Exactly.”
Lauren hugged the sconce to her chest. “I’m getting it.”
By now she had a substantial order put together—doors and hardware, mostly, and now the sconce. He rang her up; she paid, then walked with him back to his workshop. He brought the doors along on a hand truck.
“You sure do have plenty of hand tools,” she said.
“Yeah, I keep a lot of my personal tools here. Some of them were my grandfather’s, and quite a few of those were handed down to him from way back. This hand plane that I was using when you came in is about two hundred years old and still works like a dream.”
“I guess they don’t make them like that anymore.”
“No, they do not. Tools used to be made to last. I always find that vintage hand tools are sturdier and hold an edge better than newer ones.”
“Is it really worth it to use them, though? Wouldn’t it be faster to use a belt sander?”
“It might. I haven’t ever done a side-by-side comparison as to time and results. But given a choice, I’ll always go with a hand tool if at all feasible. I use power tools when I have to, but I don’t like the noise or the feel. It’s a barrier between me and the materials. I’m more in tune with the wood when I use the hand plane. I can hear myself think. And there’s nothing like the joy of passing a razor-sharp blade that I’ve honed myself over a piece of wood and hearing that little whisper of sound and seeing that thin slice of wood come out in a big loose curl and feeling that buttery smooth surface left behind. I think the result is better, too. The hand plane leaves the wood brighter and gives it more depth.”
She smiled. “You make a good case. You know what you ought to do? Put pictures of your tool wall on the store’s website. Really, that website needs a lot of work. I mean it was all right—it got me here—but it did not give an adequate idea of the scope or grandness of the place. Who maintains it?”
“I don’t know that anyone maintains it. Don and Susan set it up—they’re the owners—and I remember they grumbled a lot while doing it. I got the impression it was a one-time deal.”
Lauren made an indignant sound. “A one-time deal? I’ll have to talk to them. This business has potential client written all over it. But you know what would really dress up the site, is some pics of you in your workshop wearing your reenactor clothes.”
“What good would that do?”
“Are you kidding me? A gorgeous man in nineteenth-century attire, running a hand plane along an old door? That would draw the women in droves. You’d have to beat them off with a stick.”
A gorgeous man? Is that what she thought he was?
“Wow,” he said. “I think I’ve just been objectified. Like a bikini-clad woman in a car ad, or a pickle on a sandwich plate.”
“Sorry. I guess that was insensitive.”
“It’s okay. I don’t get objectified very often. I kinda like it.”
Alex’s love life was pretty abysmal. This time with Lauren in Architectural Treasures had actually been better than any date he’d been on in...well, ever. Somehow things hadn’t worked out for him that way. It seemed that most women were not interested in a man who worked sixty-plus hours at two blue-collar jobs, busted his rear at an abandoned ranch on his days off, lived in a crappy apartment and never had any time or money to spend on anything but reproduction clothing and old guns. It was for the best; it was easier for a single man to work such hours and sock away money like he did. But it did get lonely.