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And here I was with a duplex. Trying to keep it casual, I sipped my wine. “What’s your budget?” Not that it mattered. I’d rent to her at a rate she could afford if she was actually interested in the other unit. It was the first time I’d ever been in a position to really help her escape the situation with her father.
“Why?”
“Because this house is a duplex. I need to find a tenant for the other half.” Of course, that hadn’t been the plan at all. But this was Caroline.
She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that to you.”
I wasn’t sure what she thought she’d be doing. “You’d be helping me out. I’d intended to fix the place up first, but as you’ve no doubt clued in on, I don’t have a ton of extra time, and I’ll be spending it on this side first. C’mon, let’s take a look.”
Before she could protest, I set down my wine and nudged her toward the front door. We stepped outside, into the balmy summer evening, and circled around the lower level porch that followed the asymmetrical facade of the house to the other door. One of the few things I had managed in the past week was replacement of some rotten floorboards out here and upstairs, where I’d noted I needed to replace some railing, too. I let us into the unit and flipped on the lights to show the kitchen. As I hadn’t intended to come over here, it hadn’t been cleaned yet, so I focused on the high points.
“The floors eventually need refinishing, but they’re solid. Original oak. The cabinets aren’t what you call pretty, but again, solid.”
“Nothing a little paint wouldn’t fix,” she murmured.
“Or a lot of paint. The walls need a fresh coat throughout.”
I took her through the living room in the back corner and the other smaller room that might serve as an office or other bedroom, then up the converted service stairs to the second floor.
“There are two bedrooms up here that share a full bath. The layout is a little funky because whoever converted this place legit carved up a normal house, but it’s objectively solid, the roof doesn’t leak, and you’d know your neighbor at least a little bit.”
I could see her reluctant interest and went in for the kill, naming a ridiculously low price I prayed she could afford.
She shot me some major side eye. “You’re massively underpricing.”
I totally was, but I shrugged. “I got this thing in a short sale and paid a stupid low price for it. Between rent and, if you want to take on the painting to fix up this side yourself, I think we can call it even. We could even do things on a month-to-month basis, if that’s more comfortable for you.”
She studied me for a long minute. “Is this just another way to save me?”
I sensed I’d lose all traction with her if I wasn’t completely honest. “Maybe some. But I truly do need a tenant. Having someone who’d fix up this side would save me a lot of time and effort. And also, if you’re here, I can keep an eye out for you, whether we decide the dating thing is real or not.”
The floor creaked as she paced across the room to the window that faced the water. From this position, you could just see the expanse of it over the dunes.
“I came over here tonight to save you from yourself and tell you thanks, but no thanks to your kind offer of fake dating me. You don’t need all the stress and headaches that being linked to me in any way would cause you.”
“I’m a big boy. One who doesn’t give a shit what other people think.”
“That’s easy to say when you haven’t had to deal with the consequences of being attached to me yet.”
“Whatever they are, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. I like you, Caroline. And I want to be someone who’s in your corner, in whatever way you’re okay with.”
With a half laugh, she turned and waved a hand at me. “See? You say stuff like that, and it makes it really hard not to want to date you for real.”
I held in the fist pump, but not the smile. “I’ll keep that in mind. But we’re not talking about the status of our relationship just now. We’re talking business.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and it was all I could do to keep my focus on the conversation rather than wanting to do the same with my own teeth. If she said yes to this, there was a strong possibility that her answer to the rest would be no. And she needed to know that was an option, no matter what I really wanted long term.
“Listen, my renting to you is entirely unrelated to the rest of it. You need a place. I have a place. One that’s got room for all three of you and is available as soon as I can get to the hardware store to have keys made. Do you want it?”
8
Caroline
“I can’t believe you signed a lease without talking to us first.”
I ignored my brother’s implied criticism and led my family up the steps of the two-story beach house that would now be home, trailing a hand over the wood railing smoothed by time and tidal winds. As most houses on Hatterwick, this one sat up on brick piers, elevated several feet above ground level to allow room for flooding. It was a necessary architectural choice here on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The cedar shake siding was faded to the color of driftwood from decades of salt air. It would need some patching where moisture had caused the wood to rot and shingles to loosen, but Hoyt would see to that. The brickwork on the two chimneys marking either end of the steeply pitched gable roof was crumbling in spots. That might actually be a bit outside the range of home improvement projects he could tackle himself, but there’d be someone on-island who could handle it. Probably.
Using the keys Hoyt had dropped off yesterday, I opened the apartment and led my siblings inside. “It was a really good deal. I had to make a fast decision or someone else was going to get it.”
