Cara Colter - A Vow to Keep

The something that had sizzled through him back there at her house, watching her in her bedroom, could threaten all that, if he let it.

He wasn’t going to let it, plain and simple.

She was a good deed, not very unlike stopping to help that girl on the road back there. Linda would probably kill him if she knew. Or perhaps she’d kill him anyway. He slid her a look. He needn’t have worried about Linda having designs on him. Whatever he’d said or done back there after he’d pulled back into traffic had sealed his fate. She looked like she’d rather be sharing the car with Attila the Hun than with him.

They entered the Mount Royal area, located on a hill just south of downtown Calgary. Developed between 1904 and 1914, this neighborhood had been developed to be prestigious from the very beginning. The lots were huge, the houses gracious, the boulevards lined with mature, leafy trees. Despite some in-fill housing, the area still held the grace of old money. Houses here started at one and a half million dollars, and many sold for three times that.

They pulled up to the O’Brian house, typical of this area. It had covered porches on both floors, bay windows with original stained glass uppers, wide steps, an enormous yard. Despite the thrill of pleasure Rick felt when he saw the house, he could not stifle a groan. For the one other woman who thought he was Attila the Hun was sitting on the front porch of his house, rocking back and forth as if she owned the place.

“There’s Mildred,” he said. “Careful. She’s probably got a shotgun loaded with salt up there on that porch with her.”

Mildred, of course, looked like the quintessential little old lady, so Linda gave him a look that branded him an insensitive boor, and bailed out of the Cadillac as if it held a bad smell.

He sighed and got out of the vehicle. He shoved his hands in his pockets and trailed Linda down the walk. Mildred, her face set in battle lines, was coming down the stairs to meet them.

“Linda Starr,” he said reluctantly, “Mildred Housewell.” What he wanted to say, to Mildred, was get the hell off my property, but he didn’t want Linda to know just how mean he could be.

“I used to be an O’Brian,” Mildred said, laying claim to the house.

“How lovely,” Linda said, as if she meant it. She took both the old woman’s wrinkled hands in hers. “Would you be kind enough to show me the house?”

Mildred shot him a look loaded with satisfaction, as if she had finally been recognized. “I’d love to,” she said.

He unlocked the door. And then he was ignored as the two women explored the house together.

Mildred’s granddad had been the first owner of the house, which was built in 1912. Each of the rooms had a story. She knew the history of each of those additions and seemed terribly attached to the worst of the renovations, rooms divided, bathrooms upgraded.

The house was quite terrible inside—original hardwood covered under stained rugs, a distressing life collection of old stuff that no one wanted. There was extensive water damage under the kitchen sink and in one of the upstairs bedrooms, so the whole place smelled musty.

But the bones of the house—stained glass, gorgeous wood, high ceilings, architectural details that no one could afford anymore—were exquisite. Rick knew the Calgary market, and he knew that even if he invested a hundred thousand dollars in restoration costs he could make a lot of money on this house. And restore it to dignity at the same time.

He caught a glimpse of Linda’s face, and recognized what he saw there. Like him, Linda loved houses, plain and simple. Not the new cookie cutter ones, but ones like this, regal old ladies of nearly a hundred who had seen generations come and go, who had character in every line.

“Do you have pictures of the way it used to look?” Linda asked Mildred when they’d arrived back at the front door.

Mildred shot him a look that could only be called vindictive. “Hundreds of them.”

“Do you think I could see them?”

“For what purpose?” she asked Linda suspiciously.

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