Magnolia Nights Page 9

  “Mills, named after the renowned architect Robert Mills.”

  Ellie shook her head. “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s most famous for designing the Washington Monument. He’s originally from Charleston, graduated from our very own College of Charleston.” When she stared at him with her mouth agape, he added, “I’m an architect. I’m not in the same league as Mills, but I’ve designed a noteworthy home or two. Mostly I renovate historic homes. I have a passion for protecting the integrity of our antebellum houses while modernizing them to meet the needs of the owners’ lifestyles.”

  Ellie cast her eyes toward the dark skies. A heavenly being had dropped this man at her doorstep. Well . . . if not her doorstep, then just across the street from the antebellum house she wanted to modernize to meet her needs.

  “When can you start? Because, Mr. Hagood, do I ever have a project for you.”

  He chuckled. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “A kitchen expansion for starters.”

  “I’ve studied the architecture of most of these homes, but I’ve never been inside yours,” he said. “I’d love to see it sometime.”

  As the words left his lips, the skies opened up and a gust of wind forced Ellie to grab hold of her hat. “Is now too soon for a tour?”

  “I think now is an ideal time,” he said, pulling his hood over his head. He clapped his hands, and both dogs flew to his side. “Come here, Pip-squeak.” He snatched Pixie up, tucking her inside his rain jacket, and they took off running across the street, up her sidewalk, and onto her porch. They fell against the side of the house, gasping for air. Their clothes, including their raincoats, were soaked through to their skin.

  “We were tempting fate by staying out so long in this weather.” He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket. “At least my phone didn’t get wet.” He accessed his radar app. “I hope you’re in the mood for company, because it doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.”

  “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,” she said, removing her key from under the mat. “But you might change your mind when you see inside.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m in love already,” he said, running his palm along the hand-carved columns that flanked the massive front door.

  They stepped over the sandbags and stood just inside the door, dripping onto the floors.

  His eyes took in everything at once as they entered the house. “Wow! And here I thought Dracula’s Castle was in Transylvania.”

  “Is it really that bad?” she asked in a wounded voice.

  “You seem like a stylish woman. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the furnishings need updating, but the house has great bones. I’d explore if not for . . .” He eyed the puddle of water collecting on the floor around him.

  “Don’t move! I’ll get some towels.” Ellie ran upstairs to the linen closet and returned with an armful of towels.

  They dried their dogs as best they could, but the stench of wet dog fur was already permeating the air.

  She handed Julian Pixie’s wadded-up towel. “The laundry room is at the end of the hall. Put your clothes in the dryer, and I’ll see if I can find you some clothes to wear.”

  With the dogs at his side, Julian headed down the hall to the laundry room. Upstairs in her room, Ellie changed into a dry pair of jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a pale-pink hoodie. She combed and towel-dried her hair and smeared clear gloss over her lips. She grabbed her robe from the hook on the bathroom door and went downstairs to the laundry room. Julian was standing beside the dryer in his boxers, which clung to his firm rear end. Covering her eyes with one hand, she thrust the robe at him with the other. “This is the best I can do. Sorry about the color.”

  “Don’t apologize. I personally think that pink rocks!”

  She smiled, her hand still covering her eyes. Not only was the robe pink, it was hot pink. And velour. Most men she knew would refuse to wear it.

  She snapped her fingers at the dogs. “Come on, you two. Let’s get you some water.”

  She led the dogs to the kitchen, where Julian joined her a few minutes later. She bit down on her lower lip to keep from laughing at the sight of him in her robe, although she had to admit she found his muscular calves sexy.

  “Go ahead, laugh. Don’t hold back for my sake,” he said to Ellie, and then turned to his dog, who was staring up at him with his tail wagging. “What’re you looking at?”

  “The dryer is one of the newer appliances in this house. Vintage 1970. If the power doesn’t go out, your clothes should be ready by the time we finish our tour.” Ellie opened a cabinet and retrieved two of the stemless wineglasses she’d brought from California. “Let’s start with the kitchen since we’re already here. Can I offer you a glass of wine? I have red and white.”

  “Wine would be great. I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

  She uncorked a bottle of pinot noir and poured two glasses. She handed him a glass and held hers out to him. “Cheers!”

  He clinked her glass. “Here’s to surviving Hurricane Lorene.” He took a gulp of wine and set his glass on the counter. “Tell me what you’re thinking in terms of a renovation. This kitchen could certainly use a makeover.”

  “I’m thinking of adding on. You can see for yourself how tiny the space is.”

  He circled the small kitchen as he explored the space. He paced back and forth several times in the butler’s pantry, peeked inside Maddie’s closet, and stood in front of the back door for several long minutes staring through the glass panes. “If you go out the back here twenty feet, you’d have plenty of room for a nice-size work space and an eat-in area. You could incorporate the butler’s pantry if you wanted, but you’d have plenty of room in the new addition without it. Personally, I find butler’s pantries charming.”

  “Why on earth would I want to keep the butler’s pantry? That space is awkward and serves no purpose except housing china, crystal, and glassware I never plan to use.”

  “Holding on to generations of Pringle family heirloom silver, china, and crystal may not be of interest to you, but I can promise you, you’ll miss the storage space if you take it out, especially if you like to entertain. Most of my clients convert a portion of their butler’s pantry to a wet bar of some sort. If you decided to keep it, I would update the cabinetry and create a pouring station with a sink and ice maker or wine cooler or both.”

  “Hmm.” Ellie tilted her head to the side as she considered his suggestion. “On the other hand, if I tore out the butler’s pantry, I could put the wet bar over there.” She waved her arm at the far corner of the room.

  “That works, too. The point is, you have plenty of options to modernize this space.”

  “Do you think it would be possible to have a banquette table and bench seats built into a wall of windows in the new area?”

  Julian reached for the pen and notepad on the counter, the one she used to make out her grocery lists. The pen flew across the pad as he drew. He spun the notepad around and slid it across the counter to her. “You mean something like this?”

  She picked up the notepad and studied the elevation he’d drawn. “You’re very talented, Julian, as an architect and an artist. This is exactly what I had in mind.”

  “That’s a popular configuration these days. My clients like to bring the outdoors inside as much as possible.” Wineglass in hand, he walked up and down the back hallway between the kitchen and her studio. “You’ll want to reconfigure this area in here. What do you call that room by the way?” He swept his hand in the direction of her studio. “I hope you don’t mind, I stuck my head in there while you were upstairs. I’m guessing those furnishings are yours, since they look nothing like the rest of the house.”

  Ellie smiled. “That’s my stuff from California. For now, I’m using it as my studio. I haven’t decided what purpose it will serve going forward.”

  “So you are an artist. I noticed the easels.”

  Ellie felt her face fl
ush. “I hope you didn’t look too closely at the paintings on the easels. One is an image I need to get out of my head, and the other I just started.”

  He offered her a warm smile. “I’m sure your work is wonderful, Ellie. But I didn’t go in. I didn’t want to drip water all over your sisal rug.”

  She wasn’t embarrassed about her work. She just wasn’t ready to share the magnolia watercolor yet. The painting elicited such strong emotions for her. At a glance, it was nothing more than a simple painting of a magnolia tree. And not a very good one. The observer had to look closely to see the little girl with her doll baby hiding behind the thick branches.

  She followed Julian back to the butler’s pantry. “This was the exterior wall in the original house,” he said as he inspected the thickness of the dining room doorjamb. “Whoever added the kitchen did a crappy job.”

  “I’m not following you. Where was the original kitchen?”

  “In a separate building out behind the house. Prior to the Civil War, slaves cooked all the meals for the homeowner and his family over an open fireplace. Outhouses were built to keep the cooking smells and heat away from the main house. Most of these homes had a whole village of outhouses. In addition to the kitchen, they had a washhouse and a carriage house that would’ve served as a livery and the slaves’ quarters. Not to mention sheds to house the gardening equipment. Many of these kitchens and carriage houses were destroyed in the great earthquake of 1886. Of those that still exist, some have been attached to the main houses, while others have been converted into small homes.” As he spoke, his amber eyes were alive with excitement over what was undoubtedly his life’s passion.

  “That’s fascinating, Julian. You are a real expert. I have so much to learn about this area.”

  “I’m glad to hear your enthusiasm. So many folks today deem our cultural heritage as politically incorrect.”

  Ellie wrinkled her brow. “I don’t understand. We can’t change history. Why not learn from the mistakes our forefathers made?”

  “I agree with you,” he said, his face serious. “If only everyone felt that way.”

  She knocked on the dining room wall. “So if this was the exterior wall, where would the back door have been?”

  “Where the laundry room is now. Having a center hallway with doors on either end helped circulate the air back before the invention of air-conditioning. I can almost smell the salty air flowing through the hallway off the harbor on a cool day.”

  Ellie closed her eyes and imagined herself descending the staircase in a hoop skirt while Julian, dressed in his three-piece suit, waited at the door to take her for a carriage ride. Getting ahead of ourselves now, aren’t we, Ellie? She opened her eyes again and shook off her daydream.

  Ellie refilled their wineglasses, and they toured the rest of the downstairs, stopping at each room in turn, starting with the dining room and working their way clockwise. She saw the house in a whole new light through Julian’s eyes. He pointed out things she either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t known, like the Waterford chandelier in the dining room, the rows of crown molding, and the intricate carvings on the mantelpieces. He referred to the living room as the drawing room and the porches as piazzas. He was impressed by what he thought was cypress paneling in the library and suggested ways to lighten up the room by using neutral tones and putting an animal-print rug on the floor.

  “You sound like a decorator instead of an architect,” Ellie teased.

  He laughed. “It’s a fine line sometimes. My clients get so used to me making decisions for them, oftentimes they don’t know when to stop. I saw what you did with your studio. You have great taste, Ellie. You should clear out all of Count Dracula’s stuff and breathe fresh life into the other rooms.”

  “How would I go about doing that? I put my bedroom furniture in the attic. Everything else from my tiny apartment in San Francisco is in my studio. If I donated all my grandmother’s things to Goodwill, I’d have to start over with nothing.”

  “Would that be such a bad thing? But I wouldn’t donate it to Goodwill—not until you learn the value of your grandmother’s possessions. I have a friend who owns an antique store on King Street. I’ll get him over here after the storm. He’ll make you an offer on anything he’s interested in and make suggestions on how to get rid of the rest. If you’re looking for a designer, I’ve worked on a couple of projects with Jackie Hart of JSH Designs. She’s good at blending the old with the new. I’d be happy to introduce you.”

  “I’d like that.” Ellie nodded her head with enthusiasm. Her luck was changing. In the course of a stormy afternoon, not only had she made two new friends, she’d located a realtor, an architect, an antiques dealer, and a decorator. Maybe she would survive in Charleston after all.

  He asked to see the master bedroom and bolted up the stairs before she could stop him. “Wait! Where are you going?” She rushed to catch up with him with the dogs scrambling after her.

  At the top of the stairs, he turned right and barged into her grandmother’s room.

  “You’re wasting your time in here, Julian. It’s just more of the same gloominess.” She propped herself against the door to prevent it from closing on him. The dogs stood on the threshold with their fur raised in lines down their backs.

  Julian circled the room and opened the door to the bathroom. “This is one of the biggest masters I’ve seen in a house from this era. Are you sleeping in here?”

  She shook her head. “Not while my grandmother’s spirit is still here.”

  “Now, Ellie.” He cocked his head to the side, reminding her of a fish wife with his hairy arms and legs sticking out from her pink bathrobe. “Are you saying you believe in ghosts?”

  A week ago, before some otherworldly force had locked her in this room, she would have thought the idea preposterous. “Look at them.” She pointed at Mills and Pixie, their fur still standing to attention. Mills let out a little woof. “See! Your dog just growled at the room.”

  “That wasn’t a growl. That was a woof.” He looked down at the dogs and then up at her. “Does your grandmother’s spirit have anything to do with why you’re standing sentry in front of the door?”

  “You can make fun of me all you want, but on my first day here, I got locked in this room.” She gripped the doorknob. “Even though there’s no locking mechanism on this knob.

  “Every time I open this door, I come back five minutes later to find it closed.” His smile grew wider, his smirk more annoying, as she continued to talk. “According to my housekeeper, the Gullah people believe a spirit can’t rest until it passes into the afterworld. Maddie worked for my grandmother for forty years. She knew her better than anyone. She says my grandmother needs to know it’s okay for her to pass over, or whatever it is spirits do, and that keeping the door open will help her realize that.”

  With a flippant shrug, he said, “Then why not just take the door off its hinges?”

  “I can’t do that.” She shivered and drew her hoodie tighter around her. “If you remove the door, my grandmother’s spirit will be free to roam the house.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I want her spirit out of the house, not roaming around inside, floating over me while I’m sleeping.” She realized how ridiculous she sounded. Besides, she’d do just about anything to get rid of her grandmother’s spirit. “How hard is it to remove the door?”

  “It will take less than a minute if you’ll get me a flathead screwdriver and a hammer.”

  Ellie didn’t budge. “Maybe we should wait until after the storm. Her spirit might not be able to exit the house with the hurricane shutters closed.”

  His arm shot out with his pointer finger aimed at the stairs. “Go.”

  She hung her head and did as she was told. When she returned, Julian was squatting down talking to the dogs in a soothing voice and stroking their fur. Mills and Pixie relaxed and plopped down with their bellies flat against the floor. They watched with their muzzles resting on their f
ront paws as Julian hammered the pins out of the hinges and removed the heavy door from its frame. He wrestled the door to the empty bedroom across the hall and returned to admire his handiwork.

  “Tell me the truth, Julian,” she said as they stood looking into her grandmother’s room. “You’ve lived in Charleston all your life. Do you not believe in ghosts?”

  “I’ve experienced some strange phenomena in my day. Most of the houses in historic downtown date back to before the Civil War. We’re talking generations of interesting characters and domineering figures, many from the same families, living and dying in these homes. It stands to reason that some of their spirits may linger.”

  “I’d be willing to bet that none of those domineering figures ruled a household like my grandmother. And now you’ve set her spirit free to come after me in my sleep.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ellie

  While they waited for his clothes to finish drying, Julian and Ellie nibbled on pâté and watched the coverage of the storm on the local news channel. The circular mob of green and yellow was rotating on the radar in a definitive path toward the South Carolina coast.

  Julian explained that the worst of the storm would hit at low tide around midnight. “Which means the flooding won’t be too bad.”

  Knowledgeable on a variety of subjects, Julian was more worldly than Jake. She’d learned everything there was to know about her former lover during their first month together. Except, of course, that he was married with children living in the next state up.

  When the dryer buzzer sounded, he drained the last of the wine from his glass. “That’s my signal to leave.”

  “So soon? I have all this food. I was hoping you’d stay for dinner. If you don’t like the color”—she tugged on the sleeve of her robe—“I have a floral one upstairs you can wear instead.”

  He wrapped his arms around himself. “I like this one, thank you very much. It’s cozy and warm. I’m a real man. I can wear pink.” He stared down at Mills. “I’d love to stay for dinner, but I really need to feed this one before he starts gnawing at the pedestals on your dining room table.”