“I don’t know what it is. It’s only on the bottom, too; not spread along the whole thing, as you’d expect rust to do,” he muttered, using the tip of the blade to pick at the damage. “Hmm. Whatever it is, it’s discoloring the metal…but I don’t think it’s from oxidation—the whole spindle would have the damage instead of just the bottom part. And it’s just in this section of the railing.Strange.”
He clicked his knife closed and slipped it into his jeans pocket. When he turned to look at Leslie, she was surprised at how green his eyes were. Wine bottlegreen.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Can you fixit?”
“Of course I can fix it. But it won’t becheap.”
She sighed and crossed her arms over her shirt, releasing a soft puff of drywall dust. “I was afraid of that. But in order to keep my historical society designation, I’ve got to replace it accurately. When can you get me on the schedule tostart?”
“Next week,probably.”
“Probably? All right, then, that’s sooner than I expected, to be honest. So why did it take over a week to get you out here to take a look atit?”
Declan gave her a forbidding look. “Had some things going on with my daughter. Wasbusy.”
Leslie felt a surprising sort of deflation. His daughter. Which implied a wife too. Not that it mattered—she was too busy to be interested in a man. “I hope everything’s okay,” she saidautomatically.
“She’s fifteen. What do you think?” he said wryly, then turned back to the matter at hand. “I want to know what’s under there.” He gestured to the thin base of the balustrade, the flat channel into which the stairway spindles were set. “Maybe there’s damp under that skinny section there and that’s causing the rust to work its way up frombeneath.”
“You said it wasn’t rust,” Leslie remindedhim.
“Well, I don’t know what the hell it is,” he said absently, picking at it again with his thumbnail. “That’s why I want to look underthere.”
She shrugged. “Fine by me. You’ve got to take it out anyway if you’re going to restoreit.”
“Yousure?”
“I’ll help. I already tangled with some dastardly drywallanyway.”
He eyed her for a moment, and she swore his lips twitched again. “Dastardlydrywall?”
“It fell on me with no provocation whatsoever. I call thatdastardly.”
“I see.” His eyes were crinkling at the corners, but for whatever reason, he didn’t seem to want to let a full-blown smile erupt. He turned back to the railing. “Well, let’s get toit.”
Leslie didn’t have to do much at first. She stepped out of the way as Declan removed the main column at the bottom of the stairway with a few well-placed thuds of a rubber mallet. Then it was short work to dismantle the handrail, separating it from the spindles, which positioned the organic, curvaceous design about three inches above thebase.
While Declan carried the old pieces outside, Leslie began to work out some of the iron spikes from their moorings. They were set in a wooden track made from maple, which, she noted, definitely needed a new coat ofvarnish.
Several spikes came loose easily, and she moved a two-foot-wide section of railing away and leaned it against the wall. But when Leslie got to the area with the rust, they didn’t want to budge. “Do you think they’re cemented or glued in there?” she asked when Declan paused to watch her struggle withthem.
“They would have been glued originally, but by now, it wouldn’t be that strong. Let metry.”
Leslie stepped aside. She had a moment of pure female appreciation as Declan stood in front of the railing and clamped his hands around one of the spikes, fist over fist, and pulledup.
Though the spike didn’t budge, his muscles sure as hell did. She actually went a little dry in the mouth, watching the way his bare forearms rippled and his shoulders shifted as he tried in vain to wiggle the spikes free.Oh myGod.
“What the hell?” he muttered, and the moment was over as he stepped back from therailing.
“I’m thinking cement,” she said, bending over to look into the holes of the three spikes she’d alreadyremoved.
“That would be very unusual, but there’s definitely something going on in there. Okay if I get a little more insistent with it?” he asked. “It might make amess.”
Leslie made a show of looking down at her powdery clothing and then around the foyer, which showed definite signs of being a work in progress. “I don’t think that’ll be aproblem.”
“I’ve got to grab a few tools from the truck. Be rightback.”
While Declan was outside, Leslie made her way back to where she’d left her cell phone and other tools. One of her life-altering changes when she’d left the corporate world was to no longer be a slave to her smartphone or computer, so she often made herself leave her phone in another room, or at least out of sight orreach.
