For the first time, he looked faintly annoyed with the door.
Meryl folded her arms. “You make it sound very straightforward.”
“It usually is.”
“Comforting.”
That almost-smile appeared again, there and gone.
He shifted his hold, braced one boot more firmly on the porch, and tried again. This time, the door gave with a scrape and a grudging shudder, releasing a breath of stale air and old wood.
“There,” he said.
“Show-off.”
His head turned toward her. “I had to preserve my reputation.”
“You told me your name. I’m not sure that counts as a reputation.”
Something about that seemed to catch him off guard. He glanced at her properly then, as if reassessing her. “Fair point.”
“Right.” Meryl tightened her hold on her notebook and peered past him into the dim hallway beyond. “So the front door wasn’t the problem. Good to know.”
His mouth shifted again, almost, but not quite a smile.
The hallway was narrow and shadowed, the light from the open door reached only a little way across the floorboards before fading. She could make out the foot of a staircase, a small table against the wall, and the vague shape of something draped in a dust sheet farther back.
Meryl stepped over the threshold.
The board beneath her foot dipped.
She stopped.
Spencer’s hand came out, not touching her, just bracing lightly against the doorframe beside her as if to stop her without quite doing it.
“I’d be careful,” he said. “If the porch is that far gone, there’ll be more inside.”
Meryl glanced up at him. He was close enough now that she could feel the heat from him. Close enough that the hallway suddenly felt smaller than it had a second ago.
“I can manage,” she said.
“I’m sure you can.” His voice stayed even. “Still doesn’t mean the floor won’t drop you into the crawl space.”
That was irritatingly fair.
She looked back at the hallway, then down at the board beneath her boot, then at the notebook in her hand with its neat lists and tidy categories and growing collection of bad news.
Exterior. Porch. Door. Floors, apparently.
This was no longer a cosmetic job. It wasn’t even a straightforward one. Pine Cottage wasn’t a quick inheritance to sort out and move on from.
And Spencer Thornberg, standing there all quiet competence and maddening calm, was not helping.
She stepped back onto the porch and looked at him properly.
Solid. Quiet. Watchful.
He stood like a man who understood old timber and mountain weather and houses with more problems than they first admitted to.
