“I don’t know.” I don’t have a good reason besides that it’s crazy and presumptuous.
He pushes his door open and climbs out, that mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Come on.”
I shake my head. This is a side of Brett I’ve never seen before. “Does he do this a lot?”
Donovan smiles but says nothing.
Brett throws open my door and stands there, waiting, his hand out.
“I can’t believe you’re making me do this,” I say, sliding out.
“Don’t you want to show it to me?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Come on, then.” He tugs on my hand, his fingers through mine sending a thrill through my body. “We’ll do it together.”
I fall into a slow-paced walk with him as we take the path toward the stately wraparound porch, his steps with the new cast tentative. “You’re doing all the talking. I’m not saying a single word,” I warn him.
That doesn’t seem to bother Brett, as he grabs the knocker and bangs against the solid oak door, and I clench my thighs together, a sudden rush of nerves making me feel like I have to pee.
“Hmm . . .” He frowns, cupping his hands around his eyes and leaning against one of the stained-glass panels that bank either side of the door.
I glance around at the neighboring houses, to see if anyone’s watching. This feels like the kind of neighborhood where people keep an eye out for each other. Luckily—for us—the houses are spread too far apart and a line of bushes and evergreens separates us from the closest one, blocking the view of the porch. “We should leave. This is trespassing. Can we go?” As anxious as I am, I feel a teensy bit disappointed. Part of me must have hoped this crazy idea of Brett’s would work.
“Yeah. I guess.” He sighs. “Another time.”
I move to lead the way down the steps. The door creaking open stalls me.
I turn around just as Brett steps through the front door, a key sitting in the lock.
Chapter 31
“It’s way nicer than that sell sheet you showed me,” Brett muses, standing in the foyer, the grand spiral staircase that reaches all the way to the third floor in front of him. “You said there was another staircase somewhere?”
They do have another staircase—a narrow and steep one to reach the room in the attic. But I can’t explain that to him right now, because I’m speechless. My footfalls echo through the wide, vacant place as I wander, my gaze taking in the rooms bare of furniture, the walls empty of art but with rectangular dust marks where the pictures hung. As if someone recently removed them.
“What did you do?” I ask in an eerily calm voice, though I think I already know what Brett did.
Brett bought the Gingerbread House.
“Turns out Mr. and Mrs. Chase were thinking of selling this place. They’d bought it as a summer home for their family, but they could already see that they weren’t going to get enough use out of it. Plus, it was too much work for them.” Brett strolls over to pick a picture hanger out off the wall.
They were thinking of selling it. As in . . . “So you asked them if you could buy it?” How is it possible that Brett Madden bought a house in Balsam and the entire town hasn’t heard about it already?
“Yeah. Well, not me. A representative. My lawyer, actually. Signing on my behalf. Kept my name out of the paperwork. That’s pretty common. My parents do it all the time.”
Okay. I’m trying to wrap my head around this. Brett bought the Gingerbread House.
And Brett knows that this is my and Brenna’s dream house.
I’m no idiot. I just can’t believe this is happening.
“What?” He asks casually, barely managing to keep a straight face.
“Why did you buy this house?”
He doesn’t answer me, instead wandering farther down the hall. “The kitchen could use an update, but it’s a good size. What do you think?” I find him standing in the middle of the spacious and bare farmhouse-style kitchen. “Could knock out this wall . . .”
“Brett.”
He slides his hand along the surface of the industrial-size stainless steel fridge. “This is new, but the stove needs replacing . . .”
“Brett.”
Finally, he stops to look at me. “I was thinking about what you said, about this being a big tourist town and there not being enough of these kinds of places. I figured a little business venture might be a good idea. For me.”
“So you’re saying that you bought this place . . . for you?” I wasn’t expecting that answer.
“Yeah.” He says it so innocently, I almost believe him.
“You want to own an inn.”
“Why not?”
“You, Brett Madden,” my gaze drifts over his muscular six-foot-two frame, “giant NHL hockey legend, son of a Hollywood movie star, want to open an inn in Balsam, Pennsylvania.”
He shrugs, still maintaining a neutral expression. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. This is all just a little too familiar to me for some reason.”
He’s on the move again, through the kitchen and into the small den. “This faces east, so I thought it’d be a cool place for guests to have their breakfast.”
“Did you, now . . .”
I trail him through a set of French doors and into a room with a fireplace. “And I figure this room could be closed off and converted into a dining room, for small events. I can hire a chef. There are some good local chefs, right?”
I bite my tongue.
“What do you think? Good idea?”
I think that I have this room marked as the dining room in my sketchbook, and, despite being drunk and flipping through it only once, he somehow remembers it. That’s what I think.
When I don’t answer, he leads me out and around the corner, down a hallway. “This here was one of the big selling features. For me, of course.” He pushes the door open. “There’s a separate two-bedroom apartment, so I could live here comfortably, away from any guests.”
Is he being serious? Or is this all part of whatever game he’s playing at? “You’re going to live in Balsam?”
He frowns. “Well, yeah. Of course. How else am I going to manage things around here?”
He’s so good at screwing with me, I nearly let myself get excited at the prospect of it being true.
“It’ll take months to renovate the rest of the place. I’ve gotta decide on a good contractor. Local, ideally. I’ve heard that Boyd & Sons are the best around here.”
“From Belmont, yeah. They come into Diamonds sometimes,” I agree, still in shock, following him into the living room.
He pauses to glance at me. “I’ve got a few great ideas, too, to make it homey.” He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, throwing it into sexy disarray. “I was thinking about a nice forest-green duck wallpaper for this room. Maybe a few stuffed birds mounted on the wall, over there and there. And I’m going to take up hunting in the fall. Hopefully, I’ll bag a buck. Or a couple. One head over each table. What do you think?”
When he glances back again to see the horror clearly splayed across my face, his face cracks into a broad grin. “Finally, a reaction! Jeez!”