“The sweet with the heat. If that’s a metaphor for southern girls, I approve.”
She shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me tonight.”
* * *
When their entrees arrived, Hattie managed to steer the conversation away from any discussions of chemistry by asking Trae about his favorite projects.
“The big-budget ones are the most fun, of course,” he said. “These Silicon Valley tech bros who have money to burn are up for the most audacious, over-the-top interiors I can come up with. And they all want to outdo each other. I did an actual freestanding multiplex movie theater for one guy, complete with a full-service concession stand with a wood-fired pizza oven.”
“That’s crazy,” Hattie said.
“What about you? What’s your favorite historic restoration?”
“Hmm.” It didn’t take Hattie long to come up with a response.
“Two years ago, a friend of Tug’s sold us his late mother-in-law’s house in Ardsley Park. That’s a very desirable in-town neighborhood that was Savannah’s first streetcar suburb. It was a rundown 1920s Georgian Revival on a gorgeous double lot. The family never listed it with a real estate agent.”
She smiled at the memory. “It had hundred-year-old live oaks and boxwood hedges, set back off the street, and it was big—almost four thousand square feet, with an incredible solarium with a fireplace and original leaded-pane windows and Cuban tile floors.”
“Tell me more,” Trae prompted.
Hattie’s face lit up as she described the transformation. “We completely reworked the kitchen space, took out most of the walls. At the time, we had a really talented cabinetmaker working for us. He copied some glass-fronted cabinets that were in the breakfast nook, and we did all the upper cabinets in that same look. We stripped a dozen layers of old paint off the butler’s pantry, down to the original oak, and dropped a copper bar sink into it. Best of all, our electrician figured out how to remove the guts of a 1920s-era walk-in fridge and install a new working compressor and motor.”
She sighed. “That’s the dreamiest kitchen I’ve ever done. The rest of the remodel was pretty cut and dried. We made a downstairs master suite from what had been a den and the servants’ quarters, and then we took the four upstairs bedrooms and made them into three en suite bedrooms. There was an old carriage house on the property too. We converted the downstairs garage into a pool-house-slash-playroom, and made the upstairs a guest cottage.”
“I’m impressed,” Trae said. “And how did you make out, when you flipped it?”
“Not as well as we should have,” she said ruefully. “I did what Tug always accuses me of doing. I fell in love with the house and spent too much. We bought it for $235,000, and spent another $200,000 on the remodel, which at the time was the most we’d ever spent out of pocket on spec like that.”
“Doesn’t sound like that much to me. All in, around $435,000, right?”
“Not a lot to you, but it was for us. We probably could have made more if we’d installed the pool and backyard landscaping I’d designed, but Tug put his foot down, so we listed it at $779,000 and sold it for $750,000, and I was completely thrilled.”
“You nearly doubled your investment,” Trae said. “Well done.”
“Not as well done as the guy we sold it to,” Hattie admitted. “He put in the pool, probably spent around fifty thousand, and flipped it six months later for $1.2 million.”
She sighed. “Every time I drive by that house, I’m tempted to knock on the door and ask the new owners to give me a tour.”
“If you love your darlings, you have to let them go,” Trae said. “I agree with your father-in-law, by the way. Never fall in love with something that won’t love you back. It’s just a house. And there’s always another project, right around the corner.”
“Easy for a man to say,” Hattie said. “Not so easy for someone like me, with a tendency to fall too hard.”
He studied her face, illuminated by the candle lantern on the table. “I wouldn’t have guessed that about you. But it’s good to know.”
Trae clasped her hand in his, and this time she let him. He leaned across for another kiss.
“Ahem.”
Their server was back, with a plate containing a huge chocolate brownie topped with ice cream, fudge sauce, and whipped cream, which he placed on the table in front of Trae.