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Her jaw dropped. His logic was infuriating—and impeccable. Was it possible she was wrong about her grandfather?
But…the house. The house was a grand old dame, heavy with history and memories. The record player in the lounge was the beating heart at its centre, the soundtrack to their lives. The music he and grandma had danced to after dinner, every night, lost in their own world as the crackly ancient tracks whispered into the wallpaper-lined room. Everything was just as it had been when they’d first married, with the exception of a few mobility aids Maddie had gotten installed in recent years. Her grandfather was still fit and strong, but he was a little less sure on his feet, a little more prone to slips. She had come home six months ago to find him with a gash on his forehead, and he hadn’t been sure how it had happened. A concussion had been diagnosed at the local doctor’s surgery—Maddie had made sure the handles and railings were installed the very next day, along with ensuring her grandfather wore a device that would call her at the press of a button, if he ever hurt himself again.
“Is this what you do?” She asked, turning it back on him. “Do you undermine people until they’re so confused they sell out of a misplaced sense of altruism? As if it would be the ‘best thing’ for my grandpa? He’d be bereft without that house, Rocco. Bereft.”
“Him, or you?”
“Don’t act as though you know me.”
“You’re not the first overly sentimental homeowner I’ve dealt with.”
“Overly sentimental?” she repeated, outraged. “How dare you?”
“What would you call yourself?”
She gaped for air before getting out an indignant reply. “Appropriately attached.”
Another laugh, short and sharp and totally devoid of amusement.
“It’s not funny!” She jabbed her finger at his chest, then held it there, enjoying the sensation of pushing at him, surprising herself with the almost violent instinct. “None of this is funny.”
“You are not thinking clearly, Maddie.”
“How can you say that? I’ve been thinking clearly from the first moment he told me about your stupid offer, and how the rest of the street had gone gaga for the dollar signs you waved in their eyes.”
“You’ve been feeling since then. Feeling hurt, outraged, betrayed, terrified. And you’re acting on those feelings now. If you were thinking, you’d see that he can’t live in that house forever, and that you’re not going to want to, when the houses around it get knocked down and redeveloped.”
She gasped. “You can’t—you can’t do that. Not if we don’t sell.”
“That’s incredibly naïve.”
She glared at him, but the world was tilting beneath her feet. She didn’t know who she was, where she was, what made sense and what didn’t. She didn’t recognize anything about herself, or her feelings, or the man opposite her. Feelings and emotions were flooding her body, and he was right about one damned thing: she couldn’t think straight.
“I have a team of architects working on new plans as we speak. If your grandfather won’t sell, we’ll build around him.”
That snapped her focus back where it belonged. She’d seen a movie a few years back where something exactly like that happened. A little old man had his house turned into a relic by the modern buildings that enclosed it on all sides. She didn’t want that for Jack’s house. “It will look preposterous.”
“It’s not ideal,” he agreed with a smug line on his mouth that she wanted to loosen. “But you leave me very little choice.”
“You have all the choices in the world. Walk away from this. Build somewhere else.”
“Tear down other people’s homes, not your own? That’s not solving the problem, it’s just moving it to someone else’s lap.”
Somehow, he’d managed to take an argument that was founded on love and a desire to do what was right for her grandfather and made her feel incredibly selfish. “Then don’t tear down homes,” she muttered. “Build things without destroying beauty and history first.”
“Do you think I have no respect for the past, Maddie?”
For some reason, it bothered her that he was using the diminutive of her name. He, who was trying to destroy her life. He, the perennial bachelor. He, too suave and handsome for his own good, and all smug and patronizing. “You know what? My friends call me Maddie. You can call me Maddison. And yes, that’s exactly what I think.”
“Well, Maddison—,” only hearing her full name on his lips was so, so much worse. She flinched at the words, at what his rich, cultured accent did to them. His pronunciation was akin to Mad-dee-sun, with the emphasis on the middle syllable, and he rolled it around in his mouth in a way that was effortlessly provocative. She dug her fingernails into her palms, little fists formed at her sides. “That shows how little you know about me. I am Italian; I grew up in a culture that is steeped in the past, in traditions and history. These things matter to me.”
She made a scoffing noise.
“But these houses are not history.”
Her jaw dropped.
“Not in the sense of architectural merit.”
