fact it was already after eleven o’clock. She hurriedly pulled on the sweater, feeling a small tingle of pleasure when Barry helped adjust its collar. It had been a while since she’d had a man pay her that sort of small courtesy. Maybe Jake had had a point about her hooking up with him.
Darla glanced over at Barry, who was now expounding on plastering techniques. At five-ten and with even features, and minus the beer gut many men pushing fifty sported, he was more than acceptable in the looks department. True, he wasn’t the muscle-bound, young blond hunk like Jake’s cop buddy, Reese . . . but then, most men weren’t.
She smiled a little as she pictured the burly police detective. She had briefly—as in, for about ten minutes—considered exploring a possible relationship with him after their first meeting, and had even sensed a few vibes that indicated he might be open to said exploration. Then common sense had kicked in, and she had decided they were better suited as friends. Besides, Darla had learned the hard way that good looks alone weren’t a strong enough basis for a lasting romance. Sighing just a little, she turned her attention back to Barry and listened to his plastering homily.
They reached the brownstone a few minutes later. “What happened?” was Darla’s first comment as she took in the scene before her. Then, realizing that might sound critical, she hurriedly amended, “I mean, uh . . . that is . . .”
In its glory days, the building would have been a prime example of what Barry had told her on her first visit was Greek Revival style. Not technically a brownstone, the three-story house was red brick and fronted with what he had explained was called a “Grecian doorway”: fluted columns atop a short stoop supporting a flat porch roof. And typical of the style, the simple windowsills and lintels—the “eyebrows” of the windows—barely protruded from the surrounding brick, giving the place a sleeker look than its neighbors. Those architectural touches were enhanced, quite appropriately, by Greek key designs worked into the stone.
But what gave the property its greatest value was the fact that it was set back slightly from the street and had a tiny slip of what once had been green lawn, though the grass had since been trampled into the dirt. A tree pit to one side of the yard held what appeared to Darla’s untrained eye to be some sort of large oak whose leaves had turned a mottled yellow and orange for the season. But with some decent landscaping and an updated facade, the men would be able to turn an enviable profit on their investment even with only the most basic remodeling being done to the interior.
While she struggled for something encouraging to say about the building’s current state, however, Barry laughed. “Yeah, it looks kinda rough right now, but I promise we’re making progress.”
“Rough,” Darla privately thought, was putting a charitable spin on the situation. Indeed, rough was the shape the place had been the last time she’d seen it. The first-floor windows had been partially boarded up, and net-style orange barrier fencing had taken the place of the wrought iron fencing with a Greek key design that had surrounded the handkerchief-sized yard.
Now, the place appeared more demolition than renovation. A construction Dumpster had been squeezed into a narrow gap between that building and the one beside it, while a pile of brick surrounded by more of the orange netting spilled alongside the barred windows of the basement. One of the porch columns had been removed and replaced by several sturdy wooden posts, while the pieces of the missing column were propped against the building’s corner like an afterthought.
“I guess I should have brought my hard hat,” she replied. “I’m sure it looks better on the inside.”
“Ha, not by much,” a man’s unfamiliar nasal voice behind them proclaimed with a sniggering laugh.
Startled, Darla swung around to see a tall, thin man about Barry’s age standing on the sidewalk clutching a clipboard. He was dressed in baggy brown trousers and a white buttoned shirt topped by a bomber-style cloth jacket with a fake shearling collar. The jacket hung open, and Darla spied what appeared to be an official photo ID hanging from a lanyard around his neck. A city worker of some sort?
From Barry’s expression, Darla guessed that he knew the man, and that he was not terribly pleased to see him. “What are you doing here,