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Spencer dropped his bike on the dried-up lawn in front of the sagging duplex on Brown Street right before ten. It wasn’t unheard-of for bikes to be stolen in Pittsfield, but there were very few places to lock them up, and it wasn’t Brooklyn.

He walked up to the enclosed porch. The enclosed porch was going to have to go. He stuck his sunglasses in the chest pocket of his flannel and knocked on what he thought could be the original front door. It would be nice if that didn’t need to be replaced. He heard the floors creaking inside before the door was opened by a lanky man who looked straight out of an L.L.Bean catalog with a sweater over his button-up and honest-to-god boat shoes.

“Hi, I’m Spencer Lim.”

Spencer extended his hand. He may have been startled by the preppiness on display, but Spencer still wanted to work on this man’s house.

“Ian Collier.”

Ian shook Spencer’s hand, then stood aside to let him in.

The entryway was narrow, and the whole first floor was dark due to the thick curtains being drawn, but a flash of color to his right caught Spencer’s eye. “This is beautiful.”

The two interior living room walls consisted mostly of stained glass sidelights and transoms, panels of various jewel tones encased in delicate woodwork.

“I’ve always thought so,”

Ian said, his voice quiet. He had his hands in the pockets of his chinos and his shoulders hunched, as though he was apologizing to Spencer for being in his own house.

“So, you said in your email you were hoping for a restoration?”

Spencer pulled his notebook and a pen out of his backpack, then set it gently to rest against the front door. He had been inside a lot of old houses. Rarely did things feel as somber as they were feeling right now.

“Ideally, I’d like it to look as close to the original as possible. Though, I admit, I have no idea what that might be.”

Ian looked down at his well-worn Sperrys.

Spencer felt a bit like he was intruding. He fought the urge to check his email to make sure that this was indeed the right address and the right date and time.

Usually clients started listing changes the moment he walked in the door, or at least telling him about things they’d seen on TV and in magazines that they wished they could have. Ian looked like he’d rather be doing anything else.

But Spencer was here, and from what he could see already, this was going to be a great project if Ian let him and Cat work on it.

“Well, city records say it was built in 1910. It’s pretty much your basic foursquare, which is the kind of architecture you’d expect for the period. You have some Craftsman elements on the porch. More Victorian and colonial revival influences in here.”

Spencer pointed with the end of his pen to the stained glass of the living room and the molding that extended throughout the house.

Ian looked at him like he was speaking gibberish. But then he took a breath, and his face shifted. It seemed that he had suddenly gained his bearings, and Spencer could see a mirth in his eyes for the first time since he’d set foot into the house. “What about the avocado shag carpet?”

“That’s pure mid-century elegance.”

Spencer smiled, mostly because Ian had the beginnings of one twitching at the corners of his lips, and he really was quite attractive when he didn’t look so much like a kicked puppy. “The good news is that if the carpet has been here for sixty or seventy years, the hardwoods are probably in great shape underneath.”

That was true, and it also seemed to please Ian, so Spencer looked around for other things about the house that were in good condition. He moved into the living room, closely inspecting the woodwork. “This is the original finish. If you like it, we can leave it as is.”

He ran his hands up and down the cased opening. “Do you still have the doors for this?”

“Doors?”

Ian had taken his hands out of his pockets and moved closer to look at what Spencer was seeing.

Spencer pointed at two screw holes perfectly spaced to hold a hinge. “It looks like this would have had two sets of doors at some point, one on each wall.”

Ian bit his bottom lip. The air around them felt almost completely still, motes of dust floating in the air. Spencer realized he was inclined to lean closer but had the good sense not to. “It’s never had doors in my lifetime. Though you’re obviously welcome to look around.”

Spencer took a step back, breaking the tension. “How long have you owned the house?”

He moved into what he assumed was the dining room due to the hutch built into the far wall, though the room was also thickly carpeted, and all the furniture had already been removed.

Ian cleared his throat, as though he also needed a reminder that they were here for a reason. “My great-grandparents inherited it in the thirties, I believe, from their landlord, the original owner. Me personally? Two months.”

Spencer nodded. There wasn’t much that needed to happen in the dining room as long as the floors were intact, so he kept moving. Beyond the dining room was a kitchen that was a shrine to the 1950s, with burnt orange linoleum floors and dark-brown composite cabinets. “I assume you won’t miss any of this if we replace it?”

Something complicated passed over Ian’s face, but he composed himself quickly. “I take it this wasn’t what was here in 1910.”

“Definitely not.”

Spencer started jotting things down he knew Cat would want to know about, including a slightly spongy spot in the floor right in front of the sink. “I love doing restorations, but turn-of-the-century kitchens can often look impractical to the modern eye. So we can do something more standard in here in a classic style that won’t clash with the house’s original features.”

That sharpness was back in Ian’s eyes, and he was standing taller, shoulders more relaxed than collapsed. “I like the kitchen you did in the house on Stoddard.”

“Oh.”

Spencer could feel himself starting to blush, which was one of the more annoying things that happened to him around handsome men, especially ones who were complimenting him. “Is that how you found me?”

“Every time I saw a house around town that I liked, you were the one who had worked on it.”

Ian looked him in the eye when he said that, sounding much more confident than he had since Spencer had walked in. As though maybe he . . . enjoyed complimenting Spencer?

“Your house has more original features than most of the ones I’ve worked on. Which is great aesthetically but doesn’t bode well for your plumbing and electrical. We’ll probably need to replace all of it.”

“That makes sense.”

Ian folded in on himself again. Maybe it was the cost he was concerned about? This was definitely not going to be cheap.

Spencer moved to open the door in the corner of the kitchen. Ian made an odd sound behind him. Shit. Spencer had never found a body in a building before, and he did not want today to be the day.

“Sorry.”

Ian shook his head, sending his sandy hair flopping into this face. “I’ve always thought the basement was haunted.”

Spencer huffed out a laugh. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. “That’s okay. I’m an expert in haunted basements.”

He might have winked. What the fuck was that? He turned his attention to the basement in question. There was no light switch, so he grabbed his keys out of the pocket of his jeans and turned on the mini flashlight he kept on his key ring. He tested the first step with his foot before going down the wooden stairs. There was a single light bulb in the middle of the room, and when he pulled the string, something scattered. No ghosts then, but definitely rats. He’d need to call out an exterminator. And tell Cat to check the foundation for holes.

The basement was full of . . . stuff. The only clear pathways led to a washer and dryer in one corner and an ancient monstrosity of a furnace in another. It wasn’t original, but Spencer would have preferred if it were newer than it was.

He headed back upstairs and did his best to knock the dust off his boots on the top step before coming back into the kitchen. Ian was right where he’d left him, in the middle of the room, a good distance from the door. “We’ll need to update the heating system. I can price out a more efficient furnace and full HVAC, though you only really need AC two months out of the year here, so it may not be worth it.”

Ian just nodded. To be fair, heating systems were necessary and expensive, but they weren’t the sexiest parts of renovations. Spencer had never met someone who got too excited about a new furnace.

“It looks like at some point part of the pantry was converted into a bathroom.”

Spencer pointed over Ian’s shoulder to the far wall of the kitchen, where there was one door that led to a whitewashed pantry full of deep shelves and one that led to a butter yellow bathroom that had clearly been installed around the same time as the current kitchen finishes. “The pantry is still plenty big, but no one loves a full bath off the kitchen. So maybe we can turn it into a half bath with a washer dryer so you don’t need to do laundry in the basement?”

“That would be nice.”

Ian was smiling that little private smile again, and Spencer felt like he had won something.

They walked back through the dining room and up the stairs. “So we’ll see if the original banister is in here.”

Spencer knocked his knuckle against the drywall between the dining room and the staircase. “If not, we’ll have someone come out and copy what’s up here.”

They arrived on a landing that led to four bedrooms, all of which were a bland white, and a bathroom, this one baby blue. “Full reno of the bathroom, modern but classic. The bedrooms all seem to be in good shape.”

He walked into one and opened and closed a few of the windows. “Original wooden windows. We can get these reglazed so you don’t have to do vinyl. It will help cut down on heating costs.”

“Great.”

He seemed to have completely lost Ian again.

They made their way up to the attic. “Oh.”

Spencer hadn’t thought there’d be so much square footage at standing height. “You know, you don’t really need more bedrooms, but this could be a good place to put a primary suite without changing the footprint of the house. And since we’re already running all-new plumbing, it would be cheaper to add now than doing it later down the road.”

He looked around at what was currently an unfinished shell of a room with exposed subfloor and framing. “The house faces east, so you’d get beautiful morning light through the dormer.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Ian was standing with his hand still on the doorknob, staring across the room at Spencer. He was incredibly still, and Spencer could almost feel his gaze on him.

Spencer’s mouth suddenly felt dry, probably because it was dusty up here. He cleared his throat. “Is the other unit a mirror image of this one?”

“Yeah, exactly the same.”

They walked through the other space, anyway, and Spencer was glad to see that it was basically in the same condition as the first side. “Great. Let’s take a look at the exterior.”

The exterior was maybe the worst part. It had originally been white but was now a sooty gray color from a few too many rains.

“I think there are plants growing out of the roof,”

Ian observed blandly.

“That does seem to be the case,”

Spencer agreed. “Obviously, you’ll need a new one. The siding you have is on its last legs. I can price out wood, which is what would have been here originally. We’ll also need to rebuild the porch because it . . .”

He made a slanting motion with his hand.

“Yes.”

Ian tilted his head at the exact angle, as though trying to right it.

“If you’re free later this week, I’ll get my structural engineer in here and take all the measurements. I should be able to get you a quote by next Friday.”

Ian nodded. “That all sounds good. Thank you for coming out.”

They walked back up to the house, and Spencer grabbed his backpack before heading out to his bike. He looked up to find Ian’s gaze lingering on him for a moment before he closed the door, disappearing into the house.