Page 77 of A Class of Her Own

“Who do you think is going up on this ladder?” I replied. “I hate heights.”

We propped it on the corner of the house where the gutter was supposed to be attached, and Brooks climbed up to survey the damage and give me an update so that we could make a game plan for repairs. I watched as he made his way up, and, when warmth bloomed in my chest, I realized that I found it super attractive to watch a man doing home repair work. Not flexing in the gym or dressed up in a pressed suit or rescuing me from some villain … or whatever else was always happening in romance books and movies. I was going ga-ga for a man climbing a ladder to inspect a rain gutter. My mind was warped.

He came down and brushed his hands against his pants to remove some of the dirt and debris.

“So, what’s first?” I asked.

“We’ll need work gloves and some nails to start with,” he said.

We walked together back to the workshop, and when his hand brushed against the back of mine, my dusty heart seemed determined to go pitter-pat, which was something it had never done in the entirety of my existence. I told him where to find nails, and I went in search of gloves while I tried not to stare at the fit of his jeans and the way his jacket stretched across his shoulders as he moved.

Is this what physical attraction and chemistry felt like? If so, I was starting to understand why people seemed to lose brain cells when they were dating someone new.

“Do you have trash bags?” he asked from behind me. “I think it would be a good idea to get some leaves and branches out of the gutter while we’re up there.”

“Good idea.” I grabbed bags and met him at the door of the shop.

Ten minutes later I had a bag full of soggy leaves and pointy branches. Brooks had taken advantage of the hanging rain gutter and used it as a sort of track, pushing leaves from the far side of the house gently enough to keep the gutter from breaking further but hard enough to funnel them directly into the bag I was holding. The process had been much easier than I’d anticipated, but the smell of moldy decay had me wrinkling my nose as he climbed down the ladder and walked toward me.

He was smiling when I finished tying off the bag and looked up at him. “What?” I asked.

He took off his glove, which was now wet and muddy, and reached toward me. I flinched. He pulled his hand partway back and chuckled. The sound was different than anything I’d heard from him before. It was low and soft, tender and amused. He reached out again, and this time I held still as he lightly worked through my hair, pulling out leaves that had fluttered into the midnight-colored strands while I held my head chin-down.

It didn’t take long for him to tidy my hair, but a curious silence had descended as he worked. I dared to look up at him, only to find him watching me closely, analyzing and pondering. I wasn’t sure what to do with that type of attention, and, yet, he seemed determined to give it. He was asking me to let him in; he wanted to learn more, but old habits made me want to scramble backwards as fast as I could. As though he could see my spooked reaction, he finished by running a finger over my outer ear and then dropped his hand.

“Baby steps?” he questioned.

“Yeah.”

“Ready to hammer something?” he asked, his light tone so different from the look in his eyes.

“Uh-huh.”

When he was back atop the ladder, I was able to fully breathe again. My mind whirled as I held the ladder steady for him. One leg of the ladder seemed to be a little off, and when he’d hammer something it would wiggle slightly, so I held tightly to the legs while he forced the old, rickety rain gutter into submission. My head, however, was thinking about what a nice color his eyes were and how intriguing the one or two gray hairs in his beard looked.

“Evergreen?” I hadn’t heard the approach of my dad’s truck, so I was completely caught off guard when he called my name.

I turned to find him coming around the corner of the house. He must have parked out front. “Hey, Dad.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up to Brooks, who had stopped hammering and was looking down at us.

“My, uh, friend and I are fixing a few things around the house this morning,” I replied.

Brooks pounded in one last nail and worked his way down the ladder. He tugged the work gloves off and held a hand out to Dad.

“Brooks VanOrman, sir. Nice to meet you.”

Dad shook his hand, but his eyes were on the new porch step. “Was this broken?”

I bit down on my lips to keep from replying in a snarky tone. “Yes.” It said a lot about the normal functioning of his life that he’d not only just stepped over a broken porch stair and gone about his business without even registering that there was an issue, but that’d he’d forgotten me yelling about it the day before. “And the rain gutter was hanging down.”

“Evergreen always takes care of me,” Dad said to Brooks.

I cringed so hard I thought my teeth would pop. Brooks, for his part, managed to keep his face open and friendly, but, from the side-eye he shot me, I knew there was going to be a whole slew of questions coming about that one.

“Okay, Dad.” I jumped in. “We’re going to go inside and do a little cleaning. Have you eaten?”

“Willow took me to lunch,” he nodded, already turning toward his precious shop.

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