Page 8 of Whiskey Chase
She looked like she belonged on a poster on a teenage boy’s wall in those sexy jeans and fitted Henley. I’d never considered tool belts to be sexy, but on Scarlett’s swaying hips, I was willing to reconsider my stance.
“All right,” Scarlett said, tucking the contractor pencil back in her belt. “I’m gonna run the numbers for you so you have an accurate quote, but I can give you an estimate right now.”
She named a figure that didn’t make me light-headed. “That’s with the friends and family discount for Granny Louisa,” she said, making another note in her notebook.
I peered over her shoulder at it. She had the handwriting of a three-year-old trying to figure out whether they were right- or left-handed.
“You can think about it and let me know,” she said, ripping off a corner of the paper and handing it over.
“Let’s do it,” I decided. I wanted to see if she could do it all just as much as I wanted to give my grandmother and Estelle a “thank you” for letting me stay.
“All right,” Scarlett said. “I can start on the deck tomorrow and fit in some of the smaller projects here and there. I’ve got a roof job and some dry-walling this week, but after I’ll have a bit more time.”
“Sounds good,” I said.
If she was surprised by my agreement, she didn’t let on. “Awesome. Listen, while I’m here. I’m gonna check your roof. I did some patches last year, and I wanna make sure there aren’t any new loose shingles.”
I looked up. The roof was three stories above ground. The first floor was a garage and walk-out basement.
“Okaaaay.” I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea of anyone crawling around that high up off the ground.
“You don’t have to go up,” she said, patting my arm like I was a scared kid. “I got this.”
She hustled over to her pick-up and pulled the extension ladder off of the rack. Whistling, she held it over her head and hauled it up around to the front of the house. I jogged after her.
“Want me to carry that?” I offered.
She shot me an amused look. “I think I can handle an aluminum ladder.”
She propped it against the front of the house and extended it all the way up. At least from this elevation it was only two stories up, but still. She placed a booted foot on the first rung and rocked the ladder until it dug into the flowerbed.
Scarlett scrambled halfway up the ladder before I reached out to hold it. “Are you sure you should be doing this?” I called after her.
She hung one-handed at the top and laughed. “Don’t worry, Dev. I don’t expect you to get up here with me.”
It wasn’t that I was afraid of heights. They’d never bothered me before. It was that, right now, everything terrified me. The unknown, hell, theknown. Being away from work, my home, away from Annapolis. The only thing that was worse than being away from it was the idea of going back. I’d become risk adverse to the point where leaving the house felt like a monumental task. I’d been in Bootleg for three days and still hadn’t ventured any farther than across the property line to Scarlett’s party.
I squinted up in time to see Scarlett swing her leg onto the roof and disappear. The skies seemed bluer today, the sun sharper. And that hollow feeling in my gut, the one that had taken up residence when I’d discovered my wife of three years reviewing our prenup at the breakfast table, didn’t feel quite as empty. The last of the daffodils fluttered against my shins in the breeze.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath. I could climb a damn ladder and sit on a fucking roof. I still had my balls. Johanna hadn’t gotten those in the divorce.
I climbed. Sure, maybe my fingers ached from the tight grip on the rungs. And maybe my knees shook a little bit. But when I crested the lip of the roof, when I very carefully stepped onto the shingled expanse, I took a deep breath, and it was the first one in months that didn’t feel like it was choking me.
“You made it.” Scarlett grinned at me from her position on the peak where she was examining the chimney.
“I did.” I looked to the lake, an even better view here than in the house. It stretched on, a shimmering expanse that beckoned the gaze and held it. The trees, green with new leaves, shivered in the breeze. The wind felt stronger up here. I wondered if it was strong enough to move the clouds that had anchored themselves above me.
“Patches held up, and I’m not seeing anything new that you need to worry about,” Scarlett announced standing up and bopping toward me as if she were on flat ground.
“Good.”
“Not bad, right?” she said, staring out over the waters.
“Not bad,” I repeated.
She took a bracing breath, filling her lungs with spring sunshine. “I love this time of year. Everything comes back to life.”
God, I hoped it was true.
