“It won’t. I’ll hammer one corner, move on, it will be fine. You stay here and hold on to the ladder. It won’t take me long, I promise.”
His last words were swallowed up by another roll of thunder.
Great, just great. She was here holding an aluminum ladder with a thunderstorm approaching. She watched the canopy of the bayou start to swirl and sway. Birds took to the air and headed this way to avoid the storm. Above her, she heard Samson hammering the tarp in place, heard the wind catch the tarp, heard him swear, stomp, and then another crack of lightning preceded a clap of thunder by about ten seconds.
Hammering sounds. That was two corners. Shehopedhe was just doing the corners. More swearing as the first raindrops hit.
Hammering. Three corners.
Oh, thank goodness. The roof would be be slick, the ladder slick. She was glad she’d stayed up here to hold it steady.
And then a crash that was not thunder. She pivoted to look, and could no longer see the top of the long ladder.
Samson’s face appeared over the edge of the roof, his hair plastered to his head by the rain. “What was that?”
She looked up helplessly. “The ladder fell.”
Thirteen
Samson disappeared,and she heard one more round of hammering before he came back to the ladder, now slippery despite the roof’s overhang. She held on for dear life as he scrambled down it, losing his footing one time and making a scream catch in her throat.
Then he was on the roof beside her. He lowered the ladder to its side and pushed it under the eaves before he made his way to the edge of the roof and looked down. She joined him, moving more cautiously on the wet shingles.
Sure enough, the taller ladder was flat in the yard, like it had fallen straight back. They were stuck up here in the storm.
”The wind must have blown it down,” he said.
She might have thought so, but, “It’s on the wrong side of the house. The wind would have pushed it against the house, not away from it.”
“So what’s your explanation?” He looked over at her.
She was thinking it was the same…thing…that had been in her bedroom last night. But figuring out how the ladder had fallen wasn’t the top priority, and she wasn’t ready to explain her experience to him right now. If ever. Instead she asked, “How are we going to get down?”
Before he could answer, the rain came in a sudden rush, drumming against the roof and cascading off the eaves. He caught her elbow and urged her toward the narrow strip of shelter beneath the overhang, tucking her close beside the attic window.
“Here,” he murmured, shifting so that his body blocked the worst of the downpour. His shoulder brushed hers, then his chest pressed lightly against her as he angled himself to shield her completely.
Heat radiated from him, steady and solid, seeping through her damp clothes. His scent—salt, rain, and the clean bite of sweat—wrapped around her, grounding her in a way she hadn’t expected. She wanted to curl into him, to just breathe him in as her pulse rate slowed, but she couldn’t allow herself even that much comfort.
He was drenched, and she was pretty wet herself, as she crowded against the window to the attic.
The window he’d just fixed so no one could get in.
“There’s no way this ladder will reach the ground,” he said, nodding toward the lightning rod she was sitting beside. “I’m sorry. I can only think of one way off the roof.”
“I’m not jumping.” Just the walk to the edge of the roof had put her heart in her throat.
“No.” He inclined his head toward the window. “I have to break it.”
“Break it?” She wasn’t sure what horrified her more, having to replace the glass, or worrying about someone getting in again.
“I’ll board it up once we’re inside, but it’s too dangerous to be out here.”
She noticed then that his hands were white-knuckled, holding onto the roof. She hesitated, then nodded her permission.
She hadn’t expected him to strip off his T-shirt.
Her breath snagged. Her eyes followed before she could stop them. He was very nice to look at. Broad shoulders tapering to a lean waist, every line of him honed and strong. A dark fan of hair covered his chest, not enough to hide the muscles shifting beneath. Rain sluiced over his skin, beading in the hair, tracing paths across the ridges of muscle.
