AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Daniel surfaced as quickly as he could, then scrambled to get out of the water and into his jeans and boots. Still dripping wet and shirtless, he took the hill like an Olympic sprinter, his lungs bursting. He couldn’t slow down, not after the terror he’d heard in that scream. One horrible scenario after another ran through his head. A hiker lying at the bottom of a ravine with two broken legs. Swarmed by yellow jackets. Or worse.
He rounded the corner of the derelict cabin, and his heart lunged into his throat at the sight of the figure dangling from the rooftop, clinging to the bent gutter by her fingers. Which were starting to slip.
“Don’t let go,” he yelled. “I’m getting the ladder.” Thankfully, it was only a dozen feet away, and he quickly dragged it over. “Reach out with your leg and you’ll be able to put your foot on it.”
When she didn’t move, he realized the woman must be too dazed by fear to follow his instructions. Climbing the rungs, he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her against him.
“I’ve got you.” He instinctively hugged her tighter, as though to reassure himself she wasn’t in danger of falling again. “You can let go of the gutter now.”
The metal was so rusted it would have torn off in another second. She was damned lucky it hadn’t ripped away with the impact of her fall.
The vision of what might have happened was so bloody that he had to work to gentle his voice. “Go ahead and put your hands on the ladder.”
But she still clung tenaciously to the metal gutter, her knuckles white.
“It’s okay,” he murmured in a low, soothing voice against the dark hair trailing out of her ball cap, the bright sun glossing her long braid blue-black. She seemed so small, draped in the folds of her overalls. “I won’t let you fall.”
Finally, her knuckle-breaking grip eased, and on a shaky exhale, she put one hand on the ladder, followed by the other.
“I’ve got you,” he said again as he bracketed her on the ladder. “Tell me when you think you’re ready to make it all the way down.”
She didn’t answer for a long moment, finally saying, “I’m ready.”
Her voice was soft, musical, playing an accompaniment to the pounding of his heart and the rushing in his blood.
Easing down a rung, then another, he kept his hand on her waist as they made their way together. Back on the ground, he had to force himself to let her go.
He’d never had this kind of instant reaction to a woman before. Then again, he’d never rescued a woman hanging off the edge of a roof either. There was certainly something to be said for a massive adrenaline rush.
Standing before him, she wasn’t nearly as small as she’d seemed up on the ladder, only a few inches shorter than he was. The voluminous overalls and tool belt had made her seem tiny in comparison. She was in her mid-twenties, he guessed, with high cheekbones, long lashes, blue-as-the-sky eyes, and a luscious form his mother would have smacked him for looking at the way he couldn’t help looking. Especially given that he had no business drooling when she was clearly still in shock.
She held on to a rung of the ladder to steady herself, her eyes scrunched closed as she said, “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was on the roof nailing down the tarp—and the next I was clinging to the gutter for dear life.” She opened her eyes and looked up at the roof. “I guess it isn’t that big a drop, and I might have been okay if I’d fallen, but it all happened so fast, I couldn’t think straight.”
She turned to him then, and both her eyes and her mouth opened wide as she looked from his bare chest, to his wet jeans, then deliberately down to a big rock sticking up out of the ground ten feet away.
He’d completely forgotten he was shirtless—or that his jeans were sticking to his thighs like a second skin. All that had mattered was getting to her as quickly as possible.
“I’m standing here babbling,” she said in a voice that suddenly sounded a little breathless, “when what I should be saying is thank you.”
There were a good half-dozen nice things he could have said to get her over the shock of falling from the roof—starting with You’re welcome—but as the full impact of what might have happened slammed into him, he was blinded to anything but the danger in which she’d so foolishly put herself.
“You might have broken a leg.” His voice was harsh from the realization that he could just as easily have found her on the ground. “Or worse, depending on how you fell. First of all, you shouldn’t have gone up on the roof alone. And second, you should have secured yourself. Your roof has a helluva steep incline. Why didn’t you wait for someone—if not someone you hired, then friends or family—to help you do the work?”
He thought he saw sorrow darken her ocean-blue eyes for a split second before she threw her shoulders back and said, “I’ve been doing a pretty darn good job of fixing up this place without anyone to help me.” Her expression turned rueful as she admitted, “Until today, at least.”
He forced himself to drag his gaze away from her to eye the cabin. “I thought they were going to tear this place down.” The wood siding was sun-bleached, the window frames cracked, and the front porch, visible around the corner of the house, sagged like an old couch. On closer inspection, though, he saw she’d replaced the rotted boards by the front door.
He couldn’t believe anyone would buy this place. He didn’t know if he admired her for it…or just plain thought she was nuts.
As though she could read his mind, she put her hands on her hips and said, “I can fix it.”
“Right.” He meant it noncommittally, just a word to say to a beautiful woman who was making odd things happen inside his chest.
But she took it as a challenge. “I’m still working on the roof, obviously. But I’ve done a lot inside. Here, I’ll show you.” She marched up the porch steps, assuming he would follow.
Naturally, he did, enjoying her vivid defiance—and her surprisingly luscious curves—more than he’d enjoyed anything in a very long time. Even if he was still upset with her for getting up on the roof without a safety line.
But before he could get all twisted up about that again, he suddenly noticed the words stitched on her ball cap. “Do I need to worry?” He pointed to the top of her head.
