She mutters something she probably learned from the parrot as the dark outline of her reaches the top of the ladder.
I stride to the edge of it and peer up. “What are you doing?”
“Getting my keys. Regardless of what the universe is telling me, I need my car keys.”
“This town’s four square blocks. Walk.”
“It’s ten square blocks and growing, and I can’t carry Grady’s present that far.”
“Christ on lasagna,” I mutter.
“Aww, you sound just like Luca. That’s adorable. Is he coming to work out with you guys again soon? I miss Henri, and she’s not taking texts while she’s on a deadline.”
Shit.
I am cussing like Luca Rossi. Guy hasn’t been on the team a full year, and he’s already sharing his personality. “Can you please get off the roof before you fall and break your head?”
She twists and plops, and suddenly she’s sitting on the edge of her roof, feet dangling, probably staring down at me.
I assume that’s what the hairs raising on the back of my neck means, anyway. I can’t see her, and my heart’s starting that old, heavy rhythm again.
Dammit.
Dammit.
Beautiful morning. Chilly, but clear. Can see stars. She’s a grown woman.
Nothing to get riled up about.
My pulse is still inching upward, though, and my lungs are giving me warning signs that this is a complication I cannot afford this morning.
Go home, Max. Go home. She’s not your problem.
She sighs loudly. “I sincerely appreciate your concern, but number one, I unfortunately do this all the time, because my grandfather’s parrot is an asshole, and number two—”
“Rawk! Don’t number two on the poop deck, asshole! Rawk!”
There’s a flutter of wings.
Tillie Jean grunts, and the shadow of her legs flails as the beam off her flashlight flickers and turns wildly. “I swear to the pirate gods, you mangy aaaaaah!”
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
I don’t think, I just move, because she’s falling off the roof.
She’s falling off the roof.
I shove the ladder and leap to grab her, heart in my throat, lungs shrinking.
Have to cushion her fall.
Stop her neck from snapping.
Stop her head from hitting the ground.
Stop Cooper from killing me for letting his sister dive off the roof on my watch.
I don’t know what part of her body connects with me first, but my grand plan to catch her in my arms immediately fails. I’m stumbling backwards, propelled by the weight of a full-grown woman colliding wrong with my shoulder.
Fuck.
My shoulder.
It— “Oof,” I grunt.
My ass hits the dirt under a rock.
Specifically, a Tillie Jean Rock, who’s sprawled across me and oof-ing herself while my palms go clammy and my throat tightens and my heart tries to run a marathon in four-point-two seconds.
Reason number seventy-two million that I hate this woman…
“What are you doing?” she gasps. “You could’ve hurt yourself, and then what would the Fireballs do? Oh, shit. Are you hurt? Tell me you’re not hurt. Max? Max!”
There’s light in my eyeballs again, and I can’t shield my face. She’s still on top of my arms, and even if she wasn’t, I’m not sure I could breathe.
Dammit.
Fuck.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay.
“Put that fucking light away.” The order comes out on a gasp, but I’m breathing.
Not having an episode.
I’m breathing.
I’m okay. Not dead.
She’s not dead.
She’s annoying. She can’t be annoying if she’s dead.
Except it’s Tillie Jean. She probably could be annoying if she was dead, and thank fuck, that does it.
Thinking of TJ as a cranky old ghost yelling at parrots outside of Cooper’s window almost has me smiling, which is the weirdest sensation ever, and almost smiling has my pulse evening out and my breath coming steadier.
My back is cold and wet. I’m in the grass. Better than concrete. I test my shoulder, then glare at the light. “Are you okay?”
“Totally fine. I do this all the time.”
Hell.
I think she’s telling the truth.
Not gonna help the anxiety here. “You fall off roofs all the time.”
“I live with Long Beak Silver. And I re-roofed my house myself last summer. It’s a short house. I can handle this. Back to you, please. Where does it hurt? Can you move? Can you stand? Can you walk? Cooper’s gonna kill me. And not like let Grady’s goat into my house to eat my garbage kind of kill me either.”
Her fingers are probing me everywhere. My shoulders. My neck. My chest.
And it’s causing one very unfortunate reaction south of my belt.
Tillie Jean Rock is not supposed to make my body react like this.
I grunt and sit up, shoving her aside. “Stay off roofs.”
She makes a low growl.
My dick leaps to full attention.
So I leap too. Right to my feet, carrying me across the yard to my house, where I will go inside, make sure my shoulder’s just twinged and not injured, meditate, drink water, and then, if necessary, whack off in the shower while I think about anyone besides Tillie Jean.
Reason number eleven thousand that I hate this woman: I can’t jerk off while thinking about her if I don’t want to lose the best friend I’ve ever had.
Not how I wanted to start my day.
But I’m pretty sure this is life in Shipwreck.
Which means I can fight it, I can leave, or I can figure out how to live with it.
6
Tillie Jean
By noon, it’s pretty obvious I twisted my ankle falling off my roof this morning.
Not that I’ll admit that to anyone.
Nor will I admit what my heart was doing the whole time I was lying on Max in the dirt.
Let’s just say I wish I could double-wrap it in addition to my ankle. But I can’t, and I have to work, so I text my friends Mackenzie and Marisol back in Copper Valley and ask if they know of any single guys who need a winter fling, and then I get on with my day, which is basically a double shift at Crusty Nut.
We’re in the middle of our usual lunch rush, which isn’t heavy since November’s not exactly high tourist season for a pirate town in the mountains, and the retreat center at the edge of town isn’t hosting any conferences this week. It’s just Dad and me running things, him in the kitchen, me playing hostess, server, bartender, and busser while sneaking regular coffee into my decaf cup. My local besties are all sitting at the bar sharing a basket of gold nuggets—aka fried pickle chips—while waiting for their lunch entrees.
“What’s with your dad today?” Georgia, Grady’s morning baker at Crow’s Nest down the street, asks.
Annika, Grady’s wife, chokes on her tea while Sloane, who left the city to come live the small-town life here a few years back, cackles.
She’s still waiting for her Hallmark movie romance hero to come and get her.
Me too, Sloane. Me too.
It’s the only downside to small-town living. My on-again, off-again boyfriend of five years who agreed to marry me if we were both thirty and single found himself a wife not long after Grady and Annika hooked up, and the pickings are even slimmer around here now.