Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
W hile the troublesome American went back inside, hopefully to change out of her thin-as-a-butterfly-wing cotton top, Bryan and Lùcas scurried back up the ladder. Not that it was her responsibility how his body reacted, but it would be a shame to drop a solar panel off the roof because he was distracted by the way her nipples pebbled beneath the almost-sheer material or to sever his own thumb because of the places his mind went when he read the saucy slogan.
“She seems fun,” Lùcas said slowly.
Bryan grunted.
The moment he’d turned around and seen her there, with her very messy bun and that naughty t-shirt—over equally sinful pajama bottoms, he realized as she stalked away—he’d been overcome with an urge he’d not felt for man or woman in quite some time. And that was sort of… nice.
No distractions , he reminded himself. Never with tourists and especially not with his mate’s little sister. Jesus . If he was one thing in this world, it was not a walking cliché.
Unfortunately, the tourist in question chose that exact moment to pull herself off the ladder and onto the roof, mercifully clad in jeans and flannel, but damn. Those jeans didn’t help cool his libido like he’d hoped, not even a little. He packed the newly surfaced urges away, deep in a bunker surrounded by sharks and barbed wire, and took a calming breath.
She glanced hesitantly at him, and then over the side to the ground below. Her little not-quite-apologetic half smile sent Bryan’s belly into instant somersaults, and he batted those down too, asking, “ Heights an issue?”
“No,” she snapped, immediately on the defensive, but then she softened the tiniest bit. “ I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve been on a roof.”
“Lucky me.” He meant to say it as a joke, but it came out a growl, which was good because he didn’t need her to realize he actually did feel a bit lucky— Christ knew why. Relief , perhaps? At her offer of help? Why had she done it?
And why couldn’t she allow herself to just lie around on the beach like a normal person? Some part of him wouldn’t mind exploring that with her.
“Lucky both of us,” she sassed, and he handed her a spare pair of work gloves. “ What should I do?”
“Can you hold the flashing down while Lùc screws these in?” he asked, holding up the bolts for the stanchion posts.
Grace nodded, and Bryan directed her further along the roof to where she should kneel. They didn’t technically need her help for this, but extra hands were better than idle fury, in theory.
“A little to the left,” he told her. When she mirrored him, scooting the flashing to her right, he said, “ Your other left,” and she gave him a very annoyed eye roll that for some reason looked more cute than angry, as she moved the piece far too far to her left.
Bryan knelt opposite her, their faces close enough now he could discern the peach notes in her shampoo and count her eyelashes, spread out like a fan against her cheeks. He placed his gloved hands on either side of hers, unable to avoid cupping them as he guided the piece to where it needed to be. Despite their gloves, he could swear he felt a tremor when he touched her.
Lùc’s shadow fell across them and Bryan scrambled back, sheepishly stepping out of the way to allow his cousin to finish the job.
“Hold real still, just like that. Perfect ,” Lùcas crooned with a gentleness that surprised Bryan coming from the typically sullen teenager. Youngest of three, he was a late-in-life surprise for Bryan’s Uncle Dàibhidh and Auntie Fiona , whose second daughter, Jenny , was nearly out of school herself before wee Lùcas was born. Apparently , there was more to the lad than mere eagerness to escape the island or sing plaintive pop ballads like someone who’d had his heart broken every damn day of his young life.
Grace smiled at his encouragement and continued to hold the flashing just like he told her to.
Once the bolt was drilled into place, she moved on to the next stanchion they’d set out before the ladder had fallen.
“Don’t work too hard,” she teased Bryan , taking note of his loitering. Lùcas snorted.
“I’m s-s-supervising,” Bryan bit out, and she laughed at him, her lips pursed together, trying to keep from smiling at his hissing stammer.
When he looked away, she nudged him. “ Come on, supervising?”
Was she really going to give him a hard time about it?
“Isn’t that the oldest joke in the book? How many middle managers does it take to screw in a light bulb? As many as it takes to hire someone they can supervise doing the actual work.”
He huffed out a begrudging half laugh. Maybe she’d been making fun of his words rather than his speech. Maybe she really didn’t notice his troublesome S ’s . If she was laughing at him for being an uptight micromanager, well… he could live with that.
“I’m not middle management,” he said as arrogantly as he possibly could. “ I own this operation.”
She rolled her eyes again and shook her head before turning back to the work.
Once the stanchions were all securely mounted, Bryan switched places with Grace , allowing her to supervise as he and Lùcas heaved the panels into place. They weren’t heavy, just awkward as all hell to maneuver while on your knees on a roof.
On your knees. An unfortunate turn of thought while looking up at her with the sun lighting her from behind.
“A touch to the left,” Grace told them, so they scooted the panel to Bryan’s left. “ Your other left,” Grace corrected, just as he’d done to her earlier. Except his other left would be his right. So was she messing with him as payback?
“You mean your left, then?” Bryan growled.
She blinked for a second and then laughed rather sheepishly. “ That’s why I was an English major—so I could have an editor to catch things like that. Perhaps I meant stage left?”
“Did you always want to be an author?” he asked, gesturing for Lùcas to shift right.
“You’re an author?” the kid perked up. “ Are you rich and famous, then?”
Grace coughed. “ Hardly . I’m a school librarian by day,” she told the boy, and then to Bryan she added, “ Yes , always. Did you always want to be a…” she trailed off, no doubt unsure what to say.
“No,” Bryan answered.
“What kind of books do you write?” Lùcas asked.
“Young adult fiction,” she answered, staring daggers at Bryan while speaking to his cousin. “ Although I’m getting a bit old for the genre myself,” she added.
A familiar rush of blood washed up the back of his neck and over his face, but he supposed he deserved it, so he didn’t take the bait.
“Not like kids can write them,” Lùcas told her with more generosity than Bryan had shown in the bookshop.
“I suppose that’s true.”
“I was banned from the library five years ago,” he said, matter-of-factly like it happened to people all the time.
“What on earth for? Did you want to burn all the books like Ryan here?”
“I didn’t s—how would that help?” Bryan jumped in, unable to resist this time. “ Once the trees are chopped, it’s just wasteful. Fire would only release more CO 2 !”
“You’re a book burner?” Lùcas asked him in horror.
“I’m not,” he repeated, catching the flicker of a smirk on Grace’s face. She liked giving him a hard time. Well , two could play that. “ I’d rather not… print them at all.”
Now both of them turned a combined glare almost powerful enough to knock him backwards over the ledge like the force of a couple of Care Bears .
“But they’re art,” Lùcas gasped.
Bryan groaned. “ I’ve no objection to the art of them. Go on, why’d your own sister kick you out of the library? Does your da know about this?”
Now it was his cousin’s turn to flush and look away, a tiny smirk playing guiltily at his lips. “ I kept illustrating in the margins.”
“Graffiti you mean?” Bryan looked over to gauge Grace’s reaction, as both a writer and a librarian. She was quirking her mouth to the side to suppress a mischievous smile of her own.
“Okay, the author side of me is intrigued, but”—she glanced at Bryan —“the librarian side of me wants to give you a choice between lifetime detention and murder. How often were your drawings obscene?”
Lùcas looked deeply offended for about a second before another coy smile creeped in. “ Only sometimes.”
“Definitely murder,” she said to Bryan .
“It’s funny!” Lùcas protested.
“I get it! I agree.” She shook her head. “ Up until a ban-happy parent sees it and the next thing you know, they’ve found every single sketch you’ve made across every book and demanded those books be withdrawn from the collection. They’re not even objecting to the books this time, just one silly drawing, but it’s not like we have the funds to replace them all. It drips gasoline on an already smoldering fire, and suddenly everything’s up in flames.”
The kid stared at her.
“Sorry,” she said, blinking self-consciously. “ Occupational hazard.”
“They really do that?”
“They don’t here?”
“Not often,” Bryan told her.
“Sorry,” she said again.
Lùcas had the decency to look horrified, and Grace shook her head again. “ Sorry ,” she said for the third time. “ I didn’t mean to go off on a soapbox at you. I think it’s cool, I just…”
“Occupational hazard,” Bryan repeated and she nodded. More like the kid accidentally activated a librarian sleeper cell.
“I didn’t know,” Lùcas said.
“You should do it for authors on social media. Bet they’d pay you.”
The kid scoffed.
“No seriously. I’d pay you.”
Lùcas turned beet red then, and it was kind of her to say that when she’d never seen his illustrations.
“I mean, not the obscene ones.”
“Maybe I could start with some that were pulled from your library. Use the money to donate new copies.”
Her face softened. “ I meant I’d pay you to do it for my book. What an amazing way to engage with the text and get people talking about it! I’ll be your first client, if you want.”
“Is that what’s causing your writer’s block? Not enough kids read your first one? Didn’t it win an award or… whatever?” Bryan asked, and her gaze flickered to him, all sorts of electric, before she pulled a curtain across her expression to shut him out.
“I don’t have writer’s block. And no. More like too many people read it. And then it won an award or whatever.”
“So, what’s the issue?”
“I told you, no issue.”
“You came all the way here to write.”
Grace deflated. “ Yeah , I did do that… I don’t know. Maybe I’m too old to write YA , like you said.”
Not exactly what he said, but she was clearly never going to let him live it down.
“Maybe that’s why I’m having creative differences with my editor.”
“They want you to add in zombies, or something?” Lùcas asked.
“I wish. I could pull in some incredible Dia de los Muertos subplots if that were the case. No , it’s worse, actually. She wants me to add a big dumb romance.”
“What pish,” Bryan grumbled without meaning to, and her eyes snapped to his.
“You don’t believe in romance?”
“I don’t believe in forcing it where it doesn’t fit,” he replied, and then bit his lip to keep from smirking at the unintentional innuendo.
“My editor thinks I need to make it fit,” Grace said, without a trace of humor.
“Will they fire you if you don’t?” Lùcas asked.
She stared at nothing for a good long while. “ They’re threatening to?—”
She was interrupted by a strangled sort of yelp as something collided with their ladder for a second time that morning.”