2. The Mace Meet-Cute #2
I walked down the hall to the fuse box. The kid trailed behind me, narrating my every move to an imaginary audience, occasionally providing sound effects for his story.
Once I located the box, I opened it, reset the breakers, and voila, let there be light. When I turned around, I found Felicity’s neck straining, as if she’d been peeking over my shoulder. It was fucking adorable.
With one problem solved, I immediately moved on to the next, trying to shake off the thoughts she was inspiring in me. “Do you have a ladder?” The question came out harsher than I’d wanted.
She shrugged. “We only got here a few hours ago. Your guess is as good as mine.”
The first order of business was triage. I went back to the kitchen and scouted the immediate area for anything electrical, which, blessedly, was limited to a single outlet with nothing plugged into it. The drywall was so waterlogged it looked ready to birth a new species of mold.
“I’ll be back,” I told the kid, not wanting him to follow me outside with these weather conditions. He nodded with a solemnity that felt both hilarious and tragic on a kid that size. I turned my attention back to Felicity. “Do you have towels?”
She nodded.
“I’ll need them when I come back,” I instructed as I walked out the back door.
I knew Walter’s outbuildings well enough to know which one was most likely to have a serviceable ladder, and which one would be housing generations of angry raccoons.
The wind was horizontal now, driving sheets of rain through the air and turning the yard into a series of small, interconnected lakes.
My boots squelched as I slogged across, the air so dense with water that every inhale felt like drinking through a soaked napkin.
The shed, of course, had no working light, so I used my own flashlight to navigate a maze of rusted tools, half-finished wood projects, and the collapsed remains of a kayak.
I found everything I needed for the patch, including a ladder—aluminum, bent in two places but still functional—and shouldered it, bracing myself against the wind for the trek back.
I placed the ladder beside the house, climbed up and after finding the gap in the shingles, I secured a blue tarp over it. Once that was in place on the exterior, I climbed back down to address the interior.
As I came in through the back door, carrying a ladder and plastic wrap, Maverick and Felicity, who was now holding a stack of towels, looked at me as if I’d left to fight a dragon and they’d not been entirely sure I’d return.
“Can I help?” Maverick asked, ready for action.
“Yes, I’m going to go up on the ladder. Can you hand me the towels when I get to the top?”
He saluted, grinning with all the intensity of a soldier in boot camp.
I headed to the attic access and positioned the ladder beneath it, then climbed up, reaching down to retrieve the towels into the rafters, feeling the structure sway uneasily as I did.
The roof was old. Not just in years, but in the way it flexed under pressure, like a body that had suffered one injury too many.
When I located the breech, I pushed through the insulation, which was soaked and heavy and reeked of old dust, and traced the water’s source: a decent sized gap in shingles.
Nothing I did tonight would be more than a band-aid, but I hoped it would hold long enough to keep the ceiling from caving in.
Working by flashlight, I jammed every towel I could find into the gap, then wrapped the mess with duct tape and plastic sheeting.
Back on the floor, I wiped my hands on a dish towel and tried not to think about how much worse this would get before the night was over.
Felicity was watching me, her expression less hostile now and more neutral.
She’d put down the tennis racket and mace at some point, but her hands were still fidgeting, fingers worrying at the hem of her shirt.
“Is it fixed?” Maverick asked, hope and skepticism running parallel in his voice.
“The roof is taken care of for now,” I reported, wishing I could create a more permanent solution. I turned my attention to Felicity. “It’s not safe for you to stay here.”
Her spine straightened to steel as soon as I told her she couldn’t stay in the house.
The words weren’t meant to be harsh, just factual—the kind I specialized in.
But she looked at me like I’d called her a bad mother, not the resident of a dilapidated home.
Her jaw worked through the stages of fury.
“I grew up in Seattle,” she said tightly. “We don’t shut down city blocks for a little rain.”
“This isn’t rain,” I argued. “It’s the prequel to a flood.”
“And you think I can’t handle it?” Her eyes flashed, blue and bright, both challenging and pissed off.
“I didn’t say that. All I said was that it’s not safe for you to stay here.”
The kid, perhaps sensing the tension in the room, exclaimed, “Mama, my socks are wet.”
She glanced down. “Take them off and hang them in the bathroom.”
He hurried down the hall, and she stalked closer, lowering her voice. “You don’t even know me. We’ll be fine.”
“There are guest cabins at the ranch. You guys can stay there until the roof’s fixed.”
She stared at me, maybe waiting for a punchline, maybe expecting me to say something to paint her in the light of damsels in distress. When I didn’t continue, she took a deep breath, the kind meant to reset the conversation, and repeated, “Thank you. I appreciate the offer, but we’ll be fine.”
I didn’t push, but it took everything in my power not to.
I’d been accused of being cold. The last woman I’d dated told me I had “the emotional availability of a cement slab.” I never had strong emotional reactions to things or people.
But this frustrating, gorgeous celestial being in woman form had me feeling all kinds of things.
Things I’d rather not name. I’d be lying if I said her stubbornness didn’t make me respect her more, despite it infuriating me.
Her refusal to take help was almost admirable.
I started to walk back to the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” she asked. The sentence sounded more like an accusation than a question.
“I need to get my tools to deal with the hole in your ceiling.”
Maverick was back in the front room, now barefoot, looking up at me like he was sizing me up for a duel.
“Are you a real cowboy?” he questioned, face dead serious.
I glanced down at my mud-streaked jeans, then at my hands, which were so callused I barely felt the hammer anymore.
“Sometimes,” I replied. “Mostly, I sit at a desk and do paperwork.”
He considered this before asking a follow-up. “Can you ride a horse?”
“Better than I can drive a truck.”
He puffed out his chest. “I’m going to be a cowboy when I grow up.”
I glanced at his pajamas which had cowboy hats and boots on them. “It looks like you already are.”
His face lit up like I’d just handed him the keys to Disneyland, and something in my chest softened without permission. The kid was impossible not to like.
As I walked past him to my truck to grab my tool bag, I heard him stage-whisper to his mom, “I think he could fight a bear.”
I didn’t hear Felicity’s response, but I did hear her laugh.
The sound curled around me like smoke—sexy, addictive, and probably just as bad for my health.
I pushed those thoughts from my head as I grabbed my toolbox and headed back inside.
I tried to keep my focus on the tangible problems as I went back into the house—wet drywall, a splintered joist, the rickety porch stairs that would probably claim my ankle before the night was over.
But as I began patching the ceiling, using cardboard from one of her moving boxes, I couldn’t drown out the constant noise. Felicity had gone from barely speaking to me to talking nonstop, filling every gap with nervous energy.