Chapter Fourteen
“H ey, Emma. You need some help with that?”
At the sound of a male voice below her, Emma turned and squinted. The bright morning light brought Ryan’s face into sharp relief.
“Hi, Ryan.”
Perched on the top step of her ladder, she looked back at the rusted and worn corrugated iron sheeting of her porch roof, a stark contrast to the shiny new sheets lying stacked on their sides against the railing below. She’d ordered the new sheeting on Monday, and it had taken until today, Thursday, to get it. Something about a shortage of it in Bialga.
She’d managed to lift some of the old stuff, but the nails had rusted into the timbers beneath it, and she was having trouble pulling them out. The last one had broken off in the claw of the hammer in her hand.
“I’ll give you a hand if you like, and rip up that iron for you. I have the day free, so it’s no bother.”
Emma shrugged to herself and wiped her hands on her shorts. Who was she to refuse an offer of pure-male brawn when it was needed? Ed was coming around after lunch to put the new iron sheets on for her. She’d convinced him that she could remove the old stuff herself. An over inflation of her skills, as she now knew. She’d repay Ryan with a drink and something to eat, and that would be that.
Strong, tanned hands grasped the side of the ladder as she made her way down to the bottom.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s dangerous to climb ladders on your own?”
Emma held in the grin that wanted to come out at such a male comment. “Why, I didn’t know you cared.”
She turned around, only to find herself imprisoned in the cage of his arms, stretching from one side of the ladder to the other.
Oops.
Ryan tilted his head to look at her, taking his time to stare at first her eyes, then her mouth, only inches from his own.
Emma held herself totally still, then pressed back hard against the steps of the ladder. She had no intention of encouraging him. He was far too close for her liking.
“You have no idea, kiddo. You’d tempt a saint.”
Emma drew breath to reply, but another voice sounded behind Ryan. A rather irritated voice.
“Do you still need that roof fixed, or has it been postponed?”
Emma bit off her gasp and shoved at Ryan’s hands, pushing her way out from between his arms. Her heart pounded at the thought of how that must have looked. She shook her head at her reaction. She was being silly. He could take it how he wanted.
“Gabe. What are you doing here?”
Gabe stared at both Ryan and Emma, his cool grey eyes shuttered. His tool belt dangled from one sexy, tanned hand.
Why hadn’t he walked up a few minutes earlier? More importantly, why did she care?
“Where’s your truck? I didn’t hear you come in.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Parked it under the big gum tree down there, out of the sun.” He lifted the heavy belt onto his shoulder. “I can come back another time if—”
“No!” Emma sidestepped Ryan. “There’s no need. Ryan was just offering to help me lift the old iron. I’m having more trouble with it than I thought I would. I wasn’t expecting your dad until after lunch.”
Gabe shrugged the tool belt higher on one shoulder, the tools clanking together.
“Dad guessed as much. He had an idea what this stuff would be like. It can be stubborn when it wants to be. He sends his apologies.” He glanced at Ryan leaning lazily against the ladder. “Dad had a call and needed to go to Bialga. He sent me instead.”
Ed had sent him. Disappointment drained her enthusiasm. She couldn’t understand why it bothered her.
She gestured to the ladder. “Why don’t I let you guys get to it? I’m afraid I won’t be much use. Just yell if there’s something I can do.”
*
Gabe watched as Emma grabbed a bucketful of gardening tools and a hat from the porch steps and wandered over to the round garden that sat proudly in the middle of the circular drive. Although garden was perhaps a misuse of the word. More weeds than plants graced its mounded interior.
“I could think of a few uses for her,” Ryan muttered as he picked up Emma’s discarded hammer. He stared up at Gabe when there was no reply. “What?”
Gabe’s expression must have shown exactly how impressed he was with that statement. “Nothin’.” He slipped the tool belt from his shoulder and buckled it around his waist. “Hold the ladder for me while I get up there. She would never have pulled it all up like that.”
Reaching the top, Gabe grasped the top step of the ladder while Ryan climbed up and past him onto the roof.
Damn it’s hot up here.
Heat shimmered up off the roofing metal, intensifying. The sooner they started, the sooner he could get down.
“I tell you what, she was prettier than you to look at climbing that ladder,” Ryan joked. “What an arse.”
What an arse… You’re an arse .
Gabe shook his head at the thought. He’d known Ryan since kindergarten. They’d been friends for more years than he could remember, and here he was calling him an ass.
Mind you, he’d called him worse than that on occasion.
Gabe grunted in reply, not wanting to commit himself. What he thought of her ass wasn’t any of Ryan Thomas’s business, wasn’t anyone’s business.
Heck, Gabe didn’t even want to think about her ass.
He looked down at where she fought with the overgrown jungle of weeds and vines, hauling them from the ground, wiping a hand over her sweat-drenched face and tossing the offensive things into a pile on the gravel of her driveway.
“… are you?”
Ryan’s voice dragged him back to reality.
“What was that?”
Ryan frowned a little and glanced from Emma back to Gabe. “I asked if you were interested in her. Just say so and I’ll back off. I like her, but you… Well, we’re friends. If you want—”
“No.” Gabe shook his head and lifted his hammer from his tool belt, focusing on the buckled and rusted roofing beneath his feet. “I’m not.”
“But the way you look at her sometimes. Are you sure?”
The tick and pop of the roof in the warm sun was the only sound around them. Gabe looked up to see Ryan staring at him, waiting for an answer. Sighing, he held his friend’s gaze and kept the image of Ryan and Emma when he’d walked up the drive firmly in his mind.
And lied through his teeth.
“No, I’m not interested. She’s Darby’s friend and looks like ending up being mine as well. Satisfied?”
Ryan twisted his lips into a semblance of a smile. “I’m not sure. Should I be?”
Gabe growled in frustration. “What do you want me to say? Don’t ask her out? Let me have a chance? What? I have no intention of going through all that again. Sami was a lesson learned the hard way. I’m not going back there ever again. You have my permission to chase her as long as she’ll let you.”
He kept his gaze on the roof, trying to see where he’d start. He didn’t want to look up and see the compassion on Ryan’s face.
“Sami’s lies can’t be excused, but you shouldn’t use that as an excuse to live half a life. Everyone’s been hurt at some stage. You’re not the only one to have a woman use you.”
Gabe raised flat eyes to stare at Ryan. “I am not going to discuss this. Not now, not ever again. It’s over, in the past. I’m done with it. Move on.”
Ryan’s expression softened. His brown eyes turned sad. “I have, buddy. Have you?” Ryan threw his hammer in the air, letting it spin so that he caught it by the handle. “Don’t let something special pass you by because you’re scared of the consequences.” He pointed the hammer at Gabe. “Because the consequences of that are even worse.”
*
Emma looked up and wiped her forearm over her brow. Her hat had a wide brim, but it didn’t stop the early spring heat from getting to her.
Mmm. Nice. Very nice indeed.
She licked her lips, unaware of the involuntary reaction to the display of pure male yumminess gracing her new porch roof.
Both Gabe and Ryan had shed their shirts over an hour earlier, her comments about sun care and sunburn eliciting a saucy grin from both men and a cheeky suggestion from Ryan about applying sunscreen.
Emma had shaken her head in mock disgust and carried on pulling weeds. Letting them get burned could be their penance for being all macho. It didn’t stop her from having a good look when they were too busy to notice though.
She could see why Millie had a thing for Gabe. He was gorgeous—from his wide shoulders, right down to the hard, defined slabs of muscle that were his stomach. The way the muscles moved and flexed as he worked, twisting and hammering under the warm sun, clenched her whole body into a mass of yearning so intense it stole her breath. He had a body to die for. Sweat had lent it a sparkling sheen, which was undeniably sexy in the mid-afternoon heat.
Tight, well-worn jeans moulded to his lean hips, the waistband firm and low. The denim outlined the shape of his incredible butt and thighs, almost looking as if it had been painted on by one of the Masters.
He’d give Michelangelo’s David a run for his money.
Ryan was no slouch either—his firm body proudly on display up there as well—but it wasn’t his chest and stomach that had her fanning her face at regular intervals.
It’s just this weather.
Yes, that was it. Just the early spring heat taking its toll on her.
Gabe held up his hand and let out a whoop of satisfaction as Ryan high-fived him. Their laughter reached her, washing over her, calming her jangled nerves and tilting her mouth in a smile. They were finished.
Emma stood upright, pressing her hand to her back to get the kinks out and called up to them. “Hey! You guys want something to drink? I have beer in the fridge.”
Both turned at once, their combined grins and sheer presence enough to fell her on the spot.
I should’ve moved to the country years ago.
“You said the magic word, baby!”
Gabe let out a loud chuckle at Ryan’s comment. “You should never mention the word beer around this guy. He’d fall over himself to get to it.”
Gabe swung over the edge of the roof and onto the ladder, tool belt firmly around his hips, jeans even firmer. He jumped the last few steps to the ground and spun around to face her as she walked up.
“Do you think I could use your bathroom? I’m a little sweaty.”
Emma made a show of looking him up and down, a fake grimace of disgust curling her lip.
“You bet. You’re not exactly man-of-the-year material like this.” She pinched her nose between two fingers. “Get into that shower, boy.”
Light sparkled and reflected in the stormy-grey depths looking back at her. Gabe’s husky laughter rang out around her, enveloping her in a promise of sun, sin, and long hot afternoons of sex.
Stomach muscles clenched tight in awareness, Emma pasted a grin on her face so that he wouldn’t notice her reaction.
“Thanks. Towels are in the closet in the bathroom?”
Emma nodded, consumed with the effort it took to keep her composure around him while he was half naked. “Yes. I guess it’s the least I can do, considering you were instrumental in rebuilding my broken bathroom.”
Shrugging a shoulder, he walked up the steps with her, stopping to remove his work boots before entering the house. “Hey, that’s what friends are for, right?”
His cheeky comment belied the dark look in his eyes. She stepped closer, not even realising she’d done so, drawn to his magnetic gaze.
Gabe sucked in an audible breath, his eyes narrowing and dropping to her mouth.
Is he going to kiss me? For real this time?
Emma’s breath caught in her throat, her chest tightened and refused to let anything either in or out until he did.
“So, where’s my beer?”
The question came from behind her. Emma jerked back. Embarrassment flooded her from head to toe. “I was just on my way to get it.”
She sidestepped Gabe and hurried down the hall, her Dunlop shoes tapping rapidly on the bare floorboards.
*
Ryan stopped on the top step to the porch, eyes wide with surprise. Gabe avoided his friend’s gaze. He knew what was coming.
Ryan moved up beside him and toed off his shoes. Gabe risked a glance in his direction. One eyebrow curved upward toward Ryan’s wavy blond hair as he walked past Gabe.
“Not interested, huh? Liar. ”