by Mary Brady
The paintings that had lined the walls had been flung about the room. One of the frames had been shattered, but she added the portraits to the collection in the relative safety of the hallway. Next she rolled up one of the braided rugs. With her back to the wind, her backside faced the opening in the wall and the gale obligingly drenched it.
She sat back on her heels. Where could Hale be? Maybe he wasn’t out there going through anything. Maybe he had abandoned the idea of saving the house and had dived into a “safe room” where he was all snug and secure. Maybe he hefted the garage door open and fled in his big SUV without her. Would he? Could he? No. He was still here somewhere.
Rain ran down her neck and back, drenching her. Whatever Hale was doing, it didn’t make these pieces of history any less valuable.
She finished rolling the rug and tugged it into the hallway.
On her knees she had seen Millie’s photograph under the bed, so she dropped down where she could reach it, pulled it out and smiled. The graceful woman’s face was unharmed. She put the black-and-white portrait safely aside with the rest.
When she finished with the smaller pieces of history, she turned to the beautiful old walnut washstand. The granite top, from what she could see, had somehow survived the fall and would not be harmed by the rain, but the walnut, if left in the onslaught, would absorb enough water to warp and ruin it.
She struggled to lift the stand. Her mocs slipped on the wet floor and after a few feet, she started to lose her grip on the slippery granite top. Stopping, she reset her hold and strained to keep the commode’s historic top from ending up on the floor once again. If the gorgeous gray granite fractured it might never be able to be repaired.
Soon the rain in her face and the ache in her back made it seem as if an eternity had passed—and the piece began to slip again. She was losing the battle.
A hand appeared beside hers and then another.
“It weighs about ninety pounds,” Zach said, close to her ear. An unbidden shiver of another kind raced over her and she concentrated on the task at hand.
“Thanks for helping,” he continued.
The sound of his voice warmed her and a few moments later, Millie’s washstand stood in the hallway, dripping and safe.
“Seriously.” He softly encircled her arm with his hand. “Thank you for your help.”
He let go of her and lugged a chain saw and a battery powered lamp into the room.
She followed Zachary Hale, the man she had thought she knew so much about, but had known almost nothing. There was no story here today unless it was about a man saving some of Maine’s history.
“I need to unload some of the weight and some of the control the wind has on the tree,” he shouted.
She nodded, grabbed the battery-powered lantern from him, and he pulled the cord on the chain saw.
As he cut away the branches, the saw hardly made noise above the storm, and when the limbs fell, Addy hauled them away so he wouldn’t trip and fall. When he finally turned the saw off, he hadn’t finished. The tree still lay against the house.
Addy pitched more branches out through the hole. “Are you going to cut through the trunk?” she shouted to be heard.
“If I do that...”
The rest was swept away by the wind.
“What?”
He put his mouth close to her ear. “If I do that the heaviest part of the tree might crash into the side of the house, causing more damage.” His lips brushed her ear ever so slightly and an urge rushed through her to turn so his lips could brush against hers.
She nodded instead. She had no idea if what she was nodding to made sense or not. That part of her brain didn’t work right now.
Pressing her head to the side of his so he could hear her she asked, “What do we do now?” His wet face warmed her cheek and she moved away instantly.
In the light of the lantern there was only the earnestness of sentiment on his face. This was not a rat. There was humility in the look Hale the swindler would never have been able to conjure.
“I have to do what I can,” he said and pointed upward. “I have to go into the attic to remove branches and then put the tarp in place.”
She nodded again instead of moving in to answer. Whatever he needed to do, she was going to help him.
In the pile of things with the large blue tarp and the short pieces of lumber was a box of nails and a pair of hammers. He must have hoped she’d give him a hand.
She grabbed the lantern and an armload of supplies, happy she had risen above pond scum, and followed him to the attic stairway.
“How are we going to do this? Won’t the wind just blow the tarp away?” she asked as she held up the lantern so he could see up the steps.
“I’m going to fasten the tarp inside the attic and the second floor with these short pieces of lumber. The lumber will help keep the tarp from tearing. I’ll—”
“We will.” She interrupted him.
He glanced down at her, the harsh light illuminating something inside herself she had not thought was possible, the thought that Zachary Hale was someone she might like to get to know on a personal level.
He continued upward, breaking the spell or whatever it was. “We’ll put the tarp over the tree trunk for strength and reinforce it with ropes. I have no idea how well this will work, but I have to stop as much of the rain as possible from coming into the house.”
When they reached the top of the steps, the light Addy carried showed them that Zach had more chain-saw work to do, as the top of the tree was not visible. The hole in the roof was many feet in diameter and rose five to six feet from the level of the attic floor.
There was less water up here, but a hole in the floor gaped several feet wide. She took the nails from him and they put the supplies they carried in a dry area.
If she got what he was going to do, he would have to lean across the gape in the floor and onto the tree to reach the branches that had to be cut away. The tarp, attached to the inside of the attic, would fan out and collect rainwater and send it to the ground.
Zach started out but she took hold of his sleeve. “Shouldn’t we reinforce the floor before you go out there?” she nearly screamed to be heard above the noise.
“It’ll take too much time,” he shouted.
“Be careful.” She looked into his eyes and saw the same worry that was making her head hurt in places it never hurt before.
He nodded.
Chain saw in hand, he approached the tree, testing the two-hundred-year-old floor as he went. The wind whipped at his clothing and the rain drenched him. When he was still several feet away, the floor with its damaged supports dropped several inches and creaked loudly over the storm.
Addy clenched her fist as if she could keep him safe by holding on hard.
He backed slowly away and approached from the side closer to the roof, but farther from the branches he had to cut away. As he drew nearer the old boards dipped a bit but held him.
Addy found herself biting her lip when he tested the tree for stability.
She cared what happened, not just to his ancestral home but to him. She cared what happened to Zachary Hale.
Alarms should be blaring. Emotional attachment was what got her into deep trouble in the past. She’d better nip this one. She was only reacting to the man she wanted Hale to be, she reasoned. She knew what he was. She knew he could seduce the money out of hundreds of people, maybe thousands.
He could seduce her into walking away without a story.
The chain saw buzzed. A branch dropped and she caught it. He motioned her away, but she gestured back that she was all right and they repeated the process until the branches were stripped.
He pushed back from the tree, pulled her away from the hole and stopped, standing close enough for her to hear him when
he shouted against the wind, “I’m going to attach the tarp to the roof, bring it across the tree and secure it to the roof on the other side.”
She listened carefully visualizing the process.
“I’m going to need your help to get the tarp across the tree trunk or it will most likely get away and there will be no saving this part of the house.”
She nodded and he continued. “It could be dangerous. I don’t want you hurt.”
She nodded again and he took her arm and pulled her closer to the warmth of his body and she leaned in, seeking more.
“If you feel you are in any danger at all, I want you to let go of the tarp. No matter what else happens, let go of the tarp.” He shifted to try to see her face.
“No matter what. Like if you fall?” She turned her face up to his.
He stared into her eyes. Moisture dropping from his hair into his whiskers. The wind buffeting the two of them. “No matter what happens to me.”
“I’ll do what I need to do.”
He must have accepted that because he picked up the heavy tarp.
“When I reach out—” He gestured with one hand. “I need you to hand me one of those boards and a handful of nails.”
“Board and nails,” she shouted. “Okay.”
He fastened one side of the tarp, keeping it furled and away from the hole so the wind wouldn’t catch it. Each time he held out a hand she filled it with a small piece of lumber and three nails.
Each time he got too close to the gaping hole in the floor, each time his foot slipped and he could have plunged a dozen feet to the floor below, Addy’s stomach knotted tighter.
When he had the tarp attached across the hole and to the tree, he tossed the edge of the tarp to her. She caught it without falling into the hole or sailing outside. Easy. Though the tarp fought violently against them, they finished the upper end, anchoring ropes to keep the wind from just blowing the whole thing inward.
He smiled his thanks and she wanted to touch him. His shoulders would be hard and his arms firm. If she put her hands on his back and smoothed them around to his belly she was sure all would ripple under her fingertips. Ridge by ridge, she’d like to explore.
Truly, she hoped he didn’t read minds.
When they got down to the second floor, the tarp had blown outside and beat against the tree and the house.
“Are you ready for this?”
She almost laughed. “I am so ready.” And she wondered if she had any idea what she was ready for.
Zach leaned out the hole in the wall and reached for the tarp. After five minutes of struggling and almost losing his balance, she wanted to tell him this was not worth it. He was worth more than a house, no matter how old it was.
She had a good hold on his jacket when he got control and gathered the tarp inside. He turned and when the struggling tarp nearly tossed her to the side, he gathered her close to him so he held both the struggling tarp and her.
“I’m going to put the tarp over the tree and hand it to you. I need you to just hold on.”
She put her hands on his chest and steadied herself.
“It sounds so easy.” What they had done upstairs was not easy. Having him press her body to his was definitely not. This was Zachary Hale, the big-shot billionaire and he was holding her intimately.
He was also holding the tarp intimately, she reminded herself. As if listening to her thoughts, the tarp thrashed more.
“I don’t need you to do anything else. Just catch it and hold on. If it gets away from you, leave it.” He squeezed her closer, asking if she understood.
She agreed.
He reached a handful of tarp over the tree; she grabbed and smiled. Easy again.
When the rest of the tarp flipped over the tree and she grabbed for it.
She didn’t even realize her feet had left the floor until suddenly, she was being thrown toward the hole and before she could do anything more than scream, she was dangling a good thirty feet from the ground. Scared out of her mind, she hung on.
The meager light from the lantern coming out the hole and the edge of the wet tarp she was clinging to were all she had to cling to.
All right, you helpless thing, she thought. Move your butt. She struggled to lift her feet to climb toward the hole. Pressure on the tarp from above made Addy realize Zach had a grip from above. He pulled the tarp upward, dangling woman and all. When she was close enough, she whipped her feet through the hole and reached out a hand. He hauled her inside.
“Go back to the loft,” he shouted at her.
She laughed at the idea and that only seemed to make him angry. “I just got the hang of it, pun intended, of clinging to a tarp and you want me to go sit somewhere safe,” she shouted back at him. “I don’t think so.”
She seized one edge of the tarp, held it firmly, slipped the grommet over the nail head and bent the nail for security. Then she hammered the board into place over the edge of the tarp.
Soon they were both securing the tarp in place. After wrestling and hammering for another half hour, they added rope to give support to the tarp or the hurricane winds would have ripped it to shreds. It still might happen.
When they were finished, she came over to where he was examining their handiwork.
* * *
“WHO ARE YOU?”
Zach heard her question, but raised his hammer and bent one of the nails, anchoring the rope to the wooden beam.
She was a reporter.
Anything he said could end up on the internet, in print and on television.
He looked into her face. The angle of her head, the lines of her mouth, even the slant of her eyebrows said she was asking because she wanted to know, not that she wanted to broadcast the information to the world.
No one had ever asked him that question, not his classmates, his coworkers, the women he dated. No one wanted the answer to that question.
She stepped in close, too close to ignore her. She was not the woman he assumed she was. Not just the reporter. Not selfish. Giving. Fearless. Someone he might want to get to know. Her eyes wide, she watched him close the distance between them. When she turned her face upward, he lowered his mouth to hers and fire erupted inside him. Her lips were soft and her mouth eager as she returned his kiss. Bringing her body against his, their wet clothing warmed instantly with their heat making it feel as if they were naked.
She pressed her mouth harder to his and when her tongue met his...
With both palms against his chest, she pushed away from him. Sweeping her hand over her mouth.
CHAPTER SIX
ALONE IN THE LOFT, Adriana dropped the third load of wood into the bin, which now sat filled and brimming over. The fire crackled smartly and her whole body ached from the exertion of the last few hours.
The tarp had been as snug as possible, and reinforced, but there had been much more to do. Everything that could be removed by two exhausted people was taken from the four-poster bedroom. They had carefully draped the antique quilt over the kitchen chairs.
They had then cleared the other rooms on the windward side of the house. Polite, helpful to each other, speaking when necessary. Ignoring the kiss and what it might mean.
Firewood debris clung to the front of the work shirt she had borrowed, desperate to keep her last tank top dry. She brushed the debris into the glowing ash bed of the fireplace and watched as the bits of wood made tiny flames that died quickly away.
Addy wasn’t sure what to make of Zachary Hale or even what to make of herself. The kiss they had shared had been incendiary and she knew if she didn’t stop it, there would have been more between them.
She had been in that situation more than once. A harrowing event occurred. A man and a woman high on adrenaline do what came naturally in such a moment. The sex would be gr
eat and the letdown equally as great. There would then be no story to tell because the act would stand between them. Out the window would go her credibility and objectivity.
After another moment, she nabbed her computer from the coffee table and lowered herself into the stuffed chair nearest the fire, resisting putting her feet on the puffy rectangular ottoman. She didn’t want to seem too familiar or get too comfortable.
Zachary Hale clearly cared about something other than himself. He cared for his family’s history and the history of Bailey’s Cove. The items in the house and the house itself were only priceless because they were heirlooms handed down by his ancestors and not because they would bring a tidy profit. Their value would, of course, create a substantial boon to her meager budget but wouldn’t make a ripple in his.
When he had pulled her back inside the hole in the bedroom wall, she had wanted to take him right there on the floor. He had saved her. He could have had anything he wanted and she would have gladly given it, even—she cringed—the story. If everyone had a price, it seemed being saved from death was hers.
She rubbed her face in her hands. She was getting soft. She was glad she had pushed him away—sort of.
Staring into the blazing fire and tapping her fingertips on the top of her closed computer, she tried not to think that a smart reporter would be putting some of her thoughts into recorded notes.
She blinked. Smart would be a good thing.
After several attempts at typing and retyping, she closed the computer. Smart or not, this reporter needed to remind herself of how much she hated Zachary Hale.
Hate was never an emotion she was comfortable with, but when Savanna had spoken of what Hale had done to her, Addy couldn’t control that particular dark monster.
Now she was not so sure how she felt.
Hale had been real, honest, even admirable since she tracked him down in Bailey’s Cove.
And then there was the warm, firm feel of his lips against hers, the way her body responded instantly. That didn’t seem particularly hateful.