Handful of Heaven

by Jillian Hart

  “Alex?” The deafening hammer of the rain drowned out the sound of her voice, even when she cupped her hands like a megaphone and tried again. Since there was no sign of him from where she stood, she circled around the side of the building. There wasn’t a ladder on the premises, so that meant he’d had to climb onto the roof from the vacant upstairs apartment.

  Sure enough, as she climbed the outside stairs to the apartment door, she caught sight of a flash of navy blue against the peak of the front side of the roof—she couldn’t have spotted him when she pulled in. If she had, he’d be safe in the diner by now.

  “Alex!” Rainwater cascaded down the asphalt shingles like a river at flood stage, and it had to make the roof impossibly slick. How exactly had he gotten up on that roof? “Alex!”

  The storm was too loud for him to hear her. She could just make out the curve of his back, so she waved her arms, hoping to catch his attention. Nothing. She wasn’t about to let him stay out here. The rain was bitter cold. He’d catch pneumonia if he wasn’t careful, that is, if he didn’t fall off the roof first.

  Regretting that she hadn’t had time for her usual morning yoga in the last six months, she felt her back groan as she climbed over the handrail and wedged the toes of her walking boots onto the lowest corner of the eave. Water raced in a torrent around her feet as she lunged forward and wrapped her arm around the rain gutter downspout, while icy water pounded down on her head and back.

  Trying not to imagine the hard blacktopped ground two stories below, she clung to the downspout, which she seriously prayed was securely attached, and fell forward onto the roof. Her hands hit the slick surface and she began to slide, but she didn’t fall.

  Alex is in so much trouble. It was that single crisp thought that gave her enough fuel to grab hold of the gable window’s eaves and inch forward. The shingles felt as though they’d been coated in vegetable oil, and she slipped her way to the top of the first peak of the gable, where Alex had apparently already spotted her.

  She sank to the small crest, sitting on the frigid wetness, and tried to forget she was terrified of heights. “Get over here, young man.”

  He might not be able to hear her, but he knew good and well what she was saying. He gaped at her from beneath the hood of his coat; he looked wet to the skin. He held up the hammer as if explaining what he was doing on the roof.

  The boy meant well. He had a good heart. But this was dangerous! She crooked her finger, giving him her best imperial look. “Now.”

  “I’m almost done.” She couldn’t hear his words, but she could read his lips.

  “Move.” She gave him her most severe look, the one that meant business.

  He tried to charm her with “The Eye,” thinking himself so grown up and manly, she reasoned, for being the one to fix the leaking roof. But that was what roofers were for. They were paid to fix roofs. She didn’t relent, and finally he gave in and crawled nimbly along the dangerous roof, seemingly without a care in the world. That boy! She grabbed him the second he was in range. “Down. Now.”

  “Yeah, Mom, that’s what I’m doing.” He looked amused more than anything as he swung down, using the supports of the covered staircase roof, and landed on the top step.

  If only she were that agile! Paige went to follow suit, but she couldn’t get any traction as she eased down the protection of the gable window. Just at the time her boots threatened to follow the water and slide right over the full gutters to the ground below, a big male hand shot out from the gray curtain of wind-driven rain.

  But it wasn’t Alex’s hand. It was Evan Thornton in his Sunday best, soaked and looking more handsome than any man had the right to look. Instead of appearing as a drowned rat, the way she feared she did, the rain slicked his dark hair to his scalp, making him look virile and capable, and when he took her hand, his touch felt as invincible as steel.

  I don’t want to like this man, she reminded herself firmly, surprised that she was so glad to see him. Not that she needed help, no, but his just being near seemed to take the sting out of the icy rain and the damp out of the air. She didn’t like that, either! She did not want Evan to affect her in the slightest. But he did. She could no longer deny it as his hands gripped hers and held her steady as she crossed from the roof to the rail and down.

  “You didn’t need to come rescue me.” She didn’t mean to sound harsh.

  “I didn’t come to rescue you. I saw Alex up there, as I drove by on my way to church, and I thought he didn’t belong up there. At least, not without someone who knows what they’re doing on a roof.”

  “And that would be you?”

  “Sure. I put myself through college working carpentry in the summers. Want me to take a look?”

  “I want you safe on the ground. That roof is slick.”

  “It’s a piece of cake.” Only then did she realize he’d grabbed Alex’s hammer, which he must have taken from him on the stairs. “Go inside before you freeze. Have a hot cup of coffee waiting for me, would you?”

  And as if he had the perfect right, he climbed onto the roof and disappeared, as agile as a gorilla. A great big, pushy male gorilla. Why she was furious, she couldn’t explain it to herself, but she wasn’t about to let some man, some arrogant, know-it-all man, think he could rescue her. She didn’t need help. She might have appreciated the referral to a good plumber, and though she likely could have gotten herself out of the snowdrift, she appreciated the use of his truck’s winch, but this was way too far.

  This was her roof! She didn’t seem to have any trouble, other than a single slip as she cleared the gable, angrily climbing low along the slope of the roof. Rain lashed her. A cruel wind battered her as she knelt beside Evan.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her. “I thought you were headed inside.”

  “You thought wrong. This is my roof. My problem.”

  “Fine. You want to hold this flush so I can hammer this flashing back down?”

  There was a flicker of amusement in his dark eyes, eyes that had flecks of gold and bronze in those brown irises. Expressive eyes that seemed so…caring. Caring. She had to be wrong. Evan Thornton didn’t really care about her. She didn’t know why he was on her roof, but there was no way he was doing this out of some sense of fairness. Or, maybe he was just after a few free meals. That was easier to believe than the fact that a man could care about her.

  She knew for a fact that a man couldn’t. Men were undependable. Unreliable. And when Jimmy had left her, the pain had brought her to her knees. She’d loved him. She’d truly loved him. No, she’d been foolish ever to care, even a little, for a man.

  That’s when a familiar minivan caught her attention as it pulled in at an angle, taking two spots, in front of the diner. Heath emerged from the driver’s door, leaving the vehicle running, and bolted onto the sidewalk. With another slam, her eight-year-old nephew followed his new dad into the diner and out of her sight. Heath had come to fetch Amy. The realization was like a terrible twisting sensation in her chest, a twisting that tightened until it felt as if her lungs were being ripped into shreds. Some men, she amended, were constant and committed.

  “Like this?” She held the edge of the tin flashing firmly, the way he’d been doing it.

  He nodded, not even bothering to look at what she was doing. His gaze latched on hers and like a brush to her heart, she felt touched in places she’d never even known were inside her. As if there was an undiscovered room in her heart—There she went, believing in things that weren’t real. Things that had no substance or merit. Wishful thinking was a flaw she couldn’t afford.

  If it was possible, the rain came down in an even fiercer wave, the crashing downpour turning to pebble-sized hail.

  “This just isn’t getting any easier,” Evan chuckled, as if he didn’t mind at all. He slid a nail near to her fingertips and gave a competent tap.

  Most men grumbled when they were uncomfortable, and squatting on top of a diner’s roof in the middle of a hailstorm wasn’t an
ything close to being comfortable. And many men thought they were pretty handy, but they weren’t. Evan, true to his word, tacked down the flashing and tugged the shingles back into place competently.

  “That ought to hold until the storm’s over. Well, unless it gets any worse.” He grinned at her through the downpour, and the cold seemed almost bearable.

  The thundering storm, the skin-chilling winds, even the cramp developing in her left calf faded until there was only Evan’s steady gaze and his sincere grin and his presence brimming through her like the richest honey. It was a sweetness she’d never known and could not explain.

  And certainly had the good sense not to believe in.

  She felt her chin rise up, and something that felt like an impenetrable titanium shield close around her heart. “I could have hammered that down myself, you know.”

  “I know. I have complete confidence in you. But seeing as you’re going to have dinner with me tonight—”

  “What?” She couldn’t have heard him right. The hail pounded around them, crescendoing, until the only thing louder was the wild jackhammering of her heartbeat. “We’re not having dinner tonight.”

  “You owe me for this, right?”

  “Y-yes.” She stopped.

  Evan watched her pretty rosebud pink lips shaped with whatever she was about to say next, and realized he was right.

  Did she also figure out that he intended to make her keep her word? Evan sure hoped so. “I want dinner with you.”

  She looked shocked. “You do?”

  Why on earth would she look so surprised? Even with the residual rainwater streaking down her face and her hair plastered down, she looked amazing. Her features were delicate, and for all the strength she exuded, there wasn’t much to her, but she was no frail beauty. She was feminine and soft and caring and it was not diminished by her capable get-things-done approach to life.

  Didn’t she know how attractive that was to a man like him? Didn’t she know that she fascinated him? He resisted the urge to smooth a stray lock of chestnut hair that had tumbled across her cheek, and he realized with a breath-stealing punch to his chest that he wanted to get to know her better.

  So he risked his pride and asked her. “Why not? You’re single. I’m single. You practically have dinner with me anyway as it is. You’re in the general proximity, right?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess, but—” No longer so in charge and self-assured, she bit her bottom lip, as if unsure, showing her rare, vulnerable side. “With Amy ill, I can’t—”

  “Amy doesn’t work Sunday evenings.” He hoped that was true; he thought it might be. “And you take one night off a week, don’t you?”

  “Uh, I always take Sunday evenings off, but I work at home. It’s when I do the week’s books.”

  As if an excuse was going to work with him. He’d climbed up on this roof in the middle of a Montana spring storm, and it wasn’t out of the kindness of his heart or because he had nothing better to do. “You stop to eat supper, right?”

  “Well, usually I bring the plate into my office—”

  He laid his hand on hers to stop her, and the instant his fingers met hers, a spark snapped like static electricity. Maybe it was something in the air from the storm, or maybe it was something more, like a sign from above. But either way he could not deny the shock of tenderness that rushed into the empty places of his heart. “You can stop for an hour or two and have dinner with me. Or I’m going to tell your sister and your son and everyone you work with that you promised to go out to dinner with me and then broke your promise.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  He wouldn’t, but he liked the way she didn’t quite believe him. Good, because he would never do anything to hurt her. But when a man was standing on the peak of a roof with hail getting bigger by the minute and what looked like a thunderstorm on the way, he used what leverage he could. “So, how about I pick you up at your place around six?”

  “I—” She intended to argue, to turn him down flat, he could see it. But then something on the sidewalk below stopped her.

  He saw her sister Amy walking arm in arm with her new husband, her head leaning on his shoulder. Her little boy hurried ahead to open the passenger door, and there was no mistaking the protective concern on Heath Murdock’s granite face as he settled his wife onto the front seat.

  Paige shook her head, as if changing her mind on what she’d been about to say, and a lovely brightness swept across her face, turning her cheeks pink and her eyes full of what looked like hope. “If you’re so determined to come by and take me to dinner, is there any way I can stop you?”

  “Absolutely not.” He saw clearly what she couldn’t say. Well, there was a lot he couldn’t say to her right now either.

  He cared about her, and he leaned in close to gather her free hand with his. “Let’s get off this roof before lightning decides to barbecue us.”

  “You know what they say about lightning striking twice?”

  He remembered that night’s storm. The sparkle of humor in her beautiful blue eyes made him grin, and he felt happy inside, not superficially, but really happy in a way he hadn’t felt in so long…he couldn’t remember when.

  While he’d promised himself he’d never do this again, never open his heart up to the kind of devastation Liz had brought him, he had to know if Paige was true all the way down deep.

  He led the way down the roof and onto the outside stairwell, never once letting go of her.

  Chapter Ten

  “Mom, where’s Mr. Thornton?” Alex popped his head out of the diner’s back door, ignoring the golf-ball-sized hail that was driving into them both.

  “He went back to his car, I imagine, on his way to church.” Bruised and battered and wet clear through from the weather, she tried to ignore the fact that her son might have very easily spotted Evan Thornton helping her off the roof. And holding her hand longer than necessary. Like all the way down the stairs.

  She told herself Evan had been worried about her safety, after all, the steps were slick and coated with hail. But secretly it had been nice, something unexpected.

  “What about you? You’ve got—” she glanced at the wall clock, “five minutes to make it to the ten o’clock service.”

  “But the roof—”

  “Is no place for you to be in a storm, young man, but church is. So go, but you drive carefully.”

  “I know.” He rolled his eyes, giving her a grin and “The Eye,” thinking himself so charming.

  Okay, he was. She was biased and, as she’d been since she’d first feasted her eyes on him, totally in love with him. She couldn’t help smoothing his wet bangs out of his eyes. “Think you can come back and bus tables for me?”

  “Sure. But you know what?” He grabbed his sodden jacket from the hook. Uncaring of the dampness, he thrust his arms into the garment. “You could hire someone else. You know, ’cause you’re short-staffed.”

  “When I find someone reliable, I will.” Reliable was a problem when the wage for starting help was the state’s minimum, and mostly kids wanted the job. “You’re reliable and even cheaper.”

  His charming grin widened. “You know who’s even more reliable than me?”

  “I hate to ask.”

  “Beth. She works over at the drive-in, but she doesn’t get enough hours there. And plus, she’d make more here because of tips, right?”

  Boy, he sure could pick a sensitive subject, couldn’t he? “I don’t think it’s a good idea to have your girlfriend work here. What if you two break up? You’d still have to bus when we’re shorthanded, and you’d have to see her—”

  “It’s not like that, Mom.” He shocked her by smacking a kiss on her cheek. “Beth has to take care of her mom and sister. Her mom’s drinking is bad again.”

  Paige felt a punch of sympathy hit her hard in the chest. She, too, knew what it was like for a teenager to have to carry adult responsibilities. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

  “Think a
ll you want. Then hire her.” Alex jingled his keys as he grabbed the doorknob. “Hire her, and I won’t say one word about you and Mr. Thornton.”

  With a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows, he was gone, racing into the storm before she could haul him back and set him straight.

  You and Mr. Thornton. Alex had said it as if she and Evan were a pair, a couple, who were dating. Oh, that boy so had it wrong.

  Isn’t that what dinner with a man was, a date? a little voice inside her head asked. And didn’t that mean she was technically dating Evan Thornton?

  It was one date. Just one.

  She grabbed the cordless phone and dialed Amy’s number. While she waited for the call to connect, she grabbed a dishtowel and dried the rain from her face.

  “Hello, Paige.” Amy sounded weak and shaky. “I suppose you know what I’m about to say.”

  “You took a pregnancy test and it’s positive?”

  “Yep. Since Heath is a doctor, I suppose the result is about as accurate as we’re going to get today.” She gave a watery sigh. “I’ve wanted this so badly, but I wasn’t like this with Weston.”

  “Remember how sick I was with Alex?” Paige understood morning sickness all too well. But she’d always wanted another little baby. Even now, the pangs of it tugged at her, but that time in her life had gone the moment her husband had called it quits. “I know Heath is already taking excellent care of you. Congratulations, sweetie.”

  “Th-thank you.” Amy sobbed, a result of happy tears.

  It was a happiness Amy deserved. Paige had done her best to make sure her brother and younger sisters had a good life. It hadn’t been easy for a teenager to raise kids only slightly younger than she was, but everything she’d done, how hard she’d worked, how hard she’d championed them, was for this, a good and happy life for them.

  “I’m taking you off the schedule,” Paige decided. “You stay home this week and take good care of yourself and my little niece or nephew.”