Page 38 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

It's a rental. It's not my house, not my boxes, not my problem.

I trade his flannel for my rain shell at the back door. That shirt's not mine to ruin.

I'm up the ladder in six minutes.

Because here's the thing about a woman who never stays anywhere. She cannot stand watching something get ruined that she could've saved. Ask my therapist. If I had one. If I stayed anywhere long enough to get one.

The tarp fights me the whole way. Wind grabs it like a sail, rain runs cold down my sleeves, and I've got a staple gun in my waistband and a bad attitude, and I am winning. Mostly.

Headlights swing into the drive.

I know the truck before I see it. Of course I do.

"NELLIE." Owen's out and moving, still in his station tee, soaked in three steps. "Get down off that ladder!"

"I'm fine!"

"You're on an aluminum ladder in a lightning storm!"

"Then quit distracting me!"

He doesn't argue. That's the scary part.

He climbs up beside me, takes the tarp corner out of my hands like I wasn't fighting it perfectly well.

"I had it," I say.

"You had it, sugar? You were about to sail into the next county."

"And you'd have what, caught me?"

"Yep." He hammers a nail through the grommet. Doesn't even look up. "I'd catch you."

Water streams off his jaw. He looks at the tarp, at the limb, at me.

"You're doing it wrong," he says.

"I will staple you to this roof."

"Corner first. Windward side. Trade me."

We trade. And it works, is the infuriating part. Same as the wreck on Main, same as the ER at three a.m. He pulls, I staple, he calls the next corner before I ask. Four hands, one brain. The tarp goes down tight and beautiful and I'm grinning in the rain like an idiot.

"Not bad, Peterson."

"Not bad yourself, Greer." He's grinning too. Rain in his lashes. "Now get down before God notices us up here."

Thunder rolls somewhere over the county line, long and low, like the sky clearing its throat.

"Why are you even here?" I holler over it.

"Storm knocked the scanner out at the station. Figured I'd check the lane on my way home."

"You live the other direction."

He wipes rain off his face with the back of his wrist. Doesn't answer that. Doesn't have to. The betting pool would riot.

I swing onto the ladder first. He steadies it from the roof edge, waits till I'm three rungs down, then follows.