About two minutes after I threw Scarlett out of the house, my phone rang.

“Now why in heaven’s name would you go and kick Scarlett Bodine out of my house?” Gran demanded without preamble.

Great. My next-door neighbor was a tattle tale. “Hello to you, too. And how’s Rome?”

“Don’t you ‘how’s Rome’ me,” Gran said. “You’re my favorite grandson in the world, Devlin, and I know you’re going through a rough patch. But you can’t be rude to our neighbors.”

“Gran, she broke into your house and made me cold, runny eggs.” I scraped them into the trash and settled for more coffee. My appetite had deserted me months ago.

“That’s just Scarlett being friendly.”

“You live in a town where breaking and entering is considered friendly.”

“Do I need to remind you that you live in a world where your friends and family backstab you to get to the top of the food chain?”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” I said, smiling despite myself. Gran was vocal about her disinterest in the political world my parents and I moved within.

“Look, I want you to be nice to that Bodine girl. I understand that maybe you’re not looking for company, but her daddy just died last week, so I’d appreciate it if you’d at least make an effort to be polite.”

And just like that, I felt like the biggest asshole in Appalachia. I sank down on one of the dining room chairs. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Well, now you are. Do better.”

I looked down at the list on the counter. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, here’s Estelle. She wants to say hi.”

Gran handed me off to her girlfriend. “Hey, handsome,” Estelle said in her sing-song voice.

“Hey, Stell. How’s your European tour?” I asked glumly.

“Magnificent. We stayed up ‘til dawn yesterday drinking champagne with a bunch of old ladies from Denmark. But I’m worried about you.” Estelle and my grandmother had been together for the last ten years. It had been a complicated transition, even for my liberal parents, but now I couldn’t imagine my grandmother without her skinny, sassy counterpart.

“I’ll be just fine,” I lied.

“Bootleg is a good place for healing,” Estelle said. “Make sure you do some of that and don’t hole yourself up like Henrietta VanSickle.”

“I hate to ask.”

“Henrietta VanSickle lives in a cabin in the mountains and comes down to town once a month for groceries. Rumor has it she took a vow of silence twenty years ago. Never broke it yet.”

Or maybe Henrietta Van Sickle was burnt out on real life and just wanted to be left alone, I projected.

A vow of silence and a remote cabin? I liked that idea enough to store it away as my official Plan B. I had no Plan A for getting my life back. But at least I knew I now had a backup.

“Listen, the tour bus is leaving for the naked cabaret. Do your gran and I a favor and get out once in a while. Maybe take Scarlett with you. No one has more life in her than that girl.”

I made a non-committal noise. “Have fun at the naked cabaret.”

We said our good-byes and disconnected. I stared at the phone in my hand and at the business card on the counter.

“Call me when y’all change your mind,” Scarlett had said chipperly as I hustled her out the front door.

“Fuck.” I muttered to myself.

* * *

“These steps need redone,” Scarlett said, writing more notes on her clipboard and studying the deck stairs. “And that window on the end is rotted out. I can replace it so the place is sealed tighter for winter.”

Twenty-four hours after I’d thrown her out, she was back at the house going over my list of shit that needed fixed and adding her own ideas to it.

I followed her wordlessly around the house wondering if she was this good at her job or if she saw an opportunity to make some money off of an out-of-town asshole.

“And, please for the love of all that’s holy, tell me you’re gonna let me rip out that cabbage rose carpeting upstairs.”

It really was an eyesore.

“You do carpet too?”

“I got a guy. But I can rip the old stuff out and save you some money. Me and that carpet have hated each other since your granny moved in.”

“Add it to the list.” It was one of the benefits of being partner in a family law firm. My paychecks kept coming, even after I’d potentially destroyed my reputation.

She nodded briskly.

The list was getting longer and longer, and at this point, I wanted to say yes to everything just to see what this girl could do.

She didn’t look like any handyman I knew. Granted, it was a sexist observation and entirely unlike me. Despite wearing a tool belt and a headlamp, Scarlett looked more like an elementary school art teacher than a heavy-lifting blue-collar business owner. She was still unsettlingly gorgeous.

I was used to beautiful women. My father had been a U.S. Senator, and we’d spent most of our lives between Annapolis and Washington, D.C., before he retired into consulting. Everyone there was flawless, at least on the outside. Scarlett, by contrast, rolled up in a pick-up truck with dirt on her chin and sawdust and mud on the knees of her jeans. Her very nicely fitting jeans.

She looked like she belonged on a poster on a teenage boy’s wall in those sexy jeans and fitted Henley. I’d never considered tool belts to be sexy, but on Scarlett’s swaying hips, I was willing to reconsider my stance.

“All right,” Scarlett said, tucking the contractor pencil back in her belt. “I’m gonna run the numbers for you so you have an accurate quote, but I can give you an estimate right now.”

She named a figure that didn’t make me light-headed. “That’s with the friends and family discount for Granny Louisa,” she said, making another note in her notebook.

I peered over her shoulder at it. She had the handwriting of a three-year-old trying to figure out whether they were right- or left-handed.

“You can think about it and let me know,” she said, ripping off a corner of the paper and handing it over.

“Let’s do it,” I decided. I wanted to see if she could do it all just as much as I wanted to give my grandmother and Estelle a “thank you” for letting me stay.

“All right,” Scarlett said. “I can start on the deck tomorrow and fit in some of the smaller projects here and there. I’ve got a roof job and some dry-walling this week, but after I’ll have a bit more time.”

“Sounds good,” I said.

If she was surprised by my agreement, she didn’t let on. “Awesome. Listen, while I’m here. I’m gonna check your roof. I did some patches last year, and I wanna make sure there aren’t any new loose shingles.”

I looked up. The roof was three stories above ground. The first floor was a garage and walk-out basement.

“Okaaaay.” I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea of anyone crawling around that high up off the ground.

“You don’t have to go up,” she said, patting my arm like I was a scared kid. “I got this.”

She hustled over to her pick-up and pulled the extension ladder off of the rack. Whistling, she held it over her head and hauled it up around to the front of the house. I jogged after her.

“Want me to carry that?” I offered.

She shot me an amused look. “I think I can handle an aluminum ladder.”

She propped it against the front of the house and extended it all the way up. At least from this elevation it was only two stories up, but still. She placed a booted foot on the first rung and rocked the ladder until it dug into the flowerbed.

Scarlett scrambled halfway up the ladder before I reached out to hold it. “Are you sure you should be doing this?” I called after her.

She hung one-handed at the top and laughed. “Don’t worry, Dev. I don’t expect you to get up here with me.”

It wasn’t that I was afraid of heights. They’d never bothered me before. It was that, right now, everything terrified me. The unknown, hell, the known. Being away from work, my home, away from Annapolis. The only thing that was worse than being away from it was the idea of going back. I’d become risk adverse to the point where leaving the house felt like a monumental task. I’d been in Bootleg for three days and still hadn’t ventured any farther than across the property line to Scarlett’s party.

I squinted up in time to see Scarlett swing her leg onto the roof and disappear. The skies seemed bluer today, the sun sharper. And that hollow feeling in my gut, the one that had taken up residence when I’d discovered my wife of three years reviewing our prenup at the breakfast table, didn’t feel quite as empty. The last of the daffodils fluttered against my shins in the breeze.

“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath. I could climb a damn ladder and sit on a fucking roof. I still had my balls. Johanna hadn’t gotten those in the divorce.

I climbed. Sure, maybe my fingers ached from the tight grip on the rungs. And maybe my knees shook a little bit. But when I crested the lip of the roof, when I very carefully stepped onto the shingled expanse, I took a deep breath, and it was the first one in months that didn’t feel like it was choking me.

“You made it.” Scarlett grinned at me from her position on the peak where she was examining the chimney.

“I did.” I looked to the lake, an even better view here than in the house. It stretched on, a shimmering expanse that beckoned the gaze and held it. The trees, green with new leaves, shivered in the breeze. The wind felt stronger up here. I wondered if it was strong enough to move the clouds that had anchored themselves above me.

“Patches held up, and I’m not seeing anything new that you need to worry about,” Scarlett announced standing up and bopping toward me as if she were on flat ground.

“Good.”

“Not bad, right?” she said, staring out over the waters.

“Not bad,” I repeated.

She took a bracing breath, filling her lungs with spring sunshine. “I love this time of year. Everything comes back to life.”

God, I hoped it was true.

We both heard it. The rattle of metal, and I turned to watch in horror as the ladder listed to the side and disappeared.

“Ah, fuck,” Scarlett swore and jogged to the edge of the roof.

I scrambled after her and grabbed the back of her belt when she peered over the edge. “Jesus, Scarlett, can you maybe not plunge off my grandmother’s roof?”

“I’ve been climbing on rooftops since I was twelve years old,” she said, rolling her eyes at my concern.

“And how many have you fallen off of?” I asked.

“Six or seven.” She shrugged, unconcerned.

I towed her away from the edge for my own peace of mind. “We’re trapped. We’re stuck up here.” I could feel the panic rising in me, and I hated it. I hated myself. The anxiety that had reared its ugly and inconvenient head when I found out my whole life was a sham rushed back, socking me in the chest with the force of a fist.

“Sit your ass down,” Scarlett said, her voice stern. She pushed me down, and I dug my heels into the shingles and tried not to think about how high up we were. She sank down in front of me and stared hard until I met her gaze. “We’re gonna be just fine. I’ve got my phone in my pocket. Okay?”

She was talking me down. I hated the fact that it was necessary.

I nodded. She squeezed my knees through my jeans. The contact helped.

“Heights bother you?” she asked, her accent softening her words.

I shook my head and closed my eyes. “Life bothers me.”

She cupped my face, and I opened my eyes. Her clear gray eyes—so close to sterling—were inches from me. Her lips, soft and pink, hovered just out of reach. “You, Devlin McCallister, are gonna be just fine.”

It sounded like a promise. Or maybe it was a threat. I didn’t care. I clung to the words like a lifeline in a storm.

“I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Well, let’s see how this relationship progresses, and we’ll see if there’s anything else you can hold me to.” She gave me an exaggerated wink, and I felt my lips quirk.

Scarlett ruffled my hair like I was a kid. “I’m gonna call my brother. He’ll get us back on the ground quicker than gravity.”

She didn’t leave my side but sat down hip-to-hip with me.

“Gibs, what are you doing?”

I couldn’t hear his response, but I imagined it was something snarky.

“Good, then you have time to help your favorite sister out. I’m up on Granny Louisa’s roof—”

She stopped and frowned. “I did not fall off this one… No. I don’t need an ambulance… Jesus, Gibs, chill out. The ladder fell. Dev and I are stuck on the roof, and I’m getting hungry.”

She listened, rolling her eyes heavenward.

“Thank yooooou,” she sang before disconnecting. “He knows it’s an emergency when hunger is involved. He’ll be here in ten.”