Taking Chances: Tangled Up Part 17

She looked over at him. "How do you want me to go up?"

Max stared at her for a moment. She was actually asking him for input rather than just using the first thing she saw as a makeshift ladder.

He looked around. It was a good question, too.

"See those pieces of wood?" he asked, pointing with his flashlight to two long pieces. They had obviously collapsed in from the roof. There was a hole right above them, which, despite the problems it caused, was allowing in more light than they would have had otherwise.

"Yep."

"Can you prop one against the wall and walk up?"

He would have never suggested that to anyone else. It was certainly not the safest method ever. But it looked like the only option at the moment, and it would work. Bree would have no trouble balancing on the board. It was wide enough for a good foothold and, well, it was Bree.

She looked startled that he'd suggested it but quickly started in that direction. It was probably just as surprising as what he'd felt when she'd waited for his coaching.

Maybe they could make this work, after all.

He trusted her as much as he trusted Jake and Dillon. If either of them had been here, he would have had them do the same thing Bree was doing now.

But, while he loved his cousins and would do anything he could to protect them from harm, he didn't feel protective of them like he did Bree.

With Bree it was much more a gut-deep, instinctual need to make sure she was safe.

Max forced himself to concentrate on what was happening in front of him instead of all the emotions that had been swirling through him since the storm.

Bree made her way to the longest of the wooden planks. "Give me some light," she called as she tucked her flashlight into her tool belt so she could grab the piece of wood with both hands.

Max illuminated the area for her as she dragged the wooden plank into position. She propped one end against the wall, making an incline that would allow her to get high enough to check the electrical box.

"Okay, nice and easy," he told her. "It should support your weight, but go slow."

"Hey, it'll support my weight," she told him, mounting the board and beginning to inch up.

"I'm just saying that gummy bears can catch up with you after a while," he quipped. Making light of things was his coping method for stress-with the people around him and for himself.

Bree concentrated on her footing, but that didn't keep her from saying, "Thought you said my a.s.s looks good."

Her a.s.s looked really good.

So did her legs, her waist-encircled with a tool belt-her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her hair, her face . . . she looked in her element, and he couldn't deny that it was beautiful. He also had to admit that her getting that look while working with him on a project like this made him feel a crazy new level of attraction. She was enjoying this, and as stupid as it sounded, getting her excited over a construction-and-restoration project was better than her excitement while parasailing or skiing. Anyone would get a little excited about those activities. Not everyone found this stuff interesting.

"Your a.s.s looks good." He managed to keep his tone light. "But you could put on fifty pounds and I'd still think that."

She stopped climbing and wobbled slightly on the beam. She looked over at him. "Really?"

Well . . . yeah. He shrugged. "Of course."

She straightened slightly. "That's really sweet."

s.h.i.t. That had been the wrong thing to say, obviously. This wasn't lighthearted teasing now. "Keep climbing, Bree." He gestured with his flashlight.

"Yeah, okay." She seemed to focus back on where she was and what she was doing. But she didn't start moving again immediately. "I'm still just getting used to the idea that you have a thing for my a.s.s."

"A thing?" he asked, though he knew he shouldn't.

She started moving up the board again. For her to reach high enough, the incline was steeper than was ideal, so she had to concentrate on her foot placement, and as she moved another few inches, she finally had to squat and hold with her hands, too. "It's okay. I have a thing for your hands."

"My hands?"

"Oh yeah. I mean, I knew they were big and obviously strong. I love that you work with your hands, get dirty, always have a few sc.r.a.pes on the knuckles, and have a few scars. But ever since the ditch, I've had a new appreciation for them."

"Jesus, Bree," Max muttered. They were going to talk about this now? Or at all? He was really pretty good with the ignore-and-deny thing he'd perfected since Colorado.

Max knew she was talking to distract herself from the fact that if she fell off the beam, she wouldn't stop falling until she hit the tile floor in the hallway of Chance High School. But this had to be the topic?

"It's almost enough to make me think that naked-for-twenty-four-hours thing is doable."

Max gripped his flashlight tighter as want throbbed through him.

But she didn't mean it. Bree had been in this uncharacteristically flirty mood ever since he'd taken that branch to his head. Or maybe all of this was some crazy dream. Maybe he was unconscious in that ditch.

That would make more sense.

But he couldn't be so lucky. This was all totally real.

But he wasn't doing that with her. No way. He'd said that this morning to make a point. Before he'd finished his coffee. Any s.e.x with Bree would ruin him. Hot, naked-for-an-entire-weekend, multiple-o.r.g.a.s.ms, give-me-everything-you've-got s.e.x would forever take away any chance of being happy with someone else.

"I might even put up with one of your sappy, romantic dates if it ended naked," she said, nearing the top of the wooden beam.

Max gripped the flashlight harder again. Naked. Yeah, that was not a word he needed to hear from Bree. Ever.

He should be concentrating on her climb, but he had to admit that not focusing on what could happen if she fell was good. His heart pounded harder just eyeing the ceiling tiles below, which would do nothing to stop a fall.

And, d.a.m.n, the idea of taking her on a romantic date was really tempting.

Not because he liked the romance, but because Bree had never been romanced before.

Bree was fun. No doubt about it. No guy would say no to drinking and dancing at A Bar or going to a concert or four-wheeling or heading to the shooting range or any of the other things Bree loved to do on the weekends. But no one insisted he just wanted to be with her. None of those guys would be content to just talk to her, or cook for her, or take her to a beer tasting, or make love to her in front of the fireplace, making sure the foreplay lasted at least an hour.

He didn't spend a lot of time thinking about Bree and her dating life, but he knew her, and he knew any s.e.x she had was hard and fast, and the guy definitely didn't spend the night. If they even made it inside her house in the first place.

"I don't go on sappy romantic dates," he told her, ignoring how much he loved the idea of romancing her. He wasn't going there.

She made it to the top of the plank just as she snorted. "Of course you do. You love the sap."

"I love the romance. But it's not sappy."

She braced herself with a hand on an overhead beam and looked down at him. "What's the difference?"

He sighed. Not the right time for this conversation. With Bree, there would probably never be a right time for this conversation. Still, he said, "Romance is showing the other person you care, that you're there with her in the moment, that you want her to be happy, that you're happy just being there with her, no matter what you're doing."

"What's sap?" she asked.

"Depends on the woman," he said. "It's the stuff that seems romantic but doesn't really mean anything."

"How does it depend?"

"If you bring a woman roses because the first time you met her was when you ran into her-literally-in the grocery store and she dropped the vase of roses she'd just picked up for her mom and the vase shattered and the roses went everywhere, then it's romantic. Because the roses mean something. If you send a woman roses after one dinner without knowing if she likes roses or without any special meaning, then it can be sappy."

Bree was watching him with a strange look on her face.

"What?" he asked.

"Did that happen to you? The roses-in-the-grocery-store thing?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

She frowned slightly, then turned to look at the electrical box.

Had that been a flash of jealousy? From Bree? About another woman in his life?

Well, that was new.

And he liked it.

She balanced on the beam and pointed her flashlight at the electrical box. She pulled out her phone and snapped a few pictures.

Max's phone dinged, and he checked the photos. "Perfect," he told her. He sent the pictures to Bill with a message: Cut the power to that section.

Bree pocketed her flashlight and phone, then made her way back down the plank with Max's light guiding her way. She came down faster than she'd gone up. She returned to where Max was positioned on top of the ladder.

"I'd bring you polliwogs," she said when she was standing in front of him.

From his vantage point, he was eye level with her knees.

He looked up. "What?"

She squatted down in front of him. "I'd bring you a mason jar with polliwogs in it. That was the first thing you ever gave me. I was five, and we'd gone looking for them at the pond but hadn't found any. I was so disappointed. The next day you showed up on my porch with a jar with four polliwogs in it."

He stared at her. He wanted to kiss her more than he'd ever wanted to do anything.

"That would be romantic, right?" she asked.

He cleared his throat. "Um, yeah. It would."

She gave him a satisfied smile and stretched to her feet. "Bet none of your other girls would think so, though."

Max tried to think of even one woman he'd dated, ever, who would consider larval frogs romantic. And, not surprisingly, came up blank.

"What else do you need?"

Max looked up at her. "What?"

"While we're up here," Bree said. "What else do you need to look at?"

He forced his attention back on where they were and what they were doing and away from picturing the fully grown, gorgeous woman in front of him wading into the pond to collect polliwogs. Because she would, even now. And he would find that incredibly hot.

"Can you get over to the east wall?"

He coached her through several other checks. She sent photos and gave him verbal feedback on everything he needed, and Max had to admit this had turned out well.

With her up in the ceiling and him on the ladder, she was out of reach, so smelling her hair and keeping his hands to himself wasn't a problem. And it felt like something had shifted today. They'd acknowledged that they needed each other-he needed her to do the actual physical, hands-on stuff, but she needed him to tell her what she was looking at, what it meant, and what it should look like.

They were a good team.

"Okay, think we're done," he said.

She headed back for him as she dug into a pocket in her tool belt. She pulled out two pieces of licorice and handed him one. She also gave him a huge grin just before she bit off the top half of her piece.

"That was fun."

The look on her face was a total turn-on. "Yeah?" he asked with his own grin.

"I learned a ton, and we got a lot done, and you were completely reasonable about all of it."

He bit off some of his licorice and shook his head. "I've never been unreasonable about anything."

She laughed at that.

"Let's get down and see what else we need to take care of today," he said. He took two steps down the ladder but froze when he heard a loud crack. "Bree-"

But his mind didn't process the sound or location fast enough.

The next thing he saw was a piece of the roof crashing through the ceiling tiles a few feet in front of him, and then Bree dangling through the new opening from the waist down.

CHAPTER SIX.

"Bree!" He scrambled back up the ladder and was already reaching for her before he even got a clear view.

He grabbed her wrists, pulling with all the strength in his upper body, but his position was precarious on top of the ladder. He couldn't get a good foothold himself, and the ladder wasn't fully stable.

"Max, hang on!"