Pale gray doll eyes shine up at me, hurt. “We don’t?” she asks, then casts her gaze down to my arm. Her index finger lands feather-light on my tattoo, tracing the ink across my forearm. “But just this morning I was telling you how hot you are. You don’t consider that to be flirting?”
I rip my arm away from her siren touch, hissing as my face burns. “We both know that wasn’t flirting.”
Her lip juts as her hand drops. “You’re being so mean to me,” she accuses.
“Right,” I grunt. “Iam being mean toyou.”
“Seems like flirting to me,” Emerson observes. “And I’d love for you to be doing it off site, if at all possible. I can’t let you gothrough when the floor is like this, but if you tell me what you need, I can go get it.”
Poem blanches, dropping her bid to put me into an early grave. “I can’t get through at all?” she asks. “What if I wear a hardhat and promise to be very,verycareful?”
He shakes his head. “Even then, it’s a liability issue as much as it is a safety issue. I can’t risk my business any more than I can risk injuring you.”
Her attention shifts to the stairs, sitting a mere ten feet away on the other side of a chasm where her floor used to rest.
“Maybe you can make me a list?” he suggests. “I don’t mind going up for you.”
“No,” she replies firmly. “That’s not… I need clothes and stuff, and I like you, but I don’t like you enough to invite you to dig through my drawers.”
He laughs, taking no offense, then shrugs. “I get that, but if you change your mind, just let me know. I have a sister. A woman’s drawers are not so titillating to me.”
“I appreciate that,” she says, reaching for nonchalance. “And yet, still no. I’ll just buy extras of the stuff I want. What’s another several hundred dollars when I’m already dishing out so many?”
He winces. “Seriously, I can grab whatever you need.”
“Ah, but my pride,” she sighs.
“What if we go in from outside?” I suggest, glancing at the ladders leaning against the dumpster by the road. “Through the window?”
Two heads turn, but only one of them considers my suggestion.
“In what way would that possibly solve the safety or liability issue?” Emerson asks, frowning. “I can’t have her up one of my ladders on the side of the house. Are you nuts?”
“I have a ladder in the shed,” Poem says. “Surely there’s no liability problems if the homeowner gets on her own ladder and starts climbing it, right?”
“You heard me say ‘safety,’ too, right? As in, I care about keeping you safe?”
She waves away his worry. “I bring that ladder out every spring to clean the gutters. It’s perfectly safe. Sturdy. Nothing to worry about.”
In the spirit of saving several hundred of Poem’s dollars, I do not mention that when she pulls the ladder out every spring to clean the gutters,Iam the one who goes up it and does the cleaning. I do concur about the safety of the ladder, though, to ease Emerson’s mind. “Verysturdy,” I assure him. “And I’ll be with her.”
“Exactly!” she declares. “Fox will be with me. You think Fox would let me get hurt? On the very same day that I declared my undying love for the beauty of his outer shell?” She tsks. “Don’t insult the man.”
Well. That’s. One way to say it, I suppose.
Emerson’s hands go up. “Okay,” he capitulates. “It’s your house and your ladder. But if you get hurt, I want it on the record that I have nothing to do with it, and that I advised against this plan.” He glances at me. “Particularly if anyone specific should ask.”
“Sure,” she agrees readily. “Get me a pen. I’ll put it in writing.”
He does, and she does, signing her declaration of Emerson’s innocence with a flourish.
“Since it’s been well and established that you have nothing to do with anything,” I start, rocking back on my heels. “Do you think that you could go upstairs and make sure her window’s unlocked? And, preferably, open?”
He snorts, eyes rolling, but agrees. “I’ll put some rope in the bedroom, too,” he offers. “Because that is where I’m storing it, not because it would be a handy way to lower things down.”
“Of course, of course.” Poem nods. “I heard all contractors store their rope in their clients’ bedrooms. It’s a prime storage area.”
The corners of his deep brown eyes wrinkle. “You’re a bit of a menace, you know that?”
