It was not the lazy morning Gabi had anticipated. She’d fallen into bed the night before around nine, exhausted by the flight, and also enveloped in a warm, happy feeling now that she was back with Isabella. She’d no sooner closed her eyes than fallen asleep. Which must have been around the same time the leak had started in the loft.
Overnight the ceiling above her bed had bowed with the weight of water, until it could no longer support itself. A chunk of ceiling came down with a crash, showering Gabi’s bed with plaster, old woodwork and about fifty litres of cold water. The noise had woken Isabella and Etienne too, and they’d come running in. Etienne carefully picked her up from the bed and carried her out of the room to safety, plonking her on her feet in the corridor and thrusting her crutches at her. After a quick check that her leg hadn’t got wet, Isabella and Gabi huddled in the doorway, watching the water pour through the metre-wide hole in the ceiling, before another collapse drove them further into the hall.
Isabella helped Gabi into a fluffy white dressing gown to at least keep her warm. Etienne climbed through the loft hatch, now wearing a head torch and pyjama bottoms, which in any other circumstances, Gabi knew, would have made Isabella laugh. But Gabi could see her cousin was stricken.
‘If it carries on, it will go through the floor to the restaurant!’ Isabella gasped and started trying to position buckets and saucepans under the leak, rushing in and out of the damaged bedroom.
‘Be careful,’ Gabi said, one eye on the remaining half of the ceiling.
‘I’ve not even been open for six months, I can’t shut now.’ Isabella threw a bunch of towels onto the carpet to sop up the water. Gabi tried to help but couldn’t carry anything while using her crutches and, frustrated, realised the best thing she could do was get out of the way. She retreated to the sofa, from where she could see everything.
‘There are two tanks up here!’ Etienne shouted down and Isabella clasped her hands under her chin to think.
‘One is the cold-water tank for the flat,’ she said. ‘The other is the old sprinkler system for the restaurant.’
Etienne appeared back down the ladder and grabbed his phone. ‘Sprinklers– only one person to call. . .’ he said, pressing dial already. He lifted his gaze to Isabella and nodded. They both said, together, ‘Walker.’
Another chunk of plaster hit the floor, and Gabi crossed her fingers that Walker was the hero they all needed.
He certainly seemed to fit the bill when he turned up although there was no time for introductions. From her seat in the sitting room, Gabi couldn’t help but notice the breadth of his chest in his T-shirt as he jogged purposefully through the apartment. He disappeared immediately into the loft hatch and his feet hardly seemed to touch the rungs as he climbed the ladder on his way to investigate. Etienne and Isabella waited at the bottom, both anxious looking, dreading what a few weeks of closure could do to a new business if the restaurant ceiling collapsed too. Isabella was only just getting established. This could be catastrophic.
Walker called down for some tools which Etienne passed up, and then there was clanging and banging overhead. Suddenly, the steady gush of water stopped.
‘I think that’s got it!’ Etienne shouted and Isabella put her hands to her cheeks in relief. The dripping water slowed. There was the sound of more banging and some grunts of effort before Walker’s boots appeared, followed by a rather nice bum as he descended the ladder back into the bedroom.
Gabi watched Isabella and Etienne hover in the doorway behind him to survey the damage. She manoeuvred herself behind them and they all listened to the steadydrip, drip, observed the sodden walls and peered up into the rafters through the large hole in the middle of the ceiling. Walker stepped carefully into the debris and began moving plasterboard sheets off the bed.
‘Lucky it was just the spare bedroom!’ he said in a soft Scottish accent. ‘It could have been really nasty if someone was in it.’
‘My cousinwasin it, actually,’ Isabella said. ‘Thank God she wasn’t hurt. Well, not any more than she already is!’
Walker frowned in confusion and bent to retrieve something wrapped around the toe of his boot.
‘Who’s your cousin?’ he asked, turning something small and black in his hands.
‘That’d be me,’ Gabi said, shuffling forward. ‘Gabriella. Everyone calls me Gabi.’
He lifted his face to her and sandy hair fell over the most vividly hazel eyes she’d ever seen. ‘And that’– she pointed to the lacy black G-string he held in his fingers– ‘would be mine.’
Chapter Four
Walker
He was holding a pair of pants in his hands. Walker realised that fact at the very last second when an elfin woman on crutches appeared in the doorway, almost engulfed in a fluffy white dressing gown, who he recognised as the cousin, Gabi– and the owner of the pants. She had the most mischievous smile he’d ever seen.
He mumbled an apology and handed the scrap of fabric over. She laughed and thanked him. For a moment he forgot what he was doing, until another clod of plasterboard hit the floor and then he took command.
‘Isabella, strip the bed,’ he said and she sprang into action.
‘Now, Etienne, help me with the mattress.’ Between them, they carried it to the back courtyard and then the bed frame was moved to the front room.
‘Isabella, can you move the suitcases?’ he asked. ‘And anything else that’s adding weight to the wet floor and risking the ceiling below.’
Gabi’s suitcases were pulled out and stood in the hall.
‘I feel so useless!’ Gabi moaned as the three of them then worked together to rip up the sodden carpet and carried it downstairs to take to the dump later. It was as much as could be done– for now.
Walker exhaled slowly as he took it in. It was good he’d got here as quickly as he had but the room was wrecked. The ceiling was a write-off. The walls were streaming. The floor was down to bare floorboards. The bedroom was uninhabitable. But at least the restaurant was not impacted. He knew it was a win, but it was still a problem.
