Gina Wilkins - Secretly Yours

Realizing that Trent was studying her intently, and that she must have been standing there frowning for several long moments, she smoothed her expression. “Thank you all the work you’ve done, and especially for fixing my step. I feel much safer on it now.”

He answered in a growl. “It was an accident waiting to happen. You’re lucky you haven’t broken your neck.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing special you want me to do here today?”

She was beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer when he surprised her by saying, “I’m out of clean socks. You can do a load of laundry, if you have time.”

She smiled, pleased that he’d made a request for a change. “Sure. No problem.”

“Lock up when you leave,” he said, turning abruptly away.

“Yes, I will. And Mr. McBride, I—”

Whatever she might have said faded into silence when he left without another word. He was walking stiffly today, she noted. Had he hurt himself working at her place Tuesday? She couldn’t help worrying about those injuries Martha Godwin had hinted at, but she suspected Trent wouldn’t appreciate personal questions.

Since she was no more interested in answering personal questions than he probably was, she decided she had better just mind her own business.

IT HAD BEEN a long time since Trent had been drawn out of his own problems enough to be actively curious about anyone else. But as he sat on Annie Stewart’s roof, pounding nails into loose shingles, he found himself wondering about her. He knew why he had chosen to live a hermit’s life during the past year—mostly because he hadn’t known what else to do—but what was Annie’s story? What had brought her to Honoria? Where was her family?

She seemed intelligent enough and he would be willing to bet she was well educated. So why had she chosen to clean houses for a living? Had she no other goals, no plans? No dreams?

Had her dreams, like his, been taken away, leaving her lost and aimless—a condition he knew all too well?

“I had a feeling I would find you up there.”

Frowning, Trent pushed his glasses higher on his nose and looked over the edge of the roof. His brother stood on the ground below, his hands on his hips as he gazed upward. “You should know better than to sneak up on a guy who’s alone on a roof.”

“And you should know better than to be alone on a roof. You want to risk ending up in a wheelchair again?”

Trent hated being reminded of his limitations. “You’re the one who told me Annie’s roof leaked. I’m fixing it.”

“I also told you I would help you.” Trevor planted a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder propped against the side of the house.

Trent suddenly realized that his brother wore jeans and a sweatshirt rather than his usual suit and tie. “Don’t you have to work today?”

Joining him on the roof, Trevor shook his head. “Nope. I took the day off. Mental-health day. I don’t have to be in court, and all my appointments can wait until next week. Jamie’s teaching, Sam’s in school and Abbie’s with the nanny. Today is all mine.”

“So you decided to spend it on Annie’s roof.”

Trevor shrugged and reached for an extra hammer from Trent’s toolbox. “I decided to spend it with you.”

Trent had to make an effort to grumble. “I’m having dinner at your house this evening. Isn’t that enough family togetherness for you?”

Unoffended, Trevor moved to a curled shingle and examined it. “The roof really needs to be replaced altogether.”

Remembering Annie’s cautious look when she’d offered to reimburse him for supplies, Trent shrugged. “I don’t think she can afford that right now. I’m patching the leaks as well as possible until she can have the whole job done.”

Trevor reached for a handful of roofing nails. “Having any trouble with your back?”

His back ached every time he stretched and bent, actually, but he had gotten used to pain. On a scale of one to ten—and he was all too well acquainted with ten—he considered his current discomfort a six. “I’m fine.”

“Good. Just be careful not to overdo it.”

“Now you’re starting to sound like Mom.”

Trevor made a production of looking horrified. “God forbid.”

A small plane passed overhead, flying low as it headed for the private airstrip on the north side of town. Trent’s gaze was involuntarily drawn upward. He noted automatically that the craft was a Beechcraft V-tail, that the landing gear was already down, the descent slow and smooth. His knuckles tightened around his hammer, and he could almost feel the yoke in his hands.

The plane disappeared behind a line of trees. His memories flashed to the last time he’d flown. And then moved further ahead, images so vivid he could almost smell the smoke again, hear the creak and pop of heating metal, feel the pain of his injuries and the sick certainty that he would die there in the wreckage of aircraft and ego, a casualty of his own recklessness.

“Trent?”

Something in his brother’s voice made Trent suspect it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Are you going to talk or nail shingles?” Trent retorted, chagrined at being caught in one of his frequent daytime nightmares. The ones during the night were even worse, but at least he had no witnesses then.

Trevor sighed and moved to a new spot. “Forgive me for being concerned,” he muttered.

Pointedly ignoring him, Trent went back to work, concentrating fiercely on the task and pushing the memories to the back of his mind.

THERE WAS ANOTHER NOTE on Trent’s refrigerator when he arrived home that afternoon. “Your laundry is folded on the bed,” it read. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to open closets and drawers to put things away. I forgot to ask.”

Again, there was a postscript: “Did you make that big rocker by the fireplace? It’s fabulous.”

Shaking his head, Trent reached into the fridge and pulled out a cola. He drained a third of it in one long guzzle, then read the note in his hand again. Annie seemed to have a thing for his furniture.

Remembering the worn odds and ends of furniture he’d seen when he went in her house to check the ceiling for signs of leaks, he suspected that most of it had been chosen for economy rather than personal taste.

She was definitely an odd cookie, he thought, tossing the note onto the counter. Pretty, but odd.

He moved into his bedroom to put his neatly folded socks and underwear away, and found himself wondering again what her story was. It irritated him to realize that he was suddenly feeling rather protective of her. Working on her roof earlier, he’d had the irritatingly satisfying feeling that he was helping someone who needed him.

As if he had anything to offer Annie—or anyone, he added with a heavy scowl.

THE FIRST THING Annie always did when she returned home on Tuesday and Friday afternoons was to find out what Trent had done that day. It amazed her how much he had accomplished in the three weeks that had passed since they had begun their arrangement. Their only personal interaction during those weeks had been the mornings when she arrived at his house to clean.

She thought she’d done a decent job of hiding her reaction to him during those fleeting encounters. She wanted to think he had no idea that she all but melted every time he looked at her in that sizzlingly intense manner of his. But she wouldn’t be surprised if he suspected it, anyway. A man like Trent had to be used to finding puddles of women at his feet.

His mother had warned her that Trent considered their arrangement only temporary and was likely to end it at any time, but Annie wasn’t worried. Even if he decided today that they’d swapped their last service, she still believed it had been well worth it. Her front step was safe to walk on now, her roof hadn’t leaked during a fairly heavy rain yesterday, he had cleaned out her gutters and unclogged her drains. She didn’t know how many hours he’d spent there—he was always gone by the time she came home—but she knew he’d spent more time working at her place than she had at his.