“Why bother them when the captain says he’ll help me?”
Darcy’s eyes narrowed. If he thought she would wrap herself around his knees and beg him not to endanger his life, he was dead wrong. She raised her chin. “Fine, go ahead and do it. The fire department is just down the street, so the paramedics should be able to respond in less than a minute.”
“Think we’ll need them, Captain?”
“No, I’ve crewed on sailing ships in worse weather than this. Putting out a tarp will be a snap.”
Twink was seated at the small table coloring a giraffe. She looked up as the men went out the side door. “Where are they going?” she asked.
Christy Joy sat with her daughter. “They intend to fix the roof, honey. They’ll be back in a minute.”
Darcy sat on the steps and rested her head in her hands. “Now do you see how difficult it is to reason with Griffin? Once he decides to do something, he doesn’t even blink, let alone change his mind.”
“That can be a good quality,” Christy Joy murmured. She reached out to comb Twink’s curls with her fingers. “Are you hungry, baby, would you like some lunch?”
“Hot dogs?”
“Coming right up. Would you like one, Darcy?”
“How can you think about food? Lightning could hit Griffin and Jeremy, and they’d be fried before they hit the ground.”
“My, what a pleasant thought. Why don’t you come upstairs with me, Twink? I’ll need some help spreading mustard on the buns.”
Twink left her coloring to bound up the stairs behind her mother, while Darcy went to the front of the shop to check her makeshift dam. It appeared to be holding, but water was now up over the curb and lapping toward the building. She didn’t want to imagine Griffin clinging to the roof like some fool monkey, but she could only stare out at the rain, unable to imagine anything better.
“You know this is a damn fool stunt, don’t you?” Jeremy asked.
“Oh, hell yes. That’s half the fun.”
“Fine, as long as you know what you’re doing.”
Griffin adjusted the angle of his hat, but the rain still splattered his face. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he replied, but the wind swallowed his words.
Jeremy had nearly tripped over the ladder earlier and led Griffin right to it. Carrying it, they grabbed a folded tarp and made their way up the back stairs only to find the landing was too narrow to set up the wooden stepladder safely. What they needed was an aluminum extension ladder that would reach the roof from the ground, but there was none handy.
Griffin nodded toward the eucalyptus towering over the rear of the building. “Go get the bags of potting soil. I’ll climb the tree to reach the roof, and you can toss everything up to me from here.”
“Are you just plain crazy?”
“No, I simply relish a challenge.” With a quick step up, Griffin balanced himself on the porch rail, reached out for a wildly swaying branch and, with a lunge, caught it.
Jeremy watched in disbelief as Griffin swung himself up into the tree. In the rain-choked light, the pale trunk of the eucalyptus had a ghostly pallor. The curved leaves lashed at the pianist with gray-green claws, but he merely laughed and waved.
“I’ll get the potting soil,” Jeremy yelled, and he ran back down the stairs to fetch half a dozen bags.
When he returned, Griffin was already lying flat on the roof and scraping leaves from the clogged gutter. When it was clear, he reached down for the tarp. Jeremy got a firm grip on the porch rail and flung the blue bundle toward the roof. Griffin made a grab for it, but missed, forcing Jeremy back down the stairs and out the gate to fetch it from the alley before it was washed away.
On their second try, Griffin caught the tarp, but the wind tore at the edge to unfurl it in his grasp. The plastic-coated canvas snapped him with a cruel slap, and he had to fight for control. “Better toss me the bags of soil to weigh it down as I lay it out,” he shouted.
Jeremy took care with his aim and Griffin caught each one without trouble. The challenge was then to spread out the tarp and anchor it with the potting soil before he became so tightly wrapped in it he would careen right off the roof in a grim parody of a burial at sea. Griffin saw that calamity as a real risk, but stretched out to make the best use of his own weight. They were soaked and chilled clear through by the time he was satisfied the tarp would remain in place for the duration of the storm.
While they’d worked, the wind had shifted direction, and the eucalyptus now had a nasty twist to its sway. Certain he ought to have given more thought to how he was going to get down before he got up on the roof, Griffin edged carefully over to the slant above the back door. He thought he could drop off and hit the landing, but with the wind and rain a factor, if he missed, he would be in for a painful cart-wheeling fall down the slippery stairs.
“Get out of my way!” he ordered Jeremy and, shutting out all thought of a poor result, he turned to drop his legs off the roof and jumped down onto the landing below. For one dreadful instant, the porch seemed to tilt under him, but as he fought to regain his balance, Jeremy grabbed his arm and flung him toward the back door.
When he caught his breath, he turned to express his gratitude. “Thanks for your help.”
Jeremy moved in close, grabbed Griffin’s soggy lapels and spoke in a vicious whisper. “Now that job’s done, let’s get things straight between us. You hurt Darcy and Christy Joy, and I’ll make falling off a roof look like a pleasure cruise.”