Page 40 of Taming the CEO

"What are you doing?" I asked her.

"Huh? Why are you here?”

"I had lunch with Gran today, and she mentioned that you’re planning to do some repairs. I just had a meeting with the head of construction, and I wanted to drop by and see how it’s going.”

"See, you should have led with that. Then I wouldn’t have had a heart attack seeing you on the porch.” She was adorable in her overalls and looked a bit exasperated, making me think things weren’t going well. "I severely underestimated this. I've already been at it for about an hour, but I'm not making much progress. That YouTube tutorial was made by a crackpot. Nothing he said is working."

I put the bucket down and then took the toolbox from her. She startled when our fingers brushed, and I heard a sharp intake of air. I liked that we shared a similar reaction. I set the toolbox down and straightened up, formulating my thoughts slowly.

"You can’t repair your roof based on a YouTube video."

"But that's how I do things. I look up everything on YouTube. Most of the time, it works. But the video didn't take into account that my house is old as dirt and the structure is a bit different. I at least want to patch things up a bit so it doesn't leak inside during the next heavy rain.”

"I'll take a look at it," I said, and she blinked.

"At the roof?"

"Yeah."

"Why?" She sounded stunned.

"Because. I can help."

"You know how to repair roofs?"

"I know how to do stuff around the house."

"All right, then, be my guest."

I looked inside the bucket. "Why do you have so much stuff in here?”

"I wanted to take up everything I might possibly need."

"Are those cookies?" There was a small container stuffed with them.

"Don’t be judgy."

I wasn't. This woman just baffled me.

"There's never a bad time to eat cookies," Cami defensively stated.

"Right. I’ll take out everything from the bucket except the sealant and the caulking gun. I'm impressed you have these."

She batted her eyelashes. "I bought it thanks to YouTube."

I looked inside the bucket more thoroughly. "All right, it's not all completely useless.” There were two hammers as well.

"It's starting to look better and better, huh?" She grinned.

"Except for the cookies, most of these things are useful."

She put her hand on her chest, gasping theatrically. "Do not talk like that about the cookies." She grabbed the Tupperware from the bucket.

"You know, you don't actually have to carry that up the ladder," she told me. "I can give you whatever you need from here. I was just going to take everything with me so I didn't have to go up and down that ladder whenever I needed something."

"No, that's good. I like your system." I didn’t bother taking stuff out of the bucket, just grabbed it and headed up onto the roof.

"There are three faulty tiles," she yelled from below.

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