Page 35 of The Talk Around Town

Emma held in the grin that wanted to come out at such a male comment. “Why, I didn’t know you cared.”

She turned around, only to find herself imprisoned in the cage of his arms, stretching from one side of the ladder to the other.

Oops.

Ryan tilted his head to look at her, taking his time to stare at first her eyes, then her mouth, only inches from his own.

Emma held herself totally still, then pressed back hard against the steps of the ladder. She had no intention of encouraging him. He was far too close for her liking.

“You have no idea, kiddo. You’d tempt a saint.”

Emma drew breath to reply, but another voice sounded behind Ryan. A rather irritated voice.

“Do you still need that roof fixed, or has it been postponed?”

Emma bit off her gasp and shoved at Ryan’s hands, pushing her way out from between his arms. Her heart pounded at the thought of how that must have looked. She shook her head at her reaction. She was being silly. He could take it how he wanted.

“Gabe. What are you doing here?”

Gabe stared at both Ryan and Emma, his cool grey eyes shuttered. His tool belt dangled from one sexy, tanned hand.

Why hadn’t he walked up a few minutes earlier? More importantly, why did she care?

“Where’s your truck? I didn’t hear you come in.”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Parked it under the big gum tree down there, out of the sun.” He lifted the heavy belt onto his shoulder. “I can come back another time if—”

“No!” Emma sidestepped Ryan. “There’s no need. Ryan was just offering to help me lift the old iron. I’m having more trouble with it than I thought I would. I wasn’t expecting your dad until after lunch.”

Gabe shrugged the tool belt higher on one shoulder, the tools clanking together.

“Dad guessed as much. He had an idea what this stuff would be like. It can be stubborn when it wants to be. He sends his apologies.” He glanced at Ryan leaning lazily against the ladder. “Dad had a call and needed to go to Bialga. He sent me instead.”

Ed had sent him. Disappointment drained her enthusiasm. She couldn’t understand why it bothered her.

She gestured to the ladder. “Why don’t I let you guys get to it? I’m afraid I won’t be much use. Just yell if there’s something I can do.”

*

Gabe watched asEmma grabbed a bucketful of gardening tools and a hat from the porch steps and wandered over to the round garden that sat proudly in the middle of the circular drive. Although garden was perhaps a misuse of the word. More weeds than plants graced its mounded interior.

“I could think of a few uses for her,” Ryan muttered as he picked up Emma’s discarded hammer. He stared up at Gabe when there was no reply. “What?”

Gabe’s expression must have shown exactly how impressed he was with that statement. “Nothin’.” He slipped the tool belt from his shoulder and buckled it around his waist. “Hold the ladder for me while I get up there. She would never have pulled it all up like that.”

Reaching the top, Gabe grasped the top step of the ladder while Ryan climbed up and past him onto the roof.

Damn it’s hot up here.

Heat shimmered up off the roofing metal, intensifying. The sooner they started, the sooner he could get down.

“I tell you what, she was prettier than you to look at climbing that ladder,” Ryan joked. “What an arse.”

What an arse…You’rean arse.

Gabe shook his head at the thought. He’d known Ryan since kindergarten. They’d been friends for more years than he could remember, and here he was calling him an ass.

Mind you, he’d called him worse than that on occasion.

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