she felt about anything else, that was Troy’s expectation.
‘I wonder if the rain has eased at all?’ Stacie glanced towards the door. ‘We should maybe go.’
The getting-to-know you mission had certainly been accomplished. Whether the results felt particularly palatable just now or not was another thing. Well, they could be friends and colleagues, couldn’t they? That was what she’d felt would be sensible from the start. Stacie got to her feet and made the choice then and there to prove they could be exactly that.
It might take all the pride and determination she had, but she would make it happen.
After all she’d been through with Andrew, she wasn’t about to pine over Troy!
Troy escorted Stacie from the restaurant. He’d imparted more about himself than he’d planned to. Stacie had admitted to a broken relationship, and he’d drawn his conclusions about that: one of her sisters had stolen her man.
The hard knot in his chest must be disapproval of that sister. She’d treated Stacie badly.
Just as Linda treated you badly.
What was he thinking? Linda had done exactly what he’d expected of her.
He led Stacie through the rainy night to his four-wheel-drive. It was time to take her home and forget about swapping confidences, and too much examination of himself, when he was already quite clear just who he was!
CHAPTER SIX
‘FANG won’t like these high winds.’ Stacie glanced towards her darkened house. She took pride in the normalcy of her tone and delivery, just a colleague who happened also to be a neighbour, making an observation about the weather as Troy drove her back to her house. ‘He’s not all that keen on rain, and stormy weather makes him tense unless he’s inside the house with me. Hopefully it won’t be upsetting Houdini either. Don’t get out, Troy. There’s no point both of us getting wet.’
Troy got out anyway. He took her arm to help her to the house. The wind tried to pull them over. When they got under the porch he tipped his head to the side and listened. ‘That sounds like a sheet of tin flapping on your roof.’
It was hard to hear anything over the rain and he hadn’t bothered with an umbrella. It would have turned inside out in an instant, anyway.
Stacie had left her porch light on. She stepped back out into the open and looked up. Even in the dark and through the rain she could make out a large piece of roof-sheeting flapping crazily.
‘Come inside. We’d better see the damage,’ Troy suggested. ‘There’s going to be a mess.’
For ten seconds as she unlocked her front door and drew a breath to deal with what she might find on the other side, Stacie heard all the doubts. Had this been a good decision? Could she really make a go of things here without this place being just a money pit?
And then she threw her shoulders back. She hadn’t made the wrong decision. She’d made one that was what she’d wanted. She could make a wonderful home out of this farmlet, a great viable business of the Bow-wow-tique—and she would! ‘I guess the roofing contractor didn’t factor in weather like this when he said the rest of the work could wait.’
‘Nobody could have anticipated this. Hopefully the wind won’t have done too much—’ Troy broke off as Stacie turned lights on inside her house.
She took one look and excused herself to change into jeans and a sweater.
‘Well, technically,’ Stacie said, in an attempt to be judicious as she strode towards the rear door of her home past a large puddle of water in the hallway, ‘The wind hasn’t done all the damage. The rain it’s let through has done most of it. I’ve got a ladder out the back.’
I like a good challenge.
The thought whirled in Stacie’s head as she carried the ladder inside the back door. Fang was out there, of course, and barged into the house at the first opportunity, demanding at least some sympathy for the fact he’d been left to endure a wet, windy night while Stacie was out partying in town. Houdini was right on the larger dog’s heels.
‘I’ll take the ladder. You take care of the dogs.’ Troy glanced at both animals before he took the ladder from Stacie’s hands.
Stacie fed the dogs and she did it fast, with a quick pat for each. By that time Troy had climbed the ladder. ‘A torch would be helpful, Stace.’
Stacie already had it in her hand. She held it up and his hand closed around it, their fingers brushing lightly for a moment as he took it. It wasn’t only that which made Stacie’s heart skip a beat: Troy had called her Stace. It was just a shortening of the name; the guys at work did it all the time. But with Troy it felt different. Intimate …
‘How bad is the damage up there? I should get up and look myself, Troy.’ She would rather focus on immediate concerns than think about only being a friend to him.
Just as Stacie looked up and Troy glanced down, a dribble of water splashed onto her forehead and did its best to drown her left eye before tracking down the side of her nose.
‘Oh!’ She shook her head, blinking rapidly. Troy was descending the ladder, using the strength in the rest of his body to compensate for the limits of his shattered knee. It was an awkward descent, and halfway down his leg buckled.
‘Careful.’ Stacie gasped the warning and lunged forward.
‘I’m fine.’ He growled the words.
And he was fine. His reflexes were lightning-fast, and, though he still wore his dinner clothes, the shoes had a decent grip on them. He’d already caught himself, compensated. His strong arms flexed as he regained movement and completed his descent.
Oh, Troy.
How could he truly do all the work at his orchards when he had this degree of difficulty with ladders and the like?
Of course he can, Stacie. He’d get it done if that happened to him a hundred times a day, and she knew it didn’t. She’d watched him often enough. Too often!
Stacie brushed the water out of her eye. ‘I’m a bit concerned about fixing this loose sheeting. It’s not a good time to be out on the roof.’ They’d have to be creative to work out how to deal with the problem and not put themselves at risk. If they could do that, Stacie could creatively resist wanting to kiss him—and resist feeling as though all her earlier self-talk to that effect had fallen on her own deaf ears!
Now she wanted to offer a comforting hug to him as well. As if he’d welcome that right now! ‘The combination of wind—’
‘And rain are risky.’ Troy’s hands came to rest loosely on his hips. He, too, seemed to be pushing the earlier incident aside.
His frustration hadn’t been directed towards her; Stacie understood that. But he had every right to feel it. She had underestimated what he must have been through emotionally thanks to his injury: the loss of his fiancée and career, as well as having to move forward and reinvent himself.
Troy went on. ‘We’ll have
