not interested in your roofing job, but on the walk over here my mind clicked back to work and I could get a great view from up there.”
“You can get a great view of the valley from the road.”
“Yeah, but I’m already here.” She grabbed hold of the ladder and fit her sneaker onto the weathered rung.
“Hope, I’m not kidding. You’re going to break your neck.” But he didn’t sound too upset with her.
When she looked over her shoulder, she saw that he was holding the ladder steady for her and shaking his head as if to say women didn’t belong on ladders. Well, she wouldn’t be on for long. “I appreciate this, Matthew.”
“If you weren’t helping me out with my mom, I’d let go of this ladder.”
“Sure you would. You’re too nice of a guy.”
“That’s only according to rumor. You can’t trust everything you hear.”
“Nanna says a man who can raise three small boys at the same time has to have the patience of Job and the temperament of an angel.”
“Either that or he’s on psychiatric medication.”
Hope stumbled onto the roof, laughing, but Matthew hadn’t fooled her. Sure, he was joking, but there was no way he could disguise the patience and good humor lighting him up from within, not quite chasing away his sadness. It touched her somewhere deep inside her well-defended heart. How was it that this man could affect her so much and so quickly?
“Be careful up there.” The ladder rubbed against the weathered eaves with each step Matthew took as he climbed higher. “I don’t want to have to explain to Nora how I let her only granddaughter tumble off a barn roof. I’d never get work from her again.”
“Repeat business is all that matters, is it?”
“Sure.” He hopped onto the roof with an athletic prowess that drew Hope’s gaze, and a slow smile tugged at the left corner of his mouth. “Now before you start running around up here, some of the shingles aren’t tacked down yet.”
“I noticed that. Really.” Wisps had escaped from her ponytail, and she swept them back with one hand. “Between you and Nanna, I feel like an awkward kid again. Stop worrying about me, okay? I’m not going to take a nosedive off the barn. I’ve been on a roof before.”
“Not as often as I have, I bet.” He curved his hand around her elbow, holding her secure. “Just in case.”
“I’m not afraid of heights.”
“I am.”
“You? Manhattan’s best carpenter?”
“My roof jobs would dry up if word like that got around. You’ll keep my secret, right?” His grip on her arm remained, sure and steady, keeping her safe.
“I don’t know,” she teased in turn, heading toward the roof’s peak. “Seems to me keeping a secret like that could be worth some money.”
He chuckled, rich and deep, and it somehow moved through her even though they hardly touched. Like a vibration of warmth and sunlight, she felt it, and when her sneaker hit a loose shingle, his grip on her arm held her steady even before she could stumble.
His touch remained, branding her with his skin’s heat, and she almost stumbled again. Why was her heart beating as if she’d run a mile? With every step she took, she was aware of the way he moved beside her—the easy, athletic movements as he escorted her safely to the peak of the sloped roof.
No, she wasn’t attracted to him. He was simply being a gentleman, as he’d been when he’d carried her luggage and driven her home on the night of the storm. A gentleman, nothing more and nothing less, and even if that was attractive to her, she didn’t need to panic. He was no threat to her heart. No threat at all.
She faced the wind, and the sweet country breezes lifted the hair from her brow and whirred in her ears. Sunlight slanted in ragged, luminous fingers from the wide blue sky to the rich green earth.
“I should have brought my camera. Look at the cloud shadow on those hills.”
“The Tobacco Roots.” He nodded toward the wrinkled hills in the distance, rugged and rocky, in contrast to the regal Rockies to the West. “Kathy and I used to hike there before the boys were born. We tried it once afterward, carting the three of them in backpacks, but they were hot and miserable and, unfortunately, teething. We decided not to make that mistake again.”
“Scared away the wildlife, did they?”
“I still think half the deer never did return to their natural habitat. The park ranger threatened to ticket us.” He shrugged one capable shoulder but his grin didn’t reach all the way to his eyes.
“I remember Kathy. She was two years behind us in school, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.” A muscle worked in his jaw as he towered over her, his back to the sun, his face shadowed.
Hope sat on the hot shingles, emotions tangled into a knot in her stomach. She didn’t want to say anything more that would make sadness shade his eyes. “How old are your boys?”
“Three, almost four. Their birthday is in July.”
“Triplets. That must be a handful.”
“When Kathy was alive, it was almost manageable. When we finally got them on the same sleeping schedule, that is.” The sadness crept into his eyes anyway as he sat down beside her, leaving a deliberate space between them. “Right now I’m between housekeepers. It’s hard to find someone with the right temperament.”
“I bet it isn’t easy keeping up with triplets.”
“It’s not impossible. They are something, I’ll tell you that, always going in different directions at once, but I wouldn’t trade ’em for the world.”
The wind tossed dark shocks of hair over his brow as he looked everywhere but at her. “I haven’t seen the world like you have, heck, I haven’t even been out of Montana, but I have everything I want right now. I have my boys and that’s all I need.”
“Then you’re a lucky man.”
“I’m not going to argue with you about that.”
His voice dipped and he turned away from her to study the valley spread out before them. As the silence lengthened, Hope tried to pretend she wasn’t touched by what she’d seen in Matthew’s eyes and heard unspoken in his words, but she failed. She was touched. Anyone could see a father’s steadfast love in him as certain as the warm sun overhead.
Not that what lived in Matthew’s heart was any of her business.
Maybe this jumpy, skittery feeling wasn’t an attraction to Matthew at all. Maybe she was itching to start working again. That’s it. “I’d better get back before Nanna misses me.”
Matthew stood, not meeting her gaze, and offered his hand.
She straightened on her own, not certain if she could
