The Player Next Door - Kathy Lyons Page 0,2

in the driveway. But… “How’d you get up there?”

She gestured with her arm, the motion making her sway such that her strawberry blond ponytail seemed to spin as she twisted. “Tree.”

He looked into the backyard where a dying locust tree had overgrown the roof. Sure it would be an easy climb for a kid, but he wouldn’t want to carry roofing tiles up there. Those things were damned heavy. And sure enough, there was another spilled package of tiles on the ground.

Jesus. “Okay. I’ll climb the tree.”

She twisted back to look at him. Bright blue eyes the color of her car caught his gaze. “Okay. But there’s no need.”

“You’re about to plunge to your death.” He wouldn’t usually say something like that. One mention of falling and his sisters would have descended into hysterics, but this woman seemed practically blasé. Maybe she’d hit her head and was concussed. That would explain a lot.

She smiled, and he was momentarily startled by the charming sight of her slightly crooked teeth. “Don’t be silly. I have everything under control.” Then she winked at him. “And if I fall, you can be heroic and catch me.”

Things were very much not under control, but he recognized the stubborn set to her jaw even if she was hanging upside down. She was an I-can-do-it-myself girl. He had a couple nieces who were masters of that particular mindset, foolish though it was.

“Look, how about I just come up there and—”

“I’m fine,” she called. “I’ve been working out the details.” She sounded like she was convincing herself. Then she proved that she was completely nuts. She used her foot—the one that had caught on the gutter and stopped the worst of her fall—and kicked off. While he stood there in slack-jawed astonishment, she started swinging back and forth, kicking off the roof when she could and reaching out for the gutter with her free hand.

He gave her points for innovation, but no way would the gutter hold her weight. It would break off. Plus, she didn’t have the strength. Despite what happened in the movies, no one really could pull themselves up by their fingertips. And then, most obvious of all, she didn’t have the angle right. Every time she pushed off, she went out, not sideways. Not even King Kong had the reach to catch the roof with the way she was swinging.

What was it about rich people that made them completely ignorant of reality? Anybody with an ounce of real life experience would know this wasn’t the way to roof a house. Or get back up on a house. But there she was swinging back and forth as if it made perfect sense. Of course, now that he looked at her, she didn’t look like she was dripping in diamonds despite the fact that this was a ritzier area of Evanston. The only expensive thing she had on was that pretty pink bra with the torn piece of lace. He noticed because he couldn’t help looking at the way the bit of fabric swung back and forth next to her cleavage. Meanwhile, he waited for her to realize her mistake, taking a step back to see if he could spot another way. That’s when he chanced to look at the rope.

Oh shit, it was fraying.

The thin nylon cord was rubbing against the metal gutter as she swung. It couldn’t hold out against her weight and the steady sawing motion.

“Stop!”

Too late. He heard it pop right when she was in full swing up toward the roof.

Just like catching a bad pass. He calculated the angle of her fall and leaped into position before she even recognized the problem.

Except she wasn’t shaped anything like a basketball. And she didn’t exactly fall neatly into his hands like one.

He didn’t hear her scream, which he logged firmly in the plus column. He heard a gasp of surprise but nothing more. Then she landed in a diagonal sprawl of arms and legs that thunked into his chest like a pillowy train.

His shoulder screamed, but he’d braced enough to protect it from the worst of the impact. Normally, he could have held her aloft. Normally, his shoulder wouldn’t be a lightning poker of fire because of his torn rotator cuff. But this wasn’t a normal summer by any means, and so he couldn’t fully support her weight.

Not a problem though because he’d stopped the momentum of her headfirst plummet. Even as his legs were bending to absorb most of her weight, he