Defy the World Tomatoes (21 page)

“Careful, Darcy, I’m beginning to think you might care what happens to me.”

“Well, of course, I care. Just stay put and call someone who does roof repairs. That’s all I need.”

Griffin nearly purred in her ear. “Let’s not get into your needs just now. I’ll see you in a minute.”

He hung up before Darcy could mount another argument. “He says he’s coming down here, but he’s just as likely to go flying right off the mountain on the first curve.”

Jeremy nodded toward the clock. “Let’s give him twenty minutes. If he isn’t here, we can call the police and ask them to check the road.”

Darcy could so easily imagine a black and white car with lights flashing also plunging off the road that she just shook her head. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She ran back toward the restroom and even then barely made it.

Jeremy sent Christy Joy a sad smile. “Is she sick because he’s coming here, or because he might not make it?”

“A little of both, I’m afraid, but Griffin will get the roof fixed and that’s all that concerns me right now. No one’s likely to be out shopping this morning. Would you mind if I went back upstairs to look after Twink?”

“Not at all. Looks like you were rearranging things. What can I do to help?”

He’d yanked off his cap, his hair was plastered to his head and his cheeks were pink from the chill, but for one wild instant, Christy Joy felt like asking him for his best kiss. It would have been an outrageous request and certainly would have shocked him, but as she turned away, her only worry was that he might refuse.

Chapter Twelve

Griffin had been lost in his new composition and hadn’t realized how hard it was raining until he went outside where an icy blast of watery wind greeted him with a rude shove. Head down, he braced himself as he ran to his Land Rover. Now convinced Darcy’s warning was well-founded, he eased the sturdy vehicle down the driveway and out onto Ridgecrest at a slow crawl.

He wiped the condensation from the inside of the windshield with the back of his leather glove, but the effort improved his vision only marginally. Fortunately, he knew each subtle curve and wide turn into town, so while it was a slow, harrowing trip, he made it without sliding off the hillside. He parked next to Darcy’s truck, then tramped through the water coursing across the rear of the nursery to enter the shop through the side door.

Her attention riveted on the clock, Darcy gasped as Griffin was ushered in on a chill gust of wind. Clad in a red and black plaid Pendleton coat, black cowboy hat, Levi’s and boots, he resembled a character out of an early Clint Eastwood western more than a concert pianist. Nevertheless, he looked awfully good.

“I was going to call the police if you weren’t here in another minute,” she exclaimed.

“I’d no idea I was expected to speed down the hill after the warning you gave, but if anyone is in need of rescue, it appears to be you with the leaky roof. Care to show me the problem?”

Darcy gestured toward the stairs, then led him up to Christy Joy’s bathroom. Twink wanted to come in too, but Darcy sent her downstairs to wait with her mother. “It’s dripping through the plaster, and we don’t want the whole ceiling ruined.”

The room was painted a pale aqua and Christy Joy had sewn a colorful valance for the window from a bright aqua fabric splashed with tropical fish. There were aqua towels and a basket of bathtub toys balanced on the side of the tub. Darcy couldn’t help but think how different the charming room was from Griffin’s gleaming art deco tiled bath.

He watched the water drip into the tub and nodded thoughtfully. “Might just be that the gutter is clogged with leaves, and that’s left water to pool on the roof. I can probably fix that myself.”

“You’re not serious.”

He flashed a disarming grin. “I doubt clearing leaves from a gutter is beyond my capabilities. Of course, even if it alleviates the problem, once the weather clears, I’ll still have to hire someone to repair the damage. For now, you must have a tarp or two lying around the nursery.”

She sagged back against the door. “Yes, but you’re not going up on the roof.”

“Why not? I can put a ladder on the porch by the back door and climb right up.”

Darcy shook her head. “There’s too great a risk you’ll fall.”

Griffin moved in close. “It’s my building, Darcy, and if I want to dance on the roof, I’ll do it.”

“Not while I have the lease,” she replied coolly.

He laughed at her resolve. “Better check the fine print. I’m responsible for repairs, and you can’t prevent me from doing them myself.”

Darcy chased him down the stairs. “Griffin, you’re being totally unreasonable. If the wind caught you, you’d go sailing right off the roof and
—
”

Griffin paused on the bottom step and turned to look back up at her. “And what?”

Before Darcy could finish her sentence, Jeremy broke in. “I’ll give you a hand if you want to stretch a tarp over the leak. We’ll need something to weight it down, but the potting mix bags seem to be holding up pretty well.”

Remaining on the stairs, Darcy clung to the rail. “You don’t have to show off for me. If we’re just going to use a tarp, I’ll call a couple of the guys from my crew to come over and do it.”

“Why bother them when the captain says he’ll help me?”

Darcy’s eyes narrowed. If he thought she would wrap herself around his knees and beg him not to endanger his life, he was dead wrong. She raised her chin. “Fine, go ahead and do it. The fire department is just down the street, so the paramedics should be able to respond in less than a minute.”

“Think we’ll need them, Captain?”

“No, I’ve crewed on sailing ships in worse weather than this. Putting out a tarp will be a snap.”

Twink was seated at the small table coloring a giraffe. She looked up as the men went out the side door. “Where are they going?” she asked.

Christy Joy sat with her daughter. “They intend to fix the roof, honey. They’ll be back in a minute.”

Darcy sat on the steps and rested her head in her hands. “Now do you see how difficult it is to reason with Griffin? Once he decides to do something, he doesn’t even blink, let alone change his mind.”

“That can be a good quality,” Christy Joy murmured. She reached out to comb Twink’s curls with her fingers. “Are you hungry, baby, would you like some lunch?”

“Hot dogs?”

“Coming right up. Would you like one, Darcy?”

“How can you think about food? Lightning could hit Griffin and Jeremy, and they’d be fried before they hit the ground.”

“My, what a pleasant thought. Why don’t you come upstairs with me, Twink? I’ll need some help spreading mustard on the buns.”

Twink left her coloring to bound up the stairs behind her mother, while Darcy went to the front of the shop to check her makeshift dam. It appeared to be holding, but water was now up over the curb and lapping toward the building. She didn’t want to imagine Griffin clinging to the roof like some fool monkey, but she could only stare out at the rain, unable to imagine anything better.

“You know this is a damn fool stunt, don’t you?” Jeremy asked.

“Oh, hell yes. That’s half the fun.”

“Fine, as long as you know what you’re doing.”

Griffin adjusted the angle of his hat, but the rain still splattered his face. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he replied, but the wind swallowed his words.

Jeremy had nearly tripped over the ladder earlier and led Griffin right to it. Carrying it, they grabbed a folded tarp and made their way up the back stairs only to find the landing was too narrow to set up the wooden stepladder safely. What they needed was an aluminum extension ladder that would reach the roof from the ground, but there was none handy.

Griffin nodded toward the eucalyptus towering over the rear of the building. “Go get the bags of potting soil. I’ll climb the tree to reach the roof, and you can toss everything up to me from here.”

“Are you just plain crazy?”

“No, I simply relish a challenge.” With a quick step up, Griffin balanced himself on the porch rail, reached out for a wildly swaying branch and, with a lunge, caught it.

Jeremy watched in disbelief as Griffin swung himself up into the tree. In the rain-choked light, the pale trunk of the eucalyptus had a ghostly pallor. The curved leaves lashed at the pianist with gray-green claws, but he merely laughed and waved.

“I’ll get the potting soil,” Jeremy yelled, and he ran back down the stairs to fetch half a dozen bags.

When he returned, Griffin was already lying flat on the roof and scraping leaves from the clogged gutter. When it was clear, he reached down for the tarp. Jeremy got a firm grip on the porch rail and flung the blue bundle toward the roof. Griffin made a grab for it, but missed, forcing Jeremy back down the stairs and out the gate to fetch it from the alley before it was washed away.

On their second try, Griffin caught the tarp, but the wind tore at the edge to unfurl it in his grasp. The plastic-coated canvas snapped him with a cruel slap, and he had to fight for control. “Better toss me the bags of soil to weigh it down as I lay it out,” he shouted.

Jeremy took care with his aim and Griffin caught each one without trouble. The challenge was then to spread out the tarp and anchor it with the potting soil before he became so tightly wrapped in it he would careen right off the roof in a grim parody of a burial at sea. Griffin saw that calamity as a real risk, but stretched out to make the best use of his own weight. They were soaked and chilled clear through by the time he was satisfied the tarp would remain in place for the duration of the storm.

While they’d worked, the wind had shifted direction, and the eucalyptus now had a nasty twist to its sway. Certain he ought to have given more thought to how he was going to get down before he got up on the roof, Griffin edged carefully over to the slant above the back door. He thought he could drop off and hit the landing, but with the wind and rain a factor, if he missed, he would be in for a painful cart-wheeling fall down the slippery stairs.

“Get out of my way!” he ordered Jeremy and, shutting out all thought of a poor result, he turned to drop his legs off the roof and jumped down onto the landing below. For one dreadful instant, the porch seemed to tilt under him, but as he fought to regain his balance, Jeremy grabbed his arm and flung him toward the back door.

When he caught his breath, he turned to express his gratitude. “Thanks for your help.”

Jeremy moved in close, grabbed Griffin’s soggy lapels and spoke in a vicious whisper. “Now that job’s done, let’s get things straight between us. You hurt Darcy and Christy Joy, and I’ll make falling off a roof look like a pleasure cruise.”

Griffin had been trained in hand-to-hand combat of a savagery Jeremy could not even imagine, but he chose to shrug off the captain’s threat rather than respond with violence. But first he locked his hands around Jeremy’s wrists and pressed down hard.

“Those two don’t need your protection, and it was Darcy who dumped me, not the other way around. But that wouldn’t concern you, would it? As I see it, the only problem we’ve got today is the rain. Understood?”

Jeremy responded with a grudging nod and, when Griffin released his hold on him, he dropped his hands to his sides. “You’ve not been here long. You don’t know how hard those two have worked, and Defy the World won’t survive this storm.”

“It’s just a little rain,” Griffin argued. “Everything will dry out.”

Jeremy swore a particularly foul oath, a favorite among sailors. “It’s kept the tourists away, and they aren’t making a cent. Hell, I can’t either, but I don’t have their overhead.”

Cold, Griffin hugged his arms across his chest. “You needn’t worry. If they get behind in the rent, I’ll not evict them.”

“Not until September, you mean.”

Unwilling to debate his plans, Griffin leaned toward the stairs, but before he could take a step, Christy Joy opened the door behind them and drew them in.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “I heard you thumping around on the roof, and the water has stopped dripping into the bathtub.”

“Then our mission was a success,” Griffin assured her. “As soon as it stops raining, I’ll have the roof repaired properly and the eucalyptus at the back of the property trimmed so its leaves won’t clog the gutters again.”

Slipping by Christy Joy, he headed on down the stairs. Darcy was waiting at the bottom. Twink was again at the children’s table drawing a blue whale. They were both watching him with a wide, curious gaze. “Anything else you need?” he asked.

“Not right this minute, but they’ve just run a news bulletin on the radio. A mud slide has closed Highway 1 five miles south of town.”

“I hadn’t planned on driving down to LA this afternoon anyway,” Griffin replied.

He just doesn’t get it, Darcy swore under her breath, but as she paused to censor her response for Twink’s benefit, the power failed and the shop disappeared in the resulting darkness.

Griffin pulled Darcy close. “Does this happen often?”

In spite of being cold and wet, he was as solid as a door, and she didn’t struggle against him. “Not until today it hasn’t.”

Twink giggled. “This is cool.”

“Just stay put, sweetheart,” her mother called. “Darcy, there’s a flashlight behind the counter. Can you find it?”

“Just give me a minute,” Darcy offered quickly, but rather than release her, Griffin tightened his embrace and dipped his head to capture her mouth for a long, slow kiss that erased all thoughts of flashlights from her mind. She had to grab his coat to steady herself before she finally pushed away.

“You’re all wet,” she scolded. “You’ll get sick for sure.”

“No, I won’t. I’m never ill. Now let’s find that flashlight.”

At the top of the stairs, Jeremy stood with his arm loosely looped around Christy Joy’s waist. Her curls brushed his check and, filled with longing, he leaned closer to drink in her subtle perfume. Even with the storm, enough light seeped through the windows for him to make out her profile. She appeared perfectly relaxed as she waited for Darcy to provide some light, but he had to force himself to keep breathing. Now he envied Griffin his shameless bravado, but before he could emulate it, Christy Joy turned toward him, slid her fingertips along his cheek and raised her lips to his.

Her kiss was feather-light and yet somehow so delicious that he simply had to have more before she grew convinced he was the stupidest man ever born and shoved him down the stairs. He didn’t just brush his lips tenderly across hers either. He kissed her as though she were his own dear wife and he hadn’t been in port in years. He didn’t stop until he felt the flashlight’s beam cross his face, and even then, he couldn’t step away.