He turned and scanned the roof. “It’s all glassed in.” Playfully, he put his hands around his neck to simulate choking. “Ever read The Bell Jar?”
Not a joke, although he acted as if it were. At times she wondered if he was claustrophobic. He disliked the indoors more than anyone this side of a South Seas islander, which was why the months after his accident must have been a living hell as much for the confinement as for the threat of paraplegia.
“I suppose you can go back to your parents’ house,” she commented, light as air. “Who’s sharing your bedroom again?”
After a moment, Adam smiled. “My cousin Jack. The one with asthma and the suitcase full of medicine bottles. His vaporizer whistles all night long.”
Wordlessly, Julia held the key to him.
He put out his palm to catch it.
Her impulse was to grab his hand in both of hers, to hold it against her cheek as she folded the key into his palm and pressed kisses over his knuckles. He had artistic hands—long-fingered, nimble, hardened with calluses but ultrasensitive to stimuli. Another little fact about him that she’d filed away in her memory banks for warm dreams on long, cold, lonely winter nights.
But now was not the time to get seriously kissy-faced with his hands. Skilled at turning back her impulses, she dropped the key and stepped away without betraying even one emotion, certain she’d pushed far enough for one night. It wouldn’t do for Adam to guess her feelings so soon when he’d probably put her out of his mind years ago.
No, he hasn’t, an inner voice told her, but it was small and quiet and easy to overlook.
Adam slipped the key into the pocket of his black tuxedo pants before gesturing at one of the unfinished structures. “Now, that, Goldie, is more my speed.”
“You can’t go there,” she said, but he was already gone. She rushed to catch up, her low-heeled boots pounding the dirt. “Adam, no.” She stepped over a pile of bricks. “It’s dangerous.”
He looked at her and smiled, and that was when she knew what she should have done was bonk at least one of them over the head with the closest two-by-four.
Because dangerous was Adam’s middle name.
The house’s walls were up and wrapped in Tyvek, the roof partly shingled. The interior was a hollow shell, whistling with the wind that came in through a couple of openings that weren’t yet glassed in. Their footsteps rang on the plywood subfloor as she followed him to a makeshift staircase that any self-respecting carpenter would have called a ladder.
“Careful,” she whispered. There was no handrail.
“Stay downstairs,” he said. “I’ll take just a quick look.”
“I’m coming.” She tromped up the steep stairs without looking down. Looking down wouldn’t get her anywhere. Her whole life had been spent checking for stumbling blocks because homecoming queens weren’t supposed to fall on their faces. Enough was enough. She wanted to step outside the box and really live.
Adam gave her his hand to help her up the last steps, and that was good because she could blame the gnawing in her stomach on their chemistry instead of queasiness. One quick survey of the second floor and she knew for certain what he was going to do. And that if she were to keep up, she’d have to follow him. “You can’t possibly mean to—”
He did. The house had a cupola similar to the other, except this one was unfinished. Open stud frame, no glass, no stairs, not even a ladder. “Think of the view,” Adam said as he poked his head out the huge hole that would eventually be filled with the master bedroom’s picture window.
She gripped the ledge, taking a quick glance before backing away. “The view’s fine from right here.” Dark water glinted through the heavy fringe of the pine forest.
“You can’t see over the trees.” He leaned farther. She nearly grabbed for his belt, but he wasn’t wearing one. Only thin black suspenders over the pleated tuxedo shirt, its collar open and the sleeves shoved up to his elbows. James Bond after a mission, devastatingly sexy in his throwaway glamour.
“What’s the point?” she nearly wailed when Adam climbed onto the window ledge. For a man who’d seemed unsure of his physical abilities, he was tremendously limber.
Crouching, he threw a glance over his shoulder, calming her with his easy bravado. His face had lost the serious cast that she found so worrisome. “You know what they say about Everest. Because it’s there.” He gave her a boyish, lopsided grin and then leaped like a cat.
She let out an “Eep!” and rushed to the window in time to see Adam’s dangling legs disappear over the eaves. Apparently he’d used a trim board as a step, but she didn’t want to think of how he’d hoisted himself over the edge. There was no way she could follow.
Staring intently at the slanted ceiling, she listened for his footsteps, hearing nothing until he stuck his head out of the gap where the cupola stairs would go. “Over here.”
She circled beneath him, craning her neck and kicking up sawdust. “You’ve done this sort of thing before, haven’t you?”
“Remember the abandoned barn on Old Town Road? I used to swing out the haymow on a rope and walk the peak of the roof to get to the cupola.”
“Figures.” She rocked on her heels. “I hope the view is worth it.” Upside down, his face was still compelling. Even more so because now every shred of reserve was gone. This was the Adam Brody she remembered. For once, she understood the attraction of conquering the unconquerable obstacle. For that, she was glad she’d brought him here.
“Want to see?” He extended an arm, waggling his fingers at her.
She reached, knowing it was useless. Six feet of empty space separated them. “There’s no way.”
“You said you wanted to climb.” The reversed position had reddened his hollow cheeks. “Dare you.”
Adam and his friends had always flung dares around like chicken feed. As Miss Prim and Proper, popularity on a pedestal, she’d never been included.
No way was she turning her first one down.
She looked around the room, finding it littered with various building supplies. Sacks of plaster made an untidy pile against the side wall. “Maybe there’s scaffolding or a ladder,” she said, wishing—absurdly, but since when had her interest in this man ever been sensible?—that for once she could join Adam in midair. “Send in the clowns,” she muttered to herself, grunting as she rearranged the heavy sacks. One of them toppled off the precarious pile, landing with a thud and a puff of white dust.
“I’m coming down,” Adam said, briefly disappearing before his legs swung into the gap.
“No—stay there!” Julia climbed to the top of the stack and balanced with her arms out to her sides, biting her lip with determination. Suddenly it was very important that she get up on the roof. “I’m coming up.”
But not nearly high enough. She’d made up four feet, at best. Until Adam swung around again, going prone with his entire upper body hanging from the gap. They were able to clasp hands. “This doesn’t help,” she gasped, except that it did. His sure grip steadied her footing. She stretched higher, wrapping her hands around his forearms like a trapeze artist, and suddenly felt herself rising toward the ceiling.
The strain must have been incredible on Adam’s shoulders. For one instant, right before he pulled her the last bit and her elbows landed on solid wood, she wondered if his muscles would give out. He was using his legs as much as his arms; they were hooked around one of the cupola’s support posts, anchoring both their weights.
“Oof.” The lip of the staircase opening bit into her midsection