Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

C aroline looked away from the ground and instead focused her gaze on the horizon beyond her front yard. The panic she'd breathed through reared up again, and she fought against it until her heartbeat started to settle again.

"I'll call Belle," she said, and she pulled her phone from her pocket. She felt like she'd done this once already, but she didn't think she'd called or texted her sister. Sure enough, one glance at the phone showed her she hadn't.

She'd texted Dawson instead.

And he'd said, On the way, Caroline.

"Caroline," she said softly, imagining Dawson saying it in his throaty, husky, kind voice. Not the growly one, though she wouldn't mind that either. He didn't say her name much, but he had called her darlin' or sweetheart a time or two.

She looked at when she'd texted him, and she couldn't believe twenty minutes had passed. Now that she'd calmed and her rational thought had returned, having Dawson come from his ranch in the Southern foothills made no sense.

Caroline could call a neighbor to come right the ladder that had fallen and stranded her on the roof of her own home. She tapped to call Dawson, unsurprised when he picked up after the first ring.

"Hey, sweetheart," he said. "Wanna tell me what I'm walking into?"

"Oh, I, uh, well, the swamp cooler was having trouble, so I got up on the roof to take a look." She took a moment, so she could pretend she existed on low, level ground.

In that pause, he said, "Wait. What? You're on the roof?"

"Yes," she clipped out. "I'm capable of fixing everything around my house, Mister Rhinehart, believe it or not."

"I—"

"And Belle left with Judy to go to the petting zoo, so I'm here alone, and I must not have set the ladder right, because after I fixed the swamp cooler, I went to where I'd left it, and it had slid sideways. "

He said nothing, and Caroline couldn't blame him. She'd barreled her voice right over the top of his.

"I tried to get it up," she said. "But it's an odd angle, and well, I may not be strong enough to do it."

"I'm fifteen minutes out," he said.

"I can just call my neighbor," she said.

"Then why did you text me?"

Caroline really only had one answer, but she didn't want to say it. She fought against the words surging up her throat, but so many of them flowed out. "I panicked," she said. "I'm not exactly the best of friends with heights, and well, the ground started to swim, and I had to scamper backward, and I—I gotta be honest. I don't even remember texting you."

"Just what every man wants to hear," he said dryly, and Caroline blinked.

"Did you—did you just make a joke?"

"I can hear you're okay," he said. "So I'm going to hang up, and I'll be there in a few minutes to help with the ladder."

"Dawson."

"See you soon, Caroline." He ended the call, and that ignited the fire in her chest.

"He hung up." She looked at the screen, where his name faded to black. "I said his name, clearly with something more to say, and he hung up anyway."

Caroline looked up, emotions circling through her, throwing oddly colored images into her vision, the way a kaleidoscope did. Everything felt too hot up here on the roof, but she simultaneously felt cold. Clammy.

She'd just been thrown back into her marriage, and Caroline would not put up with being treated like that again. She absolutely would not be spoken over, or belittled, or made to feel like her words and opinion did not matter.

And Joe had made her constantly question her worth. He'd said things to her that made her doubt everything, doubt herself, doubt reality, even. He'd hung up on her before, and Caroline's fingers tightened around the plastic case on her phone.

Before she knew it, Dawson pulled into her driveway, and he waved to her from the ground. "Around back?"

She didn't answer, and the handsome cowboy moved with confidence into her backyard. Her throat felt like she'd severed her vocal cords and then tried to iron them back into place. She could barely get air down into her lungs, and she startled and pressed her eyes closed as a metallic clattering noise rent the air.

Dawson climbed onto the roof a few seconds later, and he had a bright-as-the-noonday-sun smile on his face that felt like he'd put it there just for her. "Hey." He reached out his hand for her, but Caroline didn't reciprocate the gesture.

His expression changed, but he came the several feet to her and sat beside her with a groan. "It's hot up here. "

"Mm." Caroline had so much to say, and it all tasted like poison inside her.

"Pretty view up here though," he said. "I like the perspective on the neighborhood."

Tall trees surrounded them, and in the spring and summer, they'd leaf up and make things green in Three Rivers. Right now, she could see further than she'd be able to when the trees had leaves, and it did offer a different perspective.

It showed her how her house existed among many neat rows of other houses, when it was so easy to feel isolated.

"You better tell me what I did wrong," he said quietly.

Caroline sat up straight and drew her shoulders back. "When I filed for divorce from my ex-husband, I vowed I would never allow myself to get in a situation like that again."

Dawson looked at her, and the weight of his gaze on the side of her face landed like a load of bricks. "You've been married?"

"Yes," she said with a single nod. "For a few years. I've been divorced for five."

"How old are you?" He cleared his throat. "Wait, let me back up a little. Soften my tone." His hand slid across her knee and took hers into the safety of his. "I'm real sorry about your first marriage. Sorry that it obviously hurt you and brought you pain. Not sorry it led you here, to me, but sorry I did something to make you feel like you did then."

Caroline swallowed, because Joe would've never apologized. He always thought he was right, and he'd argue it and argue it, sometimes without even any facts. She squeezed his hand and summoned up the courage to look at him.

Dawson wore resignation and defeat on his face, and he ducked his head the moment she looked his way. His cowboy hat concealed his face, and Caroline sure did like his humility.

"You hung up on me," she whispered. "Without letting me say what I wanted to say." She drew in a breath and raised her voice. "My ex-husband did that constantly. Even when I found a way to say something, he'd twist it around until I was the one asking him to forgive me and questioning why I was so weak, so stupid, and so obviously not worthy of him."

Dawson kept her hand tightly in his, but he didn't look at her. "I'm real sorry about that," he said. "I didn't realize. I thought you were teasing me about making a joke is all."

Caroline gazed over the neighborhood again, an extreme calm moving through her. "Joe would've never apologized."

"I won't hang up on you again. It wasn't my intent to silence you or anything. I guess I just didn't feel like being teased about making a joke. "

She leaned her head against his shoulder, glad when it felt good. Right. Easy. "I'm sorry too," she said. "This is a non-negotiable point for me, and it makes me a little hard-headed. A little harsh sometimes."

"I like a little harsh sometimes," he said, and Caroline could've melted into him. " I'm a little harsh sometimes."

She nudged him with her shoulder. "Just sometimes?"

"Hey, I came running when you texted, and I'll have you know that my house was full of my friends."

Shock zinged through her, first that he'd left his friends, and second, that he'd had friends over to his cabin for lunch. "It was? Why?"

"And now they've all seen me run—literally—to your aid. So I have no pride left, sweetheart."

"Was I going to eat with all of your friends?"

"I forgot we'd moved our lunch from yesterday to today," he said. "So it's a good thing you didn't come." He nudged her back. "You never said how old you are."

"Thirty," she said. "You?"

"Thirty-two," he said. "Never married, though I have dated quite a bit in recent years."

"Define ‘quite a bit.'"

"Oh, I don't know," he said with a sigh. "Four or five women in the past year. That many the year before." He blew out his breath. "Nothing ever takes."

"What does that mean? "

He didn't answer right away, and Caroline liked that he seemed to think about what he might say before he said it. "I think my last attempt at a girlfriend sums it up," he said. "We went out a few times. She's nice. It's fun. I go to kiss her, and it's like…nothing. Bland. If I had a sister, it would be like kissing her."

"And you do that four or five times a year?"

He chuckled and nodded. "Seems that way for a while, at least."

She turned into him, and Caroline honestly had no idea where this fizzy, flirty feeling inside her stemmed from. But she liked it. "Do you think when you kiss me it'll be like that?"

"By all the stars in heaven, I hope not," Dawson whispered. "But I reckon we need to go out a few times before that'll happen anyway."

"You never know," Caroline said, teasing openly now. "Some people kiss before the first date."

Dawson chuckled again. "Yeah, a friend of mine—Link—kissed his fiancée before their second first date."

"Second first date," Caroline repeated.

"Yeah, they, uh, had to try twice, but they're real happy now. Gonna get married this summer."

"That's great," she said, her own throat closing up slightly. She'd never imagined she'd date someone again, and certainly she'd never get married again. Dawson had her rethinking a lot of things, and they hadn't even gone out on a date yet .

"You got something more to say?" he prompted gently.

"Did I sound like I did?"

"Yes," he said. "You sure did."

She lifted her head and slowly peeled her fingers away from his. "Maybe I do, but I think I'd like to hold it for another time."

"All right," he drawled. "Now, can I help you get off this roof? It really is hot up here."

"It's January."

"On a clear, muggy day," he said. He got to his feet first, and when he reached for her this time, Caroline took his hand and let him help her to her feet. With the pitch of the roof, she stood above him, taller, and looked down into his eyes.

"Thank you for coming, Dawson."

His eyes lingered on her mouth, and he pulled them up to meet hers. "I'll always come when you need me, Caroline." With that, he led the way to the ladder and went down first. He held it for her while she made painstaking progress down it, and then he took it down and put it away in her shed.

A new tension had accompanied them to the ground, and Caroline didn't know the steps to this dance. She could barely look at Dawson, and it sure seemed like all she could think about was kissing him.

"Belle and Judy will be home soon," she said.

"Ah, that's my cue to leave," he said with another quick flash of a smile she caught though she wasn't looking directly at him. "I won't ask you out, but I am going to hug you."

He drew her into his arms, and oh, Caroline had not known such a tender male touch in her life. Tears touched her eyes, and she clung to Dawson in a way surely he could feel. She stayed too long in his arms, and when he finally released her, she pulled in a deep breath and tried to stabilize her emotions.

She flashed a smile at him and said, "I'll call you, okay?"

"Can't wait." He got behind the wheel of his truck, tipped his hat at her, and backed out of her driveway. Caroline watched him go, wondering if the ground she stood on would crack and allow the earth to swallow her whole.

That was how her life felt right now. Like she had no idea what might happen next, and the thrill of that kept prodding her to make another almost irrational decision. Like….

"I am talking to Belle tonight," she vowed to the empty driveway. Then she added, "Dust and shadows," and spun to go back into the house, praying that the swamp cooler had been cooling the house since she'd gone up onto the roof to fix it and she could get the flaming in her face to go down a couple of notches.