Looking down on their work, at the cobwebs in the corners and the filmy white, black and gray gauze draped in shredded strips in clumps over the table, at the strobe lights they’d zip-tied to beams so they could easily be taken down, to the zombies and skeletons hanging from nooses, she felt immense satisfaction at how much they had accomplished. The sixteen hours that had started yesterday afternoon, consisting mostly of prep work in her salon, had paid off huge.
She owed each of her friends free haircuts and colors for six months, but the trade would be more than worth it when she saw Hauk’s face. Anticipating that moment, she shimmied to the middle of the beam where the ladder waited just beneath her. Flipping her legs over so she hung by her armpits, she moved her feet around looking for the ladder.
Just as she found it, with her footing not quite secure yet, the door chime went off with a witch’s screaming cackle followed by a much more masculine scream. With a jump and scream of her own, Vic’s foot slipped on the top rung. Her grip on the beam disappeared as quickly as her balance.
She fell.
She couldn’t have been falling longer than a couple seconds, but a lifetime of moments flashed in a rapid movie behind the darkness of her closed eyelids. At the end, just after an image of the hardwood floor beneath her, was Hauk smiling as he carried her to orgasm.
At least she’d land on a happy thought.
Chapter Ten
The screeching cackle scared him. It was Vic’s scream and the vision of her foot slipping from the ladder that horrified him.
With his heart drumming between his ears and images of his exes broken and dead blurring by, he ran across the room. He hadn’t been able to save Krista or Jean Marie. If he couldn’t save Vic…
He barely got beneath her and braced himself for the impact before she landed in his arms with a whump. If she’d been one step farther…
Setting her not entirely gently on the floor, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Once. Firmly. “You idiot!”
Fire roared in his brain.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?”
His face flamed.
“What in hell are you doing?”
His blood boiled.
“You have no business being on a ladder without someone around. Jesus, woman!” Now that he’d started yelling, he wasn’t sure if he could stop. “Do you not think I’ve had enough women I love die? You need to add yourself to the list?”
“Oh, Hauk.” Vic spoke softly as she moved close and buried her face in his chest. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Scare me?” He pulled her away and looked for a moment into her wide eyes before pulling her back into his arms. His hands trembled as he realized she’d scared herself as much as him. More, he realized that her single touch and whispered apology had diffused the fear raging through him.
“The door scared me.” He spoke much more softly. “You terrified me.”
“Yeah.” She stepped back, keeping her hands at his waist. “I’d have been okay without that cackle going off.”
The woman had nearly plummeted to the floor and yet she stood before him with a smile and light comment about the cackle? She’d lost her damn mind. He must have lost his too, because damn if she didn’t have him laughing.
“Really, Vic. What were you thinking?”
Instead of answering, she stepped away and spread her arms wide.
The decorations suddenly registered. Turning in a slow circle, looking from table to booth and floor to ceiling, he saw what she’d been thinking. What she’d been doing.
His blood cooled and his heart slowed as the adrenaline drained to be replaced by quivering happiness.
“How could I not have noticed?” He knew as he asked the question that he’d been blinded by fear for her. “I walked in here to a cackle and you falling out of the rafters.”
“If it makes you feel better, I hadn’t been alone more than a minute.”
She stood where he’d put her as he walked the room. Climbing the ladder she abruptly vacated, he saw the pulleys his father had designed. “My dad was with you.”
“Yes.”
He’d get an earful later for leaving her alone. She was experienced at climbing rigs and ladders, sure, but that didn’t make it a safe thing to do alone.
“This is what you were doing in your back room yesterday.” He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, but a part of him had thought she was with a man.
“We were just getting started on it.”
She dug a fingernail into her cuticles, pushing at them until she would turn her fingers red. It was a tell he’d noticed about her long ago, though one she didn’t display often. Her uncertainty soothed his. It made him realize it was okay to not have all the answers.