Page 80 of Charlotte

She had ideas above both her station and her reach.

Peterson had already observed this fact aloud four times.

“You’ll come down off that,” he said from the foot of the ladder.

“I will when it is finished.”

“It’s not safe.”

“It is perfectly safe.”

“The boards are uneven, that ladder is older than I am, and you are standing too high.”

“I am not too high. I am precisely high enough.”

“You are precisely one foolish breath from falling on your head.”

Lottie stretched toward the lintel with the bunting gathered in one hand. “If I let you hang it, the swag will be square.”

“A square swag won’t kill you.”

“It may kill the spirit of the thing.”

His jaw set.

She could feel him watching from below, his left hand hovering near the ladder rail, his shoulders stiff with the effort not to touch what he had not been invited to steady. He was plainly caught between his fear of frightening her and his greater fear of watching her break her neck on the boardwalk.

“Tell me where you want it,” he said, “and I’ll set it. I’m taller than you.”

“You are also less romantic than I am.”

“About cloth, yes.”

“Exactly my concern.”

“Lottie.”

The way he said her name should not have made her smile when she was balanced on an elderly ladder with one hand full of bunting and the other reaching for a nail.

Yet it did.

She turned her head just enough to look down at him and blinked her eyes several times. “Peterson, you are a wonderful carpenter, a marvel with a saw, and a man of many sturdy qualities. You have not got one ounce of romance in your whole great body when it comes to a length of bunting.”

The ladder shifted. Lottie’s stomach dropped before the rest of her did.

The bright street tilted. The bunting flew out of her hand. She made one small, undignified sound and grabbed for the air.

Peterson caught her.

He moved before she had finished falling. One moment she was above him, the next she was against his chest, his arms locked around her with a strength that left no room for doubt. Her hands clutched the front of his coat. Her feet were off the ground. His heart hammered hard beneath her cheek.

“I’ve got you,” he said. His voice had gone rough. “I’ve got you, lass. You’re all right.”

For a moment, Lottie did not move.

Neither did he.

The whole street continued around them. Somewhere behind her, Mrs. Beck gasped. A child laughed and was hushed. Mr. Prentiss objected to a nail hole with deep personal feeling.