Night Moves by Thea Devine

he’d only had time to make that one phone call to tell her he would be gone.
    It had been a rough week on top of that, thirteen hours a day of laying pipeline then falling exhausted into bed. A man didn’t have much energy for anything else after that.
    He’d dreamed about Carrie the way he had on and off for the last fifteen years. And now here she was, looking like a dream, but real. So real he wanted her more than ever. However, as much as Carrie wanted to run, whatever she might say, she couldn’t deny the reality of what had happened between them last Saturday night.
    Putting his tools down on the edge of the roof, he shifted on the ladder to get a better look at Carrie. “Hey,” he called out.
    Carrie shielded her eyes as she looked up at him, even though she was wearing sunglasses. “Hi.” Light and casual. She knew how to play the game. “Want something to drink?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œI’ll bring some lemonade out,” she said as she unlocked the door and went inside the house.
    Okay, that was easy. She dropped her packages in the
bedroom, kicked off her sandals and shoved her feet into a pair of dock shoes, and went to the kitchen to get some lemonade.
    He could probably drink a quart, she thought. He’d probably been working on the roof most of the day.
    â€œCome on up,” he called as she emerged from the house. “lt’s wonderful up here.”
    Carrie hesitated on the first rung of the ladder he had propped against the side of the house and gazed up at him.
    A sun god, she thought, golden and burnished from the afternoon sun. She couldn’t see his eyes, she couldn’t see his face. All she could feel was his intense magnetic pull, and her own reluctant response.
    She wanted to be with him.
    She was really getting crazy. It had to be the air or the water. This was not in her game plan, making love with Truck McKelvey.
    No, but it could be in her afternoon.
    Afternoon delight.
    Damn, why was she thinking like this?
    She shoved the two plastic quart bottles of lemonade in each pocket and mounted the ladder. Truck held out his hand and pulled her up onto the porch roof.
    He had made it into a little hidden space for himself. There was a radio softly playing jazz, a blanket on which he’d laid his tools, a lunch box, towels and a bucket of water. To one side, there was a pile of shingles, flashing, roof cement, assorted pipes, couplings, tape and containers of various liquids and pastes. All around them were trees screening out the world and sheltering them from the fierce heat of the sun. Through the trees, Carrie could just see the pond and the opposite shore. A boat
here and there, sailing by. Birds chittering. A woodpecker knocking. Ducks quacking.
    She looked back over at Truck, his T-shirt grease-spattered and sweaty, and his jeans riding low on his hips. He dipped his hands in the water, and splashed it on his face and hair in a purely male gesture before taking the plastic bottle from her. He held her eyes as he twisted off the cap, saluted her, lifted the bottle to his lips and took the first draw of the lemonade. Her insides coiled, and she had to look away as she opened her own bottle and drank from it.
    There was something so compelling about how contained he was, how calm and competent. Yet there was an aura of danger he always radiated.
    Truck was a man who should be doing bigger, more exciting things, she thought. He could command boardrooms, he could manage industries. And here he was, rubbing his arms up and down with water and toweling himself off, perfectly content to piece together waste lines and vents.
    Carrie didn’t understand it. She didn’t want to. She felt the drive within her to escape, to live on a larger canvas. She quelled the feeling because there was no escaping the here and now, and if she didn’t think about it, she could appreciate the beauty of this moment and this summer day.
    This