Dirk: A Stepbrother Romance(87)

At that very moment, smoke entered the kitchen and as she turned around she thick black smoke billowing from the fireplace and filling the air. Covering her mouth, she walked closer and realized that something in the chimney must have caught fire – or maybe it was just blocked. She had no idea how these things worked. She quickly filled a trashcan with water and doused the fire before the entire house was smoked out. Still, she had to open every door to the house to air it out properly. As she contemplated dealing with the problem with the fireplace she realized just how exhausted she was from her trip. She decided to lay down for a few minutes. Of course she was quickly off to dreamland, only waking must have been hours later, although there was no way to tell by the light outside. It never seemed to get any darker. She had heard it could daylight for months up her but it was still weird to experience. But what actually awakened her was not the light, but the cold. She realized that she had left the doors wide open.

Throwing on a thick sweatshirt, Aria quickly headed to kitchen to make some coffee and looked at the mini -mess in the living room. There was soot on most of the objects near the fireplace and the whole place now smelled like an old fire pit. She ripped up an old box she found and laid the cardboard out in the fireplace so she could wriggle in a get a look up the chimney. She did not see any light, which she decided was bad. It must be blocked, she decided.

Her fear of heights did not rest solely in flying. She was afraid to get on anything over her own height, so she was not exactly enthusiastic about what she had to do next. In the end her fear of freezing trumped her fear of heights, and so after a couple of cups of coffee and a lot of nervous looks at the precarious roof, Aria looked around for a ladder. Truth be told, she was not too thrilled to find one on the garage wall. She also found a tall wand looking thing that she thought may be the tool used for just this sort of cleaning. With the ladder settled against the house and the cleaning contraption in hand, she prepared herself for the climb. Her hands shook as much as her insides as she scaled what felt like a mountain about halfway up , before pausing to look down. She shouldn’t have done that, she quickly realized.

Aria gasped and grabbed the sides of the ladder for dear life. The vertigo made the entire world seem to swim before her for a moment and she closed her eyes tight to stop it. She was almost prepared to open them when she heard someone underneath her laughing.

“What in the world are you doing up there?”

Aria gripped the ladder harder, steeling herself in case he was going to shake it. She knew it was a man, but she was too petrified to look down. She was all of ten feet of the ground.






Chapter 3



Darryl looked up at the tall blonde holding on to the ladder and he couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t want to be mean, but it was a little comical. By her body language she looked like she was scared out of her wits, but as he had walked down the road, he had watched the woman apparently conquer her fear and start up the ladder anyhow. Then she had looked down and he could see the terror in her eyes. He couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him.

“Do you need some help Miss?”

“No, no, I just need the world to stop spinning for a few moments.”

That got another chuckle from Darryl and he waited patiently for her to get it together. She back stepped down at a snail’s pace, never once looking down at him. It was only when she was back on the ground and had settled for a minute that he was finally able to see her face.

“Hi,” she said.

So simple the words, but he could not respond. His heart leapt in his chest and he was fixated on her hazel eyes. They were green based with flecks of brown and gold that seemed to reflect in the sun like diamonds. His nostrils flared for a moment and he looked at her with a new interest.

“Hi.”

The words seemed ridiculous as a response. Darryl finally realized that he was staring at her by the strange, cocked look that she was giving him. She waited for him to say more, but the one syllable was all that he could manage and even then, it had come out like a croak.

“Sorry,” he said, catching himself … "do you uh, need help?”

Aria looked at him for a moment and was about to refuse on premise when she caught herself. Normally it might have been alarming to have a stranger show up like this in what still felt like the middle of nowhere to her. His easy demeanor however, put her at ease. Besides, she didn’t want to go back up there. She didn’t even know if she physically could go back up there at this point. She shook her head as she looked back at the tall, muscular stranger. He had on a jacket, but she could make out the tops and bottoms of several tattoos on his arms and neck. The man was huge and he looked slightly out of place, though just as wild as the surrounding woods. Maybe he looked perfectly in-place. She couldn’t decide, but there was certainly something different about him…besides the fact that he was hot as hell, that is.

“Yes please, actually I do need help I guess, thank you. I started the chimney on fire last night and I am thinking I just need to clean it. That is what this is for, right?”

Aria held up the brush looking contraption and he took it from her hand. He smiled again and went to one of the nearby cedar trees and pulled a long branch off of it. He handed her the makeshift tool and started up the ladder without another word. After he was on the roof and moving towards the chimney, Aria started to chatter, unable to take the silence.