George was off the ladder and on the roof in a second. “You little fool,” he muttered, but there was affection in his voice, or at least as much affection as he ever showed. “May I see it?”

Grudgingly, she poked her foot in his direction. She’d already removed her shoe.

He touched it clinically, cupping her heel in one hand as he tested her range of motion with the other. “Does it hurt here?” he asked, pressing lightly on the outside of her ankle.

Billie let out a hiss of pain before she could stop herself and nodded.

He moved to another spot. “Here?”

She nodded again. “But not quite as much.”

“What about—”

A bolt of pain shot through her foot, so intense it was positively electric. Without even thinking, she yanked it back from his hands.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said with a frown. “But I don’t think it’s broken.”

“Of course it’s not broken,” she practically snapped. Which was a ridiculous thing to say because there was no of course about it. But George Rokesby always brought out the worst in her, and it didn’t help that her foot hurt, damn it all.

“A sprain,” George said, ignoring her little outburst.

“I know.” Petulantly. Again. She hated herself right now.

He smiled blandly. “Of course you do.”

She wanted to kill him.

“I’ll go first,” George announced. “That way if you stumble I’ll be able to stop you from falling.”

Billie nodded. It was a good plan, the only plan, really, and she’d be stupid to argue just because he was the one who’d come up with it. Even if that had been her initial impulse.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded again. “You’re not concerned that I’ll knock you off the ladder?”

“No.”

No explanations. Just no. As if it were absurd even to ponder the question.

She looked up sharply. He looked so solid. And strong. And dependable. He’d always been dependable, she realized. She was just usually too busy being irritated by him to notice.

He edged carefully back to the end of the roof, turning around so that he could set one foot on the top rung of the ladder.

“Don’t forget the cat,” Billie directed.

“The cat,” he repeated, giving her a surely you jest look.

“I’m not going to abandon it after all this.”

George gritted his teeth, said something quite unsavory under his breath, and reached out for the cat.

Which bit him.

“Mother of—”

Billie scooted back an inch. He looked ready to tear someone’s head off, and she was closer than the cat.

“That cat,” George growled, “can rot in hell.”

“Agreed,” she said, very quickly.

He blinked at her speedy acquiescence. She tried for a smile and settled for a shrug. She had two brothers by blood and three more who might as well have been brothers in the Rokesby household. Four if she included George, which she wasn’t quite sure she did.

The point was, she understood men, and she knew when to keep her mouth shut.