Page 12 of Working for the Heiress

"I'd like to focus on the maintenance,” Lili said. "Start mid-October. I’d rather have safe machines than squeeze in additional flights.”

It was the right call. Hank knew it. I knew it. Marlene, wiping down the counter fifteen feet away, probably knew it.

"I've been running that rotation for two years," I said. "November works."

Lili looked at me. I watched her weigh her options— push back or let it go. I knew my equipment, and I knew that locals did not just say no to Hank Mullins. But Lili had a choice to make about how she was going to manage her father’s company. "Okay," she said after another bite of soup. "I trust your judgement.”

She picked her spoon back up.

Hank slurped at his oatmeal and didn't say a word. After a minute he talked to me about the weather and I gave him the answers he needed and he finished his mush and stood up.

"Ms. Ashford." He tipped his chin at her. "Nice to meet you. Glad we can work this out, Holt."

He left with the tinkle of the bell above the door and Marlene whooshed in to clear his plate.

Lili finished the soup in silence. I watched her tear a piece of bread in half and I thought about her hands and her mouth.

I thought about taking her to my house. I thought about making her something warm and watching her eat it at my table and I shut that down so hard I felt the slam of it in my joints.

"We should go," I said. “Rain’s getting worse."

She put cash on the table before I could. I didn't fight her on it. Marlene caught my eye as we passed the counter and gave me a look that said nothing and everything. By morning, every man in my hangar would know I was here with the boss.

The drive to the inn was both silent and too loud. The rain hammered the roof, but Lili was finally warm enough that she stopped shivering. I pulled up as close to the door as I could so she wouldn’t get wet again.

She didn't get out immediately. "Thank you," she said. "For the soup. And the ride."

"You're welcome."

"Conrad."

She said it quietly. Just my name. No question attached. The same way she'd said it in the truck before, except now she was looking at me.

"Good night, Ms. Ashford."

She smiled, a small, pinched expression. She got out and shut the door and I watched her perfect ass sway as she walked. I didn't pull away until the light came on in one of the windows upstairs.

My house was dark. The motorcycle in the garage was where I'd left it, half-rebuilt, going nowhere. I stood in the kitchen and drank one finger of whiskey and looked at the chair across the table where nobody sat.

Two years of this. Empty rooms and careful distance and the belief that I deserved this solitude.

She'd let me win at the diner, override her, and the grace of that had settled somewhere in my chest I couldn't reach to pull it out. Was it grace? A test? I thought back to her questions about our flight schedules and the way she wanted to give up easy money with Hank’s contract. I couldn’t make sense of it and my thoughts were clouded with the lust I felt surging through my body.

I rinsed my glass and went to bed. I lay in the dark and listened to the rain on the roof and I willed myself not to think of Lili alone in her room at the inn.

I did not succeed.

Lili

The folder I needed was filed under PARTS — REQUISITIONS and I had to stand on a chair to get to the year I wanted.

Even wearing my new work boots from the hardware store, I wasn’t tall enough for the top shelf of the filing cabinet. The chair wobbled and I steadied myself with one hand on the cabinet, wondering what the hell I thought I was doing, and quickly grabbed the folder and hopped down.

I hadn’t been able to sleep after riding home with Holt. Conrad. I was on the verge of telling him about my suspicions, asking him what the hell was going on with my father’s company, but I was so overcome by the smell of him, by the look in his eyes when I said his name, that I simply nodded at him and melted into the rain.

Somewhere near four in the morning, I gave up on sleep and pulled out my laptop to look over parts requisitions and other records I didn’t need access to in my new role. Unless I wanted to shine daylight on questionable behavior, and it was clear my father didn’t expect me to do that.

I carried the folder to the small table by the window and sat down.