Page 14 of Working for the Heiress

"Sharon?"

"No."

"Boston?"

"No. I pulled the corporate side on my own laptop last night."

He looked at me. He looked at the folder. He looked back at me.

"Ms. Ashford."

"Lili.”

He didn't say it back to me yet. He was working through something.

"Some of these substitutions could matter," he said, finally.

"How much do they matter?”

He didn't answer that.

I waited.

"This one." He put his finger on a line three-quarters down the page. "I'd ordered a stainless fuel-line union. Specific manufacturer. Tested for the temperature range we get up here in winter. What we received was a coated steel union from a vendor I don't use." He paused. "It's the union I tightened the other morning. On the Bell."

I felt the cold in my chest crawl down into my stomach.

"The tick in the idle," I said.

His head came up. He looked at me the way he had looked at me in the truck.

"The tick in the idle," he said. He held my eyes for a beat longer than he should have. Then he looked down at the page again.

"Yeah," he said. "That's what it was."

I sat down on the stool at the end of the bench because I did not entirely trust my knees. He noticed. He didn't comment.

"Has this before," I asked. "The substitutions?”

He did not answer that.

The silence sat between us next to the folder.

"I want to keep looking," I said.

"Ms. Ashford."

"Lili.”

"Lili.” He said it without looking up from the page. He said it like the word had weight in his mouth he hadn't anticipated. He cleared his throat. "Be careful who you show this to."

He looked at me, then. Hard. Whatever was in his face held something aching. Haunted. “You don't know what you're looking at yet," he said.

"I think I do.”

"You might find things that —" He stopped. He did not finish. He looked back down at the folder.

"I'll be careful," I said.