Page 28 of Working for the Heiress

I smiled at the house with a wraparound porch and smoke coming from the chimney. There was even a big white dog lying on the front steps.

I brought us down smooth. Conrad's hand tightened on my thigh as we touched down, and when I looked at him he was watching me with an expression I'd seen exactly once before — the morning after the storm, when I'd told him about my pilot's license and he'd looked at me like every question he'd ever had about me had been answered at once.

"Show-off," he said.

"You love it."

"I love you,” he said, the words familiar now but thrilling every time we said them to one another.

The dog bounded toward us as I killed the engine. A Great Pyrenees, enormous, white, with a graying muzzle and calm brown eyes. He sniffed Conrad's hand when he stepped down and then pressed his massive head against Conrad's thigh and stayed there.

"Edgar." Conrad's voice was rough with emotion. He knelt and put both hands in the dog's fur and Edgar leaned into him with his full weight. I got the sense my man and this dog had seen some things together.

"Holt." A voice came from the porch. Low, rough, the same voice from the voicemail after the storm in Colorado. Tanner Wolf came down the steps, a tall man in his forties, with salt and pepper hair and a bit of a haunted expression. A woman followed him—she appeared to be younger and more cheerful.

She surprised all of us by flinging her arms around Conrad. “You must be the famous Holt,” she said. “I’m Drew and I’m hitched to this one.” She hooked a thumb back toward the man Conrad insisted on calling by his canine last name.

Conrad extracted himself from dog and Drew and embraced his old friend. I saw my man’s shoulders quake with emotion before they pulled apart.

"You look good," Tanner said, stepping back.

"You look married."

"Feels about right." Tanner looked at me. His eyes were sharp and careful and not unkind. "You must be the one who grounded his fleet in a storm."

"Among other things," I said.

Drew came forward and hugged me like we'd known each other for years. "I'm so glad you came," she said. I liked her immediately.

The others were inside. Conrad brought me through the front door with his hand on the small of my back and I felt him brace himself — a small shift in his posture, a squaring of the shoulders, the way he stood when he was about to face something difficult. These were the men he'd worked alongside. The men who'd broken the same night he did.

"Boys," Tanner said, from behind us. "Holt's here. And he brought a lady.”

They were in the living room around a table that held more food than five men could eat and not nearly enough liquor to fill the silence between them. I counted four, plus Tanner.

Conrad introduced them one by one.

Atlas Blackwell was sitting in the corner chair closest to the wall. He was the trauma surgeon, the dark-haired man with sad eyes and a jaw that seemed like it’d been clenched since the mudslide.

Their friend Cormac Reed stood at the window. He was the flight nurse, I recalled as he shook my hand. Conrad had told me Reed’s fiancée had died in the mudslide. I could see the shape of that loss in the careful way he held himself, as if any sudden movement might reopen something.

Ford McKenna was in the kitchen doorway, holding a beer he wasn't drinking. Yet another medical man, the former emergency doctor had circles under his eyes even though I knew he wasn’t up late working shifts any longer. These men were all grieving, retreated in the wild hills of West Virginia … although Tanner found his way to the light.

That was obvious in the way he smiled at his wife, served food to his friends, made us all feel welcome in his home. The men of Raptor Creek were gentle in their sadness. They were kind to me and I could tell they loved Conrad Holt fiercely.

They asked us about our plans and we gave them a tour of the Cessna. The men started chatting about old times, and Drew pulled me aside to the kitchen. “So,” she asked, leaning against the counter and fanning herself against the warmth in the room. “Does yours speak in monosyllables, too?”

I laughed. “He’s working his way up to short sentences. What about Tanner?”

She grinned. “Last week he talked for twenty minutes."

I looked through the doorway at Conrad, who was sitting on the arm of the couch telling our host something about a helicopter engine, using his hands to describe it, and Tanner caught his wife’s eye across the room.

I felt the heat between them and recognized it—Conrad looked at me with the same ferocity. I knew in that moment we’d be fine, Conrad and me, because I saw what happened when two people tore down their fences and let their love connect them.

Eventually, Tanner announced that dinner was served, and we all sat around the table. Even Edgar the dog had a place near the head. We ate delicious food until Tanner stood, a glass of whiskey in one hand, his wife’s hand clutched in the other.

Someone passed glasses of spirits around the table and I bit my lip, knowing I shouldn’t drink mine but not wanting to draw attention away from the happy couple in this moment, in their home.