Page 4 of Working for the Heiress

"Long flight?" she asked.

"It wasn't bad. Just early."

"I bet." She looked at me — not unkindly — and I had the brief, disorienting sense of being seen by a woman who knew exactly what was happening inside my skull. "Why don't I show you around before the all-hands briefing. I pulled the summaries you asked for. We can sit with those after."

"That would be wonderful."

I had read all I could on the flight here, made notes in the margins. My degree in business logistics should have prepared me for this assignment from my father, but I felt nervous and out of place. Sharon seemed like the best thing about this rugged part of the world and I was grateful for her presence at my side.

We did the office tour first. Reception, the small kitchen with the coffee maker she'd evidently been guarding, the conference room, the file room — I tried to control my reactions and respond like the boss ought to.

Then we went back through to the hangar.

I told myself, in the hallway, that I would be exactly the right distance from him. Professional. Warm. The right wattage of smile, the right cadence of good morning. I would not look at his hands. I would not look at his mouth. I would not stand close enough to smell engine grease and cold air and something manly underneath that I had not yet been able to put a name to.

I was going to be fine.

We came into the bay and the noise hit me first —compressors, a radio, men's voices calling things in the abbreviated language of people who have worked together long enough to skip half the words.

He was at the far helicopter, the one I'd asked about. He had his back to me. A Henley pulled tight across his broad shoulders, sleeves shoved up to the elbow, forearms corded and lit by the work light over the engine. I made the mistake of looking and then I made the worse mistake of not looking away fast enough.

Sharon was a step ahead, walking, talking — telling me what bay was what and which crew handled which contract — and I let her voice cover me while I composed myself. By the time we reached the helicopter my face was back where I needed it to be and my hands were back to simply cradling the coffee like a gentle bird.

He was wiping down the engine cover. He didn't look up.

"And this one?" I asked Sharon. "Whose is this?"

I asked it on purpose. I wanted to see if he would look at me. I had already decided that if he didn't, I would not let myself ask another question on this side of the hangar today.

Sharon looked at him. Of course she did. She was not the person who answered that question.

He straightened up. He met my eyes across the aircraft and growled a single, low word: "Mine".

The word went through me like a physical touch, vibrating straight down my spine and pooling heavy in my lower belly. Logically, I knew he was claiming structural responsibility for the machine. But logic had no place in the hangar today. The dark, possessive timbre of his voice stripped away my corporate armor. He wasn't just talking about the metal. He was looking right through my clothes, right into my secrets, and declaring ownership over me, too.

I let Sharon's voice carry me three steps further down the bay before I let my eyes leave him.

He was already back at the engine.

"Boss Lady," somebody called, from the other end of the hangar.

I turned. The mechanic from earlier — dark hair, sleepless face, the one who had dropped a wrench on purpose — was leaning against a workbench grinning at me with both hands up in a small mock surrender.

"Sorry," he said. "Diaz, ma'am. Lou Diaz. We didn't get formally introduced earlier. Welcome to Forge Creek."

"Diaz." I crossed three steps toward him because that was what owning the nickname required and I had decided in that moment to own it. "Lili Ashford."

“What if we called you Bootsy instead?” He grinned at me.

I arched a brow at him. “Do you always assign people their nickname based on their outfit, Dickie?”

He grinned and held out a hand. I took it. His grip was firm and brief and — nothing more. It was a normal handshake.

Sharon walked me back to the office building twenty minutes later. We did the briefing in the conference room, and I met the two pilots headed to a lift job in the next valley. I introduced myself, holding back my burning questions about their flight. It would not do to reveal too much about that particular interest of mine.

Nobody laughed at me. Nobody undermined me. Two of the older mechanics looked openly skeptical, which was fair, and one of the pilots — a woman who looked about forty with her hair in a ponytail and no makeup— looked at me with like she could tell I knew more than I let on about her work.

Holt was in the back of the room, against the wall, arms crossed.