Close enough to plant her lips on Nellie’s.
Sawyer’s mouth was warm and sure, and she dominated the kiss in a way that Nellie felt in her sternum and her kneecaps and one or two other locations she wasn’t going to map in detail right now.
It took her brain perhaps ten seconds to catch up to what was happening, and only then did she recover the motor functions to really kiss Sawyer back. She brought her hand up to stroke Sawyer’s sharp jaw, the other still wrapped around her waist.
The forest and the survey and the multi-million dollar deal all fell away around them as they mapped each other’s lips.
Then Nellie’s phone went off.
Paloma. Full volume. The contact ringtone—theJawstheme, assigned three years ago as a joke and now a sacred pillar of their friendship—filled the clearing with the serene inevitability of a natural disaster.
Sawyer’s head snapped back, her gaze moving briefly to Nellie’s jacket pocket, then back up. Something crossed her face that was not quite amusement and was not quite its opposite.
“She’ll call fourteen times if I don’t?—”
“Answer it.” Sawyer stepped away. “Go ahead.”
Nellie nodded sheepishly as she unzipped her pocket. “Hey, Pal. What’s?—?”
“Hey, so don’t get mad at me, but I’m in the public records archive. I pulled the county planning board index this morning.”
Sawyer had turned toward the stream, her back to Nellie, standing with her attention fixed somewhere on the water below and clearly, deliberately, making it none of her business. Nellie turned slightly the other way.
“And? What did you find?” she whispered
“Alburn Systems filed revised planning applications to the county board.” A weighted pause. “Updated infrastructure specifications, amended construction timeline for phase two. Northern sector foundation work.”
Nellie’s hand tightened on the phone.
She looked at Sawyer’s back. The slope. The late light still doing its terrible, beautiful thing through the canopy.
“That could be?—”
“They filed ityesterday morning, Nellie. While your survey is still running. While you’ve still got weeks left on the deal. The application submits a revised schedule that positions them to break ground before a county board review could conclude, even if you trigger one.”
“Seems like Gina is still determined to be a pain in my ass,” Nellie grumbled, taking a few decisive steps farther from where Sawyer stood.
“Listento me.” Paloma’s sigh held no shortage of frustration. “Who’s to say it’s just her? Surely, a planning application goes through the CEO’s office, no? That’s not some unauthorizedoperations directive. That’s got to be Sawyer Alburn’s sign-off on a decision that says they’re moving forward whether or not you make your case.”
The forest suddenly felt very quiet, as if even the birds were hushed and straining to hear the conversation.
“I’ll look at the filings,” Nellie finally whispered.
“I’ll send you the papers now.” Papers rustling through the phone. “Are you still in the field?”
“Wrapping up.”
“Is she there?”
The pause that followed lasted exactly one second too long. She heard Paloma clock it.
“I’ll call you later,” Nellie said.
“Okay.” Paloma was choosing, as an act of genuine mercy, not to push. “Call me tonight. And, Nellie—” She stopped, started again, and her voice came out gentler than usual. “Don’t trust too easily. Please.”
“I know.”
The line clicked off.
