Page 10 of Working for the Heiress

I shut her door and walked around to my side in the rain.

I was going to drive this woman home, and I was going to behave like a man, and then go home, drink one finger of whiskey, and I would absolutely not touch the flaming rod in my pants to thoughts of her, or her curves, or anything else related to Lilianne Ashford.

She sat with both hands wrapped around herself, shivering a little. I cranked the heat to high without saying anything about it. She made a small noise of gratitude. I put the truck in reverse.

She said, "Thank you, Holt."

I said, "Conrad."

I had not planned to offer her my first name. But there it was, in the cab, between us, in the dark, with the rain on the windshield and the heater coming up and her hands still cold and her hair drying against her cheek.

She was quiet for a beat.

Then she said it back to me.

"Conrad."

And I knew I would never recover from the sound of my name coming from those plump lips.

Conrad

I couldn’t focus on the sound of my name coming through her lips. Shouldn’t.

But ignoring that left me with the obvious reality that she was half frozen. Lili sat in the cab shivering. Her coat was soaked and her hands were tucked under her arms. The next words from her mouth, after my name, made me feel like a horse’s ass. “Is there anywhere to get something warm? The coffee didn’t cut it…”

I fought the urge to suggest my house, the whiskey I could pour for us…the whiskey I was now imagining drizzling on her chest as she moaned. What the actual fuck was wrong with me?

I cleared my throat. “Well, assuming you don’t want to turn around and head right back to the Foundry, Kincaid's is still open. Diner across from the airfield."

"The one Diaz was telling me about?"

"Yeah."

"Let's go there."

I should have said the inn probably had something, but I drove her to the place where half the town gathered, where Marlene Kincaid would see me walk in with a woman and remember it for the next thirty years.

"All right," I said, because apparently I couldn't deny this woman a thing.

The diner was a long low brick building with foggy windows and the type of light that made everything inside look warm and amber from the parking lot. I'd been coming here on Saturday mornings for two years. Marlene knew my order. She knew when I wanted to talk, which was never.

We dashed through the downpour to the covered awning to the diner.

I held the door for Lili. The bell above it rang and the smell hit us both — bacon grease and coffee and the vinyl of the booths that hadn't been replaced since Marlene's parents ran the place.

The lady herself was behind the counter with a pot in her hand and a towel over one shoulder. She had her silver-streaked brown hair pulled back and her reading glasses on a chain. She looked up when we came in, looked at Lili, looked at me, and her eyebrows rose about a quarter of an inch. That was all she gave it.

"Holt. Booth in the back's open."

"Thanks, Marlene."

"Who's your friend?"

"Ms. Lillianne Ashford. New regional manager at the airfield."

Marlene looked at Lili — soaked coat, damp hair — and said, "You look like you need soup."

"I really do," Lili said, and something in her voice — grateful, tired, honest — made Marlene nod in a way that meant she'd already decided to like her.