Page 19 of Working for the Heiress

I saw Sharon, by the door, see me looking.

I exhaled and nodded. “Ground Ortiz and Hartwell. Daley stays Cheyenne-bound and overnights. I'll write the call."

“Mr. Holt!”

"Ms. Ashford. I'm not telling Daley to scrub a medical transport on a possible front pivot when he's already east of it. He'll lose his certification if it turns out we were wrong and he could have made Cheyenne."

"And if you're wrong?”

"Then I'll live with it. I’ve done it before.”

The conference room was very quiet.

Diaz stared at me. The female pilot in the corner had taken her phone away from her ear. Sharon was watching Lili. Lili was watching me.

"Holt," Lili said. "Pull him."

She picked up her legal pad. She walked out of the conference room. She did not look at me as she passed.

I heard her boots in the hallway.

I heard her office door close.

I turned back to the whiteboard, and I wrote up the call, and I gave the order to Diaz, and I did not, for the next several hours, allow myself to think about that woman.

I ground my teeth, thinking of all the work that went into moving that patient, all the money lost in an emergency landing and ground transport in the high country. I worked furiously, straining under the effort of tasks I should have left for another shift.

Alone in the hangar, I almost didn’t hear the radio static as dispatch reported Daley landed amidst a swirling updraft as the storm front pivoted fast, just as Lili said it would. I dropped a wrench on the ground, seeing a fatal crash from another time, another man’s decision to surge forward to try and save the lives on board.

That time did not end well. This one still might.

My hands shook as I walked to her office. The door was closed but I saw the lights on inside.

I knocked.

She said, "Come in."

She was at her desk with her hair down out of its knot for the first time since I'd met her, and she did not stand up, and she did not look up.

"Daley's on the ground,” I said. "Patient's stable. The storm came in even faster than predicted."

"I know." She flicked a hand at the radio on the shelf behind her.

"You were right."

"I know."

She still wasn't looking at me.

The storm was coming to us, now. The first heavy gust hit the office window behind her hard enough that I felt it through the floor.

I stood in her doorway and I tried to think of what to say to a woman I had almost kissed and overruled and came up with was nothing.

The rain hit the window and I choked back a sob, not sure how to continue. “Lili.” Her name was the only thing I felt capable of saying.

She looked up then, maybe heard the desperate need in my voice. I watched her face melt from outrage to empathy. “Conrad.” She stood from her chair and began to walk toward me.

Lili