Page 5 of Working for the Heiress

He didn't look at me once.

I delivered my opening like he wasn't there.

* * *

After, Sharon walked me to my office.

My office. I had to say the words in my head twice for them to stick. Underneath the previous nameplate's outline, just slightly visible in the wood, was a simple plastic version of my name and title. I didn't ask about the previous manager. Sharon hadn't volunteered. I still didn’t know if my father had fired them to make space for me or sent me here to fill an actual gap in the payroll.

Sharon set the three folders down on the desk, told me the Wi-Fi password, and patted the ancient monitor that flickered to life at her touch. She told me she'd be at her desk if I needed her and that lunch was usually a thing that happened at the diner across the road, but I shouldn't feel obligated.

"Take an hour," she said, kindly. "It's a lot."

"Thank you, Sharon."

"Welcome to Forge Creek, Lili."

She closed the door behind her.

I stood in the middle of the room for a second and then I sank down in the chair, and I let my hands flatten on the cool wood of the desk, and I let myself feel, for the first time since I'd walked into the hangar, what was actually happening in my body.

It was inconvenient in a specific, hot-faced way that I was not prepared to deal with on company time. My pulse was too high. My right palm was still warmer than my left. There was a pressure low in my belly that was not professional.

I closed my eyes.

I told myself the things I had been telling myself since I'd boarded the plane in Boston. I wasn’t here forever. I was just here to bring the office up to speed and secure the release of my trust fund from my father’s clutches.

Nobody else knew about the private flight school in New England that had been my secret refuge. I long suspected my father was not a good man, and as slimy as it felt to take his money and run, I also felt like I earned it after a lifetime of dealing with his cold brand of cruelty. I had a plan that did not include anything Ashford Industries.

And suddenly, the sight and smell and thought of Holt was the first thing to interrupt that plan, and I didn’t like what it was doing to my central nervous system.

I was going to escape all of this, open a tourism business on my own. Sunset flights over the Front Range, custom proposals at altitude…day trips into wine country. I had the kind of business plans I could pitch at a Boston dinner party once this phase of my life had passed and my father could say something approving about me to his peers.

I could not let myself be distracted by fleeting lust for a man who looked like he was carved from marble. Maybe not marble…something manlier. Brushed steel.

The folder on top of the stack Sharon had left was the master maintenance log for the aircraft fleet. I opened the cover. The first sheet was a standing-order page, signed and dated by the lead mechanic.

C. Holt.

His signature was small and tight and entirely legible. It was the handwriting of a man who had taught himself to be precise.

I looked at the C for longer than I needed to. I did not let myself wonder what it stood for.

I turned the page.

The first entry was a medevac. A one-line description: Trans. patient (cardiac), Forge Creek to Denver. Unscheduled. Flight time 0:48. Next entry: a fire support hover. The one after that, a lift job — equipment delivery to a road crew above the snow line. The fourth, another medevac. The fifth, a search assist for a missing hiker. A fire support. A lift. A medevac.

I read for two pages before I noticed I had stopped breathing normally.

The folder I was holding was about people, not profit or company business I had been expecting. People with bad hearts. People in burning country. People on roads that had closed under them. People who had walked off into the hills and not come back.

The phone on my desk rang, startling me, and I closed the folder.

I looked at the display and saw my number for my father’s Boston office.

I picked up at the third ring, because picking up at the first would have meant I was too eager and picking up at the fifth would have meant I was avoiding, and Robert Ashford did not approve of either.

"Lilianne."