Page 8 of Working for the Heiress

"You take good care of her."

"That's the job."

There was a silence in which he was saying more than he was saying. I drank what was left in my glass and set it down on the wood between us and did not pick up the conversation he was offering. He didn't seem to mind. He sipped his beer and we sat at a bar we did not normally share and the rain ran down the window behind us and the football clock crawled.

The door opened.

I didn't look this time. I had told myself I wasn't going to, and Diaz would notice if I did.

But I felt the air change and Diaz, next to me, made a small sound in his throat and said, "Well."

I looked.

She was at the door with her hair plastered to one side of her face and rain still beading on her coat and a phone in her hand. Her curves were hidden a bit by jeans this time and I didn’t glance down to see what was on her feet. She scanned the room, a look of concern on her face. I didn’t think she’d come here intentionally … it looked more like she had car trouble and was desperate for help.

Her eyes went past me. Came back. Stopped.

"Holt," she said, from the door. Not loud. Loud enough.

I did not stand up. I did not nod. I did not do any of the things I should have done. I sat at the bar and looked at her with rain on her face and my mouth said, "Ms. Ashford," and Diaz, beside me, took a long slow drink of his beer and his body shook with silent laughter, the bastard.

She came across the room. The Foundry was a small place, and there was not enough room in here for the three of us and my unwelcome feelings toward this woman I had no business lusting after. I needed to remind myself she was an heiress. The owner’s daughter. Kin to the people who exiled me here to begin with.

She came up to the bar two stools down on my other side, set the phone face-down on the wood, pushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand, and looked at the bartender.

"Could I have something hot?" she said. "Anything. I just need to hold something warm.”

Kayla nodded like she, too, was shivering cold, and said, "Coffee?"

"Please."

"Black?"

"Whatever's easiest. Thank you."

The bartender went to the pot at the back wall. Lili put both her hands on the bar in front of her, palms down, the way a person who is cold does when there is no other surface available, and the calluses I had been thinking about for eight days were there in the bar light next to my elbow and I had to look away from them.

I looked at the football game.

"Rough night, Bootsy?” Diaz said. He sounded perfectly relaxed. I wanted to hit him.

"My car wouldn't start. I had to walk from the inn."

“I’d have stayed in, myself.”

She frowned at that, nose wrinkling in a way that had my breath stuttering.

Kayla came back with the coffee. Lili wrapped both hands around the mug, closed her eyes for one count of two, and breathed in, and that nearly did me in.

She was wet through. The collar of her coat was dark with rain. There was a piece of hair stuck to her cheek that her hand had missed. Her mouth was a little parted with the warmth coming off the cup and her eyelashes were dark and clumped from the rain and she was, in that second, more beautiful than any woman had any business being.

She opened her eyes and looked at me over the rim of the cup. Lord knows why, but I held her gaze a beat longer than was decent. But she cut away to the bartender and said, "Thank you. This is exactly what I needed."

"On the house, honey," the bartender said. "Rain like this."

"Oh — I can pay."

"On the house."