Page 9 of Working for the Heiress

Diaz lifted his beer about two inches off the bar and said, to nobody, "I love this bar."

I had not, until that moment, ever heard the bartender laugh.

* * *

We sat like that — the three of us in a triangle along the wood—for maybe ten minutes. Diaz did the talking because I was incapable of it and Lili was visibly thawing and gave him most of her attention out of what looked like pure gratitude. He told her about the diner across from the airfield and which booth to ask for. He told her about Whitfield & Sons and Mr. Whitfield Senior, who would size her work boots himself and not let her leave with anything wrong. He told her that the snow up high by tomorrow probably meant snow down here by the weekend and she should put a blanket and a flashlight in her car if she didn't already have them.

She arched a brow at that advice and I got the sense she was more experienced with extremes than she let on. Where did the Ashfords live? Somewhere in New England. Lili was probably no stranger to a blizzard, young as she might be.

Eventually, she put down her mug and turned toward me. “I’m not used to anyone else coming in as early as me,” she said.

I grunted. She did not stop looking at me.

"You don't like company," she said. It wasn't a question. It also wasn't an accusation.

"No, ma'am."

"Should I stop coming in so early?”

I looked at her. Her hair was still wet. Her hands were starting to come back to life.

"It's your hangar, Ms. Ashford."

"It's not. We both know it's not."

I did not know what to do with that sentence. It went in somewhere it shouldn't have been able to reach and lodged.

"Drink your coffee," I said. “You’re shivering.”

After another minute she stood and said she should go — she had a tow truck coming for the car and she needed to call the inn and figure out how she was getting back tonight. Diaz, damn his eyes, clapped a hand on my back and said, “Holt’ll drive you back. I gotta get home to the missus.”

I looked at him.

That motherfucker winked.

I sighed and said, “Sure, I’ll drive you back.”

“Oh, you don't have to."

“I said I’d take you.”

Diaz, suddenly in much less of a rush to get back to his wife, remained seated, slurping away at his drink while Lili nodded and dropped a ten on the bar.

I dropped cash for my own drink and glared at Diaz, hoping he understood that he’d pay for this behavior. I wasn’t sure how.

She was waiting for me by the door, awkward, with her hair drying in places and the rain still coming down behind the glass.

"Ready?" I said.

"Ready."

I opened the door for her.

She stepped past me into the rain and the night and the inch of space between us as she went through the door was the closest I had been to her since the handshake, and I felt her scent — or her soap, or her, or whatever it was — go through me like a current, and the only thought I was able to form on the sidewalk under the awning while I unlocked the truck was that I had been wrong to think I could outlast her.

I was wrong about everything, hard as stone, and utterly miserable about all of it.

I held the passenger door of the truck open. She climbed up into the seat. The dome light caught the calluses on her hand again and I was no closer to knowing what they were from than I'd been four days ago, and I was also — somewhere I wasn't going to look at yet — close enough to the answer to feel it sitting in the cab with us.