Chapter 28 Sullivan Aerospace
Sullivan Aerospace
Ernest
Davidson and I agreed on six months originally, but I set up a personal deadline of five. I wanted to be done before Lawrie went into heat so I could whisk him off to an undisclosed location and sex him up in complete privacy.
When the main show was over, Davidson ambushed us by the tables with refreshments.
“Do you have a minute?”
“We do,” Lawrie said before I could come up with an excuse. I had a sneaking suspicion about what Davidson wanted to ask us. “Is everything okay, sir?”
“Yes. The release is a success, like I anticipated. That’s not what I want to talk about.”
“What do you want to talk about?” I prompted.
“I want you both to stay at Sullivan Aerospace.”
Just like I’d expected. “We’ve been over this, Davidson.”
“Except now you’re mated to Lawrence.”
“Yes. And I promised him he’d get to see the world with me.”
Lawrie watched the exchange like a tennis match, smiling pleasantly. Did he know it was all up to him?
Davidson was relentless. He turned to my mate with a determined frown on his forehead. “Lawrence, you’d be the head of my office if you take the promotion. I don’t trust anyone else with my affairs, but I do trust you to hire people as you see fit. Then I want you, Ernest, as my lead engineer.”
I took a breath to reply, but Lawrie was quicker.
“With all respect, sir, if you need us, you’ll have to make an offer that would be more tempting than the other options we have now.
Ernest is considering a project in Switzerland and another in Finland.
Do you know how many lakes Finland has? One hundred and eighty thousand.
Population density is less than forty people per square mile, and most of those live down south.
We can spend the next two years flying above glittering water and endless forests.
And have you ever been to the Swiss Alps? ”
With his mouth turned down at the corners and eyebrows scrunched up, Davidson thrust a folder at Lawrie. “It’s all in there. Read it.”
“We’ll call you before we leave next week.” Lawrie knew we were flying away for his heat, but he didn’t know where yet.
His nose wrinkled as if he smelled something bad, Davidson thanked Lawrie and strode away.
“He acts so formal toward me now. It’s downright surreal,” Lawrie said. “I miss the snappy directness. This new stingily good-mannered Mr. Sullivan is vaguely creepy.”
“He has to behave if he wants you so desperately.”
“He wants you. He just knows I’m a part of the package.”
“You underestimate your role in his life. You are likely the closest person he has.”
Lawrie blinked. “Huh.” He gazed after Sullivan, his eyes turning soft. “I’ve never considered that angle. He’s terribly lonely, isn’t he?”
“We’re not taking the jobs out of pity, Lawrie.”
“No. We’re not.” He turned the folder in his hands, nibbling on his lower lip. “But I am curious.”
We opened the folder as soon as we got home. Reading the fine print, Lawrie’s eyes got big, and he covered his mouth with trembling fingers.
“Can he do all that?” he whispered.
“Apparently. This has surely been lawyered back and forth several times.”
After reading the first couple of pages twice, Lawrie leaned back in the sofa and exhaled.
“I used to hate him. I used to dream about throwing my balled-up notice at him and slamming the door in his face. Leaving this god-damned job used to be my most ardent wish.”
He turned his glistening eyes to me, and I knew immediately what he wanted.
“Why do you want to stay, Lawrie?”
He pointed at the papers. “This is incredibly generous.”
“It is. But that shouldn’t be the main reason.”
“We get all possible benefits, vacations, and twelve weeks of remote work. He even trusts me enough to let me lead his damned office remotely. All the flexibility he could squeeze in—it’s there.” Lawrie gulped. “And I’ve never even fantasized I could earn this much.”
“It’s what you’re worth to him.”
Scrubbing his hands down his face, Lawrie groaned. “Damned cantankerous dragon.”
“You want to take it, don’t you?”
Lawrie shook his head. “I shouldn’t.”
“He’s giving me a great deal too,” I said, flipping through my document. “I can initiate my own projects and employ people, and I’ll have access to the best aerodynamics facility on the Continent. But you have the last word, sweetheart.”
“Ugh. I don’t know!”
“You like working for him, don’t you?”
“He’s a terrible person, Ernest.”
“In many aspects, yes.”
“But I’m learning so much from him. And now I’ve realized I can talk back, that I can disagree with him, and he listens to my opinions and respects me… I do kinda like him. Is it stupid of me? Is it Stockholm syndrome or something?”
I snorted at the idea. “I think he’s finally letting you glimpse the real Davidson Sullivan. He’s a good man, Lawrie.”
“He’s still crabby as hell.”
“But you can handle him. You’re probably the only person in the world who can handle him. That’s why he so desperately wants you to stay.”
Lawrie put the papers together into a neat stack and placed them on the coffee table. “Manny would be happy if we stayed.”
“My dad will be ecstatic.”
I asked Lawrie to make the call, but he put Davidson on speaker.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Lawrence. What’s the answer?”
“Where are you, sir?”
“At home, why?”
“Would you accept some visitors tonight?”
“Don’t get cocky with me, Lawrence. What’s this about?”
“We’d like to celebrate with you before we leave the city for another ten days.”
“Celebrate what?”
“The successful release, your takeover of the company…”
“Are you accepting the job or not?” Davidson interrupted impatiently.
Lawrie grinned and met my gaze, a playful gleam in his irresistible eyes. “Yes.”
“Thank fuck. Come over then.”
And he hung up.
An hour later, we sat in Davidson’s lavish living room, and I stared at the lights reflecting off the blank surface of his pool. Did he ever swim in it?
“Where are you going next week?” he asked, swirling the whiskey in his tumbler.
“Ernest hasn’t told me,” Lawrie replied.
Davidson squinted at me, took a big gulp of his drink, and pinned his eyes back on Lawrie. “You’re not accepting the job only to disappear on parental leave, are you? Because I’m not stupid. The vacation is for your heat, isn’t it?”
Lawrie shot Davidson a glare. “That’s private, sir.”
My friend grimaced. “Sure it is. And my offer doesn’t change. I just want to know.”
“We’re not planning on having children just yet,” I said.
Davidson glanced at me questioningly, but then he must have decided to drop it because he settled deeper into his seat. “All the better for me, then.”
“I saw Mr. Crane at the release today.” Lawrie unsubtly changed the subject. “He seemed pleased.”
“He’d better be. He’d been a pain in my ass for months before Burnes finally got arrested.”
“Was he one of the board members backing Burnes until the last second?” I asked.
“Yes,” Davidson said. “He wanted to let it slide when Burnes tried to sell the Longwang design to the competition. When it became clear that Burnes was going down, Crane played the victim.”
“How?”
“Whined that he was deviously misled and deceived. He’d given a man his trust and friendship and this was what he’d gotten in return, such a shame, and blah-blah-blah.
He was a fucking enabler who chose to look away when it suited him because he still hoped he’d earn more cash from the army contract Burnes was pushing for. ”
“But he supports you as the CEO.”
“He sees no other option. I now own the majority share of the company.”
“Mr. Crane is manageable as long as we keep him close,” Lawrie said. “He’s predictable in his cowardice.”
Davidson flashed Lawrie a smirk. Did I detect a hint of admiration in my friend’s gaze? It wasn’t sexual—I would have noticed and forcefully resented that. But Davidson truly valued Lawrie, not only on paper, and it was nice to see him giving my mate the credit he’d always deserved.
“And what’s the next project?” Lawrie asked, looking from me to Davidson and back.
“Longwang two point zero,” I supplied.
“I know that. But then?”
“There’s a pet project of mine that’s been on the back burner for the past couple of years.
” Davidson studied the contents of his glass before he downed it.
He gestured with the bottle at Lawrie, who politely refused a refill, so Davidson shrugged and topped up his own glass.
“Remember when we talked about the fully electric copter?”
Lawrie sat up straight. “Can you do that?”
“Could be fun,” I said.
Davidson crossed his legs and stroked his chin thoughtfully. “See, Lawrence, the challenge isn’t to make a fully electric aircraft—that has already been achieved. The problem is to make them commercially viable so they could eventually replace fossil-fueled fleets.”
“But you think it’s possible.”
“Yes, I think we can pull it off.”
“That would be so cool.”
It would be cool, and I was looking forward to being part of the project. Davidson didn’t comment on Lawrie’s enthusiasm, but he seemed to emanate rather smug energy today.
“Do you ever swim in that?” I pointed at the pool with my glass.
“Sure. Every morning.”
“Huh.”
We stayed for only a couple of drinks. For all the talk about celebrating, Lawrie still acted uptight around Davidson and my old friend wasn’t one for parties. He did shake Lawrie’s hand, though, and once more forced out one of his awkward thank-yous.
“We should call your dad too,” Lawrie said in the taxi on the way home.
So I did.
My ear got nearly torn off by the excited yelling I was exposed to.
The first part of our journey, we flew a normal airline, so I couldn’t exactly lead Lawrie through the airport blindfolded with earplugs in. By the time we arrived at the gate, he knew we were headed to Canada. He didn’t know about the connecting flight and the cabin, though.
The small off-grid chalet on a lake in Quebec was a wedding present from my grandparents to my parents.
When my dad had offered to lend it to us for Lawrie’s heat, I’d jumped at the opportunity.
The place was all a dragon could dream of—remote, isolated, and surrounded by uninhabited forests.
My alpha father had it renovated a couple of years back, adding a bathtub and solar cells for a little necessary electricity.
It still used pellets for heating water, which got challenging in winter, but during the summer, it had all we needed.
We couldn’t get there without help, but we knew a couple of dragon families living in the closest town, some two hundred miles away.
An acquaintance would take us in a copter beyond the town borders so I could shift and fly the rest of the way to the cabin.
Lawrie glared at me when he saw the copter waiting for us.
“I got you. You know that, right?”
He sighed and reluctantly let me drag him inside and buckle him up.
When the pilot dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and said goodbye, Lawrie looked around the clearing enclosed in the dark forest and hummed thoughtfully.
“I mean, it is pretty here, but I don’t see a shower with hot water anywhere. We’re not camping during my heat, are we? I kinda hoped you were reasonable enough to find something with a shower.”
“You can have your shower in an hour.” I opened one of our duffels, and I began stripping, folding my clothes into the bag.
“You’re going to shift?”
“Yes. We need to fly the rest of the way. Your onesie and helmet are in the second duffel.”
“Oh.” Lawrie’s eyes lit up with excitement.
After I shifted, he helped me to fasten our bags to my harness and climbed up. I took the last piece of luggage into my claws, and we were off.
When we approached the lake, Lawrie’s gasp was audible even through the helmet and over the rustling wind. The wooden house reflected in the water surface, the trees around bright green with spring sprouts.
“This is it? Oh please, tell me this is it!”
“This is it,” I confirmed and circled downward so I could land softly right by the cabin.
Lawrie hopped off and ran to the house.
“It isn’t locked,” I supplied.
He tore the door open and squealed. “It has an open fireplace!”
“We need to keep the door closed because of mosquitos.”
“Oh, sorry.”
He ran back to me and helped me out of the harness. The insects were already at me, so I flapped my wings to get a break.
Lawrie took a few steps back. “Whoa. No need to slap me, I’m not that excited.”
“Mosquitos. It’s their worst hour.”
He blinked. “Really? They bite dragons?”
“You have no idea. Let’s go inside, please.”
Lawrie snickered and began folding the harness. “With all the magic coursing through your veins, one would think you’d have some kind of defense against basic insects.”
“You’d think. And yet…”
“Maybe you remind them of dinosaurs, so they get extra nostalgic or something.”
“What’s with you and dinosaurs?”
Lawrie shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s the size.”
“Do you know how small and underdeveloped their brains were?”
“I am not comparing you to a dinosaur.” He patted my leg. “Now shift before they eat you alive. I can hear them buzzing all around us.”
“Damned pest.”
I shifted back quickly and grabbed the largest duffels before sprinting into the cabin.
Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I started the new pellet boiler located in the laundry room so Lawrie could have his shower.
When I came back to the living room, he already had the fireplace alight and crackling.
So I dug out the bottle of bubbly I had brought with us.
Lawrie’s face shone brightly when we sat in front of the fire, drinking champagne and gazing at the lake through the floor-to-ceiling window.
“This is amazing, Ernest. Thank you.”
“It belongs to my parents.”
He wiggled in my arms and looked up at me, grinning. “Damn, you’re a catch, Mr. Bracknell. Good thing I’m marrying you in July.”