Lili
I made it across the parking lot before I let my face go.
It was a small mercy that the office building was a separate structure from the hangar — I had twenty feet of cracked asphalt to slip out of my performance and then back into it when I met with the office staff.
I heard my own heels on the cement as I crossed the space. I knew these were the wrong shoes for the environment, but I also knew I felt more confident in heels, with at least the whisper of hope I could meet my new staff eye to eye instead of looking up at them like statues on pedestals.
I leaned my hip into the office door, which stuck just like he told me it would. Holt.
I could smell the printer toner and old carpet almost drowning out my memories of the feel of his hand in mine. I looked down as if he’d burned my skin with the heat of his body. I could still feel the strength and power of his grip.
Holt, my mind said again, when I asked it to stop.
I closed my hand into a fist.
I had practiced this morning in the mirror at the bed-and-breakfast. I had practiced the smile, the handshake, the pleased to meet you, the I'm looking forward to learning the ropes.
I had practiced standing in the doorway of a hangar full of men and being charming without being flirtatious, professional without being cold, warm without being weak.
I had not expected the gruff man whose eyes burned into my bones.
The hallway was empty. I gave myself one more breath. Then I straightened my coat and walked toward the office at the end of the hall like a woman who'd come here to run the place.
Sharon was at the front desk with a coffee mug already poured.
She was somewhere in her fifties, dark hair shot through with grey, glasses on a chain around her neck. She stood up when she saw me, came around the desk, and held out her arms for a hug.
"Ms. Ashford," she said. "I'm Sharon. We talked on the phone."
"Lili, please." And I leaned in to her embrace, which smelled of coffee and purse candy. When was the last time someone had hugged me?
She handed me the warm mug of coffee and I held it with both hands and tried to look like a person who was not trembling from overwhelm at human affection.
"Long flight?" she asked.
"It wasn't bad. Just early."
"I bet." She looked at me — not unkindly — and I had the brief, disorienting sense of being seen by a woman who knew exactly what was happening inside my skull. "Why don't I show you around before the all-hands briefing. I pulled the summaries you asked for. We can sit with those after."
"That would be wonderful."
I had read all I could on the flight here, made notes in the margins.
My degree in business logistics should have prepared me for this assignment from my father, but I felt nervous and out of place.
Sharon seemed like the best thing about this rugged part of the world and I was grateful for her presence at my side.
We did the office tour first. Reception, the small kitchen with the coffee maker she'd evidently been guarding, the conference room, the file room — I tried to control my reactions and respond like the boss ought to.
Then we went back through to the hangar.
I told myself, in the hallway, that I would be exactly the right distance from him.
Professional. Warm. The right wattage of smile, the right cadence of good morning.
I would not look at his hands. I would not look at his mouth.
I would not stand close enough to smell engine grease and cold air and something manly underneath that I had not yet been able to put a name to.
I was going to be fine.
We came into the bay and the noise hit me first —compressors, a radio, men's voices calling things in the abbreviated language of people who have worked together long enough to skip half the words.
He was at the far helicopter, the one I'd asked about.
He had his back to me. A Henley pulled tight across his broad shoulders, sleeves shoved up to the elbow, forearms corded and lit by the work light over the engine.
I made the mistake of looking and then I made the worse mistake of not looking away fast enough.
Sharon was a step ahead, walking, talking — telling me what bay was what and which crew handled which contract — and I let her voice cover me while I composed myself.
By the time we reached the helicopter my face was back where I needed it to be and my hands were back to simply cradling the coffee like a gentle bird.
He was wiping down the engine cover. He didn't look up.
"And this one?" I asked Sharon. "Whose is this?"
I asked it on purpose. I wanted to see if he would look at me. I had already decided that if he didn't, I would not let myself ask another question on this side of the hangar today.
Sharon looked at him. Of course she did. She was not the person who answered that question.
He straightened up. He met my eyes across the aircraft and growled a single, low word: "Mine".
The word went through me like a physical touch, vibrating straight down my spine and pooling heavy in my lower belly.
Logically, I knew he was claiming structural responsibility for the machine.
But logic had no place in the hangar today.
The dark, possessive timbre of his voice stripped away my corporate armor.
He wasn't just talking about the metal. He was looking right through my clothes, right into my secrets, and declaring ownership over me, too.
I let Sharon's voice carry me three steps further down the bay before I let my eyes leave him.
He was already back at the engine.
"Boss Lady," somebody called, from the other end of the hangar.
I turned. The mechanic from earlier — dark hair, sleepless face, the one who had dropped a wrench on purpose — was leaning against a workbench grinning at me with both hands up in a small mock surrender.
"Sorry," he said. "Diaz, ma'am. Lou Diaz. We didn't get formally introduced earlier. Welcome to Forge Creek."
"Diaz." I crossed three steps toward him because that was what owning the nickname required and I had decided in that moment to own it. "Lili Ashford."
“What if we called you Bootsy instead?” He grinned at me.
I arched a brow at him. “Do you always assign people their nickname based on their outfit, Dickie?”
He grinned and held out a hand. I took it. His grip was firm and brief and — nothing more. It was a normal handshake.
Sharon walked me back to the office building twenty minutes later.
We did the briefing in the conference room, and I met the two pilots headed to a lift job in the next valley.
I introduced myself, holding back my burning questions about their flight.
It would not do to reveal too much about that particular interest of mine.
Nobody laughed at me. Nobody undermined me. Two of the older mechanics looked openly skeptical, which was fair, and one of the pilots — a woman who looked about forty with her hair in a ponytail and no makeup— looked at me with like she could tell I knew more than I let on about her work.
Holt was in the back of the room, against the wall, arms crossed.
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."
"Dad."
"You've met the team."
"I have."
"And?"
There was a small silence in which he was waiting for me to be impressive. There was no version of this sentence I could say that would be impressive enough. I said the version I had practiced.
"The office here seems well managed. Sharon — the office manager — has been here twelve years and runs it well. The fleet is older than I'd like but it's well maintained."
"That's the bar?"
"That's the floor, Dad. Do I have clearance to purchase a new flock of birds?”
"Don't be cute, Lilianne."
"No, sir."
"Twelve months with no incidents. You understand the conditions."
"I understand."
"And the trust releases on the eighteenth of October next year. Not before. Not under any circumstances."
"I understand."
"Don't embarrass us."
"No, sir."
He hung up.
I sat at the desk with my hands flat on the wood and allowed myself one minute to feel self-pity—the maximum amount of time before it became a wallow, and I had no time for that.
I picked the folder back up and opened it to the front again.
C. Holt, Lead Mechanic.
I traced the C with my finger, once, lightly.
Then I started to read.