10. Conrad
Conrad
Lili barely protested when I carried her to the truck around sunset, and that’s how I knew she was exhausted. She fell asleep before I was out of the parking lot, but I certainly didn’t mind the chance to glance at her while I drove.
She spent most of the day alternating between frantic photocopies and angry phone calls as soon as the power was back on. The people on the other end of the line did not deserve the patience or grace she showed them, but by the time she hung up that final time, she was shaking with adrenaline.
I drove slow. The roads were still wet from the storm and there were branches down on the shoulder and I was in no rush to get anywhere that wasn't where I was right now, which was in the cab of my truck with Lili Ashford asleep against the passenger window wearing my henley.
She'd been magnificent.
I stood in the doorway of her office for most of the afternoon, arms crossed, watching her work the phone like a woman who had been born to dismantle things.
The first call was Denver — the regional director, who had heard about the grounded fleet and the medical transport delay and wanted answers. Lili gave them to him in a voice so level and precise that he ran out of questions in four minutes.
The second call was the insurance adjuster. The third was the FAA liaison, who wanted paperwork on Daley. Lili had it ready, along with some amendments to former incidents the rep wasn’t expecting to unearth ever again.
And then she called Boston.
I heard Robert Ashford's voice come through the speaker and I watched Lili's face go still. Not hard. Not angry. Still, the way the surface of water goes still before something comes up from underneath.
She laid it out for him the way she'd laid it out for me the night before. Every requisition. Every substitution. Every discrepancy. The parts that were never ordered. She did it without raising her voice, without accusation, without any of the heat I would have brought to it.
She did it like a woman reading a pre-flight checklist — fact by fact, line by line, with the precision of someone who understood exactly what each number meant.
Robert had gone quiet for a long time. Then he hissed something about lawyers and liability and the family's exposure and Lili said, "I've already sent copies to an outside attorney. And I sent a briefing to the board.”
The silence after that had been the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
He'd threatened her then, shouted about the family name and her eroded trust fund, how any privilege or access to the life she’d be born into was severed.
He wailed that once he started spending his own money to clean up the mess she'd insisted on dragging into the light, there would be nothing left.
He asked if she wanted to starve, alone in the world.
Lili looked across the office at me, and I didn’t say a word, but I didn’t need to. She knew we were a unit now. "That won't be a problem," she said, and hung up.
She sat at the desk for a minute before standing up and looking at me with those brown eyes that cracked me the hell open. "Take me home, Conrad."
I didn’t bother to ask if she wanted anything from her room at the inn. I was taking her home. My home—our home.
I carried her to the truck because her legs were done and she'd earned it, and now she was asleep with her cheek against the glass and her breath making a small fog on the window.
The road was dark and quiet. The mountains were black shapes against a sky that was clearing to stars. I kept my speed down for the turns and I kept one hand on the wheel and every chance I got, I looked at my woman. Mine.
My Lili arrived in this town where I’d been hiding, and she tore the roof off of everything ugly in my life.
She gave me her body along with her fierce determination to burn down injustice and she did it all without a second thought.
This woman, who went in secret to log flight hours at the yoke and throttle.
This woman who vowed to lend her skills to search and rescue, to be the kind of pilot Wolf had been before everything went to shit. And I was going to take her to him and the other men in Raptor Creek and show them the woman who would make things right.
The house was dark when I pulled into the driveway. I never left the porch light on because there was never any reason to. Now I had someone to leave a light on for and I was never letting it off again.
I turned off the engine and sat for a second in the quiet. "Lili."
She stirred. Her eyes opened, unfocused, and she looked at the house through the windshield and then she looked at me.
"We're here," I said.
"Where's here?"
"Home."
She smiled, sleep-drunk and soft. I came around, opened her door and she slid out but I caught her, one arm around her waist, and hitched her into my arms to carry her to the front door.
The house was there, waiting for her scent to mingle with mine and fill it with a new purpose. Waiting to become a home.
I set her on the couch and quickly lit the fire. It didn’t take long—the wood was already stacked and dry. The heat filled the room quickly and the light went from dark to amber as Lili pulled her boots off and tucked her feet beneath her.
“I walked away from everything,” she said, staring at the fire.
“You going to be okay with that?” I felt the slight tinge of worry that she had regrets. I’d do whatever she wanted to make her feel safe and comfortable in her decision, though.
But she smiled. “I should have said I walked away from everything false and now I have … actually everything. I have you.”
"You also have a pilot's license nobody can take away."
She smiled.
"And you have this house. For as long as you want it."
"Conrad —"
"I'm not done." I crossed the room to her.
I knelt beside the couch the way I'd knelt in front of her desk the night before, except this time the fire was warm and the room was mine and I could see her face clearly.
"You're not leaving. You're not going back to the inn.
You're not going back to Boston. You're staying here. With me."
"Is that a question?"
"No."
I looked at her in the firelight and the words came up my throat before I could stop them. “I love you.”
It sounded too soon. A little insane. We’d known each other for days, but I felt a surety with her I couldn’t explain.
Lili went still. Then she put her hand on my chest, over my heart, and said, “I know. I felt it the second I walked into your hangar.”
“That’s not possible.”
“And yet.” She held my gaze. “I love you, Conrad. I think I was supposed to find you.”
I closed my eyes. Something enormous and terrifying settled into place inside my chest, and for the first time in years it didn’t feel like weight. It felt like an answer.
She put her hand on my face and kissed me, pulling me down to her on my couch. She laughed when I crashed onto her and the sound of that in my house, that had been silent for years—that noise broke the last thing in me that was still holding back.
I undressed her slow, kissing every stretch mark and fold I uncovered. I ran my hand along the soft rise of her stomach and the dimples on those luscious thighs. I found freckles on her knees and smiled at them while she ran her hands along my body, undressing me, too.
By the time we were naked, I was achingly hard, the tip of my cock weeping for her. “Conrad,” she gasped, “I need you.”
I smiled. “I want it to be so good for you, baby.”
“It already is. Ohh!” I slid a hand inside her, massaging the tender flesh I probably made sore yesterday. Christ, was that just one day ago? It felt like a lifetime already, the moment I entered her. Claimed her as she promised to light my world the right way.
Lili’s hand found my cock and stroked me gentle as I circled her clit.
She moaned and wriggled beneath me, her hand falling open as she gasped.
I felt the flutters inside her as I stroked a thick finger in and out of her pussy while I pressed on her clit.
That tight bundle of nerves was like a throttle, and I knew just how to make an engine purr.
Lili came beneath me with my name shrieking from her throat, the roar of it louder than the sound of her palms smacking my shoulders as the pleasure ripped through her body. “You are so fucking beautiful,” I told her, shifting my position so I lay above her, ready.
She was soft for me now, puffy and warm and I slid inside easily. We both whimpered at the sensation, at the rightness of our joining.
I held still, forehead to forehead, and I said, "You're never leaving my side."
"I know."
"In my bed. In my life. In everything that comes next."
"I know, Conrad." She looked at me. The fire threw light across her face and her eyes were brown and steady and she knew exactly where I was going.
I began to move, slowly, tentatively. And then I realized, “There could be a child growing in you right now. Mine. Ours."
Her hand came up to my face. She smiled, and there was nothing scared in it.
"I know," she said. I thrust inside her and she moved with me, the bravest person I had ever known. She wrapped her legs around me and pulled me deeper and said my name like it was the first real word she'd ever learned.
We made love while the fire burned, and she came apart beneath me again. I held her, tangled in the blanket, with the last glowing light of the embers.
She ran her fingers through my hair and I closed my eyes and I listened to her heartbeat and I knew working for the heiress was the best thing that ever happened to me.