1
VERONICA “FLASH” REDDING slammed her locker door shut for the last time. She pulled on her leather bomber jacket and popped her collar to hide the red welt on the side of her neck. Trading her steel-toed work boots for bright red Pumas, she put the boots in her backpack, slung her backpack over her shoulder and took a quick steadying breath. She could do this. More importantly, she had to do this. She would have told herself to “man up” but with the way the men in her life were behaving lately, manning up would be a step down. She’d have to woman up instead.
She found her boss, Ian Asher, standing behind his desk, poring over a set of blueprints for their next construction project—a small and desperately needed medical clinic in the rural Mount Hood area. A handsome thirtysomething black man stood next to him—had to be Drew, their recently hired project manager. She listened as he listed off changes they’d have to make to comply with new building regulations that might pass the Oregon legislature next year. Flash stood in the doorway while she waited for them to acknowledge her existence. Considering how good Ian had gotten at ignoring her, this might take a while.
“What if these regs don’t pass?” Drew asked Ian. “You really want to redo the whole plan to comply with building codes that aren’t even on the books yet?”
“They’ll be on the books,” Ian replied.
“You sure?”
“He’s sure,” Flash said from the doorway.
Ian glanced up from the blueprints and glared at her.
“Flash, how can we help you?” Ian asked. He did not look happy to see her.
“Our boss’s dad is a state senator,” Flash said, ignoring Ian to speak to Drew. “That’s how he knows the codes will probably pass.”
“If we don’t build it to the new codes and they go through, then we’ll have to retrofit it next year,” Ian said. “We’re going to do it right the first time. And my father has nothing to do with it.”
“What’s the deal with all the new regs, anyway?” Drew asked. “Four bolts per step? And that’s a lot of steel reinforcements for a one-story medical clinic.”
“You moved here from the East Coast, right?” Flash asked.
“DC,” Drew said. “Why?”
“You know you’re standing on a volcano, right?” Flash asked. “And not a dormant volcano, either.”
“Stop trying to scare the new guy, Flash,” Ian said, his strong jaw set so tight she almost heard his teeth grinding.
“Scare me?” Drew scoffed. “What’s going on?”
“We’re overdue for a massive earthquake in the Pacific Northwest,” she continued. “And not your average massive earthquake. I’m talking the sort of earthquake that they make disaster movies about starring The Rock.”
Drew’s eyes widened hugely, and Flash grinned fiendishly in reply. She knew she was grinning fiendishly because she’d practiced that grin in the mirror.
“Is that true?” Drew asked Ian.
“We’re in a safe zone here,” Ian said. “Safer. It’s the coast that’ll get hit the hardest.”
“Yeah, we’ll be fine on the mountain,” Flash said. “Unless the earthquake triggers the volcano to erupt.”
“I...” Drew gathered up the blueprints. “I’ll just go call the architect. Now. Right now.”
“I can weld your desk to the floor if you want,” she said as Drew pushed past her and walked down the hall at a brisk clip. “My treat!” she called after him.
“You’re a horrible person,” Ian said when they were alone in his office.
“Hazing the newbies is what we do. You want me to remind you how the guys hazed me when I started here?” she asked. “I mean, it was nice of the boys to build me that tampon caddy for my locker in the shape of a tampon, but did they really have to make it five feet tall and carve my name into it?”
“Yeah, they’re lucky they have their jobs after that stunt.” Ian sat down in his desk chair. “You got them back good enough, didn’t you?”
“You mean when I welded their lockers shut with all their stuff inside?”
“Yes,” he said, glaring at her again. Or still. Glaring had been his default expression around her for the past six months. “That’s what I mean.”
Ian was a gorgeous man and when she got on his bad side—which was often—she had to count to ten to keep herself from begging him to throw her down on the desk, rip his tie off, shove it in her mouth and do things to her body that it didn’t know it wanted done to it yet.