“Very. If they’d gone out with me, it would have been three out of three. You’re losing your touch, junior.”
Ian laughed all the way to his bedroom. He kept his mouth shut and didn’t tell his father the whole truth—it had been three out of three.
* * *
FLASH ALMOST CALLED off her evening plans with Ian. She was so sore from hauling and scrubbing and sanding Ian’s heavy iron fireplace screen in her workshop that she almost wanted to sleep more than have sex.
Almost.
But for Ian’s sake—and her pussy’s—she rallied at about seven o’clock that evening, took a quick shower, threw on clean clothes and drove the thirty miles up the mountain to Ian’s chalet.
Chalet? She couldn’t believe she was the girlfriend of a man who lived in an actual chalet. The last guy she’d been seriously involved with had lived in more “shack” than “chalet.”
She pulled into the long drive that led to Ian’s chalet. She spied smoke coming from the metal chimney pipe and felt a sense of comfort at the sight. That chimney smoke signaled that someone was home, someone was awake, someone was waiting for her. And that someone was Ian Asher, who she’d been falling for since the day he showed up at Asher Construction a year and a half ago to take over as the new VP. The rumor had been his father had been prepping him for the role for years, letting him work his way up the ladder at Asher Custom Homes, a smaller residential-only construction firm in Portland. When the former VP had retired, Ian had got the job. She still remembered the day he showed up, gathered the entire crew into the large conference room and introduced himself.
“Yes, the rumors are true,” Ian had said, “I am the owner’s son. I would apologize, but I’m afraid it would get back to Dad. In case you’re worried—and I would be if I were you—I am qualified for this job with something other than my last name. The city of Portland and the surrounding counties are going through a massive growth spurt and people are feeling the growing pains. Rents are going up, and people are being squeezed out. The rest of the country has finally noticed us and they like what they see. So they are coming, and we’re going to be ready for them. Asher Construction will be the first call developers make when they want to build sustainable, affordable and beautiful housing, and low-energy, cost-efficient environmentally friendly office buildings. We’re going to be part of this city’s renaissance, all of us. It takes a talented team of people to build a city. You all build the buildings. I’m here to build the team. Any questions?”
Flash had to stop herself from raising her hand right then and there and saying, “Yeah, I have a question—will you marry me?”
Instead she’d kept that question to herself as she watched Ian introduce himself to every single person at Asher Construction from the foreman of her crew to the two young women who ran the payroll office to the janitor who kept their headquarters clean. When he shook her hand, he said, “So you’re the famous Flash Redding? Dad calls you his ‘Lady Welder.’ Nice to finally put a face with the legend.”
She’d been so flustered by his handsome face, his bright and genuine smile, his height and the width of his shoulders that his perfectly tailored suit accentuated so well that when she finally opened her mouth to speak, well...it wasn’t good.
“Lady Welder is my porn name,” she’d said in reply. Her very first sentence of greeting to the new boss and it was a stupid dirty joke? She braced herself to get fired on the spot or at least sent to HR for a talking-to. Of all the stupid crass things to say.
“Weird,” Ian had said. “Lady Welder’s my porn name, too. One of us is going to have to change our name or our fans are going to get very confused. And disappointed.” Then he’d given her a little “I’m your boss but I can take a joke” sort of smile and moved on to the person standing next to her.
Eighteen months ago she regarded her feelings as nothing more than a work crush, something to enjoy, something to make work more fun. A harmless crush on an older man with money and power and prestige. It was like having a crush on a celebrity—as playful as it was pointless. Nothing would ever come of it, right? She’d been crushing on the burlesque star Dita Von Teese for four years now and hadn’t even gotten one phone call from the woman. Same with Ian Asher, right? A Harvard-educated man commonly referred to in the newspapers as the “scion of the Asher Construction empire” was not the sort of person who dated lady welders. She wasn’t even sure what a “scion” was, only that people like her were never called that. Ian was a safe crush. Nothing would ever happen between them no matter how cool she played it, no matter how hard she tried to flirt with him without him noticing, no matter how many times she made him laugh with some sarcastic remark about plumber crack, the scourge of the construction business. No matter how much she wanted it to happen, it wouldn’t happen.
And then it happened.
Now eighteen months after Ian started at Asher Construction, she was officially his girlfriend. She should have been on cloud nine with happiness. And she was. One foot was on cloud nine with happiness. The other foot was firmly on the ground, ready to run the second things started turning south.
She pushed her worries into a back corner of her mind as she pulled into Ian’s driveway. He saw her coming because he opened the garage door for her and let her pull inside. His own car was outside the garage under a tarp. Bad sign. More snow coming tonight?
When she walked into the house through the garage entrance, she found Ian lying on the floor in the living room flat on his back.
“Help,” he said.
“Have you fallen and you can’t get up?” she asked, standing over him.
“I fell down a mountain.”
“What? You fell down a mountain? Are you okay?”
“Technically it’s called ‘skiing,’ but let’s be honest—it’s controlled falling. And I did it today for the fi
rst time this season. I hurt.”
“You went skiing today?”
“Dad made me. And now I can’t move. I hate being old. Why am I so old?”
She shook her head in disgust.
“You’re thirty-six not ninety-six.”
“If you throw yourself down a mountain for eight straight hours, you will feel ninety-six. I don’t recommend it.”