Hot to Touch

by Valentine, Layla

  Thinking about that filled me with so much helpless rage that I had to distract myself with thoughts of Ace to keep from showing it. I curled my fingers around his business card, promising myself that I would somehow work up the nerve to call him tonight.

  “I’ve actually gone through the details of their contract,” I said in the evenest voice I could muster.

  Ian shifted in his seat then looked back at me. “Good, I didn’t have time. I guess you want to discuss the details with them now that we’ve reached project completion?”

  He sounded so damned smug. My fingers curled at my sides, and I wondered for a second if I could fit both hands around his neck.

  Cool down, Naomi. Don’t think about violence, think about getting through this and then having a beer with that hot firefighter. Maybe more.

  Ian didn’t notice my quiet struggle. I kept my cool. For the second time since the plane had taken off in Denver, I went over some basics about the contract signing and what he would need to do.

  He fought me on every point. Why did we have to sign in triplicate? Why did we have to supply a finalized copy of the engineering specs? He was wearing me down with questions that he should already have known the answers to, and he damn well knew it.

  “Damn it, Ian,” I snapped suddenly, disgusted with his little game. “Stop acting like you just came up from the mailroom. You’re the COO. You know the damn procedure by now. If you don’t like how we’ve laid out these deals since my father’s day, take it up with our legal team and the board.”

  He blinked at me, that same stupid, baffled look, and I counted to twenty in my head as he turned distractedly back toward the window. For a few seconds, Ian seemed so oblivious that I wondered how many martinis he had swallowed while I had been sipping mochas with Ace.

  Then he muttered simply, “Maybe I will.”

  “Have fun.”

  I sighed, resigned to a very tiring evening. I just hoped I had enough energy left over for that maybe-date with Ace.

  “See?” Ian crowed excitedly, though we were barely a third of the way up the mountain. “All your fussing was for nothing, just like I told you. We’re fine!”

  “We’ll see,” I said, wishing I had flown over with the installation team a week and a half ago and just stayed through the process. Then I could have tested the thing myself, as much as it needed.

  “You’re such a stick in the mud,” he sneered. “I’ll tell you what. Once we finish our completely flawless ride up the mountain, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself about your expensive inefficiency and paranoia. The board won’t hear of it, and you won’t hear of it. All you have to do is have a drink with me tonight.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Really, Ian?” On top of everything else, here he was, back at it again. “Blackmail now? To try and get a date? Give me a break.”

  The smirk dropped off his face, but his eyes kept their sly look. “We’ll see who’s right once we get to the top,” he persisted.

  “We’ll see you spend the night alone,” I told him frostily. “I already have plans.”

  That shut him up, though it left him peering at me suspiciously.

  “What…plans?” he asked finally.

  I thought of Ace, his white flash of a smile, his magnificent body—and smiled coolly. “None of your damn business, Ian. You don’t get a date by getting on a woman’s last nerve and then trying to blackmail her. That’s the only part you need to concern yourself with.”

  He huffed wordlessly and looked back out the window. We were reaching the top of the pass—with the chasm yawning beyond. I stared down into it as we crested that last line of rock outcroppings, seeing it open suddenly beneath us, its bottom lost in blackness.

  Ian sucked air at the sight. “That’s why a bridge wouldn’t work,” he said, his complexion turning the bluish-green of hospital soap.

  “That’s right. Glad you paid attention to some of it.” Running the cables had been complicated enough; the first set, put in forty years ago, had cost three lives. “With modern methods and materials, they might manage it, but then they’d have to run an elevator up the mountain anyway.”

  He scoffed. “Listen to you, talking like a real engineer.”

  I turned to him, lifting an eyebrow, my arms folded. “I am a real engineer. If I pulled the rights to my patents on the backup system alone, this whole project couldn’t go through. What did you do, Ian, besides screw up the testing and get in my way? What did you contribute?”

  He gaped at me like a fish for a moment, then stammered, “Oversight.”

  “Oversight I was already providing.”

  He tried to distract himself with the view, but the chasm under us seemed to really bother him. He swallowed and leaned away from the window again. “The engineers won’t listen to you. You’re not a man.”

  I bristled. In the back of my mind, my lawyer’s phone number fluttered into my head. “I’m a fellow engineer.”

  “Oh, come on, Naomi, you can’t afford to be this naive. You never had a chance of sticking the landing on this promotion. Your subordinates won’t listen to you, and the board doesn’t respect you. You’re smart, you’ve got the technical chops, but you’re a woman. And Archimedes Gears is run by men, no matter who your daddy was.” He spread his hands, his smug smile secure on his colorless face. “I could have backed your play if you were nicer to me, but you just had to be a bitch.”

  I stared at him. “You realize that you’ve made at least three legally actionable statements within the last ten minutes alone?” He had hit all the main points. Sexual harassment, admission of endemic sexism in our workplace and of his intent to take advantage of that, and that attempt at blackmail.

  He laughed. “We’re alone in here. It would be your word against mine.”

  I found my smile. It was not a nice one. I kept my arms folded.

  “I’m worth three point seven billion dollars even outside of my value to the company. I can afford a better legal team than you. And besides…” I lifted one finger to indicate the cameras mounted in the top corners of the gondola. “The situation inside the gondola is monitored and recorded at all times in case of an emergency.”

  He went dead quiet, staring up at the cameras like the ghosts of his murder victims had manifested in those corners instead. I had him. On video, with full audio.

  “You wouldn’t,” he said.

  “You bet I would, if you keep pushing it. Here’s the deal. Shut the hell up and do your job for the rest of this trip. If you ever try to blackmail or trip me up again, I use all the documentation I have on you and get you fired as COO. Got it?”

  The gondola shuddered slightly. The lights flickered.

  “Crap,” I muttered, praying that was the worst of it. We were halfway across the chasm.

  “What is it?” Ian stammered, voice a little high from nerves. It sounded at least like my words had sunk in.

  “Hopefully nothing.”

  I moved toward the control booth, currently unmanned, and tried to get a look at the command screen through the thick glass. All the system indicators were green. “Probably just a wind gust.”

  I sat back down. “Ian, I don’t know why the hell you would want my job in the first place. You hate dealing with details or reading the fine print, you have no memory retention, you’re barely technically literate, and you’re more dependent on nepotism than I am for your position. You think I’m going to crash and burn because I’m a woman and no one will listen to me. But having the ‘right’ sex won’t save you when they find out you’re incompetent.”

  He reddened. “So was your father, constantly depending on his engineering team. That never caused him any problems. Without team support, all your talent and hard work is useless. And you know I’m right about why you’ll fail.”

  His words stung—because deep down, I suspected they were true.

  I was the most competent, wealthy, successful CEO the company had ever had—including my father. Yet I burned through
way too much time and energy just getting my team to cooperate with me. So much that sometimes…I wondered why I was bothering.

  “You know,” I said, “I would bet five million cash that if I stepped aside and let you drive, you would run Archimedes Gears into the ground within eighteen months.” I stared back at him defiantly…just as I felt the gondola shudder again.

  “What was that?” he said in a shaky voice, color draining from his face again. Clearly his nerves weren’t all from my threatening him. I could see the whites all the way around his pupils.

  I frowned and looked outside. We had been tilting upward again, headed toward the final ascent. Had we cleared the chasm? I checked.

  The good news was, we were right on its far edge. The bad news was, we weren’t moving.

  Then the power cut, the lights and air conditioning dying in a second as Ian let out a cry of dismay.

  …Great.

  Chapter 3

  Naomi

  “Just stay calm,” I said. “The backup system has its own internal battery, I just have to get to it.”

  I got out of my seat and went to the front of the gondola, wondering why the emergency lighting hadn’t flicked on yet. “Call the client and tell them we’ve had a delay. I refuse to keep them waiting with no word.”

  Ian didn’t answer. I looked back and saw he was sitting in his seat like a statue, his hands still in his lap.

  Of all the times for him to become completely useless. But then again, better that than his getting in the way again. I opened the door using its emergency override switch and climbed inside.

  The power was out. The screen was black. No backup power.

  Frowning, I pulled a high-powered flashlight out of my briefcase and crouched down to open the bottom panel, which allowed access to the battery bay.

  A second later, I knew exactly why there was no backup power. The battery bay, which took two heavy-duty power banks that could each power the gondola for two days, was completely empty.

  “What the hell—where are my batteries?” I straightened too fast, nearly hitting my head, and turned to stalk back into the gondola. “The power banks for the backup power are missing!”

  Ian wasn’t in his seat anymore.

  “Ian?” I walked further down the center aisle…and spied him in a ball in the far corner. “What the hell?”

  “I’m fine!” he stammered.

  “Good to know, but not what I asked. Why are the battery bays empty, Mr. Oversight?” I walked nearer and saw him quaking as he tucked himself tight behind the bank of seats. Without the stabilizers, the gondola was swaying softly…a constant reminder of the drop we were hanging over.

  Why didn’t he say anything about being acrophobic? He had slept through the flight, snoring like an old dog next to me. Maybe he had tranquilizers?

  “Have you got pills you can take for this?”

  He rolled his wide eyes toward me. “I don’t need pills. I’m not afraid of heights!”

  He sounded so defensive that I had to fight off laughter.

  “Okay, good to know,” I said as I pulled out my phone. “Just keep quiet while I handle all of this.”

  I phoned the Aspen Fire Department to call for help, then put in a quick call to our client, calmly explaining that we had been unavoidably delayed due to an emergency and would have to reschedule. They would learn the truth soon enough, but for now, I didn’t want them waiting one minute longer than they had to.

  Then I sat down in one of the seats, closed my eyes, and waited.

  The heat was slowly creeping into the gondola as I sat there, schooling myself to patience as Ian locked himself in the toilet, whimpering every time the wind made us sway. On a hunch, I called my assistant as I waited.

  “Carol, I need your help real quick. Just find out why the backup batteries weren’t in the gondola for the new project in Aspen, okay?” At least I had a good connection up here. Talking the client into including a cell tower in the new installation might have been what would save us today.

  “No problem.”

  I heard rapid typing…and then a sigh.

  “Ian,” Carol said simply.

  “Of course. What was the issue?” I rubbed my temple and my fingers came away slightly damp. I was starting to sweat.

  “There was a two-week backorder on the power banks. He interceded and green-lit the demo anyway, instead of delaying it until they could be installed.”

  I pressed my lips together, processing this information.

  “Okay. Here’s the deal. We’re currently stranded partway up the mountain due to a system power failure, and the reason Aspen FD has to come get us out of here is because he gave the go-ahead to run without the backup system. And then didn’t tell me.”

  “Jesus,” she said. “Naomi, I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

  “Gather the corroborating evidence, put it in the file with the rest of the documentation on Ian. I’m presenting to the board about him as soon as I get back to Denver.”

  “Kick-ass. Uh…are you going to be okay up there?” Her voice went a little high from worry.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” I sighed as I stared out the window at the chasm far below us. “I always land on my feet.”

  Half an hour passed as we waited to be rescued. Ian stayed in the toilet, as far from the windows as possible. I didn’t confront him on how his latest bullshit had stranded us up here. He was too much of a mess. Better to let the whole situation hammer the truth home for him.

  I dozed in the slowly growing heat. Images from one of my usual dreams tickled at my mind in the seconds before my head would nod forward and wake me up again. The most vivid of them was a fragment of my teenage years. Furious at my father, yelling at him. “One day I’ll be free from you.”

  I had felt guilty for years for saying that to him, but now, remembering his blank-eyed startled look, I knew that I had not hurt him. He had not cared enough about me to feel anything but shock at my talking back. So then, as I startled myself back to wakefulness, I only felt sad.

  I opened my eyes, hearing a faint noise outside the gondola. I looked over and saw the cable for the old system moving. Frowning, I peered up the line—and saw nothing but the mountaintop structure, where our missed meeting loomed out of reach. The clients must have left already.

  I checked my watch. Good. I hadn’t wanted to keep them waiting. Now, though, I turned my head and looked down the line curiously.

  The old cable car was headed our way, its battered yellow bulk lumbering along, half the size of the sleek, useless gondola we sat in. I saw its operator, and one other person—tall and muscular, in rescue gear—and with a shock of cowlicky blond hair.

  No way. I gasped as I saw Ace come riding to my rescue.

  He flashed that grin as he saw me, already opening the emergency exit on that side as the older gondola rattled to a stop across from us. There was a twelve-foot gap between them. Curious as to what he would do, I went to our own emergency exit on that side and slid it open.

  The wind was gusting; I grabbed for the safety strap to brace myself.

  “Hi!” I called over.

  “Hey there! We meet again! What the hell happened?” he called over to me. He was strapping on some kind of harness as he spoke. It looked like mountaineering gear.

  “Power outage up on the mountaintop, I’m assuming, or a short in the system. Unfortunately, my COO had us run the final test without the backup power system installed, so we got stranded.”

  “We?” He peered past me.

  “Yeah. He’s in the bathroom. I think he may need to be carried out of here.” I winced apologetically, but Ace just grinned as he fastened a safety line to his harness.

  “I’ll bring the backboard across. It’s not a big deal. Is he hurt?”

  “No, just freaked out.” And hopefully learning something. I could have lied and left him up here. But I just wasn’t that sadistic.

  Five minutes of fastening lines and grabbing equipment
later, Ace swung across Tarzan-style to land in the doorway as I moved aside. The warm smell of his sweat and aftershave wafted at me pleasantly as he panted, “Hi!”

  I wanted to hug him. I wanted to do more than that. But instead I just grinned back. “Hi. You need to pack Mr. Shaw up first?”

  “Yep, I just needed to check on you before I do that.” His gaze swept over me, leaving my mouth suddenly dry. “I’ll bring over the basket,” he murmured after a moment.

  “Yeah,” I managed, left breathless by him again.

  Once he had fastened a few more lines on our side, he brought over the basket, which was of red-painted metal shaped like a human.

  It took five minutes of coaxing to get Ian out of the bathroom and into the basket. I felt bad enough for him that I made no snide remarks the whole time—only told him, firmly, that this was the only way out thanks to the lack of backup power.

  He whimpered the whole way across the gap.

  Ace came back for me with a harness that he helped me fasten on. He tested all my ropes, smiling a little the whole time. “Sorry your day’s been shitty. Hope I can make it better.”

  “You already are,” I reassured him. Then my voice caught in my throat as he drew me into his arms.

  Oh wow. He was so huge and warm, his powerful body firm and supple against mine, his grip only tight enough to keep me held securely. His hands were so huge. I melted against him without even thinking about it.

  I barely noticed crossing the gap. I did notice touching down, but mostly because, a few seconds later, I stumbled a little with shock as he let me go.

  We were in the old gondola, the empty stretcher sitting in the aisle, Ian curled sullenly in a seat nearby.

  “Is that it?” he snapped as Ace turned to start retrieving the safety ropes. “Can we go home now?”

  “Nice to see you’re feeling better,” I replied archly as I unfastened the harness and then moved to a seat. Now that we were safe, the sense of defeat and anger was kicking in. “Now keep quiet. I know about the batteries. You are in no way off the hook over this.”