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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.
“Safe to say we called it even after that,” she said.
“They didn’t do something else to you, did they?” Ian asked, running one hand through his sandy blond hair to pull it off his forehead. He needed a trim. She liked it longer, especially when it fell across his eyes while bending over to look at blueprints. But if Mr. Ian “Bossman” Asher wanted his hair to match the fancy suits he wore, he should probably tidy up. “I thought things—”
“The guys and I are good now,” she said. “I haven’t had to weld anyone’s car door shut in months.”
“Thank God. You are a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
“Because I’m the only woman on your crew?”
“Because you’re a maniac.”
“Do you call all the women who don’t like you ‘maniacs?’ Does it make you feel better about yourself?” She crossed her arms over her chest, leaned casually in the doorway. She felt anything but casual around Ian Asher, but he didn’t need to know that.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he nodded. “You’re right. That wasn’t fair of me,” he said, sitting forward at his desk and clasping his hands. His jaw was set tight like it usually was when she stepped into a room. “I’m sorry I said that.”
She shrugged. “It’s all right. After you fucked me and dumped me, I called you every name in the book and invented a few of my own. You can call me a ‘maniac’ if you want.”
Ian stood up immediately, walked—almost ran—to his office door, pulled her inside and shut the door behind them.
“Can you keep your voice down?” he asked. “I’m trying to run a reputable company here.”
“Then why did you hire me?” she asked.
“I didn’t hire you. My father did.”
“Oh, yeah. Then why haven’t you fired me?”
“Because you’re very good at what you do.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said with a wink. Since she had nothing to lose anymore, she turned and sat down on the top of his desk.
“I wasn’t talking about that night.”
She crossed her legs, which was hard to do in loose canvas pants but she made it work.
“Oh... ‘That Night.’ It has a name. I’m so good in bed our one night together has a name.”
“That Stupid Night,” he said. “That Drunk Night.”
“We weren’t drunk. You’d had two beers and I had two shots of whiskey and neither one of us is a lightweight. Don’t blame booze for your own bad decisions,” she said, raising her chin. “Or was it a bad decision? You tell me.”
“Yes,