Hard as steel...and hotter still!

Never mess with a woman who carries a blowtorch in her backpack. Welder and artist Veronica “Flash” Redding’s playful sense of evil sometimes gets the better of her. Like when her insanely handsome, wealthy, suited-up boss gave her the most sensuously wicked night of her life...then dumped her. Yep, revenge is a dish best served hot.

Only Ian Asher isn’t letting Flash get away quite so easily. He’s not ready to forget the intensity between them. The searing heat when they touch. And the deliciously demanding control Ian wields in the bedroom. Now he has only the holidays to convince Flash that they belong together...and that even the most exquisite, broken things can be welded back together.

It was rough and wild, hungry and desperate...

Flash loved it. She loved it as much as she loved Ian, and the only thing she hated was that she was too scared to tell him that. He made her feel too much.

They stood by the wall, their bodies still joined as Ian rested his forehead on her shoulder.

“I’m never like this with anyone but you,” he said as he caught his breath. She loved hearing him out of breath. “You bring out the worst in me. Or the best. Can’t tell sometimes.”

“I bring out the you in you.”

“You like me like this, don’t you?”

She loved him like this. But she couldn’t say that. It was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t quite get it out.

“More than you know, Ian.”

Maybe more than he’d ever know.

Dear Reader,

If you’re anything like me, you love the ’80s movie Flashdance but always thought it was missing a little something—namely a holiday romance, right? As soon as I started writing One Hot December and I made my heroine a welder, I knew I had to name her Flash in honor of Flashdance. And, of course, I had to work in the word maniac in the story just once, because I am a child of the ’80s and always will be.

The actual inspiration for One Hot December came from a writer friend of mine who is Jewish and married to a Christian. They celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, as many interfaith couples do. She said it’s nearly impossible to find a romance novel that includes both holidays. So here ya go, Sara. This book’s for you. And of course, it’s for all my readers who celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas. I hope you enjoy the story of Flash and Ian and their romance that will last long after their hot December together.

Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas! All my best holiday wishes to one and all, no matter what you celebrate. Even if you celebrate neither holiday, we can certainly celebrate love and romance together, and we can do it all year long.

Tiffany Reisz

One Hot December

Tiffany Reisz

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TIFFANY REISZ is a multi-award-winning and bestselling author. She lives on Mount Hood in Oregon in her secret volcanic lair with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, two cats and twenty sock monkeys named Gerald. Find her online at tiffanyreisz.com.

Dedicated to...

Sara and Sara and Flash

Acknowledgments

Writing the Men at Work holiday trilogy for Harlequin Blaze has been the writing highlight of my year. I’ve had so much fun writing these books. I can only hope my readers have half as much fun reading them as I’ve had writing them.

A huge thank you to my editor Kathleen Scheibling for her enthusiasm about the books. Working with you has been a true pleasure, Kathleen. I knew when I saw you collected sock monkeys, too, that we would get along just fine. Thank you to the entire Harlequin Blaze team for all their work on the edits and cover and marketing.

Thank you to my agent, Sara Megibow, for not only encouraging me to write the books, but for helping me get all the Hanukkah stuff right in One Hot December. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Thank you to my beta readers, Jennifer Rosen and Robin Becht, for your great notes.

And thank you, of course, to my husband, author Andrew Shaffer, who makes it very easy for me to write happy-ever-afters.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Extract

Copyright

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.

“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, it was. That I’m having this conversation with you is proof it was a bad decision. I don’t want to be having this conversation with any of my employees. I’m trying to be a good boss here. You’re not helping.”

“How am I not helping?” she asked.

“Because you don’t want me to be a good boss.”

Flash almost felt bad for him. Almost. He was rich, he was handsome, he had been handed a high-paying job at a multimillion-dollar construction company with a bow tied around it, compliments of Daddy, so it was really hard for her to muster up any sympathy for the man. If he ever had a real problem in his life, it sure as hell wasn’t her.

Then again he was also six-two, broad-shouldered, and annoyingly good in bed. She knew that for a fact thanks to “That Night” six months ago. And that meant she did feel for him a little bit. A little teeny tiny bit. Not that she would tell him that. He didn’t need to know she liked him. In fact, the less he knew about that, the better.

“Poor Ian,” she said, shaking her head. “A victim of desire. You’re a Lifetime movie. Can we get Chris Hemsworth to play you? You two have the same hair. And the same shoulders. I remember because I’ve bitten them.”

“You’ve bitten Chris Hemsworth’s shoulders?”

“A lady never bites and tells. Too bad I’m not a lady.”

“Flash.” He started to cross his arms over his chest but then seemingly thought better of it. Instead he stuffed his hands into his pockets, as if they’d be safer there.

“Ian.”

“You aren’t supposed to call me Ian. When you call me Ian people start to think we are more to each other than boss and employee.”

“Once upon a time I hopped into your shower to wash your semen off my back after you put it there after some very intense doggy-style fucking. Now...tell me again how we’re just boss and employee.”

“You,” he said.

“Me.”

“Why do I put up with this?” he asked. “Some kind of latent masochism, right?”

“It’s the hair, isn’t it?” She ran her fingers up her short scarlet red hair, spiking it even higher. It was a classic punk look according to Suzette, the multi-pierced stylist who had talked Flash into trading in her long traditional locks for a short, wild razor cut two years ago. Long hair and construction sites didn’t go well together, anyway. Plus she liked scaring the old-timers at work, who still thought any woman with hair shorter than her shoulders was a lesbian or a communist. Not that she minded be mistaken for a lesbian. They were half-right, anyway. But a communist? Oh, please. Socialist, maybe, but a communist? Ridiculous.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Please tell me and leave my office so I can, you know, do what I do.”

“Masturbate while thinking about me?”

“Flash, please.” He looked so wildly uncomfortable right now she almost laughed out loud. Not often a man as strong and as handsome and as together as Ian Asher looked self-conscious. It was kind of adorable. Which made it so much fun to torture him like this.

“You know that’s not my real name. My name is Veronica. You can say it. You called me Veronica that night. I mean, ‘That Night,’” she said, putting the words into finger quotes.

“Everyone calls you Flash.”

“You called me Veronica when you were inside me.”

“Flash, dammit...”

“Dammit isn’t my name, either. Say my name and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

“Flash, I’m not—”

“Say my name and I’ll tell you why I’m here. Then I will leave you in peace. Or in pieces depending on how much I’m annoying you today.”

“Pieces is more accurate,” he said. “I need to be steel-reinforced around you. You are an earthquake.”

“That’s the sexiest thing any man has ever said about me.”

Ian removed his hands from his pockets, stood up to his full height and stepped forward, close enough to her that he could bend and kiss her if he wanted to. He must not have wanted to, unfortunately.

“Veronica...” he said softly, so softly it was almost a whisper, and almost a whisper was exactly how he’d said her name that one stupid night. Her plan to torture him was backfiring. Now she remembered it all...everything she wanted to pretend meant nothing to her. No pretending when he said her name, no pretending when he looked at her like that.

They’d gone out for drinks one night after work, about six of them, her and Ian and four other guys. The others were all family men, had to get home early. She and Ian had lingered at the bar, talking. But not about work, about art. His father had hired her, not him, and he hadn’t known that she’d learned to weld because she was a metal sculptor in her free time, an artist. He’d assumed she’d picked up the trade from her father the same way he’d gotten into the construction business. She’d shown him a picture on her phone of the six-foot-high climbing rosebush she’d welded out of copper and aluminum, and he’d called it a masterpiece. And then he’d called her a masterpiece. And before either of them knew it, they were kissing. They’d kissed all the way back to his place and all night and here she was, six months later, still thinking about it.

“I quit,” she said.

Ian’s eyes went so wide she almost laughed.

“What?”

“I quit. This is my two weeks’ notice.”

Ian stepped back in obvious shock.

“You’re quitting.”

“I think that’s just what I said. Let me rewind the tape.” She feigned listening to a handheld tape recorder and nodded. “Yes, that’s what I said. I quit.”

“Why? Is it because—”

“Because you and I fucked? No. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“I didn’t...” He sighed. “I’m not flattering myself. I know you weren’t thrilled with how I handled the situation.”

“You dumped me after one night and said you couldn’t date an inferior.”

“I didn’t say that. I said I was your superior and therefore could not date you. You remember that part about me being your boss?”

“Only for two more weeks.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I got a new job. A better job.”

“Better? Better than here?”

She almost rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Ian, believe it or not, some people, like, oh...women, for example, might not consider working with nothing but men the ideal workplace scenario. I like the guys. We get along okay. But I like women. I would like to have some in my life. I would also like to have a job where I don’t weld all day and then go home and weld some more for my other life. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I don’t, no. You’ve stuck it out here longer than anyone thought you would.”

“I had to fight tooth and nail to earn the respect of the crew. I’m a little tired of fighting to be treated like a human being. You can’t blame me for that, either.”

“No.” Ian nodded. “So...where are you going?”

“You know Clover Greene? Runs the nursery down the highway?”

“Yeah, Clover’s great. I bought my Weedwhacker from her.”

“I’m her new assistant manager. The pay is the same as what I make here but the hours will be better, the work not as backbreaking. I don’t like going home too tired to sculpt. I’ve been putting my art career on the back burner too long. I don’t want to do that anymore. Something had to give,” she said.

“Your art’s important to you,” he said. “I appreciate that. I hate to lose you. We’re not going to find another welder as good as you.”

“You will. But you won’t find one as fun as me.”

“You put truck nuts on my bumper to punish me for telling you we couldn’t keep sleeping together.”

“So? It was just a prank.”

“You didn’t hang them on my bumper. You welded them on my bumper. Giant. Metal. Testicles.”

“Your truck needed a new bumper, anyway, and you know it.”

“Flash...” She could tell he wanted to say something but wouldn’t let himself say it. Well, she knew how he felt. She’d wanted to say something for six months now. If only she could weld her mouth shut.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“Wait, I didn’t thank you for anything.”

“I assumed you were going to thank me for leaving. I know I’ve been a...” She paused, searched for the right word. “A complicated employee. I know you’ll be more comfortable at work with me gone.”

“I’d rather be uncomfortable and have you here.”

“I’d rather work for a woman I respect.”

“Than work for a man you can’t?” he asked, meeting her eyes. His jaw was clenched again, tight. She’d hurt him.

“I respect you,” she said as softly as he’d said her real name. “I do. What I mean to say is...I’d rather work for a woman I don’t have feelings for than a man I do. I shouldn’t have made it about respect. I do respect you. I don’t like you very much, but I respect you.”

“I came on your back.”

“I wanted you to come on my back. How would us having very good sex make me lose respect for you? I’m not a man. I don’t lose respect for someone just because he has the bad taste to sleep with me. I consider it one of your finer moments actually. I respect you more for fucking me.”

“I think about it sometimes. That night.”

His eyes met hers for a tense moment before glancing away again.

Flash placed her hand on Ian’s chest, over his heart.

“Welcome to the club,” she said. She patted his chest and dropped her hand to her side. “I’m gonna go before I do or say something stupid. I’ve been known to do that. Examples include the truck nuts incident and that time I welded your desk drawers shut.”

“Wait. You what?” He ran around to his desk. Every one of the desk drawers opened.

“Made you look,” she said.

Ian hung his head, slammed the top drawer shut so that all his pens and pencils rattled.

“You’re evil,” he said.

“Just giving you a hard time,” she said. “Gotta go, boss. I mean, ex-boss. Have a nice life.”

She hopped off his desk and headed for his office door.

“What are your plans now?” he asked.

“Dinner at Skyway,” she said. “Clover says they have truffle fries.”

“No, I mean, you know we don’t have any work scheduled until January fifth. Your two weeks’ notice is kind of meaningless considering you didn’t have to work this month, anyway. Are you starting with Clover next week?”

“Clover’s is closed until March, and she doesn’t need me to start until January. I’m going to enjoy the rest of the month off. It’s December, remember? Baking Christmas cookies, decorating Christmas cookies, eating Christmas cookies, lather, rinse, repeat. Basically eat cookies all month is what I’m doing. And sculpting. You?”

“No cookies. Work,” he said. “I bought a new house. A new old house.”

“Cool. Where at?”

“Government Camp. An old ski chalet.”

“Govy? You must like snow.”

“Love snow. We have two feet up there already. Great view from my new kitchen.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It’s a fixer-upper. I’m spending all month fixing and upping.”

“A ‘fixer-upper’ ski chalet is still a chalet, Bossman. It’s like saying you bought a ‘low-end’ Rolex or a ‘used’ private plane.”

“Fine. You win. I’m a spoiled brat, and I always will be. I didn’t earn what I have, but I’m trying to be worthy of it, okay? Which is why I didn’t want to keep sleeping with you, because when someone gives you power over someone else, you don’t abuse it. And whether you like it or not, I had power over you. More than you know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I’m only saying I have the power to hire and fire. I shouldn’t sleep with someone I can fire. I did it for you.”

“Well, thank you very much for dumping me. It was very chivalrous. Good luck remodeling your chalet this December. You have to weld anything?”

“A couple things.”

“Clean your metal. Acetone’s good. If you don’t have any in the house, you can borrow my fingernail polish remover.”

She gave him one last little look, maybe the last one she’d ever give him, and left his office. She kept her head up and her shoulders straight as she marched down the generic beige hall on generic gray carpets to the parking lot. Everyone was gone. No surprise there. Last day of work before the holidays, and everybody had shipped out the second they could.

The only car left in the parking lot was Ian’s new black Subaru, which she was pretty sure he bought because he couldn’t look at his old car without picturing the truck nuts she’d welded to the bumper. She headed to her red ’98 Ford Ranger, which had seen better days, trying to convince herself she was happy about leaving. And she was. She was excited about her new job. Clover Greene was about the kindest, friendliest woman she’d ever met, and she had a quirky green-haired teenage girl working for her as an office assistant—her kind of people. The nursery itself was like a well-manicured Garden of Eden. Everywhere she looked Flash saw inspiration for her metal foliage sculptures. Great people, safe place for women to work, nice location, good pay, good benefits and fuel for her art. So yeah, she was thrilled about the new job.

But.

But...Ian.

It wasn’t just that he was good in bed. He was. She remembered all too well that he was—passionate, intense, sensual, powerful, dominating, everything she wanted in a man. The first kiss had been electric. The second intoxicating. By the third she would have sold her soul to have him inside her before morning, but he didn’t ask for her soul, only every inch of her body, which she’d given him for hours. When she’d gone to bed with him that night she’d been half in love with him. By the time she left it the next morning she was all the way in.

Then he’d dumped her.

Six months ago. She ought to be over it by now. She wanted to be over it the day it happened but her heart wasn’t nearly as tough as her reputation. The worst part of it all? Ian had been right to dump her. They’d both lost their heads after a couple drinks had loosened their tongues enough to admit they were attracted to each other. But Ian had a company to run and there were rules—good ones—that prohibited the man who signed the paychecks from sleeping with the woman who wielded the torch.

She pulled her keys from her jacket pocket and stuck them in the lock.

“Flash? Wait up.”

She turned and saw Ian walking across the parking lot toward her. He wore his black overcoat, and combined with his black Tom Ford suit, he looked more like a Wall Street trader than the vice president and operations manager of Asher Construction. Ian told her once he’d started out doing cleanup at his dad’s construction sites twenty years ago. Then he’d gone to college, come home, and clawed his way up the ranks the hard way: by working his fingers to the bone while learning every job. If only he was still just a guy on the crew, maybe it could have worked. Now when she looked at him, she saw a man with money, power, and prestige, a man completely out of her league.

“What?” she asked, leaning back against her truck door.

He stood in front of her, face-to-face, but didn’t look her in the eyes. He stared off to the left where the peak of Mount Hood rose over the treetops.

“Ian?” she prompted when it seemed like he was going to keep her standing there in the cold all day.

“I need your help with something,” he said.

“That must have been hard,” she said. “Asking for my help.”

“It wasn’t easy.”

“What do you need my help with?”

“A project at my new place. It’s pretty delicate work. I don’t trust myself to do it.”

“What’s the project?”

“The house has a stone-and-iron fireplace. It’s what sold me on the place. But the fireplace screen is coming apart. It’s nice, original to the house. Would you maybe be willing to come up and take a look at it tonight?”

“Has to be tonight?”

“You busy?”

“Would you be jealous if I was?” she asked.

“You have a hickey on the side of your neck that you’re trying to hide under your collar. Not that I noticed.”

“Except you noticed.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I noticed. Who’s the lucky guy? Or girl?”

“Nobody you know. Old friend from high school who moved back to town a month ago. We reconnected. And then disconnected.”

“Didn’t work out?”

“Do you care?”

“Yes,” he said. He said it very simply. Just “yes” as if what he wanted to say was “obviously I care.”

She shook her head, not at Ian but at her own stupidity for thinking she could have had something meaningful with this jerk she’d dated for a week.

“He was cute, he was smart, he was a good kisser, and he thought my art was awesome. But after a couple week he said he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t date a professional welder when he worked as a teller at a bank. His friends would never let him hear the end of it, he said. He just couldn’t date a woman, no matter how hot—his words, not mine—who came off as more of a man than he did. I said that was fine. I didn’t want to date a guy who was less of a man than I was, either. He called me a couple nice words after that and then he was gone. Good riddance to him and his poor little ego.”

“You have to stop dating beneath you.”

“I slept with you.”

“Exactly my point.”

She laughed. “You’re cute,” she said. “I wish you weren’t.”

“It’s a curse.” He grinned at her. “You know, you could have told that guy you weren’t going to be a professional welder anymore.”

“I could have, yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t sleep with a guy I don’t respect. A man who can’t respect a woman doing a supposedly ‘man’s job’ isn’t going to respect a woman who does ‘women’s work,’ either. I’m glad it ended before it got serious.”

“You feel that way about us, too? Glad it ended before it got serious?”

“It was already serious before you kissed me, Ian.”

“I didn’t know. I had no idea you... It never occurred to me you had feelings for me,” he said. “Except attraction. That I’d noticed.”

“You look as good in your suits as out of them and that’s saying something.”

“Let me take you out tonight,” he said. “Dinner. Then you can come back to the house and help me with the fireplace. We’ll hang out. It’ll be fun. It’ll be normal. We can end things on a good note instead of feeling shitty about what happened.”

“Or didn’t happen.”

“Or didn’t happen, yeah.”

“Do you even like me?” she asked. “As a person, I mean. I insult you, I welded truck nuts to your car, I scare the newbies and I make eighteen dollars an hour while you make eighteen dollars a minute.”

“Dad makes eighteen dollars a minute. I make low six figures. I’m on salary, you know. I don’t own the company. I just run it. If I screw up, I get in trouble or get fired just like anyone else who works for my father.”

“Except the rest of us aren’t senator’s sons who are going to inherit the family business someday no matter how badly we screw up.”

“Dad’s only a state senator.”

“And your ski chalet is only a fixer-upper.”

They were silent a long moment. She knew he was waiting for her to bend a little, to say yes to dinner, to say yes to ending on a good note instead of on this...whatever this was...this awkward painful note.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said. “You keep me honest.”

“I insult you. Often.”

“Somebody has to, right?” he asked. “Everybody else sucks up to me.”

“That’s the damn truth,” she said.

“Please? Hang out with me tonight. Take a look at this thing in my house and see if you can fix it. Then we can go to the brewery. My treat. A thank-you for your help. We can pretend to be friends for one evening, right? Then maybe eventually we won’t have to pretend?”

“Why do you want to be my friend?”

“You carry a blowtorch in your backpack and I had to pay five hundred bucks to get those fucking truck nuts off my bumper,” he said, meeting her eyes finally. It was his eyes that had gotten to her first—a blue so bright you could see the color from the other side of the room, the other side of the world. “Of course I want to be your friend. It’s safer than being your enemy.”

She smiled, because she had to after an admission like that.

“Please, Flash. One apology dinner. I’m even buying.”

Ian was strong and smart and it meant a lot to her that he wasn’t ashamed to humble himself a little. A real man. He wasn’t afraid of her even if he joked he was. Which is why she shouldn’t be doing this, having this conversation with him, thinking these thoughts. She cared too much about him already. He’d crushed her before and he could crush her again. She absolutely should not spend any time alone with him ever again, not if she didn’t want to get hurt like before, and God knows, she didn’t want to get hurt like before. She was still hurt.

“I’ll go get my torch,” she said. “But you better make good on the brewery or your fireplace screen won’t be the only thing I solder to the floor.”

“You’re sexy when you’re threatening permanent damage to my genitals,” he said.

She patted his shoulder.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

2

IAN WATCHED FLASH walk back into the office to retrieve her equipment. Dammit, what the hell was he thinking? He was thinking he wasn’t over Flash, that’s what he was thinking. And he needed to be over her. He really needed to be over her.

And under her.

And all around her.

And inside her. He needed that more than anything else.

“Pathetic, Asher. Just pathetic,” he muttered to himself as he fished around in his coat pocket to find his keys. Begging for crumbs from this woman when he wanted to feast on her. But he’d fucked it up with her so badly he knew she’d probably never lower her guard around him again. Not enough to give him anything but hope. Certainly not her love, which is what he wanted. Nothing else would do. And yet he knew it was over, all the way over. He’d had some hope when she welded metal testicles to his bumper. Only a woman with very strong feelings for him would pull a prank like that. But after that, nothing. Even the silent treatment would have been better than what he’d gotten from her. She’d treated him like she treated everyone else—with a mix of dark humor and utter disdain. He didn’t want her to treat him like she treated everyone else. He wanted to be special. But this was Veronica “Flash” Redding, and if making men feel like they were nothing special was a game show, she’d go home with one million dollars and a brand-new car.

And today she’d quit her job. Which meant he’d likely never see her again unless he did something hasty, drastic and stupid like beg her to help him fix up his house in the hopes of buying a little more time with her. Maybe he could talk her into forgiving him. Maybe he could talk her into another night. Maybe he could talk her into welding metal wings and flying them to the sun. He was dreaming too big here. Unlike him, Flash was already out there dating other people. He hadn’t gone on a second date since his one night with her. Why? Because he liked women and didn’t want to be an asshole to them, and only an asshole would take one woman out on a date while thinking about a different woman the entire time. A woman with punk red hair, a perfect face and a body that fit his so well he could believe she’d been sculpted to fit him. She wore loose canvas pants every day to work and T-shirts with no sleeves that showed off both her strong shoulders and the tattoos on her biceps. She wore that distressed bomber jacket every day of her life, no matter the weather. Brown leather, not black leather because Flash wasn’t trying to look cool—she just was cool. Too cool for him.

But still...he had to give it one more shot with this woman or he’d regret it the rest of his life.

Flash emerged from their office into the parking lot, a heavy-duty army-green duffel bag over her shoulder. With any other woman he would have taken the bag from her and carried it. But he’d learned the hard way not to try that with Flash. It wasn’t the implication she couldn’t carry a heavy load that pissed her off when he’d tried to be gentlemanly one day. She just didn’t want anyone else touching her tools.

“You want to ride with me?” he asked. “Mine handles in snow better than yours.”

“I have chains if I need them,” she said. “This isn’t my first winter on the mountain, remember?” She opened her truck door and put her bag on the passenger seat.

“My new place is a little hard to find so follow me close. If you get lost, call my cell.”

“I won’t get lost,” she said as she slammed the passenger door and got in behind the wheel. “Lead on, Macduff.”

“That’s Macbeth, right?” he asked.

She looked at him, raised her eyebrow and then slammed her driver’s door shut. Maybe now was not the best time to discuss the Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

“You’re an idiot, Asher,” he said to himself.

Ian got behind the wheel of his Outback and pulled out of the parking lot onto Highway 26. His construction company was located a few miles outside of Portland in Sandy, and Government Camp was a good thirty miles east, right up to the snow-covered top of the mountain. When they started their drive the temperature was about forty, brisk and cool, but not biting cold. As they climbed the mountain, the temperature started to drop. In twenty miles it went from forty-one, according to the Outback’s readings, to thirty-one and falling fast.

Signs of civilization disappeared as they drove. The little towns faded in the rearview mirror and soon there was nothing but massive moss-covered trees of Mount Hood National Forest looming on either side of the road. Then they really started to climb. The trees fell away to the right as the highway edged along a valley that seemed to drop endlessly. Nothing stood between him and that eternal drop but a low concrete wall. The trees in the valley were white with snow and the road’s shoulder was piled high with the stuff tinged gray by highway soot. He glanced back and saw Flash right behind him in her little red pickup. As old as that thing was, he couldn’t believe it still ran. But it did and it kept up with him.

Government Camp—a town that was neither a camp nor affiliated with the government—was on the left and he made sure Flash followed him into the turn lane behind him. It wasn’t easy watching the road and watching her the entire time. He’d wished she’d ridden with him so he wouldn’t worry so much. She was the most stubborn woman on the planet, easily. The next road had been scraped clean, but there were still four-foot walls of snow on either side of the street and a thin layer of ice underneath him. But he shouldn’t have worried. Flash handled her truck as well as she handled her torch. No wonder she intimidated men. She was so skilled and self-sufficient a man couldn’t help but feel a little useless around her.

But he’d spent one incredible night with her and knew a little something about Flash Redding—she did find men useful for at least one very specific purpose and he would be more than happy, ecstatic even, to make himself of use to her in that capacity again.

At the end of a long street, Ian slowed his car to a crawl, turned right into the driveway nearly hidden by snow. More trees—hundred-year-old evergreens fifty feet high—shadowed his house. He hoped Flash liked it. It wasn’t bad to look at. A classic A-frame Swiss-chalet-style house with a green metal roof and cedar siding, it already felt like home to him even though he’d only been living there a month. It would feel much more like home once he had someone to share it with.

He waved her into his garage while he parked beside it. Before exiting his car he paused to take a few breaths. He could do this. He could have a nice evening with Flash without screwing it up again. He would be cool. He would be funny. He would impress her and to impress her was to impress himself because anyone who could impress Flash was impressive as hell.

He found her in his garage with her duffel bag over her shoulder.

“Thanks again for coming up here,” he said as he unlocked the door to his house.

“No problem,” she said. “I was thinking earlier today how much I wanted to drive to the top of a volcano covered in a foot of snow to do even more work.”

“Two feet,” he said. “We got dumped on two nights ago. Hope your truck has heating.”

“It does. Although mine doesn’t have fancy heated seats like somebody’s does. You have a hot ass, Mr. Asher. Very hot...” As she walked past him into the house, she patted him on the seat of his pants, which were still warm from his new car’s electric heated seats. He took a moment to gently beat his head against the door frame before following her into the house.

He squared his shoulders and walked through the mud room into the living room. Flash stood in the center of the room, glancing around.

“Like it?” he asked.

“It’s nice,” she said. “I thought you said it was a fixer-upper. This all looks good. Is the knotty pine floor original?”

“It is,” he said. “But I had to strip it and refinish it.”

“You did it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Believe it or not I am capable of doing some home improvement projects on my own. I do run a construction company, after all.”

“You look supercute in your suit with your little hard hat on when you come to inspect us on-site.”

“I wasn’t always a suit,” he said, throwing his coat and briefcase down on the kitchen counter. “I used to hang drywall and put down flooring. Let’s see... I also poured concrete, painted, did a little basic masonry work and framed houses. I think I can strip and refinish a floor in my own house.”

“I know,” she said. “I just like giving you a hard time.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“The floors look great with your dark green walls. Your paint job?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He smiled hugely and then realized his “being cool” plan was already out the window if he was grinning like an idiot for the sole reason she’d complimented his wall color.

“Come here,” he said. “I’ll give you the ten-cent tour. The house was built in the 1940s. Three stories, cedar exterior, knotty pine floors. First floor is the living room and kitchen, second floor is the master bedroom, guest room and two bathrooms, top floor’s the loft.”

“What’s in the loft?”

“Me,” he said. “I sleep up there. Heat rises. Warmest room in the house at night. Plus it’s the only room where you can see the top of the mountain in the morning. Very good view.”

Ian paused, hoping she’d say something, anything, about wanting to see that view. But no, not a word.

“Um, all the furniture is made in Oregon,” he said, pointing at the wood-framed couch, the rustic dining table and the cane-back rocking chair. “There’s a hot tub outside.”

“Oh, my.”

“You like hot tubs?” he asked, a very pleasant image appearing unbidden in his mind, one that involved him and her and his hot tub and absolutely no clothing.

“Nope.”

“Let me guess—you also hate puppies, kittens and chocolate.”

“Yup.”

“Liar,” he said. She nodded, but that’s all she did. No flirting, no teasing, no winking, no nothing.

“Okay, the fireplace is in the sitting room. Want to see it?”

“Please,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Luckily she was behind him and couldn’t see him wince when she said that. All his hopes were fizzling like a wet firecracker. Why did he think he could make things right with her just by bringing her out to his house, getting her alone with him, hashing things out? Flash had already made her decision about him. If he were a gladiator and she the empress of Rome, she would have looked down on his beaten, bloodied and bruised body in the ring and given him a thumbs-down.

He led her through the living room to the rustic sitting room—oak bookcases, pine coffee table and his stone-and-iron fireplace, which was about to fall apart.

Ian pointed to a weak spot in the old irons screen.

“You can see that some of the joints are broken, and there’s some rust.” He grabbed a bar of the decorative iron grate and shook it so she could see how the central part of the design had come loose from the joints. “What do you think?”

Flash didn’t say anything at first. She knelt onto the wood floor and ran her hands over the iron scrollwork.

“Ian...” she breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

He grinned again, like an idiot again, but this time he didn’t chide himself for it.

“It’s ivy,” he said. “The whole thing is iron ivy. I thought you’d like it. It looks like the sort of thing you’d make.”

“I would.” Her eyes were alight with happiness and wonder as she ran her fingers all over the twisting and looping iron bars. “A real craftsman made this. Or craftswoman. This is art. Real folk art.”

“It sold me on the house.”

“It would have sold me, too,” she said. “Wow.”

“Oh, my God, did I hear Flash Redding say ‘wow’ to something? I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“I am not a hipster,” she said. “I’m an artist with high standards. There’s a difference. Hipsters pretend they aren’t impressed by stuff. I’m genuinely not impressed by stuff. But this...this is wow. You done good. You have better eyes than I gave you credit for.”

“I have a good eye for beauty,” he said. She looked up at him and said nothing. But he could have sworn he saw a ghost of a smile dance across her lips before it disappeared into the hard line of her mouth again.

“I’ll fix it,” she said. “An artist needs to fix this, not just any welder. This is delicate work.”

“Flash is on the job,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Flash again? Not Veronica?” she asked.

“You want me to call you Veronica?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll call you Flash. Why, I don’t know. I assume you flashed someone at some point in the past and the name stuck?”

She shook her head in obvious disgust at his ignorance.

“Poor Ian. You’ve never seen Flashdance, have you?”

“Flashdance? The dance movie?”

“Yes, Flashdance is a dance movie.”

“No, I haven’t seen it. Why?”

“The main character in it is a woman who works as a welder by day and an exotic dancer by night. When I started welding in high school, one of my friends started calling me Flashdance. But I don’t dance so it got shortened to Flash. I’ve been Flash ever since.”

“Should I rent the movie?” They were having a good conversation. This was progress. This was an improvement. This was giving him hope.

“If you like to watch sexy girls dancing, maybe. And welding.”

“I’m more into the welding than the dancing. I feel like I’ve missed out on something,” he said as he knelt on the floor next to her and watched her test all the connections to see which ones were loose and needed to be rewelded. “Before my time, I guess.”

“Before mine, too. But my mom did her job and showed me all her favorite movies when I was a kid.”

“You have a mother?”

“Did you think I didn’t?” she asked.

“Don’t take it personally, I just assumed you were forged in the fires of Mordor.”

She laughed softly. Yes...a laugh. Ten points for Asher.

“No, I have a mom. A cool mom. Everyone has a mom.”

“I don’t.”

“Were you forged in the fires of Mordor?”

“I had a mom,” he said. “But she died when I was a baby.”

Flash looked at him and he looked away.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m an asshole.”

“No, you aren’t. You couldn’t have known. She was hit by a drunk driver.”

“Oh, my God, that’s awful. I thought your parents were divorced. I didn’t know your mom had been killed.”

“They were separated when the accident happened. Dad’s always felt bad about that. They’d eloped when she got pregnant with me and both families went to war. Her family hated him. His family hated her...”

“Romeo and Juliet.”

“Sort of, yeah. If Romeo was Catholic and Juliet was Jewish.”

“You’re Jewish?”

“Mom was.”

“Then you are, too. Judaism is passed through the mother’s line, not the father’s. Mazel tov, Ian.” She patted him on the head. He would have preferred a kiss but he’d take a head pat. At least she’d touched him.

“Are you Jewish?” he asked.

“I’m nothing,” she said. “I just know about it because of a friend of mine.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No, a friend-friend. You feel any different? Sudden craving for bagels? Suddenly annoyed at me for making a joke about Jewish people liking bagels?”

“I feel...I don’t know how I feel,” he said, trying to wrap his mind around this new information. It didn’t make much of a dent on his soul, but still, it was good to know he had some sort of spiritual connection to his mother. “Dad never told me that. He never told me anything about Mom or that side of my family. He doesn’t talk about her very much. Doesn’t talk to her family. I’ve never even met my grandparents. Truth is, I think he was still in love with her and only separated because his family pressured him to and so did hers. He was only twenty and she was eighteen when they eloped.”

“What was her name?”

He furrowed his brow. “You want to know my mother’s name?”

“Yes, I want to know your mother’s name. Why wouldn’t I?”

He swallowed a sudden lump of sorrow. He didn’t even remember his mother. Why would he be sad thirty-five years after she was gone?

Ian raised his hand and touched one of the iron leaves on the fireplace grate. “Riva,” he said. “But when she went away to college, she went by Ivy. Dad said it was her teenage rebellion, changing her name. And marrying him.”

“Rebellious teenager. I think I like your mom,” she said.

He felt Flash’s eyes boring into him, searching his face, studying him. What was she seeing?

“I can fix this,” she said. “We can fix it. It’ll be a lot of work, but we can fix it.”

“The fireplace screen?”

“Yeah, the fireplace screen. What did you think I was talking about?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I can pay you.”

She stood up and looked down at him.

“I don’t need your money,” she said. “I’m not fixing this for you. I’m fixing it because it’s beautiful and beautiful craftsmanship like this deserves being preserved by someone who knows what she’s doing.”

“Sorry,” he said, standing up. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. You said it was a big job. I don’t want to take advantage of our...”

“What?”

“Friendship?”

“We aren’t friends.”

“Then what are we?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But not friends.”

She rubbed an iron vein on one of the iron stems of the ivy. A piece of rust flaked off on her finger and she shook her head at it like it had broken her heart.

“If we’re not friends, then I should pay you,” he said. “I’m not the sort of man who uses people. I’d have to fork over a thousand dollars to a pro to get this removed, cleaned, sanded, repaired and reinstalled. Either we’re friends and you’re helping me out of friendship, or you’re a professional welder who is doing this as a job. So you either let me pay you to do the work or you admit we’re friends.”

“You can pay me,” she said.

“Fine.” It was anything but fine. He didn’t mind paying her. But he wanted her to admit they were friends or something other than just employer-employee. She’d quit her job today and here she was again, working for him.

“In sex,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” She wiped her hands on her pants. “You can pay me for the work in sex.”

Ian blinked.

“You’re not kidding.”

“Why would I kid about that? You and I have already slept together. You know what I’m into. You’re into it, too. And you’re good at it, very good. It’s not easy finding someone good in bed. That’s valuable to me. I have money. I don’t have someone to have good sex with. It’s the barter system and don’t pretend you don’t want to. You could have asked Crawford to do this work for you. I’m not the only welder you know. I’m just the only welder you’re attracted to.”

“It’s more than attraction,” he said.

“What is it, then?”

“I don’t know. But it’s more.”

“Whatever,” she said with a shrug. “You decide.”

“You are bizarre,” he said.

“You’re the one who started this so who’s more bizarre—the girl with the blowtorch or the guy who wants to fuck the girl with the blowtorch?”

“The girl with the blowtorch. I’m going to go with that answer.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.”

“You don’t even like me,” he said, rubbing his temples in the hopes of keeping his brain from imploding. “You have made it abundantly clear you don’t like me.”

“I don’t have to like someone to have good sex with them. I just have to respect them. You’re a good boss, you run the company well, you treat your employees well and you don’t take shortcuts with your work. That’s attractive to me. I don’t want to hold hands with you and go walking in a winter wonderland, but I’ll spread for you if you’re man enough to take me up on the offer. Because we both know you want to do it, and the only thing stopping you is fear.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“Yes, you are. You and I had an amazing night together and you dumped me because you were afraid of getting in trouble with dear old Senator Daddy.”

“That’s not why I dumped you.”

“Then why?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“No skin off my rosy nose. So what’ll it be? I can do this work in a day or two. Two days’ work for two nights? What do you say?”

Ian wasn’t prepared to answer that question because he hadn’t been prepared to be asked that question. He’d been propositioned by a lot of women in his thirty-six years. Never once in those years had a woman attempted to barter welding services for sexual services. Was he flattered? A little. Was he insulted? Yeah. Kind of. A lot.

“No,” he said. “That’s what I say. No.”

“Can I ask why you’re saying no?”

“You can,” he said.

She stared at him. He waited. She wasn’t the only one who could play mind games.

“Why are you saying no?” she asked, her mouth a tight line of either tension or disappointment.

“I told you, I don’t like using people. I don’t like being used, either. I’m not going barter my body just so you can get off without getting attached. Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather sleep alone.”

“Okay,” she said. “That’s fair.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and typed something. His own phone vibrated in his back pocket a second later.

“What did you send me?”

“The phone number of a guy named Daniel Tang. He’s a metalsmith in Portland. He does killer work, and if you’re willing to pay him to come out here, he will if you tell him my name.” She zipped up her coat and glanced over her shoulder at the sky darkening through the picture window. “I better go. It’s getting late.”

She headed back toward the garage without another word.

Ian rubbed his temples again. This woman blew his mind on a daily basis. And she was leaving. Right now. He heard her in the living room picking up her gear from off the floor and heard her footsteps on the hardwood and heard the garage door opening. She was leaving and he was letting her go. He’d thought of her every single day and every single night for months. She intimidated him, she confused him, she intrigued him like no one else he’d ever met.

And he was letting her go.

No, he wasn’t.

He ran through the house and made it to the door just in time to see her back out of his garage. She had her arm over the seat and was looking back as she turned around in his driveway. He waited and she looked his way one last time. He waved his arm to flag her down, to stop her, to slow her down, maybe. She gave him a little salute in return, and then drove out of his life.

She didn’t even give him a chance to tell her goodbye.

3

FLASH CONGRATULATED HERSELF for not crying on the drive home to her apartment. She’d wanted to. She’d come very close. Then she’d seen that harrowing drop-off down the side of the highway and instead kept her eyes clear and on the road. By the time she pulled into her parking lot, she felt as good as anyone who’d been once again rejected by the guy she was in love with could feel.

“You don’t love him,” Flash told herself as she grabbed her duffel bag and a grocery bag from behind her truck seat. “You just want him.”

She closed her eyes and breathed long and hard through her nose, willing herself not to love Ian. A long time ago she’d read about those gurus who could control their own heart rates, slowing them to the point people could mistake them for dead. Why couldn’t she do that? She should be able to do that, will her heart to not beat so wildly in Ian’s presence. When he’d said his mother’s name and touched the iron ivy leaf on the fireplace grate, she thought she’d die of love for the man. If he was just a pretty face with good hair and a great body and a nice smile, and even if he was just a good person, she might have made it out without falling in love with him. But he was all that and vulnerable, too. That was her Achilles’ heel, her Kryptonite, the one chink in the armor she’d forged for herself. She felt protective of him as she never felt about any other man. She wanted to take care of him, which was stupid because if anyone on earth didn’t need taking care of it was the son of a rich father with a good job and all the luxuries in his life money could buy. But still...it was there, that love, that need to take care of him, and when he’d said he refused to let her use him, she’d almost broken down right then and told him everything she felt about him including all of that. Instead she’d turned tail and ran. He’d offered her friendship when she wanted his body and his heart and his soul. Friendship was the last thing she wanted from Ian Asher.

With a sigh, she got out of her truck, took her bags and walked to the corner apartment on the first floor. A few people had already started decorating for Christmas. She saw lights in windows, battery-operated candles, a few fake snow scenes. Fake snow? All they had to do was drive thirty miles east and they’d be up to their eyebrows in real snow.

She doubled-checked her grocery bag out of paranoia and knocked on the one door on the row with no Christmas decorations in the windows.

A few seconds later the door opened a crack, the security chain still locked.

“You’re late,” the voice inside the door said.

“Work-related. Sorry.”

“You have the stuff?”

“I have it,” Flash said.

“Two bags?”

“Two bags.”

“Anybody see you come here?” the voice asked, and Flash saw two dark brown eyes darting around in the direction of the parking lot.

“Nobody saw me but someone’s going to if you don’t let me in.”

The door slammed shut and a second later reopened. Flash slipped inside.

“You know this stuff isn’t illegal, right?” Flash said, passing the grocery bag to her downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Leah Scheinberg.

“Illegal or not, I can’t get caught with it,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, digging through the bag with a grin on her face. “I’d never hear the end of it. Here, take a hit. You look like you need this as much as I do.”

Mrs. Scheinberg was eighty-eight years old and had spent World War II working in a munitions factory as a welder—a real live Rosie the Riveter. Flash worshiped the ground she walked on, especially since Mrs. Scheinberg had saved one of her blowtorches from back in the day and had given it to her. Now it was Flash’s most prized possession. So when Mrs. Scheinberg offered her a frosted Christmas cookie, Flash took it, because when a woman is as much of a badass at eighty-eight as she was at eighteen, you ate the cookies she gave you and you did it with a smile.

“These are pretty good,” Flash said, eating an iced Christmas tree in one bite. “No wonder you make me smuggle them to you.”

“If my son weren’t such a stick-in-the-mud, I wouldn’t have to have you smuggle them in for me. Sit,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, pointing at her sofa.

Flash sat and munched on the fistful of cookies she’d taken out of the bag. She loved hanging out at Mrs. Scheinberg’s apartment. It was like stepping back in time to the 1930s. She’d inherited all her parents’ furniture and had it cleaned and repaired so that it looked like new, even if the patterns and styles were from another era. She had art deco lamps on her side tables with geometric patterned shades, a square teak coffee table with chrome legs and a leopard print wall-hanging over the back of the two-tone black-and-white sofa. Mrs. Scheinberg herself looked like she belonged in another era. She wore dresses every single day—not skirts, but dresses. When she went out she put on gloves. When she stayed in she always had on a full face of makeup and had her white hair styled every week. She took a seat in the chair across from the sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles, prim as a schoolgirl while she scarfed down frosted Christmas cookies like a starving person.

“Talk,” Mrs. Scheinberg said between bites. “Why were you late? You put in your notice today?”

“I did.”

“How did Mr. Asher take it?” Mrs. Scheinberg paused in her munching long enough to give Flash a pointed look.

“He took it. He wasn’t happy about it but he said he understood.”

Mrs. Scheinberg waved her hand dismissively.

“Not good enough for you,” Mrs. Scheinberg said. “You’re better off without him.”

“I did find something out about him today, though,” Flash said. “Something surprising.”

“Spill it,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, then popped another cookie in her mouth.

“He’s Jewish.”

Mrs. Scheinberg nodded her approval. “I always liked the boy.”

“You just told me he wasn’t good enough for me.”

“That’s before you told me he was a nice Jewish boy. Why am I just hearing this?”

“Because he didn’t know. We were talking about our parents and he mentioned that his mom died when he was a baby. He said his father never talks about her because there’s a lot of bad blood between the two sides of the family. His dad’s Catholic and his mother was from a pretty conservative Jewish family apparently.”

“Then he’s Jewish.”

“That’s what I told him. Then I asked him if he wanted a bagel.”

“Wicked girl. In my day we didn’t talk to men like that. Well...I did. But most women didn’t.”

“I can’t help myself,” Flash said. “He’s infuriating. I can’t stand being around him. I want to insult him and yell at him and put a ‘kick me’ sign on his back. He turns me into a child. I’m twenty-six. I should be able to talk to a man I’m attracted to without insulting him.”

“You’re in love.”

“Yup.”

“And you’re scared.”

“Yup.”

“Sit up straight and talk to me like a grown woman, Veronica Redding. We’re adults here. Let’s act like them.” She snapped her fingers and Flash sighed and sat up straighter.

“You don’t have much room to talk,” Flash said. “You’re Jewish but you’re addicted to frosted Christmas cookies and you make me buy them for you so your son won’t find out.”

“Where did I go wrong with that boy?”

“Your son runs an entire hospital. He calls you every day. He checks on you three times a week. And he’s nice to me. Nobody’s nice to me but he’s nice to me.”

“Yes, but he has no sense of humor. My son should have a sense of humor. If he caught me with these, he’d throw them in the trash and tell me I shouldn’t be eating goyische food.”

“That’s terrible. If he catches you with them, tell him they’re mine and you were just holding them for me.”

Mrs. Scheinberg laughed. “He’d see right through it.”

“Fine, I’ll keep smuggling them to you. As long as you share.”

“I always share with my girl,” Mrs. Scheinberg said, leaning forward to pat Flash on the knee. “Now tell me more about Mr. Asher. Why were you two talking about mothers?”

“I don’t even remember how we got on the topic. I put in my notice and said goodbye. I was already to the truck when he came out and asked me to stop by his new house and help him with a project. He’s got this fireplace thing that needs some major repairs and it’s...wow. It’s a work of art. But it’s rusted and broken.”

“It needs your help.”

“It does.”

“So you’re going help Mr. Asher?”

“No.”

“You told him no? Are you that angry at the man?”

“I’m not angry at him. I’m not. Not really. Not much, anyway.”

Mrs. Scheinberg raised her eyebrow.

“Okay, I’m angry at him,” Flash said. “He dumped me.”

“You work for him. You expect too much of a man when you ask him to compromise his integrity so you can have a boyfriend.”

“He shouldn’t have slept with me if he felt that way.”

“No, he shouldn’t have. But you were there, too. Don’t act like you were some kind of victim. We both know you were after him even before that night.”

Flash smiled. “I was after him. You would be, too, if you saw him.”

“Oh, I’ve seen him.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“I Googled him. Handsome, very handsome. Nice face, nice hair and nice eyes. Big shoulders. Good strong neck. I loved Dr. Scheinberg’s neck. I liked to nibble it at stoplights in the car. He’d drive home a little faster when I did.”

“Mrs. Scheinberg!”

She waved her hand again, poo-pooing Flash’s shock.

“Don’t be silly. We were married. Sex between a husband and a wife is a mitzvah. And, oh, was it a mitzvah with him.”

“I should do a mitzvah for Ian. I was...not nice to him.”

Mrs. Scheinberg had explained mitzvot were something like commandments. But more than that, more like good deeds or blessings.

“What happened?” Mrs. Scheinberg asked. “And do I want to know?”

“He offered me his friendship and I said no way. He offered to pay me for helping him fix his fireplace screen, and I said I’d do it if he slept with me.”

“Young lady, that is shameful.”

“I know, I know.” Flash buried her head in her hands before looking up again. “He’s never going to love me. Men like that don’t love women like me. They screw women like me. They don’t marry women like me and make me part of their perfect prissy lives.”

“Women like you? What’s a woman like you?”

“I’m blue collar. Ian is very white collar. Seriously, he has the whitest collars I’ve ever seen. He must own stock in a bleach company.”

“I was a welder, too, and I married a doctor.”

“You were a teenage welder because you were helping with the war effort.”

“My mother was a housewife and my father a baker. We were poor, dear. And Dr. Scheinberg was anything but. Now stop with the inferiority complex. Any man would be lucky to have you. Including Mr. Ian Asher. Especially Mr. Ian Asher. And I think he knows it already, which is why he offered his friendship.”

Mrs. Scheinberg stood up and wiped her hands on a lacy handkerchief that Flash guessed had belonged to her mother, much like everything else in this room.

“I think he’s afraid of me.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Mrs. Scheinberg said over her shoulder as she walked to her dining room table. “It isn’t like you’ve purposely tried to terrorize him by playing schoolyard pranks on him.”

“I’m not very good at relationships.”

“You’ll get better with practice.”

“What should I do?”

“I think you should apologize to him for trying to buy his body.”

“But it’s such a nice body.” Flash sighed. “Do you think I should try being friends with him?”

“Being just friends with someone you’re in love with can be hard. And dishonest if you’re only using the friendship in the hopes of it becoming something more.” Mrs. Scheinberg took the lid of a blue-and-white box on her table and removed something from the box wrapped in blue velvet.

“What’s that?”

“My Hanukkiah, but you’d call it a menorah, my darling gentile,” Mrs. Scheinberg said as she carefully unwrapped a silver nine-branched candelabrum. “Moshe gave it to me after he and his wife came back from their last trip to Israel. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Flash walked over to the table and sat down, studying the menorah. It was beautiful. She touched the base—real silver.

“When does Hanukkah start?” she asked.

“Tomorrow evening. Moshe and Hannah are coming over. And Tova, too. If you can behave yourself for one evening, you can come. We’d love to have you.”

Flash gave Mrs. Scheinberg a skeptical look.

“Well, I’d love to have you,” Mrs. Scheinberg said. “Hannah thinks you’re a little strange. I said you’re not strange. You’re a BMW. I didn’t tell her what that meant.”

Flash laughed. BMW stood for Burly Mountain Woman, which is what the tough ladies who lived on Mount Hood often called themselves.

“Can you fetch me the silver polish? It’s under the sink.”

Flash found the polish but before leaving Mrs. Scheinberg’s kitchen she paused and studied the photographs on the refrigerator. They were all of Mrs. Scheinberg with her family—her two sons, her seven grandchildren, an old black-and-white photo of her and her husband, Dr. Lawrence Scheinberg, who’d been movie-star handsome in his prime, a young Humphrey Bogart with thick wavy hair. One photograph was from last year, all the family gathered around a table with Mrs. Scheinberg’s silver menorah front and center. Mrs. Scheinberg had been lighting the very last candle when the photograph had been taken. Everyone in the picture wore a beautiful smile, the same smile, the smile of family. Flash felt a pang of sympathy for Ian. He’d never gotten to take a family photograph like this with his mother and grandparents and cousins. He’d never had the chance to celebrate the holidays that were part of his heritage, never a chance to light a candle on a menorah.

“Mrs. Scheinberg?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Are there rules about menorahs? I mean, Hanukkiahs?”

“Rules? What do you mean?”

She brought Mrs. Scheinberg the silver polish and a chamois.

“Rules about how they have to be made? Or blessed?”

“It should have nine branches, nine candle holders or nine oil holders. Usually eight are in a line. The ninth has to be higher than the other eight.”

“That’s it?”

“They should be made well. That’s all I can think of. Why do you ask?”

Flash opened the bottle of cleaner and went to work polishing the menorah for Mrs. Scheinberg. She had arthritis in her hands and Flash knew it pained her.

“I have an idea for a mitzvah to do for Ian.”

4

IAN SPENT ALL day working on the new house and trying not to think about Flash. He stripped the old paper out of the downstairs bathroom, sanded the drywall and repainted it the same deep forest green as the living room walls. A huge job for one man and it took him from seven in the morning until five that evening to finish the work. By dinnertime, he was sore, tired and covered in paint and wall dust. He was hungry, too, but couldn’t bring himself to eat until he’d cleaned up. He stood under the hot water in the shower for as long as he could stand the heat. He’d hoped the hard work would distract him from thinking about Flash but it didn’t, not even close. She’d been on his mind from sunrise until sunset, and if tonight were anything like last night, she’d be on his mind until dawn. Why couldn’t he just forget about her? She didn’t like him. She only liked having sex with him. He wanted more than that. She didn’t. She didn’t even want to be friends with him. Maybe she was smart to turn down his offer of friendship. Likely she saw right through it and knew he wanted more than she was willing to give him. Or she knew he was desperate to get closer to her and she simply liked to torture him.

Reluctantly he turned off the shower when the hot water started to run out. He toweled off, pulled on his jeans, ran his fingers through his hair, and walked out of the bathroom.

“Goddamn, you take long showers,” Flash said. Ian stared into the master bedroom where Flash Redding sat in a leather armchair. He didn’t see all of her because the back of the chair faced the bathroom door. It hadn’t before he’d gotten into the shower but she must have turned it around while he was in the bathroom. He saw her legs dangling over the chair arm and her beat-up red Pumas dangling off her feet. Of course she wore Pumas. Nike owned one half of Portland and Adidas owned the other half. Even her sneakers were subversive.

“Flash, what the fuck are you doing in my house?”

“You invited me over.”

“Yesterday. I invited you over yesterday. And you came over yesterday. And then you left. That wasn’t an open invitation to come into my house anytime you wanted.”

“Should I leave?”

“I don’t know. Tell me why you’re here, and I’ll tell you if you should leave or not.”

“Are you decent?”

“I have jeans on.”

“Bummer.”

“You were trying to catch me naked?” he asked as he walked over and tossed his towel in the laundry hamper. She wore burgundy skinny jeans and a white sleeveless undershirt, which she called a “wifebeater” no matter how many times he told her she shouldn’t use that term. Her brown bomber jacket hung off the bedpost knob.

“No, but I wouldn’t have complained if you were.”

“You know this is creepy, right? You coming into my house while I’m in the shower?” He hated how much he liked seeing her making herself at home in his place. Especially since she was technically breaking and entering.

“Is it?”

“Let’s do a little role reversal here. You’re in the shower—”

She started to take her shirt off.

“Not actually in the shower,” he said.

“Fine. Go on.” She lowered her arms.

“You’re in the shower at your place and you walk out of the shower and I’m in your living room. How does that make you feel?” Ian asked.

“I don’t know,” Flash said. “Why are you in my living room in this scenario?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter. If you’re in my living room to rob me, I’d be pissed. If you were in my living room to surprise me with red velvet cupcakes, I’d be happy. If you were in my living room because you’re running from killer ninjas, then I would be surprised because I’m not entirely sure ninjas exist, and if they do, I highly doubt you’d get mixed up in anything that would make ninjas want to kill you. But I wouldn’t be mad. I’d be impressed you got away from them. And then I would go join up with them because I’ve always wanted to be a ninja,” Flash said.

“Flash.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you in my house?”

“I have a gift for you.”

If she’d said she was in his house to assassinate him because she herself was a ninja and had been given orders to kill him, he would have been less surprised than he was at that moment when Flash Redding, a woman he was dead certain loathed him, said she had a gift for him.

“It’s not a throwing star, is it?”

“No, but I could make one if you want one. I’ve never made one before, though. That’s a lie. I have made them. I’ve made lots of them.”

“Flash.”

“What?”

“You’re behaving very strangely.”

“How am I behaving?”

“You’re being...adorable,” he said. “And kind of nice. It’s freaking me out.”

“Imagine how I feel.”

He pulled a plain black T-shirt out of his clean laundry basket and pulled it on. This was not a conversation he should be having half-dressed. He needed to be fully dressed and probably a bulletproof vest wouldn’t hurt, either.

“What are you doing here, Veronica?” he asked, hoping if he used her real name he’d get the real person to talk.

“You wanted to be friends with me and I said no. I changed my mind. I have some friends who feel comfortable coming over to my place and making themselves at home. I thought it was what close friends did. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out. It’s twenty-two degrees out and you didn’t answer the door when I knocked even though I know you’re here because I saw your car in the garage window. I came in instead of freezing to death in my truck. I heard you in the shower so I waited outside not facing the shower in case you walk around in the buff like I do.”

“Okay,” he said. “That’s a semireasonable statement. I have some friends who’d do the same thing. So...we’re friends now?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not, but I wanted to give you something, anyway, as an apology for my bad behavior the past few months. You know, the thing with the truck nuts and what not. So here.” She picked up a box that she’d set on the floor by the leather chair and thrust it into his hands. Then she picked up her jacket and started to leave the room.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“I gave you the thing,” she said.

“You aren’t going to stay and watch me open it?”

“Is that something you’re into?” she asked.

“I...guess? I think so? Plus if it’s a bomb I want to make sure you get hit, too.”

“Good idea. But it’s not a bomb.”

“What is it?”

“Open it,” she said.

“Fine. I’m opening it.” He sat down in the chair and ripped the brown paper off the box and opened the lid. There was something wrapped in white tissue paper inside. Too big to be a throwing star. Too small to be a bomb. Unless it was a very small bomb.

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