Hot to Touch

  Hot to Touch

  Layla Valentine

  Contents

  1. Naomi

  2. Naomi

  3. Naomi

  4. Ace

  5. Naomi

  6. Naomi

  7. Naomi

  8. Naomi

  9. Naomi

  10. Ace

  11. Naomi

  12. Naomi

  13. Ace

  14. Naomi

  15. Naomi

  16. Ace

  17. Naomi

  18. Naomi

  Also by Layla Valentine

  Copyright 2020 by Layla Valentine

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Naomi

  “What do you mean, the team only tested the system twice after installation? This is a thirty-million-dollar contract!” I said with a huff into my cellphone as I strode out of Aspen/Pitkin County Airport. My single roller bag rattled along behind me as I moved through the crowd.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Richards, but the chief operations officer said we only had the budget for two run-throughs. He told us to stop after that.” The assistant on the other end of the line sounded mildly terrified—but unlike many of my associates at Archimedes Gears, I had never been the type to shoot the messenger.

  “Ian again,” I muttered, knowing the COO in question was lagging behind too far to overhear. “I ordered ten run-throughs, not two. Doesn’t the head of Engineering realize that I outrank Ian Shaw? This project has two of my patents!”

  Life as the CEO at Archimedes Gears never had a dull moment. I was always putting out fires or dealing with unpleasant surprises. Toss in the toxic old-boy network that resented answering to a woman half their average age, and I found I had to fight hard for things that should have sailed through without resistance.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, really,” the assistant said. She was younger than me, stuck in the dead end that was the clerical department. And of course, she was forced to break the news, instead of the man responsible, who was literally behind my back. She continued, “I just thought it was better that you know. Is there some way that you can work in an extra test on the cable car before you take the clients up the mountain?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  I could hear Ian struggling to keep up behind me, puffing as he moved.

  I suppressed a groan of frustration. Every time I turned around, he was sabotaging another of my projects with his impatience, his corner-cutting—and his eagerness to take the credit for my hard-earned successes.

  Worse, he wanted to sleep with me. He wasn’t very blatant about it, and considering he had half my muscle tone and no backbone, I never felt unsafe around him. He was just…annoying, and persistent, and once he had realized it would never happen, spiteful.

  “Thank you for the warning,” I told the assistant. “I’m sure Shaw would never have told me on his own.” Because he was a cowardly, backstabbing little weasel. The only advantage he had over me was that he didn’t have to fight to get the cooperation of every engineer, administrator, and board member in the place. And for the stupidest reason ever.

  “I understand, ma’am. Is there anything I can do?” She sounded relieved.

  I had shown a little too much of my pent-up fury over all of this, and I felt bad about it now.

  “Just keep your ear to the ground.” I hung up, then quietly sent her a bonus from my discretionary fund. Despite my best efforts, none of the rank and file at Archimedes got paid enough.

  I looked back at Ian, glaring daggers at him as I waited a few moments for him to catch up. He was reedy and colorless, and smirked at me as I waited.

  “Hurry up, we’re running late,” I snapped at him, and he colored slightly, the smirk dropping off his face. “Damn, Ian, don’t you ever hit the gym?”

  “I prefer to exercise my mind.” He sniffed haughtily between wheezes for air.

  Now it was my turn to smirk.

  “And yet, I’m the engineer.”

  I had to spar with him. Our usual running half-argument covered up the urge to publicly dress him down for his undermining both my authority and my project.

  I saved that for a private space instead—inside the hired car that drove us up to the High Peak Ski Resort, several miles away.

  Crammed against the door on my side of the limousine, I made sure the soundproof barrier between the driver and us was closed, then turned a full-force scowl on Ian.

  “You want to explain why you’ve left me walking into a client demo of a barely tested custom cable lift installation?”

  He jumped slightly, the smirk wobbling on and off of his lips as his nerve kept failing him. “Testing ten times onsite would have been a waste of money,” he insisted. “I couldn’t possibly justify it to the board.”

  “It wasn’t up to you to justify it to the board. That’s my job. It was your job to back my play and make sure that those tests were completed.”

  It was a huge risk for us to sign off on an improperly tested project—especially this one. The cable car meandered up the slope over some of the most picturesque forest and rock formations in the Aspen area—and then crossed a jagged chasm deep enough to kill every passenger on impact if the cables failed.

  “You act like we’d be on the hook for a wrongful death lawsuit or something.” Ian chuckled nervously—and then went very quiet as he saw my face.

  “Try up to sixty. That’s the cable car’s capacity. The backup system, the emergency retrieval system, none of that is optional. Neither was the testing. But every time I try to complete part of what needs to be done to fulfill our contract to this client, I find you there tripping me up. Where are your priorities, Ian? Did you even read the contract with High Peak?”

  His blank look wasn’t very encouraging.

  “You didn’t, then. Why am I not surprised?”

  I sighed and stared out the window, forcing myself to calm down.

  I remembered my mother yelling at my dad the same way, back when I was a kid, frustrated to no end of battering herself against the brick wall of his head. Meanwhile, he would just stare at her, baffled and confused—not by her argument, but by the fact that she was actually yelling at him at all.

  I took a deep breath. Mom had let the stress drive her into an early grave. And my father, second-generation millionaire and founder of Archimedes Gears, had followed her a few years ago—right before I had become CEO.

  I had never gotten the chance to prove my worth as an engineer or business head to my father, even though I had already cleared my first billion before I was out of my twenties. He had gone before I could get him to acknowledge I was as good for the family and the business as any son.

  Now, I wanted to get some respect as his heir—as I had already earned the top position, climbing on sheer merit and tenacity from the lowest rank of engineers on up to the CEO’s office. But standing in my way at every turn was Ian Shaw, who wanted my body, and credit for my accomplishments—and most importantly, my job.

  “I need you to buy me time to get one more test in before we embarrass ourselves getting them up the mountain,” I told him, planning to risk my outfit double-checking the system during a ride-through. Better that than having to explain a failure.

  He lifted his chin, fold
ing his arms across his thin chest obstinately. “No deal. They’re impatient for results, Naomi. They’re still riding that creaky old thing that we’re replacing.”

  And then he realized what he had just admitted, and the stubborn look wavered just as his smug expression had.

  “So you’ve been talking to the client behind my back, too.” I sighed, looking away from him in disgust. “I should have guessed.”

  How the hell do I handle this?

  Everything I did at Archimedes felt like I was doing it in the middle of a minefield. One wrong step and it would blow up in my face. But this time, it was Ian stepping wrong—again—and I had to handle it.

  “You’re gambling with the company’s reputation to try and make yourself look good,” I informed him. “It’s a stupid ploy. If anything goes wrong today, I’ll make sure that you answer for it.”

  He stared at me, lips trembling, then looked away sullenly. “It’s the right call,” he insisted.

  “It wasn’t yours to make,” I said in such a cold, implacable voice that he actually went quiet for a while.

  The resort was gorgeous, its many ski slopes nestled among imposing crags and stands of ancient-looking trees. The main building sat at the base of the slopes, with our cable car and its older companion wandering upward from there to the mountaintop lodge.

  The main building rambled along the bottom of a mountain pass, surrounded by deeper chasms on two sides. The entire complex was built of whole logs and massive stones, reinforced by steel beams and concrete. It had withstood three head-on avalanches in its history: a rustically pretty fortress.

  Ian was eager to catch up with our clients. I needed to get away from him before I lost my temper. And I knew that if his was the first face the clients saw, and there was a disaster, they would associate him with it primarily, instead of me. That was exactly what I wanted right now.

  “Go right ahead,” I said. “Text on your way back down. I’m getting coffee.”

  I watched him eagerly toddle off to one of the elevators. I needed caffeine and a fortifying dose of sugar.

  The coffee shop off the lobby had iced white chocolate mochas. That would take care of me for now.

  As I headed that direction, my gaze fell on a figure who was sitting inside, crammed onto one of its chairs with his legs jutting most of the way under his little round table. He wore dark blue tactical uniform pants and a tank top that showed off his powerful, eye-catching arms, and his shining blond hair stuck out in cowlicks from hiking in the wind.

  My eyes drank him in as I drew nearer; he was half turned away, oblivious, one tanned, tattooed arm flexed as he gripped his mocha cup. The colorful tat sleeves dizzied me with their detail for a moment before I dragged my gaze away.

  Breath coming in short gulps, I turned my back on him to face the counter as I walked in, somehow staying aware of his presence more than anything the whole time I stumbled through my order.

  Holy cow, I thought, already feeling a rush of heat through me even though I hadn’t yet even seen his face.

  I was no stranger to crushes. Growing up with an army of private tutors, online classes, and the occasional small college-level seminar, I hadn’t been prepared for life around college-aged men. Some of them had left me completely fluttery, and of course, with no real idea of what to do about it. Even after I had completed school, that same sense of helpless, twitterpated cluelessness had haunted me around any man that I was really attracted to.

  That was why I had almost no experience with sex and dating. If a guy didn’t make me weak in the knees like that, I didn’t see the point of dating him. And if he did…I got shy as hell and had no idea how to approach him.

  Now, there was a man of that caliber right behind me. A man who gave me that feeling even before I looked into his eyes. Dangerous. Distracting. I needed to focus on the presentation. But as I took my cup and stepped back from the counter to find a table, he grabbed my attention again.

  “Hey.”

  The deep, rich voice behind me could only have belonged to one person. I felt it down to my toes.

  I turned around and looked into eyes the same deep, rich blue as the summer sky outside. They twinkled as the tattooed guy smiled at me, and I forgot how to breathe.

  “You want to come sit with me?” he asked, so much warmth in his voice that I started moving toward his table before I even thought about it.

  “Hi,” I managed as I settled into the chair across from him. Our knees brushed. My throat closed. Shit.

  He had the rugged, tanned good looks of a guy who lived life physically, either working with his hands or playing so hard that his office job didn’t show in his body or his face. I had a particular weakness for fit guys, ones who could keep up with me—and this one looked like he could wear me out.

  I crossed my legs under the table. Don’t think about that or you’ll make a fool of yourself again.

  “I’m Ace Larsen,” he said easily, his white teeth flashing in a smile, “You look like you just got out of a board meeting. What’s your name?”

  “Going into one, actually,” I admitted. “It’s Naomi, Naomi Richards.”

  I set my cup down on the table and offered my hand, lapsing into formality before I could stop myself. At least work-mode was familiar. “Archimedes Gears, we’re installing the new cable car system.”

  “Ah. Stopped for some caffeine?”

  I nodded—and then froze as his enormous, warm hand engulfed mine.

  Oh God.

  For a moment, sitting in that crowded little shop, all I could think about was that huge, slightly callused hand sliding over my bare skin. I forgot to blink.

  He shook my hand very gently, and when he let me go, the absence of his skin on mine made me ache.

  I knew in that moment that I was already done for, bare minutes after seeing this man for the first time. Just like my other crushes, I was going to be thinking about this guy for months.

  And just like with the others, I had no idea what to do about it.

  It took everything I had to force myself to answer him. “Yeah. My partner on this project is trying to round up the guys we’re meeting with. I needed a breather.” I didn’t feel like wasting time bitching about Ian with this amazing guy. Looking into those eyes, I felt like Ian stopped existing.

  “I see,” he rumbled, smile going a little lopsided. “But if you’re gonna run off soon, that means I’ve got to ask for your phone number now.”

  I blinked at him in shock. This wasn’t in the script. Most guys didn’t take the initiative with me unless they wanted a hookup. And none of those had made me feel like this.

  “O—oh,” I managed.

  His eyebrows rose a little. “Oh wow. You’re a little shy, aren’t you?”

  I swallowed and nodded, and his smile softened, going from amused to warm.

  “Oh, well then. I’ll make it easy on you. Here’s mine.”

  He fished in his pocket, coming out with a black metal wallet with a card carrier. He pulled out a printed business card with an Aspen skyline on it.

  I accepted it, distractedly taking a swallow of my mocha. His name was embossed on the card, along with a title that surprised me.

  “You’re a firefighter?”

  “Yeah, and part of the local search and rescue. I’m on call a lot.” His smile widened slightly. “But sometimes that means I can go hiking or skiing in the middle of the day.”

  “Sounds good. Some of the lush trails outside made me wish I had brought a change of clothes and my hiking boots. I usually don’t have time. I’m running the show day-to-day over in Denver.”

  “Oh wow, you’re a CEO? I thought you said you were an engineer.”

  “Well, many of our projects are based on my work.”

  “That’s impressive.” His lips quirked. “So, are you running back to work after this, or are you staying in Aspen tonight?”

  “Just overnight, the presentation’s going to run through dinner likely.” My heart star
ted pounding as I saw the gears turning in his head.

  “Call me if you want a drink afterward,” he purred, and I could see from the gleam in his eyes that a drink was only the beginning of what he was offering.

  I squeezed my knees together under the small table. After a terrible start, my day had suddenly gotten a lot better.

  Chapter 2

  Naomi

  An hour later, twenty minutes into being back on the clock, I found myself wishing I had taken Ace’s hand and simply run off with him, even if all he wanted was a fling. His company would have been much better. It would also have gotten me well away from my current situation: well away from Ian Shaw, his troublemaking, and my own bad luck.

  At least I had gotten Ace’s phone number. But that didn’t comfort me much as I sat across from Ian inside our shiny new cable car gondola—with the clients nowhere in sight.

  “So when did you find out that they were already waiting up on the mountaintop for us?” I demanded as Ian stared sullenly out the gondola window.

  “They had a last-minute change of venue. It wasn’t my fault,” he groused. “And anyway, you got your wish. One last run before anyone else rides on it.”

  He gestured around grandly, while I sighed and rolled my eyes.

  At least everything was working properly so far. The completely automated system moved us almost soundlessly upward, the stabilizers kept swaying to a minimum even in the swirling wind, and the polarized windows and top-notch insulation kept the heat and glare down.

  “So far, so good,” I murmured to myself, but I didn’t trust it. Murphy’s Law of engineering said that what you didn’t test enough was exactly what would fail in front of a client. I had seen it happen twice—at the hands of other engineers, not on any of my projects. But this one…this had been my baby, until Ian had meddled so much that I could barely even say that anymore.