“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 a
nything 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.”