Farrah Rochon - Stay with Me Forever

“Stop taking such a hard line,” Sawyer said. “Budgets get blown all the time. The last three projects I worked on for the state all were over budget by at least 30 percent. The extra money is already figured into the state’s budget, because they know the projects will go over.”

“Not on my projects,” she said. “I don’t know how you state boys operate, but one of the things that makes me a good project manager with Bolt-Myer is my accuracy for hitting my budgets and my completion date targets. This project in Gauthier will be no different.”

“You’re determined to make this difficult, aren’t you? Are you doing this just to spite me?”

She turned her chair toward him, her face full of haughty indignation. “How much weight does that giant ego add when you step on your bathroom scale in the mornings?”

Sawyer ran both hands down his face. It was a conceited thing to say. It was also unfair. Within the first hour of working with her Sawyer had already determined that she was, above all else, a professional.

He held his hands out to her. “I just don’t want everything to turn into a fight, Paxton. I want you to be open to hearing my side of things.”

“I am open to hearing your side. This isn’t a dictatorship,” she said. “As long as you understand that when it comes down to the final decision, it’s my ass that’s on the line. You get to return to your safe government job, but my job security is tied to my performance.

“I have more riding on this project than you can possibly know, Sawyer, and I will not allow anything to interfere with it. Are we clear on that?”

The intensity in her stare matched the seriousness in her voice. He wanted to refute her words, but they were true. He didn’t have as much at stake when it came to his job. He would be fine no matter what.

But this wasn’t his typical project. His concern superseded his personal well-being. This was about Gauthier.

“We’re clear,” Sawyer answered. “This isn’t just a job to you. I get that. But it isn’t just a job to me, either. I don’t go into work every day just to collect a paycheck. As I’m sure you know, I don’t need to,” he said before she had the chance to throw it in his face. “However, when it comes to this particular project, I am just as invested as you are. The people of Gauthier deserve the best flood protection system we can provide, and as long as I’m the engineer on this project they’re going to get it. You need to keep that in mind when you think about your budgets. Now, are you clear about that ?”

She held her jaw so rigid Sawyer was certain it would shatter. Several long, intense moments passed between them, sending the tension in the small conference room into the stratosphere.

Paxton was the first to break. If she’d waited two seconds longer, he would have beaten her to it.

Dammit. He could not take an entire month of these showdowns. He would go crazy.

“I’m willing to compromise on some issues,” she said. “ If you can prove that they will make a significant difference to the overall effectiveness of the system. You don’t get to just throw something out there because it’s this cool new technology that you’ve been dying to use.”

It irritated the hell out of him that she would assume that he could be so frivolous, but Sawyer wasn’t up for yet another face-off so soon. He was still catching his breath from the last one.

“Fine,” he said. “So, are we going with the titanium valves?”

She popped a potato chip in her mouth, dusted off her fingers and said, “No. Next item.”

Chapter 3

Paxton pulled into a slanted parking slot two spaces down from the entrance to the Gauthier Law Firm. She grabbed her briefcase from the passenger seat and exited the car. As she rounded her front bumper, she looked up and down Main Street, and stopped short. The cashmere-silver BMW 750i that she secretly coveted—yeah, she’d looked up the base price; it was way out of her budget even before she’d bought Belinda the bar—was not it its usual parking spot.

Had she actually made it here before Sawyer?

Yes!

She was going to switch those desks. She was getting her window seat today, dammit.

Paxton raced into the law office, waving a quick hello to Carmen before heading down the hallway. She opened the conference room door and halted.

Sawyer, who sat at his desk sipping from a paper cup with the Jazzy Bean’s logo, was scribbling on a notepad. He looked up at her.

“What are you doing here?” Paxton asked, her shoulders falling in defeat as she shuffled over to her desk with much less enthusiasm.

“Good morning to you, too,” he said with a chuckle. “Why are you out of breath? Have you been running?”

“Only from my car to here,” she answered. She set her briefcase on her desk, then walked over to his.

He had on his reading glasses, the bronze wire-rimmed ones that looked so good on him it made her want to scream.

“You’re early,” he said.

It was ten minutes after eight, which meant she was technically late, but since she’d spent the past week coming in after eight-thirty, she was early today.

“Where’s your car?” Paxton asked.

He handed her a cup of coffee. “The mechanic’s shop.”

She hadn’t noticed the second coffee cup on his desk. Her heart performed a ridiculous flip-flop at his sweet gesture.

“Thank you. And good morning,” she added. She took a sip of the slightly cooled coffee. It had just the right amount of cream and sugar, which meant Shayla Kirkland, the owner of the Jazzy Bean, had likely made it herself. Her best friend knew how Paxton preferred her coffee.

“Did you walk here?” she asked him. Paxton made a habit of not listening to gossip—hard to do in this small town, which fed off gossip the way mosquitoes fed off blood—but she’d heard that Sawyer had bought a house on Willow Street, which was less than ten minutes away on foot.

“I could have, but as muggy as it is this morning I was afraid I’d need a shower after I got here. I’m driving my dad’s old Buick for the next few days.” He grimaced.

“The burgundy one?” She couldn’t stop the sharp laugh that escaped. “I don’t know how I missed seeing it parked out there.”

“Yeah, the burgundy one,” Sawyer said. “I hate that car.”

“I can’t believe it’s still running. It has to be over twenty years old.”

Paxton could remember Sawyer driving his dad’s car during their senior year of high school, which was twenty years ago this year. She’d missed the reunion this past summer, purposely filling in for a coworker on a job in Memphis so she’d have an excuse. If given the choice to revisit her high school years or frolic through a minefield, she would choose the minefield.

“It’s twenty-two years old,” Sawyer said. “My dad loved that damn thing. He went through four cars after it, but he refused to get rid of the Buick.”

“You didn’t have a problem with it back in high school,” Paxton pointed out.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he said with a laugh.

Sawyer had driven the Buick up until the week following the big state championship game, when his father had surprised him with a brand-new pickup truck as a reward for leading the Lions to victory and being named MVP for the season.

The shiny black truck had been parked in front of the school with a big red bow on the hood. They had all later learned that the truck also counted as Sawyer’s birthday, Christmas and graduation presents that year, but it was still a huge deal. There were not many families in Gauthier who could afford to buy their teens brand-new cars. The lucky ones got their parents’ hand-me-downs, and were more than grateful for it.