She’d been both surprised and relieved at how easily she and Sawyer had fallen into their own little bubbles while working together. He’d spent most of the past week catching up on the project, while she’d focused on the hundreds—literally hundreds—of line items on her master to-do list.
The most important bullet on her list was the preparation for the stakeholders’ information session. Paxton had taken to calling it a town hall meeting when discussing it with residents, hoping that the less formal title would encourage more people to attend. As with every major project, Bolt-Myer was required to inform the members of the community what would take place over the eight months while the first stage of the three-stage flood protection system was being constructed and to answer any questions residents may have.
Paxton had facilitated a number of meetings like this in the past, but she knew this one would be different. It wasn’t as if she had anything to prove to the people in Gauthier, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to show them just what the girl who had been raised by a single mother from the wrong side of the creek had made of herself.
She put in her headphones and turned the volume up on the classical music she preferred to listen to while she worked. She’d become so immersed in reviewing the request for proposals from local subcontractors vying for the various jobs that would have to be filled once construction was under way that she nearly jumped out of her seat when Sawyer tapped her on the shoulder.
“Goodness!” she yelped, clutching a hand to her chest. Paxton jerked the headphones off. “What?”
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I tried calling out to you, but you have that music so loud that I can hear it even with the speakers over your ears.”
“You should have said something sooner if it was bothering you,” Paxton said.
“It isn’t. That’s not what I wanted to speak to you about.”
Her brow rose.
“I need you to come over to the table,” Sawyer said. “I want to show you something.”
She didn’t like the forbidding she heard in his voice or the frown lines creasing the corners of his mouth. Trepidation skirted along her spine as she rose from her chair and followed him to the other side of the conference room, closer to his desk.
Over the past week the conference table had slowly acquired more and more items. It was now covered with stacks of papers, file folders and blueprints. Several topography maps of the east side of Gauthier, not too far from the elementary and middle school, were stretched across the table, their ends held down with a stapler, the polished rock that usually sat on Sawyer’s desk and two empty coffee mugs.
Sawyer pointed to an area not too far from Mount Zion Baptist Church.
“I hope I’m wrong about this,” he said. “But if I’m right, it can stop this entire project dead in its tracks.”
* * *
Standing at the conference table, Sawyer’s eyes slid shut for a moment as he soaked in the sensation of his body being so close to Paxton’s. Mere inches separated them as they hunched over the topography maps he’d spread across the space. She’d taken off her jacket; the belt cinched at her waist accentuating her small frame. His fingers itched to wrap themselves around her. His gaze traveled up to her delicately curved chin, past her full mouth and those hazel eyes, which were narrowed with determination as she focused on the maps.
Sawyer caught a whiff of the coconut-and-mango lotion she kept on her desk, along with something else he couldn’t identify. That intoxicating scent had tortured him in the most pleasurable way this past week. He smelled her in his sleep, invading his dreams.
It had become a test of his will to fight the urge to call out her name as he lay in bed at night, manually relieving himself of the pent-up sexual tension that flooded his body. He failed each and every night. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop himself from uttering her name in that moment when he found his release.
It didn’t matter that they’d spent only one night together, or that he’d had a wife and two additional casual love affairs since that one explosive evening he and Paxton had shared. When it was time to conjure a fantasy, she was always the star.
Sawyer studied the column of her neck, his eyes moving hungrily up the delicate expanse of skin. His tongue darted out on its own accord, the need for just a quick taste of her nearly overcoming his common sense.
“So, what’s the issue?” she asked, catapulting him out of his fantasy.
Sawyer cleared his throat and took a step back. “What was that?” he asked. Standing this close to her would only lead to trouble.
As if she’d tracked the route his train of thought had taken, she, too, took a step back, putting a bit more distance between them.
“I asked about the issue you’re having with this. I don’t see anything that can put a kink in the project.”
Remembering that he was here to do a job, Sawyer returned his attention to the map. Using a capped pen, he pointed to a spot just left of Landreaux Creek that connected to a bigger tributary of the Pearl River.
“According to this elevation map, this area should be out of the restricted flood zone.” He slid several color printouts out from underneath the binder he’d set there earlier. “However, based on these stats from the aftermath of Tropical Storm Lucy, it saw over two feet of water.”
Paxton’s forehead wrinkled. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, and the urge to run his tongue along the glistening seam made a comeback. Sawyer started running linear equations in his head, hoping it would distract him. It didn’t.
“Maybe it was just overwhelmed,” Paxton said. “I was already in Little Rock by the time Lucy hit, but, according to everything I’ve heard, it dumped a lot of rain in a very short amount of time. Shayla said she was afraid the Jazzy Bean would get some water, and this part of town never floods.”
“Any area can see heavier standing water than usual if enough rain falls on it in a short time,” Sawyer said. “But Lucy was moving at twelve miles an hour. That’s not fast, but still a reasonably steady clip. This area shouldn’t be vulnerable to that kind of flash flooding, especially with it being this high up.” He shook his head. “Something isn’t right here. I think these maps may be off.”
“These are the maps Bolt-Myer’s project engineers used when developing the initial concept package. Trust me, Sawyer—they’re accurate.”
“How sure are you?”
Her back went ramrod straight. “Excuse me?”
“Look, Paxton, I know as project manager you’ve had your hands in every aspect of this project, but I also know that there are a lot of things you have to pay attention to with a project of this size. You trust your engineers to take care of certain things. Now, I want to know how sure you are that these maps are accurate, because based on these flood totals, something isn’t adding up.”
“I think you’re jumping to conclusions.”
Sawyer crossed his arms over his chest. “How do you explain two feet of water in an area that should see no more than a couple of inches at the most?”
“It’s not just the speed of the storm that you have to take into account,” she argued. “The river was also still high from all the snow that melted from that previous winter and traveled down from the north. Gauthier doesn’t have robust pumping stations like the ones in New Orleans and other big cities, so they’re going to get this type of flooding during the perfect storm, even in places that are not flood prone.”
“That’s the thing,” Sawyer said. “This wasn’t the perfect storm. Not even close.” He rounded the table and moved to a map he’d hung on the wall. He pointed the pen cap at the center of the Gulf of Mexico. “Lucy