Stay with Me Forever

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 formed here and lingered over the Gulf for several days before moving north. The eye of the storm followed the Louisiana–Mississippi state line, which means Gauthier wasn’t even on the so-called bad side of the storm. In fact, for the most part, it remained in the lower-left quadrant, which is the best-case scenario.”

“But Lucy was a slow mover,” Paxton countered.

Sawyer shook his head. “That shouldn’t matter. If I’m to believe that the elevation in this area is as high as it is on this map, then Lucy could have lingered for another three days without this part of Gauthier seeing even close to the amount of flooding that it saw.”

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