Page 38 of Second to None
But her most immediate concern was Diego, who couldn’t remain in the unheated building all night.
She tapped out,Come to my house. Bring Mario with you. Windy will share her dog stuff so you don’t need to bring anything else.
She threw on her clothes before dialing the repairman’s emergency contact number.
“Hey, Emily, that old boiler done conked out again before I could get you a new one?” Coleman asked.
Hearing his gravelly voice calmed her. “With its usual terrible timing.”
“Yeah, old man winter has settled in. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
“You’re the best.”
“Tell my wife that.”
She laughed and hung up before going to tell Izzy they were having company, something her daughter considered a high treat.
*
The next morning in the furnace room, Coleman stood in his usual stance of hands on hips while he shook his head. “It’s well and truly dead this time.” His words came out in puffs of frozen vapor.
Emily shoved her gloved hands in her coat pockets and fought off panic as she stared at the exposed innards of the dead furnace. “So what do we do now?”
“I’ll put heat wraps on your pipes and hope to keep ’em from freezing.”
“But what about a new boiler?”
“I told you, I can’t get nothing this big in before the holidays.”
The panic was rising in her throat. “Doesn’t someone rent emergency replacement boilers? This must happen to other buildings.”
He shook his head again. “Other buildings replace their boilers before they reach this point. This is what you call a catastrophic failure. I’m real sorry.” He looked at her. “I’ll make some phone calls, but I don’t want to get your hopes up. You should probably be finding another place for the big party.”
That’s when she knew what she had to do. There was only one person who could solve this problem. The man with an executive assistant who could get anything done on short notice.
She squeezed her eyes closed as a tangle of emotions tightened in her chest. She’d already burst into his office to beg for his help once. How much worse was it to ask again after breaking up with him?
At least this time she could pay for her favor ... using his foundation’s money.
She grimaced at the irony.
“Does that estimate you sent me have all the information on it that I’d need to order a new boiler?” she asked Coleman.
“Yes, ma’am, it does. But the earliest delivery date I could get on the equipment is ten days from now.”
“If I can get it sooner, I promise you will be in charge of the installation,” Emily said.
Jogging up the steps to her office, she pulled up the estimate on her computer. Then she took a deep breath and dialed Max’s cell phone, hoping he didn’t simply ignore her call.
It went to voice mail, and she dropped her head onto her desk in frustration as the recording told her to leave a message. “Max, it’s Emily. This is not personal. I need your help with an emergency at the center. But we can pay for it, thanks to you. Please call me as soon as you can.”
She disconnected and stared down at her phone’s screen. Would he delete the message without listening to it? Should she call his office number as a backup?
No, she would send an e-mail with Coleman’s specifications attached. If he didn’t respond to that, either, she would know he wanted nothing more to do with her.
In the meantime, she needed to borrow every space heater she could get her hands on.
Three hours later, when she was praying the circuit breaker didn’t blow as she plugged in the fifteenth space heater, her cell phone rang.
