She narrowed her eyes at him—he didn’t look up from searching for a pencil to see it, but he could feel it—and paused for a second, as if she was debating with herself whether to force talk about the weekend and his mom or jump to business mode.

Business, he urged silently. He was grasping to it by a thin thread himself, fighting off images and memories of Saturday night.

Another few seconds ticked by before she made up her mind. “It’s done. I finished it late last night so you can go over it.” She held out a packet of multiple pages.

“Deadline is a week away?” he asked as he took it from her.

“Yep. We can submit it online, though I’d prefer to do it early.”

“Lot of pages,” he said as he sat back and leafed through them.

“Multiple essay questions. It was worse than a college app.”

“Wouldn’t know. Didn’t go to college,” he said, maybe trying to highlight a difference between them. The first part was a lie though. He’d filled out multiple applications, essays and all, just never sent them in.

“See, I know that but I don’t get it,” Sierra said, and he realized his error in bringing it up. “You’re smart, Cole. Wicked smart. I’ve never seen you use a calculator on bids, but they’re always correct. I check,” she admitted.

He glanced up at her because he hadn’t realized that—that she’d noticed or that she double-checked his math.

“It’s my name on the door,” she said with an unapologetic shrug, proving that she, too, was smart.

He nodded in acknowledgment, turned his attention to the application, ignoring her probe for more info.

The first few pages were short answers, facts, dates, numbers, records, and then there were a couple of pages of three-line answers, and then the long ones. “You handwrote it all?” In turquoise ink, no less.

“I think better that way. I’ll type it in after you’ve read through it.”

“S. Lowell,” he read in the first response. “You think they’ll hold your gender against you?”

“Always a possibility. They’ll figure it out soon enough if we advance.”

That they would. While Cole could work up a good panic attack at the thought of being on a weekly TV show, Sierra was born for it in every way—with her confidence, her knowledge and experience, and her looks. But he’d seen firsthand more than once where she’d lost a bid because of those looks, because someone didn’t think a woman could do this job. Dumb fucks, every one of them.

Cole read over the basics quickly, more interested in the longer answers, as those would be what the people judging the entries would focus on.