Chasing Trouble (Texas Trouble) (6 page)

"Did you finish your pizza?" she asked as she handed the pills to him.

He looked a little agitated, but a wry smile kicked up his lips.  "Yes, mom."

"I'm sorry for being bossy, but if you don't eat before you take this antibiotic, you're gonna be sorry."

"Which one is the pain pill?" he asked looking at his palm.

"The elliptical white one, not the capsule."

"I'm going to wait to take that one, until I get to Amarillo...don't want to be driving loopy." he told her and held his palm out.

"Take it now, you're hurting," Jenny ordered then added with a huff, "You can sleep on my couch tonight."

"I didn't come over here for that...and I don't want to inconvenience you.  I should get going."

"Just take the damned pill!" she told him then
strode around the sofa and sat down.

"Wow,
your couch-side manner could use some improvement, Doc," he told her with a chuckle.

"Well, you're not being a very compliant patient.  Just take it..." she repeated grumpily and folded her arms over her chest.  "I'm off tomorrow, so it's not an inconvenience."

With his eyes on hers, he lifted his hand near his mouth then said, "Last chance to get rid of me, Doc..."

Jenny glared at him and lifted an eyebrow
.  He put the pill in his mouth, then chased it with a drink of water.  "You're stuck with me now," he told her with a laugh.

There were a lot worse things she could be stuck with, Jenny thought, and mentally slapped herself.  As nice and good looking as Chase Rhodes was, he was not a complication she needed in her life. 

"Let's watch a movie, what's your flavor?" she said hoping an hour or two of quiet would help calm her nerves...and the rampaging hormones Chase Rhodes presence in her apartment sent into overdrive. 

The little devil on her shoulder whispered in her ear telling her she could find much more interesting things to do with him for two hours, but she flicked her off of her shoulder and walked to her DVD collection.

"Anything but a chick flick," he snorted.

"Not in touch with your feminine side?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm plenty in touch, but they're so sweet they make my teeth hurt, and I'm already in enough pain from my facer on your floor."

"Not very graceful, are you?" she teased then got up off the sofa and walked to the TV cabinet and squatted down to search through her selection.  "You can't even get shot right,
your big feet got tangled up then too, right? " She looked down at his feet and said with a snort, "You have a right and a left, but remind me never to dance with you." When she glanced back at the shelf, her eyes fell on
How to Lose a Man in Ten Days
and she grinned then opened the case and popped it into the DVD player.

"
I was trying to avoid flattening your cat who was wanting my attention, but I'm pretty smooth on the dance floor, my mama made sure of it," he assured her in that low sexy rumble of his and her heart tripped a little in her chest.

"
Cotillion classes?" Jenny guessed he'd been in what amounted to charm classes for the southern socially elite.  "By the way my cat hates men, you're lucky she didn't scratch your eyes out."  When he didn't respond, Jenny glanced up at him after she pressed the play button and saw his face was beet red.

He finally admitted,
"Something like that...mama put me in stupid dance classes with my sister when I was small.  My brother and my friends gave me absolute hell, so after a few classes I refused to go, and my dad backed me up and signed me up for baseball."

Jenny shoved up to her feet and put her hands on her hips to stare at him thoughtfully. 
"You have a hard time saying no to your mother, don't you?"

"You have no idea how persistent she is," he told her and huffed out a
breath.

"I met her in the hall with your sister when I left your room yesterday...I definitely can see where it would be difficult," she admitted then
went to turn off the kitchen light.

He groaned and said, "Oh, god, don't tell me she gave you a hard time..."

"No, but she hog-tied me into agreeing to come to a dinner party to thank me for saving her baby boy," she chuckled, then grabbed the remote from the coffee table and sat on the sofa.

Even in the now dim light, she saw the glow of his thousand watt smile.  "That's a great idea," he told her.

"Not necessary," she told him then pressed the button to turn on the TV before pressing the one to start the movie.

"Totally necessary in my mother's opinion, I'm sure."

"Why do you think she feels that way?  Did she have a thank you party for the doctor who circumcised you?  Jenny asked with a chuckle and shook her head.

Chase sputtered and h
is face turned even redder, before he answered, "Um, I don't think so..."

"Did she have a party for your pediatrician when you got your first innoculation?"

"Um, no don't think she did that either, but he was about a hundred years old and looked like a hunchbacked raisin," Chase hooted.

"What does how I look have to do with anything?"  Jenny asked him and glanced at the TV where a trailer
for a Terminator movie flashed on the screen.

"My mother wants grandchildren, and is on a mission to marry me off," he told her wryly.  "She's been at it a couple of years now, and I have to say her taste has definitely improved."  Chase's eyes caressed her face, then a slow grin spread over his.

Tingles spread through her and Jenny dragged her eyes from his back to the TV.  "She's barking up the wrong tree," Jenny said flatly, then hit the fast forward button to move through the animated movie trailer that followed the one for Terminator.

"My mama thinks that as long as
she
believes it's a good idea, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks...and like I said she's persistent when she's got something in her head."

"Well, this is one time when she won't be getting what she wants," Jenny told him firmly.  "I'm working on joining Doctors Without Borders and going to
Africa." 

It was something she'd been thinking about, but the more she thought about it, the better the idea seemed to her.
  It would take her a hundred years to pay off her student loan debt working at the hospital.

She heard Chase suck in a breath and looked over to see his eyebrows were drawn together and his smile was gone.  "What?" she asked.

"Why the hell would you do that?  You have a good job that
pays
," he said in a low serious voice she'd never heard him use before.

"It doesn't pay enough to cover
my student loans, and if I commit to two years they're forgiven and I start fresh."

"If you're still alive to do that," he said shortly.

Jenny snorted, then told him, "It's not dangerous, Chase."

"I beg to differ, there are a lot of places in
Africa that are very dangerous, not just because of political unrest either.  Disease is rampant, and there are tribes where women are just chattel and are traded for goats and shit...especially beautiful blond women."

Warmth spread through Jenny at his compliment
and his concern, but she shook it off then teased, "I'd like to think I'd be worth at least
two
goats."

All of a sudden Chase was beside her and he grabbed her shoulder with his good hand.  "It's not funny, sugar.  I'm being serious," he told her gravely with worry in his expression.

"I haven't joined them yet, I'm thinking about it...seriously."

"How much are your loans?" Chase asked her
quickly.

Jenny didn't think that was any of his business and she pinched her lips
then studied him for a second.  She had no idea how their light conversation had transitioned to this heavy subject, something that really wasn't any of his business.

"How much, Jenny?" he repeated a little more forcefully.

"Two hundred thousand dollars," she finally admitted with a huffed breath and jerked her shoulder from his grasp.

"Holy, crap!" he hissed, then
unmindful of his sling, he used both hands to turn her toward him.  "How the hell did you rack up so much?"

"Med school ain't cheap," she said with a twist of her lips, "And I had a legal problem
, so I had to borrow more to help fix it."  She wasn't going into
that
with him for sure.

"I'll pay
them off," Chase said quickly.  "If you come to work for Rhodes Drilling and Exploration, I'll pay it all off, and pay you a nice salary."

That got her attention and Jenny shifted on the sofa to face him.  He was serious, there wasn't a bit of humor in his eyes or on his unsmiling face.  "You don't even know me," she told him with a shake of her head.  "And what the hell could you need a doctor for in your business?"

"Health and Safety," he told her.

With a snort, she told him, "Some
how, I think your dad would have a problem with that...and I don't know the first thing about oil well drilling or the dangers involved in that.  I know my dad got hurt on a rig, but other than that, nada."

"
My dad is the one who suggested it to me this morning.  It's a great idea," he told her with a smile then added, "You can help prevent what happened to your dad from happening to someone else, what better motivation could you have?  You'd be perfect for the job," he told her.

"Your dad suggested it?"  That was something that Jenny would
never have expected.  Chase's dad had barely even acknowledged that she was a doctor, because she was a woman, and he wanted to hire her now?

"Yeah, he did.  We've been talking about hiring a medical professional for a while now
to train and supervise on-site medics to act quickly if there are accidents at the sites.  All we have now are roughnecks who double as medics."

"I know how those rigs operate, and it's all about the bottom line
, isn't it?  That's not something I would be okay with.  Safety of the workers should be a priority, not making money," she told him.  Her dad had been a statistic that proved that fact. 

According to her dad, the company had removed the hand rails on the stairs and safety chains to drill faster. 
A piece of the drill string, or pipe, turned loose and shot mud on the stairs, and he was running up them at the time.  He slipped and fell, breaking his back and almost dying in the process.  He was very lucky to be alive, let alone still be able to walk.

"Our rigs don't operate like that,"
Chase said firmly.  "The safety of our crews is our first concern.  My grandpa almost lost his life working for Pinion, before he started Rhodes Drilling.  We take safety seriously."

Jenny sucked in a breath
, then repeated, "Pinion?" 

That was the same company her dad had worked for when he
was hurt.  The same company that had paid just a minimal amount of the monumental medical bills that almost bankrupted her mother and father.  If not for his disability check, they wouldn't be surviving, which was another reason it pissed her off that her brother took advantage of them.

"Yeah,
Pinion Drilling...they're infamous for their safety violations.  The worst."

"That's the
same company my dad worked for when he got hurt," she said.

"He's not alone
...a lot of men have lost life and limb with that company.  I'm surprised OSHA hasn't shut them down, but not so surprised.  The owners pad the right pockets."  Chase's face turned red and his eyes were troubled.

She put a hand on his thigh and said softly, "You have no idea how sad that makes me...to think of all those guys who are just trying to make a living for their families, and that company is abusing them and their trust."

His full lips kicked up at the corner and he challenged, "So do something about it, Doc."

"What the heck can I do?"  Jenny was a doctor, not an OSHA inspector, or oil derrick expert.  She knew emergency medicine, not bores and kellies
, which her dad had tried to explain to her once, but she had failed miserably to comprehend.  She had no idea what precautions were needed to make an oil derrick safe for workers.

"You can come to work for me and help me put a better safety program in place.  Help me train our safety officers and on-site medical personnel.  Help me make sure they're doing all they can to protect the crews."

"This has been a strange day," she said on a sigh.

"I'll send you to all the classes so you can learn about rig safety...at our expense.
  It wouldn't take you long to get up to speed."

"I don't know..." she said.

"C'mon, Jenny, you'd be a good fit for the job, you know the consequences of failure from what happened to your dad.  My grandpa would probably help you too."

"You'll pay off my student loans?" she asked gnawing her lip.
  This whole scenario seemed too good to be true.