Firestorm (22 page)

The hopeful look in her eyes faded, and she turned away. Jake wished he could banish her sadness. How could he, though, when he was barely able to cope with the emotional turmoil she caused in him?

“Yeah, honey. I know,” he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Life’s a bitch.

Come on to bed. I’ll give you a rubdown so you can get some sleep. Tomorrow morning I’ll have to leave you to Deb and Shana’s mercies while I go to the office for a meeting.”

“Should I be afraid?”

He laughed. “Unless you want to find yourself being fitted for a wedding dress, you’d better have all your wits about you. They’re in full matchmaking mode.”

Jake couldn’t muster his usual quota of horror when he thought of his sisters ganging up to get him married off.

* * * * *

I'd like to wake up every morning to the feel of your warm, soft ass snuggled up against me.

Jake shook his head, as if that action would rid him of unwelcome urges that had begun to come over him at the most inconvenient times.

Why couldn't he stifle them? Now was not the time—if indeed there was a time—

for tender feelings to rear their inane heads. Not when he had to find a way to satisfy the Old Man without letting himself be swept up into a position he neither wanted nor considered himself qualified to handle.

Abruptly, he rolled off the bed and pulled on dark brown briefs. They hardly hid his insistent erection, but maybe the light pressure from the cotton knit material would remind him he had more important things to do this morning than mess around with Kate.

Shaking her gently, he told her she had less than half an hour to dress before Shana would get here to pick her up.

When in hell had his condo shrunk? Jake tried to ignore Kate’s sweet, enticing body while they washed and dressed in what seemed to be ever-tightening confines of his bedroom suite.

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The doorbell rang, and Jake thanked his sister silently for making it on time.

Zipping his pants as he went, he hurried to let Shana in.

“I like Kate—a lot,” Shana said, her dark eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Good morning to you, too,” Jake growled. “Go to the kitchen and pour yourself some coffee. Kate will be right out.”

With that, he stalked away to hurry Kate up. Maybe when she was gone, he would be able to focus on how he could make his father happy without giving up the work he loved.

“Shana’s here,” he said curtly, determined to keep his fingers out of the mass of dark-brown curls Kate had brushed away from her face and anchored high on her head with some kind of scrunchy looking ribbon.

It was yellow, a little darker than her crisp-looking, butter-colored suit but lighter than the bright, silky shirt that showed under the open jacket. Other than enameled earrings that looked like white daisies, the ribbon was Kate’s only adornment.

She looked adorable.

“I’m ready.” She picked up a handbag that matched her high-heeled sandals. “I hope your meeting goes well.”

Putting her hands on his shoulders, she stretched up on tiptoes for his kiss.

“I hope so, too. Go on. Shana’s in the kitchen. Tell her I’ll see you both at lunch.” He pulled her close and gave her one last long, wet kiss.

God, he had to get a hold on his libido or he’d have blue balls by the end of the day.

Worse, he had to rein in the treacherous emotions that threatened to burst loose.

Instead of telling Shana to cool her heels while he hauled Kate back to bed, Jake picked up the starched white shirt he'd set out earlier and started to put it on.

When Kate was gone, her scent stayed with him, torturing, tantalizing and distracting him. Would he ever be able to get her off his mind?

For a long time, Jake stood and stared out the window, his fingers working the buttons through stiff, little used buttonholes down the front of his dress shirt.

Why the hell was it taking him so long to dress? Jake hated ties, but he’d never been so awkward at putting one on before. The beige and brown number he’d snatched from the rack in the closet kept resisting his efforts to form it into a presentable knot.

The tight, scratchy collar of his shirt was damn near strangling him. Finally he managed to knot the tie. After giving himself a cursory once-over in the full-length mirror, he shrugged into the jacket of his khaki suit and headed for the downtown Houston skyscraper that housed GreenTex Oil Company's main headquarters.

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* * * * *

Of everything that made up his family’s business, Jake liked this steel and glass cage in downtown Houston least. To him, the vertical beams between panels of gray smoked glass resembled bars in a prison cell. He saw the elegant decor as an ostentatious waste of the black gold that the real GreenTex Oil Company wrested from a reluctant earth.

Yeah, the facade was necessary. The banks and brokers expected to see trappings of the company’s success. And the analysts, accountants and legal people that the company employed had to have somewhere to work.

Still, the place gave Jake the creeps.

“Good morning, Mr. Green,” a perky receptionist chirped as he passed her desk on the way to the bank of elevators against the back wall.

Jake nodded and smiled. Because he couldn’t recall the woman’s name, if indeed he’d ever met her, he didn’t bother to speak.

He stepped inside the elevator and fumbled for the key card that would tell the computerized machine to take him to the restricted, executive floor. As the door closed behind him, he reached up to loosen the collar that was threatening him with asphyxiation.

When it opened again and he stepped out into a spacious foyer, he breathed deeply and headed for the plush corner office whose door had a discreet brass plate that bore his name.

“What the hell is this?” he asked when he looked at the stack of papers on the desk he seldom used.

No one ever put anything on his desk, but stuff was sure as hell here now—a neatly arranged stack about ten inches high in the center of the massive, dark-wood status symbol. Not getting a reply to his shouted query annoyed Jake, and he strode through the connecting door to the Old Man's office in search of a secretary—and some answers.

“Ellen, what are all these papers doing on my desk?”

“Why, those are the reports I get for your daddy to review every morning when he comes to work.”

Ellen Drake had been his father's secretary for as long as he could remember, but Jake had never cared for the prissy woman who’d always seemed to view him as being about as useful to the company as tits on a boar.

“Why are they on my desk? For all you know, you might have kept piling them up to the ceiling before I wandered in to take a look at them. Take them to Scott.”

“Mr. Carrington gets copies, too. I thought, since Mr. Green is ill, that you would be taking over for him.” Ellen’s expression soured, reminding Jake that he had never been Ann Jacobs

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one of her favorite people, either. “Since he isn’t here, I can do your correspondence, so I didn't call downstairs to get you a secretary from the pool.”

“All right. I don’t have any letters to write, but you can get Skip Ward on the phone for me. I’ll take the call in my office.”

Jake stalked back the way he’d come, pausing at his office door to study Ellen's board-straight back. “Tell Scott I'm here,” he added curtly.

Ellen turned to face him. “Mr. Carrington will be in later. Mr. Green asked him to come to the hospital on his way to the office. I’ll have the receptionist let him know you need to see him.”

Jake nodded. Settling onto the glove-soft leather chair behind his desk, he flipped through the reports until he found one he could understand—a summary of chief geologist Bob Fishman's scientific findings about land parcels the company had leased in the Groveland field.

A smile played at the corners of his lips. Fish’s sophisticated studies confirmed his own gut feeling that they’d stumbled onto the biggest domestic oil discovery in years.

“Mr. Green. I have Mr. Ward on the line for you.”

Ellen couldn’t have sounded any more self-important if she’d been announcing the President. Jake grinned as he punched a button that would allow him to talk with Skip without picking up the receiver.

“Hey, Skip.”

“Jake. I was shaking in my boots. Thought it was the Old Man calling me. Since when does Ms. Ellen give you the kid gloves treatment up there in the office?”

“Since she heard Dad’s going to have to retire, I guess. I wish she’d spare me. So far, the woman has stuck me with about three hundred reports here to wade through, at least two-thirds of which I won't know any more about after reading them than I do now. What's going on there?”

“We caught the other arsonist. He tried again last night, after everybody but me and the security guys had left. We holed up in the trailer with the lights off, and let the bastard get clear onto the well platform before we stormed out there and dragged him down.”

“Shit.” Jake leaned closer to the speaker. “What about proof? Or did you just have him arrested for trespassing?”

“Hell, no. He was trying to set the gas lifting apparatus on fire when we caught him. Could have blown himself as well as all of us to kingdom come. Sheriff Jones charged him with arson and tossed him in jail.”

“Is the guy talking?”

“Not yet, but the DA says he’s laying on the heat.”

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“Good. We’ve got to find out who’s behind this and stop them for good. I want to get those new permits issued and send in two more drilling crews. We’re sitting on a pool of oil like nothing either of us have ever seen in this country.”

“You sure?”

“Fish is. I’ve got his report right here in my hand. Hell, I’m certain, too. We’re smack in the middle of a sea of black gold. You’ve sensed it, and so have I.” Jake started to jerk the knot out of his tie, but stopped his hands in mid-air.

“When will you be back?”

“Next week, if the Old Man keeps improving. At least I’ll come back long enough to bring Kate home. Dad has to retire. I may have to start spending more time here, unless Scott and I can talk sense into him.”

“Okay. Look, I have to go. Fish is here now with his computers. The truck with the rest of his seismographic gear can’t be far behind. I’ll call and let you know about the new seismic readings.”

Jake heard a click and knew Skip was gone before he pressed a button and silenced the loud dial tone that filled the room. Restless, he got up and paced.

What were his sisters doing with Kate? He doubted that she was enjoying her morning much more than he was enjoying his.

* * * * *

She wasn’t. Perched on the edge of a damask-covered chair in the bright, cheery room Leah called her conservatory, Kate felt like a captured insect, held in place with pins for its captors to prod and examine under a microscope.

In their husbands’ company, Jake’s sisters had been politely inquisitive. Left to their own devices, they appeared obsessed with ferreting out her intentions toward their grown-up baby brother. And pitching the qualities that made him top-flight material in the marriage market.

Belatedly she tuned in on what Deb was saying.

“…every girl he’d gone to school with was absolutely bereft when he came home from college married to that woman,” Deb concluded, her tone scathing.

“And Kate, you’re just the type of woman Jake should marry. You grew up out in the country. I know you’ll just love his ranch. It’s only an hour away from Houston when he takes the Cessna.” That was Shana.

“Jake isn’t serious about me,” Kate protested again, but it seemed that nobody was paying her the slightest attention.

“Nonsense. That woman hurt Jake. He’s understandably reluctant to admit he’s fallen in love again. Kate, he needs you. All you have to do is love him, and he’ll Ann Jacobs

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eventually come out of that brittle, cynical shell he wrapped around himself as protection from her.” Leah spoke in a soft but compelling tone.

I do love him.

Kate stared out the window when Deb started in on her again.

“He needs a little push. I know. Since Dad’s coming along so well, I'll give a party next week. Kate! Tomorrow, I’ll take you shopping. You’ll need something out of this world to wear when we announce your engagement.” She reached for the portable phone and began to dial a number.

Not about to let Deb make a fool of her, Kate snatched the phone away and fumbled with it until the sound of a dial tone let her know she’d managed to hang up on whoever she’d been trying to call.

“I think we should wait to plan an engagement party until after Jake asks me to marry him,” she said firmly.
As if he ever will
.

Kate listened helplessly to the buzzing conversation around her until, mercifully, Shana reminded them it was time for them to go to their parents’ home for lunch.

Settled on the passenger seat of Shana's bright red Mercedes convertible, Kate braced herself for another barrage of questions.

She was grateful that Deb was bringing Leah in another car, since that would give her a few minutes’ respite from the women’s three-way assault.

“You love Jake, don’t you?”

“Is it so obvious?” Kate’s cheeks burned. She’d known that sooner or later Shana was bound to mention the disheveled state she and Jake had been in two nights ago when she and Bear had dropped by Jake’s condo. To cover her embarrassment, Kate focused her attention on well-kept homes that got bigger and more opulent the farther Shana drove down winding roads in the elite Houston residential district called River Oaks.

Shana laughed. “Yes, it's obvious. Women who blush like you did the other night when somebody walks in on their sex games don’t play those games at all unless there are some pretty heavy feelings involved. Besides, every time you look at my little brother, you’ve got stars in your eyes.”

“Please don’t.” Tears welled up behind Kate’s eyelids, and she fought to regain her composure.