Firestorm (25 page)

When he stroked her from behind, his hips moving with the same rhythm his fingers played on her aching nipples, she realized that in this way if in no other, he gave her of himself.

“Oh, Jake, this feels so good.”

“Yeah, honey. Damn good. “ His hot breath tickled the back of her neck. “Come on.

Come for me. I’m about to…oh, God.”

Shuddering, he slammed into her twice more, sliding his hands down her body and rubbing her swollen clitoris.

The pressure built inside her. Feelings bubbled over—passion, lust, and love. When the dam burst and she tumbled over the edge into a climax that took her breath away, she closed her eyes and enjoyed the fall.

Wrung out, she lay against the Jacuzzi wall enjoying the afterglow, until he came in one last mighty thrust and they both went up again in a burst of flame.

* * * * *

Later Kate watched Jake sleep. Sprawled out over snowy sheets, his hard-muscled body still awed her with its beauty and power. But his face looked younger in repose, more approachable.

With luck this kinder Jake might someday come to love her. She sighed and curled up against his side, drifting off to sleep with his scent in her nostrils and hope in her heart.

When she woke the next morning, he was already up. The smell of fresh coffee beckoned, and she followed it to the kitchen.

Jake sat at the table, frowning at some notes he’d made on the pad in front of him.

Veins stood out in the hand he was using to hold the portable phone to his ear.

“Excuse me.” Kate turned to leave so Jake would have his privacy.

He held out his hand. “Don’t go.”

When she looked back at him, his hand was over the mouthpiece.

“There’s nothing I’ve got to say that you can’t hear,” he said. “Sit down and have some coffee.”

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When she did as he asked, he resumed his conversation. At least she assumed he was conversing, for she heard him make occasional monosyllabic, profane replies while he doodled on the pad.

“I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon,” he finally said before he shut off the phone and set it down beside the note pad.

Kate fiddled with her coffee mug. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

“You weren’t. We’re going to be busy today, getting ready to go back to Groveland.

That was Skip. One of our arsonists has fingered the man who hired him. As we speak, the sheriff should be picking him up.” His frown deepened, but he didn’t enlighten her further.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, a little put off when he shot her a hard, cynical look.

“Make up your mind real fast what you don’t want for a wedding. Mom and Deb are on their way here now to go over plans with you. Their plans, not ours.” Jake grinned, but stress was evident in his eyes.

“What don't you want?”

“I don’t care. Like I said before, weddings are mostly women's doings. Just remind Mom that I own two tuxes and that I have no intention of wearing anything any fancier than one of them. Bear can be my best man. I’ll ask Skip and Scott to stand up with me, too. She can pick out anybody else you women think I need to fill out the wedding party.”

He ripped away the paper he’d been using and scribbled some names on a fresh sheet. “Here,” he said. “Tell Mom to make sure she invites these folks. Aside from them, she can ask whoever she wants.”

“You’re not going to be here?” The idea of discussing their wedding with his mother and sister but without him scared Kate silly. She slipped the paper into the pocket of her slacks and tried to still her trembling hands.

“Sorry, honey. I can’t spare the time. If we’re leaving in the morning, I’ve got to spend the day at the office, checking out what’s going on in our other fields. It’s easier to do from here than from the site in Groveland.”

“But Jake. I don’t know what you want. Would you like dinner? Dancing? A religious or civil ceremony? All you’ve said is that you don’t want to wear anything fancier than a tuxedo. That doesn’t tell me much.”

Kate panicked. What if he hated everything about the wedding his mother was dead set on arranging?

“It tells you there’s no way Mom is getting me into tails again. Every male in the wedding party had to wear them for Shana’s wedding. Leah’s, too, but I was fortunate Ann Jacobs

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enough not to have to stand up with Ben.” Jake paused and raked his hand through his dark, thick hair. “A sit-down dinner and dancing are givens, unless you can dissuade my mother a hell of a lot better than I can.”

“Do you want a religious ceremony?”

“Your choice, honey. We’ll be just as married either way.”

“You don’t care?”

“No.”

She hesitated. “Jake, I don't want this to remind you of your other wedding. Tell me about it.”

His expression turned fierce. “It doesn’t matter.”

She looked into his eyes, silently pleading for him to open up, at least a little, and let go of some of the hurt she sensed was still festering inside him. “It matters to me,” she said.

Suddenly, he stood up. “All right. I said it doesn’t matter. There’s no way any wedding Mom has anything to do with planning will remind me of my first one. But you obviously want to know, so I’ll tell you.”

Kate cringed at the pain she saw in his dark eyes. “It’s all right,” she said, contrite.

“You don't have to. I know it must be painful to talk about.”

“Damn it. Don’t credit me with having a bunch of stupid sentimental emotions.

Shut up and listen.” He looked as if he was daring her to interrupt.

“We got married in her hometown, in the little country church she had gone to all her life. The reception was there, too, on the picnic grounds outside, with cake and peanuts and little sandwiches with pastel-colored fillings. Her mother made the cake and punch, some green stuff that almost matched the bridesmaids’ dresses. It had big blocks of lime sherbet floating around in it.”

He’d loved Alice so much that he’d married her in her world instead of his own.

“Sounds like some of the weddings I’ve been to back home,” Kate said lightly, trying to smile and hide her pain. She realized now how much he must have loved the wife who had betrayed him.

“Yeah. It was a country shindig, all right. There was no dancing and no booze. The whole thing, reception and all, didn’t take two hours. No way would Mom plan anything remotely like that.”

“We’ll have a civil ceremony then,” Kate said quietly.

“Whatever you want. I need to get to the office.”

Today Jake had on jeans rather than a suit like the one he’d worn yesterday. He looked good enough to eat, either way.

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“That must be Mom and Deb now,” he told her, practically running to answer the doorbell.

After greeting them perfunctorily, he gave Kate a hasty kiss and deserted them, looking like a man who couldn't wait to escape.

* * * * *

“I’m going to nail that bastard to the wall this time,” Jake spat out the minute he set foot in his brother-in-law’s office.

“What bastard? Back up and tell me what you’re talking about.” Scott looked up from the report he’d been studying. “Sit down. Want some coffee?”

“Thanks.” Jake poured a cup from the silver carafe on the corner table, then sat and stretched his legs in front of him. For a minute, he stared at the toes of his boots before meeting Scott’s curious gaze.

“Durwood Yates.” The son-of-a-bitch had been his nemesis even before he took up with Alice. “Skip called me at the condo this morning. One of our arsonists in Groveland has fingered Yates as being the man who hired them.”

Scott’s grin was feral. Jake imagined he was recounting the money Yates had cost GreenTex over the years. “You mean the arsonist pointed the finger at one of Yates’s minions, don’t you?”

“No. He fingered Yates personally. As we speak, a couple of Houston’s finest should be picking Durwood up. Unless he fights extradition he should be in a Mississippi jail by this time tomorrow. We’ve finally got him by the balls.” Jake tried to tamp down his personal hatred for Yates and focus instead on the damage he had done to the company.

“Do you want me to go to Groveland and make sure some country DA doesn’t let Yates off the hook?”

Jake appreciated Scott’s offer and thought he understood his reasons for making it.

There was no way, though, that he was going to relinquish the pleasure of twisting the figurative knife into the bastard responsible for Dale’s death and millions of dollars’

damages to GreenTex property.

“I’ve got to be there anyhow. Now that we don’t have to worry about sabotage any more, the Oil and Gas Board should be issuing us new drilling permits. I’ll need to get two more drilling crews out there if we expect to get production going fast enough to bail us out of debt.”

“But you’ve got a wedding to get ready for,” Scott pointed out.

“I’m sure Mom and Deb already have their plans laid out for that. They're at my condo now, conning Kate into agreeing to whatever kind of three-ring circus they’ve Ann Jacobs

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conjured up. You can’t leave here now, anyway. Not with the Old Man out of commission.”

“What about Kate?”

“What about her? I’m taking her with me. She’ll have to pack up whatever she has in her house that she wants to ship out to the ranch.”

“How’s she going to feel, seeing you take out your anger at your ex-wife on her present husband? I’d hate to try convincing Deb I didn’t still care for a woman who could fuel that much hatred in me.” Scott leaned back and regarded him seriously.

Kate would understand. Jake was certain of it. She’d already agreed to marry him knowing he didn’t love her and probably never would. “Kate’s a lot more easygoing than Deb,” he said noncommittally.

“Okay. You know your lady better than I do. What can I do here?”

“Get our legal department to put all the pressure they can on Yates Petroleum. The more the lawyers who work for Yates are tied up here, the less they can do to help their boss with his problems over in Mississippi.”

“What good will that do? The creep will be out on bail and back in Houston, as soon as they get him indicted.” Scott picked up a pen and shifted it from one hand to the other.

“Maybe not. The whole town of Groveland could have turned to soot and ashes if Yates’s hirelings had managed to set that well on fire, and the district attorney is counting on press coverage to help him push his own statewide political agenda. Skip says he’s asking the judge to deny bail.”

Scott nodded. “I’ll have our legal department file civil suits against Yates for the damages at the west Texas fields as well as the one in Groveland. That should keep his lawyers hopping. In any case, the criminal investigation out in Lubbock will heat up now that Yates has been linked to the Groveland sabotage.” He pushed his gold-framed reading glasses up onto his forehead and looked at Jake. “You’re positive you don’t want me to handle this?”

“Yeah.” Maybe by putting Yates away, Jake could lay Alice’s betrayal to rest once and for all. “I’ll check out what’s going on in our other fields before I leave. Before I go, I’ll leave next month’s production estimates on your desk.”

“All right. Let me know how the drilling is going on that new offshore rig, too.”

When Scott frowned, Jake recalled how opposed his brother-in-law had been to buying those leases in the Gulf of Mexico and sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into specialized offshore drilling equipment.

“I will.” Giving Scott a farewell nod and forcing thoughts of Alice and Durwood Yates to a corner of his mind, Jake headed back to his office. While he waited for Ellen Ann Jacobs

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to place calls to the GreenTex field supervisors, he wondered how Kate was faring with Deb and his mother.

* * * * *

Kate's head was spinning.

How could Adele and Deb have done so much so fast? And what had she agreed to in the past two hours? She stared blindly at the array of advertising materials spread out on Jake’s oversize cocktail table.

With numb fingers, she picked up hotel brochures and tried again to focus on the slick, four-color photos of ballrooms where she and Jake might have their wedding.

They all looked opulent, and each of them looked as if a thousand guests could get lost within their confines. She couldn’t imagine herself getting married in any of them.

But she thought she’d just been gently badgered into choosing a downtown Houston hotel whose restoration had made it functionally modern while maintaining an aura of old-world grandeur. At least, that was what Deb had said.

The wedding was to be on Sunday evening. The sixth of September. A federal judge who Adele said was an old family friend would perform the civil ceremony.

There would be a sit-down dinner with dancing afterward, for what Deb had called an “intimate gathering.” Personally, Kate wouldn’t call a party for six hundred people intimate, but then what did she know?

Vaguely, she recalled suggesting that they get Jake’s friend Mel Harrison to provide the music.

I can’t believe I just agreed on a menu that includes lobster appetizers, prime rib, baked potatoes, and two vegetables to be chosen by the chef. Whatever happened to finger sandwiches and frilled cups full of salted nuts?

Deb had talked her into choosing a huge, four-tier cake with raspberry filling and pedestals between each tier. But Kate drew the line at having a personalized statuette of her and Jake made to sit atop of the ornate confection. She wanted her cake topped with a simple spray of sugared violets, her favorite flower.

That decision set the color scheme. Kate’s bridesmaids would wear gowns in different shades of violet. Fortunately the various hues flattered Jake's dark-haired, olive-skinned sisters as well as Deb's blond daughters. And Becky, who would be Kate’s matron of honor, liked violet, too. Kate wasn’t sure about Gilda, who said her carrot-red hair and freckles clashed with nearly every color that wasn’t neutral.

Kate’s gown had to be ivory, she was told. Jake’s younger nieces, as flower girls, would wear ivory trimmed in violet, and his mother and Mama Anna would carry through the color scheme by wearing deep purple.