Firestorm (9 page)

“We have leases on around five thousand acres, more if the land man’s been doing his job for the past two or three weeks. If the price of crude goes up, we could be putting as many as a hundred wells in this part of Mississippi. Even with prices depressed the way they are now, we can make money on fifteen or twenty if we put them in the right places. Assuming we can stop whoever is trying to put the company six feet under.”

Kate smiled, that gentle smile that lit her whole face up. “You'll catch them. I’m sure of that.”

“Yeah. We will. Whatever it takes. The Oil and Gas Board's refusing to grant us any more drilling permits until we do.”

Kate frowned. “I’m surprised that you've been able to lease so much of the land around here. Some of my neighbors have been up in arms since I opened my place up for oil drilling.”

“There are some who are holding out. Mostly bigger landowners like you. But in the end, they’ll prove they’re as susceptible to the lure of money as anyone else is. Their crops have failed too many times in recent years. Their land is farmed out, and they Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

52

can’t eat their principles or their long-dead ancestors forever. Everybody needs money, and leases provide it. Oil wells on their land will make them rich. You certainly weren’t the only one to lease us a good-size section, honey, just the first.”

“Then why are my neighbors being so mean to me? It’s as though I’m the only person within a hundred miles who’s put oil leases out on their property.”

“I don’t know,” he said, thinking idly that it was weird that Kate apparently had to go twenty miles from home to find a friend to put her up for the night. “Did some long-dead ancestor of yours make the mistake of fighting on the wrong side of the Civil War?” he asked, hoping his question would make her smile.

“Not exactly. My great-great grandfather bought this place for taxes after the Civil War. And he made a success of himself with his store in Laurel when I guess lot of folks were suffering.”

“A carpetbagger, huh?”

“No. He didn't fight in the war at all. He was a Jewish peddler who came here when he emigrated from Germany.”

“I didn't realize you were Jewish,” he said matter-of-factly. “I don’t imagine many Jews live around here.”

“No. Oh, Jake, I should have told you before we…”

Jake watched Kate's cheeks turn a becoming pink. It amused him that she apparently couldn’t come right out and say they’d just had mind-blowing sex.

“Why?” He’d never felt the need to discuss religion with the women he took to bed.

Except Alice, and not even her until they’d decided to get married.

“Would you have wanted me if you’d known?”

Jake devoured her body with his eyes and grinned. “Honey, I’d have wanted you.

You can take that to the bank. I'm Jewish, too, but religion has nothing to do with what you do to my libido.”

* * * * *

After leaving her at the door of her friend's modest white brick house, he tried hard to put Kate out of his mind.

He didn’t want to care that she lived alone, not close enough with her neighbors nearby that she could go to them when trouble loomed. And he certainly didn’t welcome the anger that bubbled up in him when he pictured some narrow-minded rednecks hurting Kate’s feelings with their sharp tongues.

But he knew all about the subtle forms of disapproval that fundamentalist rural Southerners could express toward someone who, to them, was different.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

53

Heathen.

That was the word they’d used then, and the one he had heard that disapproving old woman mouth at Kate the other day when she’d described the roughnecks who were here to drill the wells.

A word that Jake had more than passing familiarity with.

He’d liked the close-knit, down-home friendliness of Alice’s friends and relatives when she took him home to meet her folks long years ago in tiny Thayer, Georgia. At first they had seen him only as the Aggies’ star quarterback—a fitting match for their hometown beauty queen. And he’d pictured himself with Alice, living a simple rural life away from the pressures of Houston society and his overachieving, ambitious family.

It hadn’t worked out that way, though. The good folks of Thayer, Georgia had cooled to him damn quickly when they found out he wasn't a card-carrying member of the Baptist church. Not even marrying Alice in that church had persuaded some of her parents’ friends he wasn’t a “heathen” out to corrupt their pampered darling and destroy their simple way of life.

Fortunately he’d only had to put up with that subtle prejudice a dozen or so times, when he and Alice had gone to visit her folks. Kate must have lived with it all her life.

Jake shouldn’t give a damn.

After all, Kate had left Groveland but returned by her own volition. She had apparently decided to stay after her father died, even though her family was gone and her only ties here were to her land. It had been her choice to sign oil leases, her decision that made her set herself up as her neighbors’ pariah. He shouldn’t give a damn if people treated her badly.

But he did.

He could take her away from here.

What the hell was he thinking? Just because she made him feel like they were making love instead of fucking was no reason to start thinking dumb things like that.

* * * * *

Determined not to let his thoughts continue on their dangerous path, Jake tried to think of incidents with former employees, problems with landowners and their neighbors at any of GreenTex’s domestic fields—anything that might have triggered this sudden outbreak of sabotage. Anything that might keep him from reliving his time this afternoon in Kate Black’s bed, and the most satisfying fucking he’d had in years.

Maybe ever.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

54

Pulling in and stopping beside the derrick, he greeted Skip once he’d gotten out of the car.

“Did Sheriff Jones finally haul our firebug off to jail?” he asked.

Skip grinned. “Yeah.”

“Is the fire completely out?”

“Uh-huh. But Ms. Kate's pond's damn near dry. We had to pump water out of it, onto the brush fire our friend set in the woods.”

Jake nodded. “We're lucky she has that pond. Otherwise we'd be calling out the wild well control folks.”

“They give you a hard time up in Jackson?” Skip headed for the trailer, Jake at his heels.

Suddenly exhaustion overtook him. Jake sank onto the lumpy sofa bed and opened the beer Skip handed him. “They didn’t jerk the permits we already have, if that's what you mean. But the Board refused to grant any of the new ones Blake and I applied for.

They made it damn clear there won't be any more permits to drill on GreenTex leases in Mississippi until the sabotage stops.”

“Damn. I was planning to bring a second drilling crew over here pretty soon.”

Propping his bum leg up on an overturned trash can, Jake shrugged. “We’ve got to stop the bastards soon, or GreenTex won’t have enough assets left to fund the drilling.

Did that guy we caught finally start talking?”

“No. Not even when the sheriff told him he’d be doing ten to twenty years of hard labor on an old-fashioned Mississippi chain gang.”

“Will he?” The idea sounded good to Jake.

“Hell, I don’t know. I hope so. It’s no more than the son-of-a-bitch deserves. Bob Wallace needs to talk to you before you leave,” Skip said when the middle-aged investigator joined them in the trailer.

Jake sat back and listened while Bob brought him up to date on the nationwide search for information about the guy they caught this afternoon. While the dry-voiced security chief droned on about fingerprint searches and background checks, Jake found his thoughts drifting back to Kate.

“Ms. Kate's gotten to you, hasn’t she?” Skip asked after Wallace left. “You going back up there tonight?”

“Why?”

“Because if you are, you might tell her we’ll be sinking seismic holes starting bright and early tomorrow morning.”

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

55

“Already? I thought, since you had to get that barn fire put out this morning, you'd still be struggling to get this well hooked up to the pipeline.”

“Nah. We finished up about an hour ago. Thought you might be interested. Black-GreenTex Number One is flowing into the pipeline.” Jake saw the look of pride on Skip's face.

“How much?”

“A little over thirty barrels an hour and going up. We're getting a good flow of liquid gas, too.”

Jake let out a whistle. “Close to seven-fifty a day. Not bad. Pretty damn good, in fact. Go call and tell Susie you've got a bonus coming, so she can spend it,” he told his friend.

“I already did. Hey, I almost forgot to tell you. Susie told me I’m gonna be a daddy again.”

Jake couldn’t help it. He was jealous. Jealous of Skip for his pretty, loving wife and his two sturdy sons. Jealous of his friend's joy at the prospect of having another child to add to his happiness. He forced himself to smile and extend his hand.

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks. We’re hoping for a little girl this time.”

Jake hoped Skip hadn’t sensed his envy.

“Hey, you didn’t answer me. Are you gonna see Ms. Black tonight? If you aren’t, I'd better high-tail it up there and warn her we’ll be traipsing around on her property with the portable rig.”

“You don’t have to. She's not there. But I’ll tell her when I bring her home.”

“So you took her somewhere for the night?” Skip asked, a big grin spreading across his face.

“Not exactly. I didn’t want her up at her house alone, so I took her to Laurel to see one of her friends. I told her I’d pick her up about nine tomorrow.” Jake didn't know why, but he was reluctant for Skip to know he and Kate had become lovers.

“What’s the problem, Jake? Afraid to admit you might be feeling more than an itch in your jockstrap for Ms. Kate? Are you scared you might just have to toss that chip off your shoulder and let yourself care for somebody again?”

“What the hell do you mean?” Jake's fists clenched, and he stepped within striking distance.

Skip held his ground, and Jake knew from experience that he wouldn't back down.

He watched Skip sift a hand through his hair before looking him in the eye.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

56

“You know, Jake, you may be the best damn petrochemical engineer in the world, but you don't have a lick of sense if you don't know what I meant.”

“Spell it out, pal.”

“If that’s what it takes.”

Skip ambled casually over to the refrigerator and grabbed another beer. “This is gonna take some time. Might as well sit back down and relax.”

Jake shrugged. He and Skip went back a long way, back to when they had shared an apartment at college. Jake had learned the hard way that when Skip had something on his mind, he might as well listen from the outset. His friend wouldn’t let go until he'd said his piece.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

57

Chapter Five

“So what's on your mind?”

Jake had an overwhelming urge to get back to Kate, and he didn't much like the feeling. It was too much as if he needed the woman.

He watched Skip down half a beer before he set the bottle down and turned to him.

Finally he spoke up.

“You know, we've been friends a helluva long time. I think I know you better than your own kin.”

“Get to it, my friend. I haven’t had free psychoanalysis from an overeducated roughneck for a good long while. But I don't have all night.”

“Okay. Ever since you dumped Alice, or she dumped you, whichever, you've been a damn hypocrite. You come home with me and envy me for Susie and the kids. You say you want a wife, a few children of your own. But you don’t. Not really. Since your divorce, you've been using and discarding women right and left. You’ve set standards so high not even your matchmaking mama and sisters can find you what you want…”

“Hold it. You don’t think I've asked my mother to go scouting out women for me, do you? Let alone Shana, Leah or Deb?”

“You haven’t stopped them.”

“I'd like for you to try stopping them. At least I escaped the minute I could, when our Saudi field manager decided to take early retirement.”

“You haven’t stopped them the only way you could—by finding your own woman or shutting up and admitting you don’t want to take a chance on marrying again.

You've deliberately hit on sluts and ice princesses so you wouldn't be tempted to waste any tenderness on them.”

“So? Maybe I like those kinds of women.” The accusation stung, though, because Skip’s description pretty well fit the women Jake had slept with after his divorce—until he’d skulked off to the Saudi Arabian oil fields to lick his wounds.

“If you do, why are you sniffing around Kate Black? From what I can see, she just might be that one in a million woman. If it weren’t for Susie, I could get real worked up over her, myself. She's no porcelain doll like the ones your mama sets you up with, but she doesn't strike me as being an oil rig groupie either.”

“Shut up, Skip.”

But Skip was right. Kate was different from the women he’d dated since his divorce. What he wasn’t so sure of was that she was different enough from Alice. “I like her,” he admitted to himself as much as to his friend.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

58

He watched Skip's eyebrows lift. “Don’t go reading more to that than is there.”

“Well, at least you aren’t looking at her like she’s a quick, convenient fuck—or a broodmare for the next generation of Green oil millionaires.”

“No, she isn’t.” Suddenly Jake pictured Kate as she had been this afternoon, wild and innocent at the same time when she’d made love with him in her narrow bed.

“Well, do you love her?”

Jake snorted. “You know me better than that.”

“You loved—”

“Alice,” Jake spat out. “Yeah, I know. And what, I ask you, did that get me? Besides royally fucked over?”

“Bitter, pal. It got you cold and bitter. You’re not yourself anymore. What the hell do you expect in a woman?”