The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (10 page)

Couldn’t tell her that he loved her when he wasn’t even sure what the word meant. Wouldn’t promise her that he’d settle down when he had drilling obligations from one end of the state to the other.

Because—hell, he didn’t know why. But he knew he didn’t want to hurt her—ever. Didn’t want those gorgeous blue eyes on his conscience when it was time for him to go.

So he denied his desire for her and got on with the business of drilling for oil, blissfully ignorant of the fact that the initial test of true love is putting the other person first.

The first day of summer and her tomato plants were already three feet tall. Just went to show what a person could accomplish when she put her mind to it.

Joni placed a gloved hand on the small of her aching back and straightened up from her uncomfortable weeding position. At the rate they were growing, she’d have ripe tomatoes by the Fourth of July.

That’s not all she’d have, either.

Finished weeding, she took off her work gloves and shaded her eyes with a hand that had shown remarkable improvement since she’d begun wearing them on a daily basis. She looked over her
raised tomato beds and out toward the cornfield, where the drilling rig rose like a phoenix from the ashes of despair.

A slender spire of steel gossamer that towered above her thrifty farm, it seemed as incongruous as a tree growing in mid-ocean. No workers were visible at the moment, but the steady clatter and rumble coming from the derrick told her that drilling was proceeding right on schedule.

Two weeks from start to strike, barring equipment breakdowns, Chance had said before he’d left to pick up that load of casing and Grandpa’s prescriptions yesterday. But it was what he hadn’t said that gnawed at her now. He’d yet to mention either her nightmare or her foolish behavior the following morning.

Her temper had a terribly short fuse. Sometimes that worked to her advantage. Back her into a corner and she’d fight like a tiger to get out. Other times she was her own worst enemy. Give her enough rope and she’d hang herself.

She still cringed when she remembered her reverse striptease. Chance had provoked her, pure and simple. But two wrongs didn’t make a right, and on meeting his eyes in the mirror, she’d realized she was as much to blame for the incident as he was.

The rig swayed under the force of the wind, reminding her that all was not lost. Dropping her hand, she started toward the house and her never-ending bookwork, wondering which of their creditors to pay and which she could put off for another
month. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that much longer.

Come July, she’d have oil. Barrels of it. And money. Piles of it. But she wouldn’t have Chance. Couldn’t have Chance. He wasn’t the settling kind. Wasn’t a man she could depend on when the chips were down. And that broke her heart because, fool that she was, she loved him.

She loved him!

Loved the rowdy streak of laughter that ran through him. The inner strength and rugged individualism that radiated from him. She even loved the trace of chauvinism that surfaced in him every so often, though a little of it certainly went a long way.

She loved him so much, she wanted to shout it to the world. But she couldn’t tell a soul—not even Grandpa—because she loved him too much not to let him go.

“Grandpa?”

“Out here.”

Joni stepped to the front screen door and peered out. A ragged patch of cloud had eclipsed the moon, and she could barely make out her grandfather’s shape, hunched forward in the old oak porch swing.

It just tore her up to see him sitting alone in the darkness, struggling to breathe. But the prednisone that eased his cough kept him awake, and he refused to take the sleeping pills that Dr.
Rayburn had prescribed. Claimed they made him sleepy at all the wrong times.

“Mind if I join you?” Joni asked.

“Don’t stay up on my account,” Grandpa protested.

“It’s a little early for bed yet—even for me.” She slipped out the door and started across the porch. The wind had died down to an occasional whiff, and only a trace of dust lingered in the air.

He patted the seat beside him and moved over some, smiling when she took her place. That bit of exertion cost him dearly. He hunched forward again, his breath coming short and hard.

Joni’s heart and hand went out to him as she reached over and gently rubbed his back. Her eyes brimmed with grief when her palm contoured the emaciated ridges of spinal column and shoulder blade that protruded beneath his flannel shirt.

“Damnation!” Trying his best not to cough—it hurt so bad—Grandpa shook his head in self-disgust. “I’d shoot a horse that sounded like this.”

Her hand stilled; her heart dove into a tailspin. “That’s a terrible thing to say!”

“It’s true, though,” he said philosophically. “We treat animals more humanely than we do people.”

She hid her anguish behind anger, an automatic defense with her. “I’m warning you, Grandpa, if you don’t stop talking like this, I’ll call Dr. Rayburn and have you hospitalized.”

“It’s not the dying I’m afraid of.” He panted with the effort of speaking. “It’s the doctors.”

“You can’t give up.” Not when they were so close
to being able to afford a lung specialist. “I won’t let you.”

A spark of his old spirit flashed across his face. “A body’s got a right to die.”

Joni clamped her hands over her ears. “Stop it!”

Grandpa grabbed her wrists and forced her hands down, surprising her with his tenacity. “Promise me you won’t send me to the hospital. Won’t let them jam tubes up my nose and down my throat.”

“Please—”

“Promise me you’ll let me die at home.”

Was this how she repaid the man who’d raised her single-handedly? By making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep?

A jumble of thoughts played tricks on Joni’s mind, appearing and disappearing so fast, she couldn’t really grasp them. Grandpa wiping her tears when she skinned her knees … Grandpa waiting up for her when she came home from her first date … Grandpa walking her down the aisle when she married Larry, up the aisle when she buried him.

She coughed to clear the rust from her throat. “I promise.”

He released her hands. “Thank you, darlin’.”

They swung silently then, listening to crickets and barn owls and the rhythmic pounding of the drill bit. Odd, how the
chirrups
and
screeches
and
thuds
all harmonized to create their own special symphony.

Drilling had been going on day and night for a
week now, keeping Chance away from the house from sunup to sundown, and sometimes later than that.

Like tonight, for instance.

He’d called her from the trailer while she was fixing supper to tell them to go ahead and eat without him. She’d offered to run his plate over to the site, but he’d refused, saying he’d just grab a bite of whatever was in the refrigerator there. So supper had been a lonely affair.

The moon peeked through the clouds just then and Joni glanced toward the cornfield, her eyes seeking but not finding Chance’s muscular figure. The towering derrick had melted into the night. In its place were groups of ruby lights—airplane warnings—high up against a sky of blue-black velvet.

On the rig floor fantastic shadows danced here and there as naked electric bulbs swung in the intermittent breeze. Stacks of pipe glinted in the moonlight, and wet drilling mud glistened on men and machinery.

A chain clinked musically and the diesel engine drummed softly. The sound of money in the making … The sound of good-bye.

Determined not to brood, Joni got to her feet and crossed to the porch railing, looking across the farmyard. A sense of life renewed blossomed in her smile when she located the raised beds where her tomatoes grew.

She kept her garden meticulously neat, watering and weeding as though her sanity depended on it. Perhaps it did. She knew she’d come dangerously
near her own breaking point after Larry died, wondering and worrying about the future. Working till she dropped had given her an opportunity to let off some steam. More important, it had given her the order and symmetry she hadn’t been able to impose on any other aspect of her life.

“Well,” Grandpa said now, “I guess Chance isn’t coming home tonight.”

“I guess not.” Joni realized he missed the wildcatter as much as she did and she told herself that they were going to have to get used to an empty house sooner or later. He’d be gone in no time flat.

Too agitated to stand there just doing nothing, she turned to help Grandpa out of the swing and into the house. “Come on, it’s past your—”

But the rest of her sentence rode a warm zephyr into the night when she saw Chance cutting across the cornfield. The moon broke completely through the clouds, lighting his path, and her heart did a welcome-home pirouette.

“Speak of the devil …” Joni wasn’t sure if it was the rig or her pounding pulse that shook the porch where she stood when he took the steps two at a time.

“Howdy, stranger,” Grandpa said with a grin.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“How’s the drilling going?”

“Do you like cold fried chicken?”

“How about a game of pitch?”

Chance raised his callused palms, effectively putting a stop to their excited bombardment. “In
reverse order, maybe later, love it, fine, and famished.”

Joni and Grandpa fell silent as they fumbled to slot his answers into the proper questions.

“But first,” he said before they’d quite succeeded, “I’m going to take a shower.”

Mud covered his lean body from head to foot, but in Joni’s eyes he’d never looked better. She smiled. “There’s a whole stack of clean towels in the linen closet.”

He flashed her that engaging grin before he turned to go inside. “Thanks.”

Twenty minutes later the three of them sat on the porch just like a regular family at the end of the day, Joni and Grandpa in the swing and Chance in the wicker rocker with a plate on his lap.

He polished off three pieces of the golden brown chicken and two slices of homemade bread slathered with butter before he set his plate on the round table beside the rocker and gave a sigh of repletion. “That was really good.”

A frown etched Joni’s forehead. “Didn’t you eat today?”

“Didn’t have time.” Chance lifted his beer bottle to his lips and took a long swig. He’d started keeping a six-pack in her refrigerator so he could have a cold one every night.

Funny, he thought as he drained the bottle and set it aside, before he met Joni he often knocked off a whole six-pack in a single sitting. But now he never wanted more than one.

“I told you when you called that I’d be glad to fix
you a plate and run it over to the site,” she reminded him.

“And I appreciated the offer,” he replied. “But it wouldn’t be fair to the other guys if I ate a square meal and they ate catch-as-catch-can.”

Grandpa asked Chance a question about the drilling procedure, which prompted a discussion about the old “cable tool” method as opposed to the modern “rotary” method.

Joni didn’t pay any mind to what the men were saying because she had a plan she was mulling over. If it worked out the way she hoped, they’d all get to spend a little more time together. And if it didn’t … at least she would have given it her best shot.

She came out of her reverie only to realize that Chance had just asked Grandpa why he’d never drilled for oil before.

“I lost interest when I lost Ruthann,” Grandpa answered quietly.

“You must have loved her very much.”

“There’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss her with every fiber of my being.”

Chance envied the old man his memories. He’d never felt that way about a woman. Never known that kind of love. That kind of loyalty. He wondered if he ever would.

Grandpa’s eyes narrowed as he looked back through a fog of fifty-some years. “We had our differences, of course. She liked to do things on the spur of the moment. I liked to plan things down to the last little detail. She never met
a stranger, while I was slower to warm up to people. But we had the basics in common.”

Joni remembered what Chance had said about showing her what
they
had in common and wondered if he remembered it too.

He did.

Their eyes met in the moonlight.

“Both of us loved the land,” Grandpa went on musingly. “And both of us welcomed the challenge it presented. More important yet, both of us were willing to fight—”

A coughing fit cut him off then.

Like a well-trained rescue team, Joni and Chance jumped to their feet and went to Grandpa’s aid.

She gave him a sleeping pill.

He got him into his pajamas.

She folded back the covers and fluffed the pillows.

He carried him to bed and laid him gently in place.

She kissed that leathery old cheek.

He turned off the light.

The long-case clock in the hallway chimed ten times.

“I think I’ll leave my bedroom door open, in case he wakes up.” Her emotions flayed raw by the events of the past few hours, the last three years, Joni couldn’t make direct eye contact with Chance for fear he’d see how much she needed him tonight.

He walked her to the bottom of the stairs and stopped, studying her bowed head. Knowing he could take her tonight. Knowing it would break her in the long run. Knowing he was doing the
right thing when he turned away and left her to go up alone.

“Chance …” She called after him so chokily, it damn near did him in.

“Don’t say it, Joni.” Better the small hurt now than the big heartache later on, he told himself as he stalked to the screen door.

“Wh-where are you going?”

“Back to the drilling site.”

“Will you be gone long?”

“A couple of hours at least.”

She pressed her fist to her stomach. “I’ll wait up.”

He punched the screen door open with the heel of his hand and sent it crashing against the outside wall. “Don’t bother.”

“What’s this?”

“Thirst aid.”

Chance got up and came around from behind his desk, where he’d been working on the drilling log. He’d heard of first aid, of course, but … “
Thirst
aid?”