by Cathie Linz
“Then there was the time I was on safari in Kenya and saved our group from a charging rhino at considerable risk to myself.”
Stan waited until Jack had finished his lengthy story before saying, “That’s nothing. Talk to me after you’ve been involved with a ship takedown in the Persian Gulf.”
“When you’ve traveled the world the way I have—”
“And what way would that be?” Stan interrupted him. “Being pampered at a bunch of fancy hotels?”
“As opposed to the high-class places you’ve been?” Jack countered with a raised brow.
“That’s it! I’ve had it!” Elizabeth stated, rising to her feet and tossing her napkin onto the table in disgust. “You two good ol’ boys go right ahead and continue playing this verbal ‘mine is bigger than yours’ game. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving.”
“An excellent idea,” Angela said, getting to her feet as well. “I’ve had enough as well.”
A second later both women had walked out of the restaurant and disappeared in the passing crowd along the River Walk.
Kate was speechless.
Striker wasn’t. “We’re taking off as well.” He placed a handful of large bills on the table. “That should cover my meal and Kate’s. My parents’ as well.”
“Put your money away. The meal is on me,” Jack insisted.
Striker shook his head. “I pay my own way. And my family’s.”
Striker hustled Kate out of the restaurant so fast she didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye. Looking over her shoulder, she saw her father and Stan look at each other with a shared expression of male confusion.
“We can’t just leave them alone like that,” she protested even as Striker ushered her through the door and out onto the River Walk.
“Sure we can. We just did.”
“Are you sure they’ll be okay?” Kate craned her head to try and catch sight of her dad through the large window.
Striker tugged her away. “They’ll be fine.”
“What if they start arguing again?”
“They’re grown-ups. They’ll manage.”
“Your dad won’t punch my dad or anything, will he?”
“I sure hope not.”
“That’s not very reassuring. I think we should go back.”
“And I think you should stop worrying about your father and start concentrating on your own life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that your dad is a big boy and can take care of himself. You don’t have to worry about him.”
“He had a heart attack two years ago and almost died.”
“I know. You told me. You also told me that he’s doing fine now and that his latest checkup went great, right?”
“Yes, but…”
“No buts. That skunk just ain’t gonna mate.”
Kate cracked up.
“What are you laughing at? You don’t think that sounds like a good Texas saying? One that Tex would approve of?”
“I don’t think you live your life waiting for someone else’s approval.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“Yet you automatically had that approval because you followed in your dad’s footsteps and went into the Marines. What if you had wanted to be… I don’t know…an artist or something?”
“You’ve clearly never seen me try and draw anything,” Striker noted dryly. “I can manage a map but that’s about it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I like to think my parents would have supported my decision.”
“Yet you told me that your dad is very upset about you working at King Oil.”
“You didn’t let me finish. And even if they didn’t, I’d do whatever I needed to do anyway. There comes a point where you have to be true to yourself. You have to live the life you want to instead of the one expected of you.”
Easier said than done, Kate thought to herself.
She tried to shove those thoughts out of her mind as she and Striker stopped at several shops along the River Walk before giving in to temptation and getting some ice cream. But even while sitting beside him on a bench along the river, his words continued to repeat themselves in her mind.
Striker noticed her silence and commented on it when they entered her building a while later. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“You do too much of that. You need to do more of this…” He lowered his head and brushed his lips across hers.
The kiss blossomed into a sensual exploration of various angles and delicious moves. The world faded away as pleasure filled every particle of her body.
“Ahem. Sorry to interrupt…” Angela said.
Kate’s eyes flew open…to find not only Striker’s mom, but her own mother standing a mere five feet away.
Chapter Nine
Kate knew what her mother was going to say. She could hear her already… Really, Kate, you shouldn’t be standing out here in the hallway where anyone walking by might see you making out with that Marine.
Instead her mom surprised her by saying, “Angela and I had the best time tonight. I showed her some of my favorite shops in Rivercenter. They were doing a makeover clinic at the Lancôme counter so we stopped there and afterward we talked over a cup of latte.”
“I’ve missed girl talk,” Angela confessed. “Raising five sons means you don’t get much feminine input.”
“Darn right,” Striker muttered, staring at his mom as if she’d turned into an alien from another planet.
“I had so much fun this evening. Thank you, Elizabeth.” Angela hugged her. “It was so sweet of you.”
“Nonsense.” Elizabeth hugged her back. “I’m glad we were able to spend time together.”
“Remember what I told you. Jack’s tales about my being his first love were all a bunch of cow manure. The only time we kissed, we were both fourteen, and it was like kissing my brother…if I had one.”
“Yuck!” Striker looked as his mother with the horrified expression of a son. “Too much information.”
Angela laughed. “Have you noticed, Elizabeth, how children have this silly notion that they somehow were hatched out of a cabbage patch and that their parents never…”
“It’s getting late,” Striker interrupted. “I’d better drive you back to Westwind.” He hustled his mom away.
Elizabeth watched him and stunned Kate even more by noting, “That is one fine-looking man.”
“How many margaritas did you have tonight?” Kate asked suspiciously.
Elizabeth shrugged prettily. “I’m not sure.”
“I’d better drive you home.”
“No. I don’t want to go home tonight. Would it be okay if I stayed in your guest room?”
“Sure.” Kate unlocked her door and ushered her mom inside. “But we have to call Dad and tell him that you’re here so he won’t worry.”
“It would serve him right if he did worry. Putting me through such misery, making me think he regretted marrying me and wishing he’d hooked up with Angela instead.”
“What made you think a ridiculous thing like that?”
“Gee, honey, tell me what you really think.” Her mom’s voice was mocking.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insinuate that your feelings were ridiculous. I just meant that Dad loves you. He always has.”
Elizabeth sat on the denim couch and swapped the pillows, moving the floral one to the front. “He takes me for granted.”
“Have you talked to him about any of this?” Kate placed her keys in the wooden bowl she kept on the foyer table for that purpose. As distracted as she was, she had to keep to her routine. She glanced at the hammered silver Mexican mirror on the wall over the table and discovered that her hair clips were totally lopsided thanks to Striker’s caressing hands.
Her entire world was feeling lopsided at the moment. Her mother never came to visit her. She’d seen the loft once when Kate had first moved in, and that was it. Sin
ce she’d tried to strong-arm Kate into using her decorator, Kate hadn’t been real eager to have her return.
But tonight was different. Her mom was different. Even if she was still rearranging Kate’s throw pillows to her own liking.
“Talk to your father? Impossible. You know how he is. He hides behind that newspaper of his in the morning, then heads out to work, and when he gets home his mind is still on his caseload or his golf game. I’m just an accessory, like the dining room drapes or the Oriental carpet in the living room.”
“I think you should talk to him.”
“Tomorrow. I’ve had enough stress for one day.” Elizabeth stood, looking at Kate uncertainly. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll head off to bed.”
“I don’t mind. I’ll call Dad for you.”
“You do that.” Elizabeth patted her cheek. “I may not tell you often enough, but I do love you, you know.”
Emotion clogged Kate’s throat and she had to blink away tears.
“You do know that, right?” Elizabeth said.
“It’s nice to hear it,” Kate confessed unsteadily.
“I know I’m not a real touchy-feely kind of person. That’s not the way I was raised. It’s not the way your father was raised. It’s not the way we raised you. I’m thinking now that maybe that was wrong of us. We should have hugged you more.”
“I never doubted that you and Dad love me.” What Kate doubted was that they were proud of her, that they would be happy for her to live the life she chose rather than the one they chose for her.
“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” Elizabeth patted Kate’s cheek one final time before yawning daintily. “Good night, then.”
Striker didn’t know what to say to his mom during the drive back to Westwind so he kept quiet. His mother talked enough for both of them.
She started off railing about the denseness of some men, then their competitiveness, then the forgotten fun to be had at a makeup counter.
This only convinced Striker even more that the woman in his truck was not really his mother. Aliens must have replaced her with a clone. Sure, under the fancy makeup, she still looked like his mom. But she sure wasn’t acting like her.
Maybe this was due to the fact that she was back in Texas. Maybe it had put some kind of weird spell on her. A makeup spell. Next she’d get big hair.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she was saying.
“I doubt that.”
“You’re thinking that I’m not acting like myself, right?”
“Right.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” She peered at him through the semidarkness. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking anymore. I don’t often know what you’re thinking. Of all my sons, I do believe you are the most enigmatic. Not as enigmatic as your father, thank heavens.”
“I’m working on it.”
He’d meant it as a teasing comment, but she took it seriously. “Don’t do that. Don’t work on it. Hiding your feelings is not always a good thing. Not where the woman in your life is concerned. I like Kate, by the way. I guess I told you that already. But the more time I spend with her, the more I like her.”
“You spent more time with her mother than you did with Kate tonight.”
“True.”
“Are you sure you’re not acting this way because of the stress of being back here in Texas? At being back at the ranch after so long?”
“What do you mean ‘acting this way’? What way would that be? Standing up for myself?”
“No, you always do that.”
“I should hope so. Otherwise I’d be overrun by a houseful of Marines.”
“Understood. A Marine’s wife needs to be strong. Strong enough to buck your father’s orders.”
“I don’t regret doing that, you know. I never have. I have regretted that my father couldn’t get past that. Couldn’t meet me halfway. And I deeply regret that we ran out of time.”
“He probably would have been thrilled to see you walking out of that restaurant tonight.”
“He probably would have sided with the men. He was a terrible chauvinist.”
“Yet he hired Kate as his attorney.”
“He must have mellowed some in his old age. Maybe your father will mellow, too. It could happen.”
“Yeah, when cows—”
“—give beer,” they said in unison before laughing.
Apparently, Tex wasn’t the only one with a colorful phrase or two up her sleeve.
The next week flew by as Striker really got down to business with King Oil. He created a combat team to battle corporate waste so that no employees would have to be laid off. He established a weekly strategy session with top executives. He cut response times in half—no more waffling over decisions, hiring expensive consultants to write thick reports, waiting years for something to happen. Forget that.
He’d just said as much to the top executives at this week’s meeting.
“The Marine Corps leaves everyone else in the dust when it comes to turnaround time and pace,” Striker told them. “The organization that moves faster, without sacrificing competence, has the edge over the competition.”
He put a freeze on top management’s expense accounts, putting an end to their lavish spending. And prepared new contracts stating that no longer would bonuses be distributed regardless of the company’s well-being.
Striker took a day to meet with the lower-level managers who ran the day-to-day operations, following a meeting with the bean-counters in the accounting department. He spent the next day with the men out in the field; he met with engineers who wanted to purchase new equipment and talked to geologists.
But one of the most important things he did was assemble a talented group of people around him. The same way that any individual Marine was only as good as the team around him, Striker knew that the company needed to promote new ways of thinking instead of the stagnant rules of the past.
Luckily the people were already there. They often weren’t in charge, but they were ready to pitch ideas, to work on financial reports without resorting to creative but illegal means of juggling numbers.
Charles was not a happy camper about any of these developments. He especially disliked Striker’s most recent order that each department head learn about the people in their section who made things work.
“What do you mean, learn about them?” Charles demanded. “Like who their family is? Where they were born?”
“I mean what they do for the company. Get as close to the frontline workers as possible.”
Charles looked down his aristocratic nose. “We’re not at war here. There is no front line.”
“The battle is to keep King Oil going. You need to listen with an open mind and learn what works, what changes need to be made to make this one of the best private companies in the country. Why did the people in your department come work for us instead of going somewhere else?”
“Why do we care?” Charles countered. “They wanted a paycheck. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that you’re only as good as your weakest link. An I-don’t-get-paid-to-think mentality does not help any of us. A Marine recruit’s problem-solving skills are an important part of the final stage of their training. Everyone needs to be capable of making decisions that lead the unit to accomplish its mission. It requires creative ability to devise a practical solution.”
“We don’t have time to do all these projects you’re starting.”
“Everyone else seems to have time, Charles. You’re the only one who seems to have a problem.”
“I’m warning you that if you keep up this ridiculous imitation of the Marine Corps you’re going to lose people.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Me.”
There. Charles had finally tossed the gauntlet on the table after weeks of veiled innuendoes.
The smirk the V.P. had on his face was a clear indication that he expec
ted Striker to back down. Big mistake.
“I agree with you, Charles. And I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” He leaned back in his chair, puffing out his chest with pride.
“I agree that since you obviously aren’t happy any longer here at King Oil that it would be best for you to leave.”
“Leave?”
“That’s right. To resign.”
“Are you crazy? This place wouldn’t last five minutes without me.”
“As a matter of fact, it lasted decades before you got here, and I have a feeling it’s going to do just fine without you.”
Charles’s face turned red with anger. “I don’t believe this!”
“Believe it.”
“Fine. Go ahead and try to manage King Oil. You’ll run this company into the ground. It’s better I leave this sinking ship now.” With that, he stormed out of the meeting room.
“I’ll expect you to have your things out of the building by the end of the day,” Striker called after him. “And security will be checking to make sure you don’t do or take anything that you shouldn’t.”
Striker turned to face the rest of the executives. “Anyone else feel they want to jump ship?”
Instead of looking at him with fear, as if worried that they might be the next ones tossed out, everyone seated at the large conference table just grinned with relief. Striker knew from speaking to them all individually beforehand that Charles was the one rotten apple in the bunch.
“No? Good,” Striker said with a smile of his own. “Because everyone else at this table has been willing to work with me. We are a team, folks. Working together we can make this place something special. As for Charles’s vacancy, it will be filled effective immediately by Anna Sanchez, the assistant vice president of finance. As many of you know, Anna has trained the last three V.P.’s of finance during her ten years here. She’s more than qualified to take on the responsibilities of this position.”
“Thank you, Striker,” Anna said.
After the meeting, Tex was waiting for him. “I heard about Charles. You know that if brains were gasoline, Charles couldn’t run an ant’s motorcycle.”
