“It’s coming along. I just need a little more time.”
They lapsed into a strained silence again. Annie cleared her throat, and he could tell her smile was forced. “I think I’ll go see if Savannah can use some help.”
He took hold of her arm as she started to turn away. They both felt the jolt and their eyes met. “Annie, I... You look—”
“Jared!” someone yelled from across the room. “Jessica says she needs to talk to you pronto in Jake’s office.”
At that second, Jared wasn’t sure whether to thank his sister or throttle her. He’d almost told Annie how beautiful she was. How glad he was she was here. This was the second time Jessica had “saved” him from stepping over the line he’d drawn when it came to Annie.
That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? To keep his distance from her? And even if it wasn’t what he wanted, it was the way it had to be.
He dropped his hand from Annie’s arm and his fingers felt cold and empty. Hell, he felt cold and empty.
Whatever it was that his sister wanted, it had better be good.
He moved away from Annie, felt her gaze follow him as he left the room. He was silently cursing when he walked into the office.
Jessica was on the phone, raking her fingers through her hair as she spoke. “I’m on my way, Mrs. James. Yes, I’ll find him, don’t worry. I’ll see you in thirty minutes.”
Jared frowned as he closed the door behind him. “What’s the matter?”
“Jared, I’m sorry, but one of my kids from the youth group has run away. I’m sure he’ll show up, but I’ve got to get over to his house and calm his mother down.” She grabbed her purse and dug for her keys. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so you’re going to have to take Annie home for me.”
“But—”
She kissed him on the cheek and was out the door. “Thanks, big brother, I knew you wouldn’t mind,” she called over her shoulder.
He stood there, struck by the force of his tornado sister and stared at the open door. Oh, no. He closed his eyes and swore softly. It was a long drive into town. Forty-five minutes long.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
He took a deep breath and walked back out to the party. Annie was standing in a corner, talking to Sam McCants, who owned the ranch next to Jake’s. Jared remembered Jake’s being crazy with jealousy when Sam had turned his attention on Savannah. Now, Jared realized as he watched Annie laugh at something Sam said, it was his turn to feel crazy.
And he also realized that forty-five minutes with Annie, alone, late at night, was forty-four minutes and thirty seconds longer than he could handle without making him want things he couldn’t have.
* * *
They drove to town with the truck windows rolled down. It was warm, and the air, heavy with the scent of sage, rippled through the cab. The headlights lit the dark deserted highway, but the moon was so bright that lights were hardly necessary.
“Jared, really, you didn’t need to drive me back to town,” Annie protested for the third time since they’d left the party. “There must have been someone else headed in my direction.”
“I told you it’s no problem,” Jared said flatly. If he’d been left alone to consume the amount of liquor he’d wanted to it might have been a problem, but Jake had dragged him off to help with games before he’d even had a chance to finish one beer.
He flipped on the radio, and a country ballad about a lonely bedroom and empty pillows filled the cab. He quickly snapped the radio off again.
With a sigh, Annie leaned her head back against the seat and stared out the windshield. The silence stretched as long as the highway, and when she closed her eyes, Jared thought she might have fallen asleep.
He glanced at her, at the slender column of her neck and the smooth line of her jaw. A longing he couldn’t suppress gripped his insides. If only...
“Your sister-in-law is terrific,” Annie said, interrupting his thoughts. “Jonathan told me once what Jake’s ex-wife put him through. I’m glad to see him so happy.”
It had been a rough time for Jake, Jared remembered. He and Jessica had felt so helpless.
“We thought he’d never settle down again,” Jared said. “It took a special lady like Savannah to set him straight.”
There was a long quiet pause. Annie turned slowly and opened her eyes.
“And what about you, Jared?” she said softly. “What kind of special woman is it going to take to set you straight?”
The cab suddenly felt like a fist closing around him. How the hell was he supposed to answer that?
The lights of town were quickly approaching. A few more minutes. That was all he needed to hold it together.
“I didn’t know I needed straightening out,” he said lightly, trying to force a humor into his voice he certainly didn’t feel.
He smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. She simply stared at him, not even bothering to brush away the strands of hair whispering over her face.
He pulled into the parking lot of the motel and cut the engine. He stared straight ahead, his hands still on the wheel.
“It’s Jonathan, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “He’s the reason you haven’t married. Why you aren’t with someone. Because you won’t allow yourself that happiness, will you?”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“Or is it just me?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “Do you look at me and think of Jonathan? Do you wish I would just go away so you wouldn’t have to be reminded of him?”
When he didn’t answer, she turned away and started to open the door. He reached out and took hold of her arm, then gently pulled her across the seat beside him. He looked down at her, and the moisture in her eyes only deepened the ache in his chest.
“I do think of Jonathan every time I look at you,” he said raggedly. “He’s the one who deserves to be looking at you, to be touching you.” He closed his eyes and swallowed the bitter taste in his throat. “He’s the one you should be with, Annie. Not me. Never me.”
She touched his cheek with her fingers, and he sucked in a deep breath at the gentle touch. “Jonathan is gone, Jared. Nothing can bring him back.”
He opened his eyes and watched as a tear slid down her cheek. “But you’re here.” She lifted her face to his. “And so am I.”
His heart went still, then pounded so hard he thought his chest might explode. His fingers tightened on her arm.
I have to taste her. If only this one time...just one time....
He lowered his mouth to hers.
She met him, softly at first, and her sigh was like warm silk sliding over his jaw. It was the merest brush of lips, no more than a whisper, but it set his blood pounding in his veins. Sensation after sensation pulsed through him. Every nerve ending in his body became excruciatingly alive.
She opened to him, and the sweetness he found there made it impossible not to want more. He moaned deeply, a desperate mixture of need and despair. She pressed against him, sliding her fingers up his chest, burning his skin through the fabric of his shirt.
An urgency coursed through him, and he pulled her closer, slanting his mouth fiercely against hers again and again. She met the hot thrust of his tongue with her own and the whimper of need in her throat sent him over the edge.
Every primal instinct screamed at him that she was his. She belonged to him. He buried his hands in her hair, pulling her closer. She welcomed him, accepted him fully, and when his hand closed over her breast, she cried out, arching into him. His thumb slid over her hardened nipple, and she moved against him, gasping for breath.
He needed as he’d never needed before. Ached as he’d never ached before. His body demanded fulfillment, and he bent her backward onto the seat of the truck, covering her body with his, moving against her, spreading her thighs with his knee...
What the hell was he thinking?
Appalled at what he’d done, what he was about to do, he sat up quickly, pulling her up with him.
&n
bsp; “Annie, my God...”
He sucked in a breath and dropped his hands from her. His body was on fire, his arousal to the point of pain. “Annie, I’m sorry.”
She stared at him, her passion-filled eyes wide with confusion. Slowly she eased away from him and combed her hair away from her face with her fingers. The look in her eyes was like a knife ripping him in two.
“I’m sorry, too, Jared.” She opened the door and slipped out, then stood outside the truck and leveled her gaze with his.
“You feel guilty because every time you look at me you see Jonathan’s face,” she said heavily. “But you know why I feel guilty, Jared?”
She closed the door and stared at him through the open window. Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her.
“Because every time you look at me,” she said, her voice shaking, “every time you touch me, I can’t even remember what Jonathan looked like.”
She turned and walked away. He wanted to call out to her, to jump out of the truck and bring her back to him. To hold her in his arms and tell her it was all right.
But it wasn’t all right. And it never would be.
So he watched her go.
Six
The smell of damp earth filled the air as Annie watched the first-shift crew awaken the long-sleeping derrick. There was an energy here she’d never experienced before. A powerful force that charged the air and ground. It made her skin tingle and her pulse quicken.
Of course, for Annie there was always a certain level of excitement the first day of drilling. She compared it to the first day of school after the summer break, when everything was new and you were unsure of what to expect, unsure if you were going to like your teachers, of who would be in your classes. Then as the semester wore on, the days would settle into a routine, then finally boredom. She’d learned quickly that drilling a rig was no different.
Until this rig.
Jared stood beside her, hands on his hips, watching mud bubble up from the entry hole. All the drilling fluid would be routed into a mud pit, which was a hole in the ground the size of a house. It was also from where she would be retrieving her soil samples as they moved closer to the target zone.
“What’s your estimated time to set the casing?” Annie yelled over the roar of the machinery.
“Around three this afternoon,” he shouted over his shoulder, then signaled for the man leading the drill to slow the speed.
“Are you going to watch?” she asked.
He nodded. “I want to make sure everything goes smoothly.”
She knew he would, of course. Until everything was in place and he could see how the crews were working together, Annie had expected Jared to do double shifts. Besides, it was much easier to avoid her that way.
When she’d shown up this morning, he’d acted as if nothing at all had happened between them after Emma’s party. He’d been business as usual.
He was one stubborn man, she thought dryly.
But no matter how he acted, no matter how hard he pretended, the undeniable draw was still there between them. Lord knew she was still reeling from that kiss. And no amount of pretending could make it go away.
Jared called out to Slater, who was busy checking the compressor gauges. The foreman gave Jared an okay sign, then pointed at Annie and gave her a wink. Annie smiled back and waved. Jared frowned.
A woman on a rig was still a novelty for most crews, and not everyone was completely accepting. She could usually tell immediately which men were going to give her trouble, and she dealt with them accordingly. But the members of this crew had greeted her without a hint of resentment, and she wondered if she had Slater to thank for that, or Jared.
She’d also noticed that Glenn Woods and Steve McBain, two of the new recruits Slater had rounded up, had been watching her with puppy-dog eyes, but she’d dealt with that type of infatuation before, and it didn’t bother her. As long as they did their work, Annie didn’t mind the covert glances and repeated excuses to talk with her.
They would drill to twelve thousand feet, which would take approximately three weeks. If there was no oil found once the designated target was hit, work was to stop and the rig was to shut down. Arloco would cease to pay any bills submitted beyond that point. There was no such thing as bad weather, days off or holidays.
The clock was ticking.
* * *
At three-thirty that afternoon, Slater, Jared and Annie opened a bottle of champagne and a bag of pretzels in the office. It was the end of the first day’s shift, everything had gone smoothly, and the casing was in place. They were all tired but smiling as the glasses were raised.
“Here’s to all that money you’re gonna make,” Slater said, clinking Jared’s glass with his own. “May you remember all of us little people as you sail off in your yacht.”
“I might remember a lot of things,” Jared said, taking a sip of wine and reaching for a pretzel, “but not one of them will be you as one of the little people.”
Slater’s booming laugh shook the trailer walls and Annie laughed with him. Jared watched her eyes light up, and when her lips touched the champagne glass in her hand, he desperately wanted to taste her while the bubbles still lingered in her mouth.
He cursed himself for the thousandth time for wanting her as he did. He’d finally given up denying it. After that kiss the other night, he’d be a bigger fool than he already was if he didn’t at least admit to himself he was attracted to Annie.
But it was more than an attraction. It went deeper than that, more intense. She’d aroused more than his body; she’d aroused his very soul, made him want her in a way he could never have her.
“Hey, boss, you look like something the cat dragged in.” Slater refilled his now empty glass, then topped off Annie’s again. “Don’t you think so, Bailey?”
Annie looked at Jared and nodded. “Yeah, after the dog finished with it.”
Outwardly Jared frowned at their antics, but the impish light in Annie’s hazel eyes made him smile inside. Her face was smudged with dirt, her hair tousled, and her jeans and boots covered with mud.
She looked beautiful.
It was all he could do not to pull her onto his lap and cover that smudged face with kisses.
“Well, Slater,” Jared drawled, stretching his long legs out in front of him, “in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re wearing enough mud to build a dam. I’d get you a mirror, but the way you look, you’d just break it.”
Slater feigned indignation and Annie giggled. Jared grinned at her. “And you, Miss Angel Face, the way your mug looks right now, you could be the poster child for the homeless.”
Annie threw the first pretzel, but from there it was hard to keep an account. Pretzels and champagne flew, and they were all laughing so hard they didn’t even hear the knock or the office door open.
“Uh, excuse me.”
Jared ducked a salty missile Annie had aimed at his head, then turned at the sound of the man’s voice.
He wasn’t one of the crew. In fact, Jared had never seen him before. He was young, around twenty-five, with red hair and pale freckled skin. He was carrying a clipboard and a small black book.
The man picked his way through the broken pretzels and puddles of champagne covering the office floor, then reached into the pocket of his blue plaid shirt and pulled out a card.
“Boyd Fitzer,” the man said loudly, as if he were announcing royalty. “Department of Oil and Gas.”
Jared rose from his chair and took the business card. “What can I do for you, Mr. Fitzer?”
“I need to see your drilling permits.”
Jared frowned. “I’ve filed all the necessary paperwork and been approved. I’ve also been told twice on the phone that everything is in order.”
“Well, then—” Fitzer raised one red eyebrow “—you should have your permits, shouldn’t you?”
Jared felt a muscle in his cheek jump. “Your department has been a little slow mailing them out.”
The man
raised his other eyebrow. “So you started drilling without them?”
At the murderous look on Jared’s face, Annie felt it best to intercede. “Mr. Fitzer,” she asked sweetly, “how long have you worked for the department?”
He straightened his shoulders. “Three months.”
Annie groaned silently. The most difficult department employees were always the new ones.
She smiled brightly at the man. “Well, then, perhaps you aren’t aware that it’s not unusual for a rig to start without the permit in hand once there’s verbal approval. You know how slow the postal service can be.”
He hesitated, then shook his head and tapped the small black book he carried. “I’m afraid that’s not in the code book. And besides,” he added, “I have no record of your paperwork.”
“No record!” Jared slammed his hands down on the desk. The glasses rattled. “What the hell are you talking about?”
At Jared’s outburst, Fitzer dropped his clipboard and book. “There, uh, there’s no paperwork. I looked for it personally when I was assigned to you.”
Jared’s stream of expletives singed the air. His face red, Fitzer bent to pick up his clipboard, but Slater, who had been sitting back quietly, reached for it first and handed it to the man. Slater then reached for the code book and began to leaf casually through it.
Flustered, the state employee ran a hand through his hair. “Mr. Stone, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to shut you down until you have the proper permits.”
Now you’ve done it, Fitzer, Annie thought, shaking her head. This boy really had a lot to learn about oilmen.
“Shut us down!” Jared came around the desk, his fists clenched. “You think you can—”
“Here it is, Jared,” Slater interjected, stabbing a finger at the code book. “Remember that code we were talking about the other day?”
“What code?” Jared yelled.
“You know, the one where it says it’s legal to shoot stupid civil servants.”
Slater stood and looked down at Fitzer. The poor man’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he looked up at his huge adversary.
“You...you c-can’t threaten me,” Fitzer said weakly.
Texas Temptation Page 7
