“Are you sure you’re all right, Daddy? I mean what could be so important that you’d be willing to break out Drummond’s dusty FedEx account?”
Cleveland heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I keep on hoping one day you’ll grow up and realize not everything’s a joke, but it just doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon. Thank goodness we had your brother first, or you would be too much of a trial to bear.”
She tried to keep the hurt his words caused her from showing. She didn’t know why his low opinion of her still bothered her so much. It had always been this way between them, him wondering out loud why she couldn’t be more like her brother, Steve. For a short time, she had actually managed to gain his approval when she decided to get her M.S. in Social Work in order to take over the Social Services & Welfare Office post from her mother, who had been doing the job for over thirty years. The summer before she started the master’s program, he had told anyone who would listen about his son who was in the Foreign Service program and his daughter who had decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
But that had been before their three-year estrangement and before the birth of his only illegitimate grandchild.
“I’m a social worker. I do realize everything’s not a joke,” she said. “But you’ve kind of got to have a sense of humor to do what I do.”
“Your mother always took her duties very seriously. None of this waiting until the last minute to get important forms in the mail, no asking if I had a stroke when I told her I needed to meet with her about something important.”
Only respect for her father kept her from rolling her eyes. Yes, the horror that her parents, two of the most serious people on the planet, had given birth to one equally serious son and a big-mouthed, bright-color loving daughter, who had a son out of wedlock but still never knew when to stop joking. She wondered if she and her father couldn’t just once have a meeting during which he didn’t compare her to her super-organized and efficient saint of a mother.
“Daddy, is there something I can help you with? Because I’ve still got to get the social security checks ready for tomorrow.”
His lips thinned. “Yes, there is something you could help me with. Maybe you can help me understand why you’ve been messing around with Alexei Rustanov again?”
Eva broke into a cold sweat at just the mention of his name. “I haven’t been messing around with—“ She couldn’t even say his name out loud. “Can I ask where all this is coming from?”
“If you haven’t been messing around with him, why did his company just decide to buy Drummond Oil out of the blue?”
Her heart clenched. He wouldn’t. Not because of one kiss and five minutes of dry humping. But a certain dread was already starting to pool in her stomach, even as she said, “I’m sure that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
He father lifted his thick eyebrows. “Really? Because when I tried to set up a meeting with his people in regards to the future of Drummond’s main business, and the source of seventy-percent of our town’s funding, I received an interesting call back from his executive assistant. He said Rustanov himself would take the meeting, but only if it’s with you.”
Eva shook her head. “No, I can’t. I can’t meet with him.”
Her father leaned forward, his face all business. “The taxes Drummond Oil and their employees pay are what funds both your salary and mine. They employ the vast majority of the adults who live here, and they’re responsible for eighty-percent of all charitable donations. If Rustanov decides to suddenly withdraw his support or, heaven forbid, move the Drummond Oil headquarters somewhere else, this town will die.“
Her throat had gone completely dry. Though she wanted more than anything to say she couldn’t face Alexei again, she knew she would have to. Her father wasn’t exaggerating. Drummond Oil really was the life-blood of the town, providing its sole industry. If Rustanov moved the Drummond Oil headquarters, the majority of her neighbors, many of whom she also counted as friends, would be out of a job. This included both Rodriguezes, who would have to put off their adoption quest until they could find another source of income.
Eva herself could always find a position as a social worker somewhere else, in fact she had been thinking about doing just that for a couple of years now that she had enough money in savings for her and Aaron to live comfortably until she found another job.
But Drummond Oil had always been a friends-and-family kind of business. Many of the people who worked there had inherited their jobs from their parents, just like she’d inherited hers from her mother. But unlike her, many of them hadn’t even bothered to get a degree in order to take on the administrative work of running the offices of a company that hosted wells in several parts of the state. Drummond’s own well had gone dry a couple of decades ago, but back then the company’s namesake family had decided to keep their headquarters in Drummond because it was central to all their other wells, and also because the family still had a home in the area. One of the reasons her father was such a local hero was because after the family sold Drummond Oil to a larger oil company, he had convinced that company to keep the headquarters in Drummond with a mix of tax breaks, business savvy, and one good-old boy, booze-filled weekend.
But now Alexei Rustanov owned Drummond Oil. And he wanted to meet with her.
“I’m no good at business meetings,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“I know you aren’t,” he answered. “But in this case, it’s real simple. You’ve got to convince Rustanov to keep the Drummond Oil headquarters here. Tell him we’ll do whatever it takes, give him whatever incentives he wants to keep the business here. If you have to grovel at his feet, do it. Now is not the time to finally grow a sense of pride, little girl.”
Despite the circumstances, Eva found herself more irritated with her father than her manipulative ex-boyfriend. “It’s not about pride, it’s about my son. I can’t let him find out about Aaron.”
Her father sat up, his head tilting to the side in angry confusion. “What do you mean, find out? You said you told him and he didn’t want anything to do with Aaron. I thought that was why you left his name off the birth certificate and didn’t seek him out for child support.”
She winced. “It’s a little more like I figured he wouldn’t want anything to do with Aaron, so I kind of didn’t tell him.”
“You kind of didn’t tell him.” Her father’s posture had become rigid with anger. “So let me get this straight, little girl. First you moved in with this Russian boy against my wishes. Then you got pregnant. Then you didn’t even tell him he had a baby coming and it was his. Then you put yourself in his sights again. And now he’s bought Drummond Oil, not even knowing you and him have a seven-year-old son?”
When her father summarized the story that way, it did sound really, really bad. “I know I’ve put Drummond in a really terrible position, Daddy. And I’m really sorry. But he cannot find out about Aaron.”
“He sure as hell can’t,” her father agreed. “If he finds out you’ve been hiding a son from him, Lord knows what he’ll do. I don’t know what happened between you two that has him suddenly buying up Drummond Oil and wanting to meet with you, and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to know, because my blood pressure is high enough as it is. But whatever you did, you need to get on that plane tomorrow, and go to New York to fix it.”
“Tomorrow!” she said. “I can’t just drop everything and drive all the way to Dallas to go to New York.”
Her father gave her a small, tart smile. “Eva, I warned you against getting mixed up with this boy, and now look where it’s gotten us. You can and will drop everything. And you will do whatever it takes to save our town, which we’ve both pledged to serve to the best of our abilities.”
“Okay, Daddy, I’m just going to point out that you warned me to stay away from him because he was in your words, ‘fresh off the boat,’ ‘couldn’t even speak English,’ and ‘would never amount to anything.’ I have
no idea if he’s officially got his citizenship or how his English is coming along, but you were definitely wrong on at least one of those accounts. He’s made something of himself and now he’s got you, me, and this whole town under his thumb.”
To her surprise, Eva actually felt a bit of pride in Alexei welling up inside her. Who would have thought the Russian security guard who could barely afford a rundown efficiency would own her hometown one day?
Her father glared at her. “This is all your fault, young lady. If you had kept your legs closed or at least chosen a black boy—” He broke off, obviously too angry to continue down that road. “Your mama and me didn’t raise you like that. ”
Once again, a volcano of regret erupted inside her. He was right, they hadn’t raised her like that and she had been a dutiful daughter up until she met Alexei, but he had awakened her until-then latent wild child. Funny Eva had morphed into crazy-in-love Eva and nothing her father said or did had gotten through to her. She had only been with Alexei for six months, but now her short affair was once again coming back to bite her in the butt. And this time it wouldn’t be just her father’s good name that would suffer. This time, everyone in Drummond might lose their jobs because of her.
“Fine, I’ll go,” she said, not wishing to argue with her father, who was at least half-right about the foolishness of her past actions. “I’ll do it for Drummond and I’ll do it for Aaron. If I don’t go, he might get nosy and start poking around for other things to manipulate me with.”
Perhaps feeling a modicum of remorse for sending his daughter into a known dragon’s den, her father relaxed his stiff posture and said, “You won’t have to drive to Dallas. He’s sending a private plane to the Drummond airfield to pick you up.”
Eva stood, feeling too guilty to look her father in the eye. “Just have Berta email me the details. I’ll be there. Now I’ve got a lot of work to do before I leave.”
She made a hasty exit then, but peeked over her shoulder at her father as she walked out the door. He looked like she felt. Grim and sad.
Chapter Five
EVA stayed at the office until one in the morning in order to get things where they could run without her for a day or two. She thanked her stars Aaron was currently staying with her brother, his wife, and their twin daughters all summer in Italy, where her brother was a Foreign Service officer.
At first when her father had come up with the idea of her seven-year-old son spending the entire summer in a foreign country without her, she had balked. But he insisted spending time with a male role model under sixty would be better for Aaron than another summer in all-day camp. Plus, Aaron had wanted to visit his Uncle Steve and his cousins, and he was such a good kid, she found it too hard to deny him one the few big things he’d asked her for.
But now it felt like it had been fate’s way of cutting her a break. She just hoped she could get this situation with Alexei mitigated before he returned in three weeks, further complicating an already complicated situation.
She arrived at the airfield, which was located about fifteen minutes outside Drummond with an extra large coffee in hand and wearing a pair of large white sunglass to protect her bleary eyes from the bright Texas sun.
She parked her car outside the small, corrugated metal building, which held a couple of benches for departing passengers to sit on. When she got out, she was surprised to see Berta’s maroon Lincoln also parked outside the tiny building. And she was even more surprised when she walked in and found her father’s longtime assistant and three other middle-aged black ladies sitting on the benches, waiting for her. Two of them worked in civil services like her and Berta, and one of them was a vice president at Drummond Oil.
“How ya’ll doing?” she asked, the typical Texas greeting rolling off her tongue, despite the fact she was emotionally and physically exhausted and did not at all feel like being social during the short time she had before her flight was set to leave. Still, she was the mayor’s daughter, and she had been trained to be unfailingly polite to the town’s citizens, no matter what. “Ya’ll came to see me off? How sweet.”
But Berta’s eyes were glued to Eva’s yellow T-shirt and red denim skirt paired with Croc flip-flops. “See, I told you we would need to do an intervention,” she said to the other three women. “Well, come on then. We don’t have much time.”
And before Eva could protest, the four ladies set upon her, stripping her down to her bra and panties, and replacing her comfortable clothes with a slinky black dress that showcased her cleavage and just barely walked the line between sophisticated and out-and-out sexy.
They then pulled a cordless flat iron and manicure supplies out of nowhere and proceeded to straighten her hair, which she had been wearing in a large twistout, and paint her bare nails a vampy red. Last but not least, they chucked her beloved Croc flip-flops and forced her poor feet into a pair of stilettos.
“Really, stilettos?” she said.
Berta sucked her teeth. “Your father might have been fool enough to trust you to dress yourself, but I knew better.”
“Berta, you have always excelled at complimenting yourself and insulting me at the same time,” Eva said. “It’s like a special talent.”
Berta harrumphed. “I got two years before I can retire with a full pension. You best do whatever it takes to convince that man to keep the headquarters here in Drummond.”
The vice president peered over her glasses at Eva. “Whatever it takes,” she repeated in such a way that made it clear to Eva that these women were totally fine with her prostituting herself for their job security.
“Well, Berta, please use the same amount of effort you put into this makeover to finish that pile of work I left on your desk before I get back.” This was, at best, a hollow command. Though Berta was supposed to assist both her father and herself, she’d yet to do a lick of work for Eva and whenever Eva confronted her about it, she said something to the effect of, “When your mother was here, she didn’t need any extra assistance.”
This was another reason Eva was keen to leave Drummond after Aaron returned from Italy. Sometimes it felt like the town was so set in its own ways that it was going backwards as opposed to forward.
In response to her stated wish, Berta just harrumphed again.
And If Eva thought she was going to get away with bringing her clothes with her so she could change back into them on the plane, she was sorely mistaken. When she tried to reach for them, Berta held them above her head and said, “Get along, now, Miss Eva. You got a meeting to get to.”
And that was how Eva came to board Alexei’s private jet looking ten times more sexy than she had wanted to and grumbling about the audacity of old black women.
On the plane, she wrote a long offline email to Aaron, since she had no idea if she’d be back in Drummond in time to Skype with him at their usual hour before dinner, which was right before he went to bed. But while she was trying to compose a light letter filled with silly news from town, her thoughts kept drifting back to the man who had summoned her to New York, and her father’s hand in making sure she did exactly as he asked.
She could still remember the one time they’d all had dinner together those many years ago. Her father had come to town for the National Conference of Black Mayors convention, which was being held in Dallas, and he had made a side trip to to take his daughter to dinner. Eva had known from the start he wouldn’t approve of Alexei, who she’d been dating for three months at that point. But Alexei had insisted on joining them.
“I will not be dirty secret,” he’d said, like she was asking him to help her hide a dead body as opposed to gently suggesting he not come by to see her that night. After their first fevered coming together, they’d spent most of their time at her much larger apartment even though it was further from campus than his efficiency. However, Alexei refused to lay low the one night her father would be staying over.
So she had taken the chance that the two of them might find some common ground and brought Alexei
along to dinner. This was the decision she would mentally kick herself for over and over again for the next eight years. Their first and last meeting had been nothing short of disastrous.
Alexei had taken offense on her behalf whenever her father teased her about not being as smart or responsible as her older brother. “Eva is very smart,” he said. “And she is very good with people. She will be excellent social worker.”
“Her brother’s even better with people,” her father said. “He’s in the Foreign Service program. He might even become an ambassador someday.”
“I think Russians and Americans maybe agree, we need more good social workers, not more rich ambassadors and politicians.”
At that point Eva had audibly groaned and said, “Can we just agree to disagree? Personally I am a fan of both my brother and myself and I know we’re both looking forward to serving our communities in different ways.” She patted her father’s hand, which was now clenched around his dinner fork. “Just like you, Daddy.”
But her father kept on glaring at Alexei like she hadn’t even spoken. “Are you trying to say you know my daughter better than I do?”
“No, I am saying you should be more proud papa. Eva very good, very smart, very kind, but you choose to, how do you say…“ The angrier he got at her father, the thicker his accent got. “… put her down for not being same person as her brother. You should be happy to have such wonderful daughter instead.”
Eva opened her mouth to offer up a quip that would hopefully diffuse the situation, but it was too late. Her father threw down his napkin. “Eva, if you thought bringing around some Russian boy to insult me and my parenting to my face is a good way to gain my respect, then you were surely mistaken.”
“I am not boy,” Alexei said, his voice growing dangerous.
Her Russian Billionaire Page 4
