Leaving Necessity

by Margo Bond Collins

  Leaving Necessity

  Margo Bond Collins

  Leaving Necessity

  A Contemporary Western Romance

  Copyright©2016 by Margo Bond Collins

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author except where permitted by law.

  Published by Bathory Gate Press

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  *

  About Leaving Necessity

  Can they strike love again?

  At nineteen, Clara Graves left Necessity, Texas, to try to heal her broken heart. She swore she would never come back, and she’s kept that promise. Until now. When she returns for her uncle’s funeral, she inherits a small oil company that may keep her tied to Necessity for a few days longer than she expected. But as soon as she can close or sell the business, she’s pointing her boots toward greener pastures.

  To this day, Mitchell MacAllan regrets letting Clara go without a fight. But his whole life was in Necessity, and leaving town wasn’t in the cards. As the foreman of Aerio Oil and Gas, he works hard to keep the townspeople employed and maintain the business, despite a recent downturn in petroleum prices.

  Now Mac has less than a week to convince Clara that she should give Aerio a chance, and maybe even forgive him in the meantime. Otherwise, she will once again be leaving Necessity—and taking his heart with her, this time for good.

  *

  Contents

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  To the Stewart Siblings, for keeping me sane this last year. Love you both!

  Chapter One

  Clara Graves stood on the side of the deserted Texas road and, with one pointed toe of her red, high-heeled Manolo Blahniks, gave the flat tire on the rental car a hard kick.

  For the third time, she held her cell phone up in the air, hoping it would tell her something other than No Service.

  No such luck.

  Of course.

  And all I’ve managed to do is hurt my toe.

  The late spring sun was setting, the beauty of the orange streaks across the sky capturing Clara’s attention just long enough for her to register that it would eventually get dark.

  She pulled her long blonde hair back into a ponytail with one hand. Then, blowing out a breath, she let the curls drop back down past her shoulders.

  “Fine,” she muttered to herself. “I’ll change the tire my own damn self.” She shook her head. Not even five hours back in the state, and already she had completely lost both her cool and her grasp of basic grammar.

  She did, however, remember how to change a tire, even if it had been years since she had done it.

  Don’t think about the last time. Don’t think about it. Don’t.

  She couldn’t help it. Even as she traded her pumps for a pair of running shoes—her boots were probably still in the closet at Uncle Gavin’s—and moved her suitcase to the back seat so she could pull the jack out of the trunk, she was remembering the last time.

  She and Mitch had been eighteen, right out of high school, and his truck—that old Dodge pickup Mitch kept running through some magical combination of used parts and duct tape—had gotten its third flat of the week.

  All summer long, he had been threatening to make her change the next one.

  This time, he made good on the threat.

  “It’s your fault,” he claimed. “If not for you, I wouldn’t be driving all over these back roads.”

  “My fault?” Clara had managed to sound outraged, even around her laughter. “I am not requiring you to find the best, most secret make-out spot in all of Palo Pinto County. That is your own personal, private quest.”

  “Not private enough. We still haven’t found private enough.” Mitch cut his hazel eyes toward her. “Anyway, you’re the one who doesn’t want your uncle to catch us. It’s definitely your turn to change the tire.”

  “If I refuse?” she’d asked, smiling despite herself.

  “It’ll be really awful.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “We’ll sit here until dark. Past dark. Mr. Graves will get worried, and call out the cops, and the search dogs. When they find us, they’ll ask us what we’re doing out here. I won’t have any choice but to tell them.”

  “Tell them what?” Clara could barely speak through her laughter.

  With wide, rounded eyes, Mitch adopted a quasi-serious tone. “That you brought me out here for immoral purposes, and then held me captive.” He shrugged. “You’ll go to prison. It’ll totally ruin your life. I’ll be sad, but I will eventually move on.” His voice grew tearful, and he held his hand to his chest. “But I will always remember you fondly.”

  “Fondly? Seriously?” Still laughing, Clara scooted across the bench seat away from him. “Fine. I’ll change the damn tire. But if I do, you’d better remember me more than just fondly.”

  “If you change the tire, you won’t have to go to prison, so it won’t be an issue.” In the end, Mitch had gotten out of the truck and tried to take over, his wide grin showing off his perfectly white, straight teeth.

  “Oh, no. Step off, cowboy. I got this,” she said, wagging her finger at him.

  Even now, she smiled at the memory, despite everything that had come so soon afterwards.

  “I got this,” she whispered as she placed the jack under the rental.

  Fifteen minutes later, the car sported a ridiculously tiny spare donut tire, the full-size flat safely stowed in the trunk.

  Clara’s hands were black. Without thinking, she wiped them down the front of her designer jeans, then grimaced at the marks.

  Oh, well. She could always buy more.

  The combination of dealing with the grease from the lug-nuts and crawling around on the ground to set the jack almost certainly meant that everything she was wearing was ruined, anyway.

  Back in the driver’s seat, she flipped down the visor to check her appearance.

  A black smudge ran across her forehead and up into her hair, probably where she had shoved the blonde curls out of the way. The curls themselves were in disarray, some of them flattened or missing altogether, others spiraling out into frizz.

  Streaks where sweat had dripped down her face ran through her carefully applied makeup. Clara turned the vent so the air conditioner could blow directly on her.

  Taken all together, she looked like a woman who had just changed a tire on the side of the road on a hot Texas day.

  Not exactly the way she had envisioned returning to Necessity, Texas.

  With any luck, she wouldn’t see anyone she knew.

  Or more to the point, anyone who knew her.

  *

  “Hey, Mac, we got another problem out at the Rittman B.”

  Mitchell MacAllan—“Mac” these days, at least to the men on his crews—squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, warding off an impending headache. The late-afternoon sun shining in his eyes wasn’t helping.

  He wouldn’t be home until after dinner for the fifth night in a row.
>
  “You there, Mac?” Bobby’s voice echoed a little through the cell phone Mac still held to his ear.

  He blew out a sharp breath. He might not know if any of them would still have a job tomorrow, but today, at least, he had work to tend to.

  “Yeah. I’m still here. What’s up?”

  “Looks like the pump is burned out again.” Bobby sounded almost as tired as Mac felt.

  “Shit.” Mac drew out the vowel until it sounded like “she-it” and growled with frustration. “Duke been messing with the valves again?”

  He could almost hear the shrug in the mechanic’s voice. “No way to tell for sure. Anyway, I didn’t want to touch it until I talked to you.”

  There was no chance Bobby had gotten a cell signal on the ranch, either. Duke Rittman had refused to allow cell towers on any of the vast number of acres he owned, no matter how much the phone companies offered for the lease.

  He had refused to allow drilling on his ranch, too, until he had discovered that he didn’t actually own the mineral rights to his land and the court had forced him to allow Aerio Oil and Gas onto the property to drill.

  The site had been nothing but trouble ever since.

  Mac couldn’t prove it, but he was certain that Duke took every possible chance to slow them down.

  “How far out are you?” he asked Bobby.

  “Had to come out almost to the interstate to call. I’m sending pictures now.”

  One look at the images that came through moments later told Mac everything he needed to know. “That’s a two-or three-day job. Let’s hold off until after the meeting tomorrow.”

  The pause at the other end of the line held all the anxiety Mac had been shoving down for the last three weeks, ever since he found out that Gavin Graves, the owner of Aerio, had died unexpectedly.

  Bobby was anxious that he might not keep his job.

  For Mac, the realization that Gavin’s niece Clara had inherited the company was far worse.

  Clara Graves was his new boss.

  And tomorrow, he was going to have to give her a report on the state of the company. He needed all the information he could gather. “Head on out to the next site, Bobby. Give me a call when you’re done. In fact, update me on all the sites you visit today.”

  “You got it, Mac.”

  He had poured his entire professional life into this company. With one wave of her hand—well, a stroke of a pen, anyway—she could take away everything he cared about.

  Again.

  He wasn’t going to let that happen. Not this time.

  This time, he would convince her. He would find the right words, the right argument—a way to keep her from destroying everything he had built.

  Mac squared his shoulders and resettled his straw cowboy hat on his head.

  This time, everything would be different.

  Chapter Two

  “Clara? Clara Graves, is that you?’

  Crap. I almost made it.

  Clara winced as Mrs. Jordan, the elderly woman next door, waved her cane in the air. “Wait just a minute there, missy.”

  Missy? Seriously, did anyone outside of sitcoms say “missy”?

  Apparently Virginia Jordan did.

  Forcing a smile, Clara turned to face her one-time neighbor. “Hello, Mrs. Jordan. How are you?”

  The old woman peered at her through thick glasses, her lips pressed together in an unforgiving line. “I am disappointed in you, Clarissa Ann Graves.”

  Here we go.

  Years of dealing with advertising clients allowed Clara to maintain a pleasant, neutral expression. “It’s Clara, Mrs. Jordan. I haven’t gone by Clarissa since I came to live with Uncle Gavin. You know that.”

  Sidetrack the argument. That was the ticket. Distract the woman from whatever she was going to say, then go inside for a shower.

  And maybe a long, hard cry.

  “Don’t you try to change the subject. I am disappointed in you. You never once came to visit your uncle here. You know that just broke his heart.”

  Clara had to duck the gesticulating cane, which had always been more theatrical prop than physical aid, as she well remembered. “Uncle Gavin came to see me in New York, Mrs. Jordan. Several times every year. We always had a wonderful time. I promise you, his heart was not broken.”

  He would have her undying gratitude for that willingness to travel to her, too. More than once he had said he understood her reluctance to return to Necessity—not that he could ever truly realize how deep that unwillingness ran. He had never heard the whole story, but he had known the thought of any kind of homecoming made her feel sick, and that was enough for Gavin Graves.

  He had been a better father to her than she could have ever expected after her real father died.

  There were the tears, springing to her eyes. She had to get away from the nosy neighbor, get inside the house before she broke down. It would do no good for everyone in town to hear how she had fallen apart “right there on the front steps.” Clara could almost hear Mrs. Jordan’s voice, see her cane stabbing the air to underscore the severity of the prodigal niece’s public breakdown.

  Drawing herself to her full height, plus the three inches added by the heels she had re-donned after the tire fiasco, Clara worked to make her voice as dignified as possible. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go inside. I had a bit of car trouble on the way out here, and I need to clean up.”

  Mrs. Jordan seemed taken aback at the announcement, her mouth gaping open and closed several times as she gazed myopically at the younger woman.

  Probably had a whole tirade planned, designed to put me in my place, just like she did when I was sixteen.

  Well, Clara wasn’t sixteen any longer. And she wasn’t so easily cowed these days. “Good evening, Mrs. Jordan,” she said coldly, lifting her suitcase off the bottom step where she had set it when she first heard her name being called.

  Without looking back, she moved up to the porch of the old Craftsman-style house, opened the screen door, and slipped the key she had picked up from the attorney in Dallas into the lock.

  Clara didn’t remember ever using a key to enter the house the whole time she had lived there, from the time she was ten until she was almost nineteen.

  That was the only thing that had changed, though.

  As she stepped into the hallway, the smell of the house overwhelmed her, and she had barely enough time to close the door behind her, to shut out nosy Mrs. Jordan and the rest of Necessity, Texas, before a sob tore through her chest and out her throat.

  *

  An hour and a long, hot shower later, Clara sat in the darkened living room, drinking a Shiner Bock. She would have preferred wine, honestly, but beer was all she could find in the house. Even this surprised her—Shiner was a little upscale for her uncle’s usual tastes.

  The thought made her smile, then sigh.

  Settling back into the corner of the couch—the one that had been hers when she lived there, where she had watched television and read books and lived—she considered the room around her.

  It looked just like it had ten years ago, when she had taken a last, long look at it before closing the door on Necessity and everything it represented.

  What was she going to do with the house? It wasn’t like Necessity was a growing metropolis. Even most of the recent growth from the oil and gas industry had skipped Necessity. Though Uncle Gavin had said enough companies were investing in the area to keep the town alive, it hadn’t turned into a boomtown like Odessa or Midland.

  And with the recent downturn in oil prices, Clara was certain that the smaller, start-up companies would be shutting down and pulling out of the area.

  She wouldn’t have even known that much, if not for her weekly phone conversations with her uncle.

  Anyway, it all added up to the possibility that she was about to inherit an albatross of a house in the one town she wanted to avoid.

  Wanted to avoid was mild. She had sworn, more than once, never to set foot in th
e place again.

  “So much for that plan,” she muttered, draining the last of the beer.

  She could deal with the rest of this tomorrow, after the reading of the will.

  Once she knew exactly what she had to work with.

  For all she knew, Uncle Gavin had willed the house to a local church or the school or something, and she would be able to get right back on a plane after the funeral in two days, back to her real life, the one in New York.

  Yeah, right.

  She was stuck in Necessity.

  Again.

  At least this time, she knew how to get out.

  She had done it before, and she would do it again.

  As soon as possible.

  *

  Mac slid into the attorney’s office at the last minute and stood at the back of the small room. He didn’t even know why he had to be here, except maybe as the oil company’s foreman, he was supposed to explain the business to Clara.

  Several other people were there to hear the reading, too—presumably people the attorney, Mr. Pritchard, had invited because they were in the will in one way or another.

  And there was Clara, at the front of the room, sitting with her back to him.

  He had attended Gavin Graves’s funeral that morning the exact same way, arriving late and slipping into a back pew. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to go out to the graveside service. Gavin had been much loved, and the church was packed. Probably the graveside ceremony would be, as well, but Mac couldn’t bear the thought of seeing any more of Clara’s grief, even from a distance.

  Ten years, and still his gaze was drawn to Clara instantly, as if magnetized to her. Right now, from the back, he couldn’t see any change. Her hair was a little different—wavy and down around her shoulders rather than hanging straight down her back or in a ponytail—but when she shifted in her seat, she moved the same way she always had. A little tense, as if she might bolt at any moment.