“She’s reckless. Opinionated. Stubborn. And disrespectful.”
“In other words, she’s a whole lot like you.”
Adam shook his head. “Dad, you know what I mean. She’s—well, she’s a woman in a man’s world. She doesn’t fit.”
“She’s smarter than any man I’ve come across. She’ll be a big asset to the company.”
“Find me someone else to work with and you can cut my salary in half.”
Wyatt’s brows shot up. “You’re serious!”
“Damn serious,” Adam told him.
Wyatt studied him for long moments. He’d seen that look on his son’s face before. Stubborn, defiant, even a little reckless. And he felt as if thirty years had rolled back and he was staring at himself in the mirror.
“Well, I’m serious, too,” Wyatt told him. “I can see you’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of the real purpose here. To get gas and oil from the ground and eventually to the consumer.”
Ducking his head, Adam jammed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and stared at the toes of his cowboy boots. His ruined cowboy boots. But he tried not to think about that now. He could probably forget that Maureen had slung him out of that open-topped Jeep, too. But could he bear to be around her day in, day out? The woman bothered him in ways he didn’t want to think about.
“I have no personal feelings for Maureen York,” he said bluntly.
“It didn’t sound like that a few moments ago when you were practically biting her head off,” Wyatt pointed out. “Did the two of you...you didn’t come on to the woman down there in South America, did you?”
Adam appeared shocked by his father’s question. “Dad, Ms. York is probably getting close to thirty!”
Wyatt’s expression grew wry. “Since when did a few years’ difference in ages ever stop you?”
Adam had the grace to blush. “Well, maybe she isn’t that much older than me. But I can safely say she’s...far from my type.”
“Good.” Wyatt gave Adam’s shoulder an encouraging pat. “Then it won’t be a problem for you to go back into my office and assure her you’re looking forward to working with her.”
“I’ll do my best to lie like hell.”
Wyatt chuckled. “Trust me, Adam, in a few months’ time, you’ll be thanking me for hiring the woman.”
Maureen had almost decided not to wait another minute when the door to the office swung open and Adam Murdock Sanders entered the room. She immediately rose to her feet and clasped her hands behind her back.
“Where is Mr. Sanders?” she asked him without preamble.
“I’m the Mr. Sanders you’ll be working with. My father has gone home to our ranch.”
Maureen moistened her lips and told herself to remain calm. She’d never been an emotional woman. It was one of the reasons she was successful in spite of her gender. But there was something about this young man that got under her skin like no one ever had.
“Look, Mr. San—Mr. Murdock Sanders,” she corrected pointedly, “I believe you and I both know we could never work together.”
Adam totally agreed. But as his father had voiced a few minutes ago, this was one time he was going to have to put his personal feelings aside. This earthy-looking woman was a highly intelligent scientist. He’d been around her for less than a day, but the short time had been enough for him to conclude she’d known her business.
He walked to the desk and propped one hip on the corner. “I’m willing to try.”
“Because your father is forcing you to?”
Adam tried not to bristle at her question. “Wyatt doesn’t force me to do anything. He isn’t that sort of father. And I’m not that sort of son.”
Looking at him, Maureen could well believe he wasn’t a man to be pushed around. In spite of his young years, he already had more presence than a man had a right to possess. And it wasn’t just his physical appearance. Though heaven knew how the sight of his lean, broad-shouldered body shook her right to the marrow of her bones.
“Yes, I can believe that. I can’t see you bending to anyone.”
Adam’s gaze searched her face for a clue as to where her thinking was headed. Yet somewhere along the way he forgot why he was looking. Instead, he began to take account of her high cheekbones, smooth golden skin and chocolate-brown eyes. Her wide, full lips were stained with cherry-red lipstick, and the bright contrast against the rest of her bare face was the most erotic thing Adam could remember seeing on a woman.
Deliberately clearing his throat, he said, “Look, Ms. York, I realize we don’t know each other that well and—”
“Four hours at the most,” she interrupted.
Adam nodded, then feeling as if the office was closing in on him, he turned and walked over to a small table holding a coffee machine, paper cups and other fixings.
“Would you like coffee? Or there’s a soda machine at the front of the building,” he offered.
“Coffee will be fine,” she accepted. “Leave it black.”
He poured two cups and carried one to her. He’d intended to simply hand it over, then move away. But as he’d discovered in the short time he’d been with her in South America, his intentions went awry whenever he was near Maureen York. Instead, he remained less than a step away from her, his eyes going once again to her red lips. “I...understand you really weren’t trying to kill me. It just seemed that way.”
“Believe me, Mr. Sanders, if I’d been trying to murder you, I’d have found an easier, more thorough way than slinging you out of an open-topped Jeep.” She sipped the coffee, grimaced at the bitter taste, then leveled her eyes on his face. He had strong, bony features, darkly tanned skin and eyes as green as a wet emerald. His hair was the rich color of polished mahogany and flopped onto his forehead in a thick wave. If she had to describe his looks in one word, it would have to be sexy.
“Do you actually believe we can work together?” she asked him.
Adam couldn’t imagine getting any sort of work done while in this woman’s company. But he was going to keep that opinion to himself. Sanders Exploration needed a good geologist in a bad way. If it had to be Maureen York, then he’d do his best to be a professional about it.
“I can forget our first meeting if you can,” he said.
She smelled like lilacs on a warm summer night, and before Adam could stop them, all sorts of questions about her were running through his mind.
“How generous of you,” she replied.
A pent-up breath drained out of him. If his memory served him right, she’d told him she was divorced and that she’d worked as a geologist for nearly ten years. Other than that, he knew nothing about where she’d come from or how his father had managed to ferret her out of a long list of potential candidates for the job.
“I’m trying to be,” he agreed.
Maureen took another sip of coffee. “I, uh, the next day after the accident, I was on my way to the hospital to check on you, but an unexpected call forced me to turn around and head to the airport to catch a plane back to the States. I called the hospital later, and a nurse assured me you were going to be fine. I was glad.”
Back in the hospital, Adam had told himself he didn’t care if Maureen York had the courtesy to see if he was going to live or die. But now...well, hell, he felt like he was fifteen instead of twenty-five. It was downright ridiculous how much better her explanation made him feel.
“I have been...fine. Just hampered with a cast.” He forced himself to move away from her.
At the corner of the desk, he picked up his coffee cup and carried it over to the glass wall. The pineand spruce-covered mountains spread in a panoramic view to the south. Reluctantly, he kept his eyes on their beauty rather than Maureen York’s.
“What brought you here to Sanders Exploration?” he asked. “Six weeks ago, you obviously had a job with a good company.”
Maureen was wondering the same thing herself. She hadn’t been unhappy with her former employers. Their headquarte
rs were based in Houston and you couldn’t get any closer to the oil and gas industry than that. She’d been paid a top-notch salary and the people she worked with had been easy to deal with. But she’d been feeling stifled by the city. And though she hated to admit it, she’d had to face the fact that her life had grown stagnant. She wanted and needed a change. Still—if she’d had any idea this man was a part of Sanders Exploration, she never would have agreed to hire on.
“For one thing, I wanted to get out of Houston. I didn’t dislike the city, but I was tired of living in an apartment and dealing with the fast pace. I want a house with a yard and trees.”
He couldn’t stop his eyes from cutting over his shoulder at her. “Sounds like you want to settle down rather than gear up for work.”
Squaring her shoulders, she walked around the desk and joined him at the windows. “I guess you could say I’d like to slow down. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
His dark green eyes met her brown ones. “I didn’t know there was any other way for a...woman.”
Her nostrils flared as she wondered why anything this man could say or think should matter to her. True, she would have to work with him, but she’d dealt with far worse. So why did she let his little innuendos fire her temper? It was silly.
“You might be interested to know that all of us women aren’t pining to get married. We can have a life without a man.”
“Really? My mother thinks a woman has to be with a man and a man has to be with a woman before they can ever be truly happy.”
Something about his voice, the way he talked about men and women made her feel as if she were a very young teenage girl just learning how it felt to be flirted with by a handsome boy. Yet Adam Sanders was far from being a boy, and she had long since passed the flirting teenage years.
“Your mother must be a hopeless romantic,” she murmured, then turned away from him and settled her gaze on the mountains stretching for several miles in the distance.
And Maureen York wasn’t a romantic. She hadn’t said the words, but Adam had read them on her face just before she’d turned her head away. Well, that was fine, even good, he thought. It was a relief to know she wasn’t searching for romance. It would make their job together so much easier.
“This job will send you to all sorts of places, particularly here in New Mexico. It’s not likely you’re going to get much time to spend in that house with a yard.”
She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You don’t want me to take this job, do you?”
Fearing she could read his expression, Adam kept his gaze firmly entrenched on the view outside the glass wall. When his father had purchased this office building more than twenty years ago, he’d also bought several adjoining lots to keep any sort of neighbors at bay. To this day, beautiful woods of pine, spruce and aspen grew right up to the back of the building, and at most any time of the day, chipmunks and birds could be seen feeding right outside the windows.
“I don’t have the final say-so whether you work here or not. My father has that right,” he told her.
“That’s not what I said,” she pointed out.
“I think you’ve come here searching for something you couldn’t find in Houston. I don’t think you’ll find it here, either.”
How could he know what she was searching for? Maureen wondered crossly. She swallowed the last of the bitter coffee and tossed the cup in a trash can sitting next to the desk. “Are you an authority on geologists or women or both?”
“I don’t profess to be an authority on anything.” he retorted.
She smiled, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Then don’t try to figure me out. More than one man has tried it and failed.”
That got his instant attention, and he twisted around and pinned her with a stare of disbelief. “Look, Ms. York, I’m not trying to analyze you. I just want to make sure you’re here to work. This may not be like the huge company you worked for in Houston, but we do sink a lot of holes. If you came out here thinking this job was going to be easy, then you might as well head back to Texas.”
She walked to within a step of him, folded her arms across her breasts and looked up at him. “How old are you, Mr. Sanders?”
He frowned as though he couldn’t believe her question. “Twenty-five. Not that my age has anything to do with this conversation!”
“Hmm. Well, I was just amazed that you got so smart in such a short length of time. It takes most men many more years than you’ve acquired.”
Adam could rightly say without a drop of conceit that he’d always found it easy to converse with women, to charm and cajole them around to his way of thinking. He normally had a gift for gab. Especially with the opposite sex. A trait he’d been told he inherited from his birth father, Tomas Murdock, who’d died shortly after he was born. But this woman was not like any he’d encountered before. He wanted to kiss her and strangle her. He wanted to shake the haughty confidence from her face.
She dropped her arms, and his eyes fell to the generous line of her breasts. Beneath the mint-geen cotton shirt, he could see the faint outline of her lacy bra. He tried not to think how she would look without either piece of clothing.
“I guess you could say I’m a...fast learner,” he drawled.
Noticing the line of his vision had strayed lower than her face, Maureen folded her arms back over her breasts and glared at him. “I can tell you right now, the only reason I’m going to stay with Sanders Exploration is your father. He’s a man who’s highly admired in this business, and now that I’ve met him, I can see why. I’m flattered to have the chance to work for him. And I’ve decided it would be foolish to throw it away just because he has a cocky, know-it-all son.”
His brows lifted as his lips spread into a devilish grin. “So this means we’ll be working together?”
“Against my better judgment.”
It was certainly against Adam’s judgment, too. But he wasn’t a man to back away from a challenge. “My dad will be pleased to hear it.”
She smiled then. A sumptuous little movement of her lips that packed enough power to curl Adam’s toes.
“You don’t have to bother saying you’re pleased, too.” she countered.
As if she considered their conversation closed, she walked over to the chair she’d been sitting in and picked up a leather purse. She pulled the strap onto her shoulder and started to the door. Adam’s gaze followed the graceful swing of her hips.
“Do you need help finding a place around here?” he asked in afterthought.
She glanced at her wristwatch, then opened the door. “I’m meeting a real-estate agent in thirty minutes.”
“A real-estate agent! You mean you’re planning to buy rather than rent?”
She smiled again. “You said Sanders Exploration sinks a lot of holes—well, I plan to sink some roots.”
“Without a trial run?”
She nodded. “The moment I saw this area, I fell in love with it. In the past few minutes, I’ve decided that whatever I have to put up with on the job will be a small price to pay to make my home here.”
My home. She’d told Adam she wasn’t seeking a home in the traditional sense. So what was she looking for? And why did he keep picturing her as a wife and mother? She was a scientist. A woman who studied rocks and shale and sludge and seismographic charts.
“Then I hope you’re not disappointed, Ms. York.”
“The only way I’ll be disappointed is if you continue to call me Ms. York. My name is Maureen,” she said with a wry smile, then slipped past the door and out of Adam’s sight.
Adam thrust a hand through his hair and let out a low groan. The woman was a walking piece of dynamite. Just looking at her was dangerous. And working with her? Well, he could already see the explosion coming.
Chapter Two
The sky was full of stars and a warm breeze carried the scent of sage and pine. The sweeter fragrance of petunias blooming close by mingled with the tangy smells of the high
desert country.
It was a pleasant night to eat outdoors, and for the first time in ages, his parents had managed to find time in their busy schedules to meet him at this favorite mountainside restaurant.
Across the table, Chloe was finishing the last of her chocolate mousse while the two men sipped their coffee. “I know you’re ready to go, darling,” she said to Wyatt. “But just give me time for a few more bites. It’s rare I have a chance to eat a dessert I haven’t made myself.”
Wyatt chuckled and patted his wife’s hand. “I know, you’re just a regular little slave. One of these days, I might let you out of your chains.”
A faint smile crossed Adam’s face as he watched the teasing exchange between his parents. After twenty-some years of marriage, the two of them were still very much in love and completely devoted to each other. The solidity of his family had always been reassuring to Adam. Yet now that he’d grown older, his parents’ relationship oftentimes amazed him. And sometimes even saddened him. Because he knew he would never be blessed in such a way.
Chloe put down her spoon and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “Okay, signal the waiter for the check and we’ll get out of here,” she told her husband. “I need to get home anyway and check on that mare. If she doesn’t foal tonight, she will tomorrow.”
Wyatt reached for his wallet and began to thumb through the bills inside. Across the table, Adam shook his head. “Forget the check,” he told the two of them. “I’m footing the bill.”
His mother frowned at him. “Adam, this is a celebration of sorts because you got your cast off. Your dad and I want to treat you.”
“Having your company was treat enough.”
Wyatt put his wallet away, then scraped back his chair and patted his nonexistent belly. “Well, I must admit this has been a good day. My son got his foot back, the company just hired the best damn geologist in the gas business, and now I’ve had a free meal to top it all off.”
“Well, if Miss Mighty Dash gives me the painted colt I want, then it will be a perfect day,” Chloe added as she fished her purse from beneath the chair.
Millionaire on Her Doorstep Page 2
