Texas Pride

by Gerry Bartlett

  “Yes, I guess you’d like to spin it that way. Though clearly you and Shannon are very friendly.” Mindy couldn’t quit smiling. “But when my housekeeper showed me a letter she got from Calhoun Petroleum, I realized there was something going on at Calhoun that no one had suspected.”

  Shannon felt her breath freeze in her lungs. “Oh?”

  “You know, I’ve been running Jake’s business since he died. That’s R & F Pipeline, Billy. Oil and Gas is not new to me.” She shook a finger. “So when I saw that letter, I could tell there was something peculiar about this situation with the mineral rights. I took Edith to Rand right away. He did some investigating.” She reached out and pulled a tall man to her side. “Here he is. I’ll let him tell you.”

  “Billy, how’s it going?” Rand was clearly comfortable in his tux, handsome and smiling as he extended his hand to Billy. He wore his blond hair short and had the tanned and toned look of a man who probably played a lot of outdoor tennis or golf.

  “Pretty well, I thought. Do you know Shannon Calhoun?” Billy shook hands with him.

  “A pleasure, ma’am.” He took Shannon’s hand in his and squeezed it gently.

  Billy pulled Shannon close again. “Mrs. Foster suggested you had something to tell us. About a letter from Calhoun?”

  “Now, Mindy, that isn’t a subject we need to get into at this kind of event. Billy and I can make an appointment. Sit down in my office.” Rand graced Shannon with a dazzling smile. Obviously, he’d had his teeth whitened recently. “Ms. Calhoun is paying him to take such worries off her pretty shoulders.”

  “Don’t be silly, Rand. Shannon is tough enough to handle the bad news.” Mindy was obviously eager to be the bearer. “Starting tomorrow Rand’s law firm is running an ad. On TV. We’ve already found out that Edith isn’t the only one who got a letter. She’s from a little town south of Houston. Some of her mother’s neighbors got the same letter. A half dozen so far that she knows of. Can you believe it?” She shook her head. “But of course you do. I’m sure you have a list.”

  “Don’t suppose you’d share that with me, Billy.” Rand laughed. “Unless I had a court order, right?” He quit smiling. “Don’t worry. It’s in the works.”

  “It’s only right that all the people who got that letter should get together. File suit for compensation and such. Thirty years’ worth.” Mindy fanned her face with her hand then rested her fingertips on Shannon’s arm. Anyone watching would think she was being kind. But her eyes told another story. “Can you imagine how the damages would add up over time?”

  “Seriously, Rand? You’re using the media? Like one of those ambulance chasers?” Billy was clearly not pleased.

  “Don’t jump on your high horse with me, Pagan. Our junior associates have been hip-deep in research. Clearly Conrad Calhoun pulled a fast one on Edith Perry and her neighbors. Didn’t take long for me to realize this was when Calhoun was just getting started. There must be dozens, maybe hundreds of people who are owed what will probably be millions for the crimes he committed back then.” Rand shook his head. “Sorry, Ms. Calhoun, but facts are facts.”

  Shannon felt the warning squeeze of Billy’s hand on hers. He was clearly signaling her to keep quiet. God, but she wanted to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off Mindy’s face. But what could she say? She stood there while Billy handed Rand his card and told the lawyer to call and make an appointment with him. She guessed that was a sort of victory. Make Rand come to them, not the other way around.

  “I’ll wait a while on an appointment, Billy. Have to see how many people respond to the TV ad. I’m seeing a class action suit here.” Rand smiled. “Mindy, I think they’re playing our song.” He steered Mindy away but not before the woman hissed in Shannon’s ear.

  “How’s it feel, girlfriend? You told everyone at our come-out that I had to show up with my cousin Mike ’cause I couldn’t get a date.” She sniffed in Billy’s direction. “Humiliation’s a bitch, but payback? Sweet.”

  Shannon just stood there. Payback? She’d never told anyone anything about Mindy. It had been Mike himself who’d let drop that he’d been called by Mindy’s doting parents. After that ball, Mindy had gotten a nose job and her boobs enhanced to a double D. Then she’d started her campaign to marry the richest single man in town. She’d gotten her man—Jake Foster, owner of R & F Pipeline. He’d been decades older and something of a bore, but Mindy had walked down the aisle like a conquering hero. Rumor had it that both her kids had her unfortunate nose. Talk about payback.

  “You ready to get out of here?” Billy hadn’t let go of her arm since Mindy’s attack. Yes, that was what Shannon was calling it.

  “Please.” She waited while he called Stan to bring the limo around. “Put your phone number next to your bid on the cruise. Sounds like a perfect honeymoon. They’ll call you if you’re the winning bidder.”

  He whooped, turning heads. “I’ll definitely take that as a yes.” He gave her a kiss to seal the deal.

  Shannon leaned into it, not caring that they were garnering attention. She loved him. He was going to do whatever he could to help them save Calhoun. And if they couldn’t save it? A life with the man she loved was not a bad thing to look forward to. When she pulled back, she heard a smattering of applause. A couple of her friends raised champagne glasses in a mock toast. Yep, it was pretty clear she was in love and making some kind of commitment. She smiled and nodded, happy to leave the ball and get into the limo as soon as Stan texted he was outside at the curb.

  The privacy screen was still firmly in place. “I believe, Mr. Pagan, that we have something to celebrate.”

  “You sure? That woman seemed determined to bring your family’s company down.” Billy studied her with concern.

  Shannon reached for the zipper on Billy’s tux pants. “Let her try. I have you on my side.” She smiled when she found him ready and willing. “Now relax and enjoy the ride.” With that she leaned over and showed him how much she loved him. His groan of pleasure was all she needed to make her realize she’d meant every word. No matter what happened with the company, it was just that—a company. And her father was dead. He couldn’t be hurt anymore. Or hurt anyone else.

  Billy wouldn’t just let her please him. He slid his hands under her long dress and found that she’d left her underwear at home. It would have ruined the lines of the clingy dress.

  “Woman, what are you doing going out in public like this?” He laid her back on the seat and let his fingers drift over her with his usual expert touch. “Am I going to have to check you before we leave the house from now on?”

  “Maybe.” Shannon smiled up at him. “That feels good.” When he leaned down and pushed aside her bodice to take a nipple into his mouth, she sighed. “That too.”

  “I’m figuring out what you like.” His thumb found that special spot inside her and she jerked. “Yeah, there I think.”

  “God, yes.” She grabbed his hair. “You could press a little harder. Even bite me if you felt the urge.” He didn’t hesitate and she hit the seat to keep from screaming her pleasure.

  He looked up and grinned. “I like it when you give me directions. Anything else?”

  “We don’t have that far to go. So give it to me, big boy. Now. Fast and hard.” She raised her hips so he could push her dress up and out of the way. When he was inside her, she held onto him, digging her fingernails into his shirt under his jacket. A quickie. Ridiculous. Yet he could still make her lose her mind. Her heart? Long gone.

  He leaned down to kiss her, pounding into her while he cradled her head, apparently afraid she’d bump it into the door handle. Caring, always thinking of her. Shannon’s last thought before she couldn’t think at all was that she couldn’t marry him in the middle of a scandal. It would taint everything. He deserved a wonderful church wedding with his grandmother proudly showing him and his bride off to her friends.

  Oh, Billy. I
should let you go. Instead, she held tighter. He was hers, damn it. Forever.

  Chapter 15

  “Family meeting in my office. Now.”

  Shannon hung up the phone and got to her feet. Monday morning. No surprise that Cassidy wanted to meet. The ad had been running all weekend but she’d refused to watch it. Billy had, of course, and cursed when he’d seen it. A quick check told him it was appearing all over the state. She felt sure that Rand Pierce’s law firm had received dozens of calls already.

  Ambulance chaser. That’s what Billy had called him. If only they could brush this off as a nuisance. A powerful firm had taken the case against Calhoun Petroleum. Billy was a one-man office. Had they made a mistake letting him handle this? Was she disloyal for even thinking that?

  She stopped at the office down the hall. “I have to meet with Cassidy. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  Caroline Wilson dropped her reading glasses onto her desk. “Go. But good job on the Ballet Ball sponsorship. Nice article in the Chronicle about you and Pagan. Made the company look generous, community-minded.”

  “I saw it. Considering we got hardly any recognition from the podium, thanks to Mindy Foster, it came out well.” There had also been a nice photo in the lifestyle section.

  “Take care of your family business.” Caroline waved her away and put her glasses back on. “Oh, Shannon?” She looked over the top of the stylish tortoise rims. “I hope while you’re up there you figure out some kind of statement to give the press about that TV ad running this weekend. Your sister’s ‘No comment’ coming into the building won’t cut it.”

  Shannon leaned against the desk. “She was ambushed?”

  “Of course. And my phone’s been ringing off the hook. I had any calls from the press diverted to me. We need a formal statement from the family.” She looked grim. “I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe I don’t want to know. I’ve had stock options over the years and used them. So I have a lot invested in this company.” She picked up her smart phone. “They’ve lost too much value just this morning. Please tell your family that we, the stockholders, need some kind of reassurance that this is a greedy lawyer going after a big corporation and it’s being handled. No need to panic.” She set the phone down gently. “If it’s not? Heaven help us all.”

  “Amen to that.” Shannon sighed. She and Caroline would obviously never be drinking buddies, but she’d like to tell her the truth. And start a sell-off? Couldn’t do it. She just shook her head, already trying to compose something that would appease the fact-hungry media.

  She rode the elevator up to Cassidy’s floor and stepped out into another world. No cubes here. These were the executive suites where the power players reigned. Cass now occupied Daddy’s old office. It was a corner with a view of Houston stretching out toward the southwest. No oil derricks in sight, of course. But there was the bayou meandering through Memorial Park and a cluster of high rises near the Galleria shopping mall where the rich and famous loved to drop big bucks. A traffic snarl on one of the many freeways looked bad, even from up here. Cass wasn’t noticing. She leaned forward as she stood behind her huge desk, Daddy’s marble-topped import from Italy, and talked seriously to the three men in front of her.

  “We’ve got to figure out a way to get ahead of this, Dylan. If we can get a judge to put a cap on the payouts, that’ll save us.” She waved Shannon in. “We need you.”

  “To come up with a statement to the press.” Shannon had thought to pick up her laptop, and she settled on the couch and opened it. “Tell me what we can safely say and I’ll try to spin it for us.”

  “My woman.” Billy sat next to her and kissed her cheek. “You read our minds.”

  “It wasn’t hard. Plus, my boss said Cass had to fight her way through the press this morning. I parked in the garage and missed that.”

  “Mason dropped me at the front door. Big mistake.” Cass walked around her desk and put her arm around her fiancé. “I forgive him but I’m going to have to start driving my own car again and go straight into the parking garage where there’s security.”

  “All right. I give in.” He rubbed her shoulders. “Dylan, what do you think? Can we get this in front of a judge?”

  “Hi, Shannon.” His brother Dylan nodded. “It’s a solid idea. If they’re really going to make this a class action suit, we need to see if there’s a way to get ahead of it. Show that we’ve put a settlement fund together. Cass has been working to give us a figure, Billy. Here comes Ethan. He should have a better idea of what we need at a minimum.”

  Ethan came through the door with his own laptop under his arm. “Looks like a wake. For good reason. Have you seen that ad?” When Shannon and Cass shook their heads, he set his computer on Cassidy’s desk and opened it. “Take a look.”

  “Mineral rights to your property can be worth thousands, even millions of dollars. Big oil knows this and has even gone so far as to steal those rights from unsuspecting land owners. If you or a family member has received a letter recently from Calhoun Petroleum about mineral rights for land you own or have sold in the last thirty years, you could be eligible for compensation. Call—-” Ethan hit the pause button. “You get the drift. The pictures of the granny knitting on her front porch with pumping wells in the background was a nice touch. Did you notice the peeling paint and sagging shutters? They know how to get the public stirred up. Big bad oil cheating little old ladies.”

  “And they wouldn’t be lying.” Cass’s words hung in the silent room before Mason cleared his throat.

  “Baby, you didn’t know him. Stop feeling guilty.” He kept his arm around her and swept the room with his bright blue eyes. “None of you had any part in making this mess.”

  “I don’t feel guilty personally. But we need to make this right.” Cass looked at Shannon, then Ethan.

  “We’re with you, Cassidy.” Shannon had cried herself to sleep when she’d first learned what her parents had done.

  “Cass, we can’t fix what Daddy did, but we want to help you show our family’s remorse.” Ethan shook his head. “To most people, that means more than an apology. They want to hit us where it hurts. In the pocketbook.”

  “Thanks. I know it’s going to cost you all most of your inheritance. When I met you, I didn’t know what to expect.” She gave each of them a tremulous smile. “It wasn’t to be welcomed into such a great family.”

  Shannon jumped up and hugged Cassidy. Of course, her new half-sister might be having doubts about them. She and Ethan had lived under Conrad’s influence. All Cass knew about her father was that he’d disappeared before she was born and signed away his parental rights. Her mother had blackmailed him with the proof of his double dealing. As a thirtieth birthday present, Elizabeth Calhoun, Cassidy’s mother, had made sure Cass found out the bitter truth. Now they were having to deal with the fall out.

  Shannon let Cass go and looked into her eyes. “Hey, Mason’s right. If this company goes under, then that’s what was meant to be. No one is going to blame you, Cass. No one.”

  Cass swiped at a tear. Sunlight sparkled off her diamond engagement ring. No matter what, she’d come out all right married to Mason MacKenzie, CEO of Texas Star. They’d have a good life and she’d be happy with the man she loved. Shannon patted her shoulder and sat down.

  “Thanks, Shannon. You know it still feels strange to sit here in Conrad Calhoun’s office and call the shots. Now I’ve got all this power. Budget in the billions. Controlling the lives of thousands of workers.” Cass put a hand to her forehead. “Surreal.”

  “You’ve been doing great.” Mason took her elbow and eased her into a chair in front of the desk. “Jumped right into a job without any background in oil. You’re amazing.”

  “Thanks, but you’re not exactly objective.” She gave him a weak smile and squeezed his hand. “That ad.” She straightened. “It said some might be owed millions. Is that true, Et
han? Are any of those people going to be entitled to that much?”

  “It’s been damned complicated.” Ethan walked around and sat in the leather chair behind her desk to work his computer. “Here’s the thing. Some wells never paid off. Others went dry or were shut down when they started petering out. Then there are the lucrative fields, with wells still pumping today.” He looked up and frowned. “Just wait till Megan and Rowdy get here. Rowdy’s family had a field that should have set them up for life. Daddy had Rowdy’s grandmother sign away their rights completely without any royalties coming to them.”

  Cassidy’s pained cry echoed in the room. “She had Alzheimer’s, Ethan.” Her hands were shaking as she looked at her sister and brother. “How could he do that?”

  Shannon leaned against Billy, tears in her eyes. “The Daddy I knew? I can’t imagine.”

  “Baby, are you okay?” Billy held her tight, his warm comfort seeping into her. “You are not your parents. You know that, don’t you? None of you are.” He looked at each one of them. “I’ve defended people who grew up hard. With parents who were little more than animals. But those men and women were innocent, I made sure of that before I took their cases. Just because you come from a rotten tree doesn’t mean the fruit is spoiled.” He rubbed Shannon’s arm, a habit of his when he wanted to comfort her.

  “We’re fruit, seriously?” Shannon fought what was probably hysteria.

  “Okay, blame that on courtroom rhetoric.” He rubbed her cheek where a tear must have escaped. “Your father managed to keep his past from you. He was damned clever.”

  “Billy’s right. Stop beating yourselves up about what Conrad and, yes, Missy, did back then. They covered their tracks well once they made their millions.” Mason had Cass in his arms and looked into her eyes. “Cass, even your mother isn’t blameless, keeping this shit a secret. All these folks could have gotten justice a long time ago if Elizabeth had stepped up.”