“Good call, use a catch phrase of mine,” he smiled. “But what am I really trying to do? All these meetings you’ve been making for me, what are they about?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted, going one shade brighter. “I know you feel the company is dated, being passed by. You want to change things and make it more profitable. I’m no expert, but what you say seems to make sense.”
“These meetings are all partnerships I’m creating with solutions companies that can come clean these messes up quickly. Dodgewood Solutions will focus on the EPA challenges we have. They’ve created a plan to get us compliant and save us millions in fines. I’m pushing them to have it done in two months, which is just about impossible but I wouldn’t tell them that.”
“Why does it need to be done so quickly?” Libby asked, and the way she bit the back of her pen made his body pulse. He may have let her stay on in this job at the expense of sleeping with her, but it didn’t stop him from picturing her sweet mouth all over his body.
“There is a new chemical compound being created and tested overseas right now. It will revolutionize the way the world uses fossil fuels. It will change everything. The rumor is Asher Barrington is nearly ready to bring it back to the States. I want West Oil on the front line. I want him to use our resources to launch the technology here. But with my company as it stands today, he’d laugh in my face. Rightfully so. We’re dinosaurs in this business. I’ll clean it up first then make sure he knows going with any company besides West Oil will be the biggest mistake of his life.”
“What else do you need to do besides get compliant with the EPA problems?” she asked, looking genuinely interested.
“These,” he said, gesturing down at the OSHA reports. “The average recordable rate for a company our size is about one and a half percent. You know what that is right?”
“It’s a formula used to determine how many injuries, deaths, or illnesses the company has every year,” she said, nodding her head.
“Yes. An oil company is expected to have more than average. It can be as high as three percent. In the last ten years we’ve averaged five percent. It’s completely unacceptable and between lawsuits and fines it’s cost us a fortune.”
“Lawsuits,” she asked, a small lift in her shoulders. “Like for people who are injured or killed?”
“Yes, we’ve paid out millions,” he said looking her over, trying to figure out why her face was fluttering. “Asher Barrington won’t touch this company with a recordable rate that high. I have to have a plan to bring it down and give assurances it won’t be a problem going forward.”
“How will you do that?”
“It’ll be a rollout of more effective training, better safety measures, and upgraded technology. I can’t keep having people die and getting maimed here if I want to get my way.”
“That’s why you want to do that stuff? Just so you can get what you want? You don’t care about the people dying out on rigs and getting crushed by equipment, their whole lives being turned upside down?”
“Libby,” he said leaning away from her, “these things need to be done. They will be done. I don’t need to lay out my motivation; I need to lay out my plan.”
She nodded her head and silenced herself by snapping her lips shut for a second, composing herself and then speaking again. “Why didn’t your father just do these things? Didn’t he care?”
“He cared,” James cut back, surprising even himself at the way he was defending his father. He realized quickly that he couldn’t answer her question. That was the whole point of his relationship with his father. If he could understand why the man refused to change and evolve then there would be nothing left to argue about. “It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I don’t think I would,” she said, raising her brows and nibbling at her lip in frustration.
“There’s a bigger problem though,” James said, flipping open a folder. “Asher and his partner, Brice, don’t miss a beat. His people are top notch. They’ll flush out any discrepancies, and I’ve found some I can’t account for.”
“Like what?” she asked, leaning in over his desk, the collar of her shirt lowering enough to flash him her soft skin.
He had to pull himself back to the paper in his hand. “The recordable forms for the last ten years aren’t complete. Those are the documents where we log the incidents and provide them to OSHA. There are things missing.”
“How do you know?”
“I wasn’t here at the company but I stayed in touch with people. I kept my ear to the ground. I know for a fact there were injuries and accidents, even some deaths, that aren’t reported here. That’s not possible.” He looked down at the papers again as though the missing reports would suddenly appear.
“You . . .” she faltered, “you mean you think some things were covered up?” She looked quite green all of a sudden as she rubbed a shaking hand across her forehead.
“I’m not saying that,” he cautioned with a raise of his hand. “That’s not an accusation I’m willing to make. But I do need to figure this out before I bring in an outside party to start dealing with the issue going forward. They’ll want to investigate past instances, and then it would be out of my hands. I can’t have that.”
“I don’t know what you mean? It would be out of your hands? How could you control it even if you found it yourself?” He watched her swallow hard, leaning in even farther over the documents.
“The key to business is to get ahead of things. If something is wrong here, I want to know about it first.”
“And keep it quiet?” she asked.
“I was supposed to have a meeting with an OSHA representative on Monday. You’ll need to cancel it. No way I’m sitting down with them until I have a handle on it.”
“Where are you going to start?”
“With what I remember,” he said in a heavy breath. “I know there was a rig accident eight years ago. A few guys got burned badly. It’s not on here.”
“Maybe you’re remembering wrong,” she challenged, looking like she was ready to bolt from the room.
“Are you all right?” he asked, watching her swallow hard again.
“I . . . I just need a second. I think I’m going to be sick.” She stood quickly and charged out of the room. But he could hear she hadn’t made it to the bathroom, just to a wastebasket in the next office over.
“You good?” he called out, standing up and moving slowly toward where she’d run off. He didn’t do hair-holding puke sessions. Especially not for a woman he wasn’t even sleeping with.
“Fine,” she lied. “Maybe I have a touch of the thing Mathew has. You said stomach bug, right?”
“Shit,” James grunted, hustling back to his desk for his hand sanitizer. “Do you know how inconvenient it is to be sick? I don’t have time to be sick.”
“At least it’s the weekend,” she sighed, holding her stomach as she moved back into his doorway.
“Every day is a work day for me,” he argued, backing up some as though the germs might launch themselves at him from across the room.
“We kissed last night,” she reminded him as though she could read his mind. “If it is the stomach bug you’re already infected.”
“It’s like the damn zombie apocalypse,” he said, looking down at his body as though it had betrayed him. “You should go home.”
“I . . . um,” she clutched her stomach and ran from the room again, retching into the trash can. “I’ll go home. Once I stop doing this.”
“Can you drive? I should drive you,” he said with a grimace. He didn’t need vomit in his car. He didn’t need germs filling the lines of his leather seats.
“I can drive,” she said. “I just need a minute.” She punctuated it with one more burst of sickness, and he felt himself getting queasy.
“Just grab a new trash can and let’s go,” he uttered as though he’d just been ordered to the electric chair. “It’s an hour back to your place.” He thought again about his car. “My pla
ce is around the corner. You can clean up there. Rest or whatever.”
“Okay,” she resigned, rounding back toward him with a fresh trash can in her arms. “Sorry.”
“There’s your classic catch phrase,” he teased as he moved in close to her, trying to offer support without touching her.
“What about all the reports?” she asked, gesturing back toward his desk and losing her balance. He extended his arm and braced her by the hip, his hand slipping up under her shirt slightly.
“I’ll come back. As long as we cancel that meeting with OSHA on Monday I can deal with it later.”
Chapter 13
“Mathew says it’s a twenty-four-hour bug,” James explained as he stood over her. She’d curled herself up on his couch like a sleepy cat. He’d brought her a blanket for the chills and a cool towel for her burning head. She hadn’t been sick in so long she’d forgotten how much every inch of her body hurt. Every muscle and joint. “I just ordered some soup from the deli around the corner. They’ll bring it up.”
She nodded but couldn’t speak for fear of getting sick again, like opening her mouth was granting her stomach some permission to revolt. Glancing around his apartment she wondered how anyone lived in a place with so much metal and so many sharp edges. It was cold, not in temperature but in style. The space was wide open. A studio like Jessica’s but completely different. She could see his bed, even his shower, but it clearly wasn’t because he couldn’t afford walls. It was a style choice, an odd one, but not something designed out of necessity.
“What else do you need?” he asked, looking thoroughly uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry,” she said without thinking. “I should have gone to my house. You didn’t need to bring me here.”
“Always sorry for something.” He smiled, jamming his hands into his pockets looking unsure what else to do with them.
“I hope you don’t get sick,” she sighed, as she rolled to try to get more comfortable. The blanket slipped off of her and a chill ran up her side.
“Here,” he said, pulling the blanket back up and tucking it in tighter. “What am I doing? This can’t be comfortable. Get in the bed.”
“I don’t want to get it all sick,” she said, trying with her tired arm to wave him off.
“The maid will come by in the morning and change it. I’ll have her burn the sheets. Really, you should be in the bed. This couch is a Holly Oranthal design. It’s intentionally uncomfortable and costs more than most people’s houses. Business brings me to Texas often; that’s why I keep this place. But I never want it to feel too much like home.”
“Did she do your entire apartment?” Libby asked with her best attempt at a breathy laugh.
“Most of it. You don’t like it?”
She wondered if he really cared or if he was just making conversation. “I guess I just don’t get it. Why no walls? How do you shower when other people are here?”
“Ha,” he laughed in a husky growl. “Well, there is a small stall toilet. Does that count for privacy? I figure if anyone is here in this apartment they’ve already seen everything they’d see when I’m in the shower. Hell, they’d probably be in there with me. It keeps everyone else from stopping by.”
“Clever,” she said, rolling the other way but not getting any more comfortable.
“Come on,” he said, leaning down and pulling her to her feet. “Take my bed.”
“This doesn’t break the rules in your head about employees?”
“Not at all,” he said, and his laughter was lost on her. “If anything it helps the cause. I can say without a single doubt in my mind you and I will not be sleeping together tonight.”
“I’m a mess. So gross.” She brought a hand up to her face in embarrassment and he pulled it down gently.
“I’m just kidding. You’re not gross. I just don’t like sick people. I don’t do well with them.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?” she asked as he sat her gently down on the bed. “Ugh,” she groaned. “My whole body hurts.”
“You should get out of your clothes.” He reached around to his dresser and pulled out a T-shirt. “You can wear this.”
“You’ll burn it tomorrow?” she asked, clutching the shirt tightly to her chest, the idea of being in it already giving her comfort.
“Exactly.” He flashed the smile at her that she’d only seen a handful of times over the last week. Sometimes it felt like his only authentic thing.
“Can you turn around?” she asked, tipping her eyes down to the floor.
“Oh yeah, no walls. I almost forgot.” He turned his back to her and with great effort she pulled her clothes off her body and slid the shirt over her head. This cotton shirt was like nothing she’d ever felt before. It was hard to believe rich people got to walk around wearing this kind of stuff all the time. “All set?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“Yeah,” she uttered through a yawn.
“Sleep for a while. I’ll be hanging around, so if you need anything I won’t be far.”
She had the urge again to ask him why. He’d been one of the first people in a long time who didn’t require an abnormal amount of stuff from her. At work, of course, he demanded her performance, but that wasn’t what she meant. Besides Jessica, everyone in her personal life normally tuned in to her inability to say no and exploited it, using her in ways that either fed their ego or made their lives easier. But he kept coming through when she needed it. That was a quality she valued more than anything in the world but had pretty much determined finding it in a man was as likely as finding a unicorn. A pink unicorn. A pink unicorn with wings and a rainbow tail.
Closing her eyes, she pictured the mythical beast and smiled. It wasn’t until his words caught her ear and brought her back to reality that she remembered how screwed she was. “I’ll pick up the reports later and do some more work on them.”
James was going to find out that his father and West Oil were making back-door deals in order to cover up excessive injuries and deaths in the company. She had always assumed, or forced herself to believe, she was the only one who’d made a deal with the devil. That made it easier to sleep. Now, however, she knew James’s determination would ultimately be her undoing. She should tell him the truth now. It would save him the hard work of digging into every instance. It might even save her from pushing him away when he seemed to care about her in his own strange way.
But James West, Jr. was not an open book. She didn’t understand the inner workings of his mind. She hadn’t even glimpsed a small piece of his heart. Telling him now would be too much of a risk. There was still a slim chance this wouldn’t lead back to her. Maybe it would blow over, get pushed to the bottom of the priority list by something else. There was still hope that she could keep this going. She could keep her mother in the best facility. She could keep her brother’s college tuition paid. She could keep the mortgage paid.
“James,” she croaked out.
“What?” he asked, sitting by her feet on the end of the bed.
“Why did you fire that person?” she asked, needing to know if her opinion of James was formed by her history with West Oil or with who he really was.
“While we were on the plane?” he asked, narrowing his eyes, looking confused.
“Yes. You said to fire him. Make sure everyone saw it and with no severance package. Why did you do that?”
He dropped his head down slightly and rubbed at the growing stubble on his cheek. “This guy kept making people uncomfortable. There had been a bunch of formal complaints against him. Then he cornered a fellow employee in the break room and threatened him. He wasn’t stable. I wanted him gone.”
“Oh,” she said, with a tiny nod of her head. “I didn’t know that.”
“I wouldn’t expect the benefit of the doubt from you, but for God’s sake don’t say you’re sorry.”
“I wasn’t always like this,” she whispered. “I know you see me as weak. I know you think I give too much of myself and I hi
de. I didn’t start there.”
“I don’t think you’re weak,” he countered, but she knew he was lying.
“I am weak,” she sniffled. “I am nothing like you. But I used to be better than this. I think people get hurt, and they either end up like you, becoming stronger, or like me. You don’t let anything hold you down. You get what you want. You’ve evolved into a person who never wants for anything. I-I,” she stuttered, “I did the opposite. The books and the movies want you to believe everyone who gets destroyed by something builds themselves back up, but it’s not true. There are plenty of us who fall down and stay down. Who let the people trying to break us succeed.”
“Who hurt you?” he asked, his hand clutching her ankle and squeezing it gently.
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, I let it change me.”
“It matters,” he countered with a growl. “Who hurt you?”
She closed her eyes and rolled to her side, wiping away a few stray tears. The edge in his voice made her think if she started naming names, made a list of those who hurt her, he’d go out looking for them. “I need to sleep,” she whispered as the world faded away.
Chapter 14
Before Libby opened her eyes she knew something was different. She wasn’t in her bed, and fear crept over her until she heard James speaking on the phone.
“No, I’m going to lay low today too. I canceled a few things for Monday.” He was off the phone a second later and sitting on the edge of the bed again. “You should try to eat something.”
“I am hungry,” she agreed as she shimmed up to a sitting position and yanked the blanket up to cover her.
“Toast?” he asked, not averting his eyes at her embarrassment.
“That would be great but you don’t have to do that.” She wiped the sleep out of her eyes and looked over at the shower. It was less than ten feet from the bed and the stone tiles and five shower heads looks so appealing right now.
“Shower,” he said, gesturing over to it with his chin. “There’s about a hundred settings in there. You’ll feel so much better.” He stood and pulled the glass door open. “Just watch this vibrating shower head,” he said with a smile. “You’ll never come out. I’ve lost some good women to that thing.”
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