Love Under Two Wildcatters (10 page)

Love at first sight
. Not that she was in love with those two wildcatters. It was way too soon for that. But she’d fallen into lust at first sight, and that, in her estimation, had to be just as rare.

Besides, she’d certainly taken as many liberties with their bodies as they had with hers.

The sound of the drill stopped, and she sensed a hot gaze on her back and waited a beat. When she looked over her shoulder, both men looked busy, adding more casing pipe into the bore hole. She wondered how deep the well would end up being.

The geological report she’d received had been more than a decade old. She had no idea if it had been created with the help of the latest satellite imaging, or not.

The sun blazed down, hot for mid autumn. Using the back of her hand, she wiped the sweat from her brow and stood back to survey the job she’d done so far. Not bad, if she did say so herself.

She could easily have hired painters to do this, but doing it herself gave her enormous pleasure.

Just as the upgrades she’d done inside the house filled her with pride. Little by little, she was making this Benedict holding
her
home.

She’d done all she could prepping the exterior from the ground. It was time to go back to the other side of the house and deploy the ladder.

Though small by Benedict standards, Susan had fallen in love with this century-old ranch house the moment she’d laid eyes on it. She’d approached the town trust to ask permission to move in and take over managing the land. As a member of one of the founding families of Lusty, she could claim part ownership in every building, every acre that comprised the town and surrounding area. Any of them could use any part of the trust, with the agreement of the majority.

The only thing none of them could ever do was sell any property.

That’s the way their town, their birthright, had been set up and protected more than a hundred years before by Warren Jessop, attorney-at-law.

Susan picked up the ladder she’d taken out of the barn yesterday and began to open it into full, extension ladder mode. She thought briefly of the conversation she’d had at breakfast with the wildcatters. They’d been earnest, and not just polite, when they said they’d give her a hand with the upper story and anything else she needed to do that was tricky. She figured if they were still willing tomorrow, she’d take them up on their offer of help. She wanted to be independent, but she wasn’t a fool. But the drilling rig had been running steady—well, except when they stopped to add new pipe—since that morning. Colt and Ryder had their hands full at the moment with establishing her new well.

The ladder, when fully extended, stretched to forty feet, which she figured would be high enough to work on the roof trim. She figured as she got each section done, she’d move her perch, then retract it as needed.

It shouldn’t take her more than a couple of good solid days of elbow grease to get the place ready for new paint.

After making certain the base of the ladder was planted solidly on the ground, she stuffed the wire brush in her pocket, held the scraper between her teeth—yuck, it tasted
terrible
—and ascended to the top of the house.

She held on to the edge of the roof as she used first the brush and then the scraper to dispense with the old layers of paint decorating the trim. Here, as below, she found both brown and a deep forest green. She shook her head.
Why is it people find it so hard to do a job properly
? Yes, it was more work and took more time to scrape off old layers of paint first, but the finished job would look so much better.

One of the first things she looked for in people when she met them was their work ethic. Her Grandma Kate was fond of saying that idle hands were the devil’s tool and an idle mind, his playground. Susan smiled, thoughts of her favorite grandparent settling softly within her. Grandma Kate was forever twisting her axioms and clichés, but her versions tended to be more precise and, to Susan’s mind, a lot more entertaining.

“Susie? Can you come down here, sweetheart?”

Susan looked down toward the ground in response to Colt’s voice. He was giving her a big smile. She hadn’t even realized the drill had stopped working, so lost had she been in her own thoughts.

Both Colt and Ryder stood at the base and on either side of the ladder, each with a hand resting on the frame of it.

“Sure. Just give me another couple of minutes. I’m almost done this section, here.”

“Now, please? It’s kind of important.” Ryder’s smile seemed every bit as engaging as Colt’s.

She wondered if there had been a problem with the well, though their smiles didn’t seem to suggest trouble of any sort.

“Well, all right, if it’s important.”

She tucked her brush in her jeans pocket and slipped the scraper between her teeth for her descent. She really ought to thinking about getting herself one of those tool belts—

“Hey!” The scraper dropped to the ground when she yelled.

Colt had plucked her off the ladder when she still had a few steps left to go. She didn’t know how he managed it, but in seconds, he’d turned her around to face him without her feet once touching the ground.

The smile on his face was gone, and he looked mad as hell. His hands that grasped her arms were trembling.

“I told you we’d do the ladder work.” He gave her a shake that felt far from harsh but certainly wasn’t gentle. “You agreed. Damn it, woman, you didn’t even have anyone spotting the fucking ladder. You could have broken your damn fool neck.”

Susan’s temper went from nonexistent to eruption in two seconds flat. Kicking her feet, she tried to break free of Colt’s hold. “Did you just call me a fool? I’ll have you know I’ve been looking out for myself for a long time! How dare you—”

“That was before we got here. We said we’d do it, and we meant it.” He gave her another little shake, and then he more or less tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and began to walk.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Put me down!”

“We’re going to show you what happens when you disobey us.”

“
Disobey you
? Who the hell are you to order me about? What are you going to do, send me to my room?”

“No, Susie Q,” Ryder answered, and confirmed with his next words that he spoke for the both of them. “We’re going to paddle your ass.”

“That’s not funny! Put me down. You can’t go carting me around like this.” Neither man answered her. Ryder stepped ahead and opened the back door.

“Okay, you’ve made your point. I’m sorry. Now put me down.”

“Of course I’ll put you down,” Colt said. Susan noticed his tone lacked humor. “As soon as we get upstairs, I’m going to put you down right across my knee.”

Short moments later, Susan discovered that Colt wasn’t kidding.

Chapter 8

Morton’s hand shook as he replaced the receiver of the phone. A part of him wanted to get into his car and storm on over to the phone company, complain about their shoddy communications system, or, better, pound the living shit out of someone. The rest of him knew it wouldn’t do any good, that nothing would do any good.

His home phone hadn’t been damaged and didn’t need repair. It had been disconnected.

“Damn it to hell!” He swept the phone off the table, hurling the device across the floor.

The special delivery letter from the bank lay unopened on his kitchen table. He’d carried it all the way to the back of the house after signing for it, tossing it on the table, and then came in here. He’d wanted to call…who? Someone. Anyone.

It doesn’t matter that the phone’s dead. You’ve got no one left to call
.

Leaving the room that had been his home office—a once cluttered, busy space, but now, eerily nude of equipment—he ignored his father’s voice and headed for the library.

Or what used to be the library. This room at one time had housed thousands of books, some of them first editions. He’d sold the books several months ago. Now, the shelves stood empty, mute testimony to his failure. They wouldn’t stand there mocking him much longer, though.

He’d sold the shelves yesterday, and a man was coming to get them tomorrow.

“Time for a change. I’m a modern man. I don’t need an old-fashioned library.”

Fortunately, Morton still had his bar cabinet, and even more fortunately, it was still very well stocked.

He poured himself a half glass of Jack and knocked it back quickly. The burning trail down his throat to his stomach felt like a welcome friend. Standing there by the bar, he poured himself another shot, drinking it in one gulp as well. He wasn’t sure why he thought about his nanny, Petra, and the way she used to make him quaff down his cold medicine when he’d been knee high to a grasshopper.

He poured a third drink, this time a deeper one. He eyed the biggest chair in the room, the leather and oak arm chair that was his father’s favorite. Keeping hold of the bottle—no sense not to, he’d need a refill quick enough—he wandered over to the chair and settled himself in it.

That’s a damn fine chair. Leather from our own stock. A real man learns how to be self-sufficient, Morton.

He could hear his father’s voice, of course, but chose to ignore it. If Morton closed his eyes, he imagined he could still catch the scents he’d long before associated with his father, Cuban cigars and Courvoisier.

Morton drank deeply, not wanting to think what his father would say about his current predicament.

Not wanting to think about it didn’t seem to matter. His father’s spirit filled this entire house, a house Jonas Barnes inherited from
his
father. Morton was the third generation of Barnes’s to occupy this place. He would also be the last. Through the haze of memory and whiskey, he could hear his father’s derisive laughter.

Didn’t I tell you you’d always be a fuckup? That’s your mother’s side of the family coming through. I should have beaten you more often, you useless little prick.

“I’m not a fuckup. The economy took a dump. The entire country is suffering, it’s not just me. It’s not my fault.”

You haven’t changed. You’re always making excuses. The entire country isn’t suffering. Those two wildcatters you used to be hooked to are doing just fine
.

“They were nothing but thieving, conniving bastards. They took me for a ride.” Barnes took another sip from his glass, then used the tumbler as a pointer. “They’d be nowhere today if they hadn’t had my money and influence in the beginning. Not my fault they deceived me.”

Of course it’s your fault. You’re a fuckup. If you couldn’t be smart enough to succeed on your own, the least you could have done was to stay latched on to those that are
.

“Those two? They’re nothing but white trash. No-accounts, street urchins. That’s where I made my mistake. I never should have connected with them in the first place. Not our kind at all.”

Not our kind? They’re smart, they’re gutsy. Maybe they’re not
your
kind. They turned out the way I’d hoped you would have
.

“You don’t know anything, Daddy. It’s a different world these days. Different than when you were making your way up the ladder. You had an easy time of it. Market conditions were right, hell, they were booming. All those sweet deals just fell into your hands. It’s different today.”

Not so different. There’re winners and losers, like always. You’re a loser, Morton. Always have been, always will be. Those two, Evans and Magee? They’re real men. A man would be proud to have sons like them
.
I wish they’d been my boys
.

Deep inside, Morton heard his father’s words echo, the familiar battering of them stirring his temper. Always before, he’d suppressed that rage, telling himself he did so out of respect for his father.

Telling himself a lie.

Deep inside, where his emotions churned, he felt something swell then break free. Rage like he’d never known consumed him, consumed him like a fire, eating his thoughts, his will, until only the bitter ash of failure remained.

“You go to hell, you old bastard! You just go to hell, you hear me?” Furious with a man who took up space only in his head, Morton heaved the crystal highball glass against the wall. The heavy crystal bounced onto the floor and rolled toward one of the bookshelves.