Firestorm (4 page)

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

21

“What exactly is it that you do?”

“Me, personally?”

“Yes.”

“I'm in charge of GreenTex's field operations. I decide where to drill, how deep to go, when we need to bail out of a dry hole. I analyze core samples as we bring them out of the ground. Then, there's the part I'm not too fond of—hassling with oil and gas regulatory agencies, and sometimes with landowners.”

“Whenever there's trouble, like this thing with someone sabotaging our wells, my job is to make it go away. We can't afford delays in exploration or loss of production.”

Jake smiled at Kate, then turned his attention back to the smooth blacktop road.

“Sounds as though you’ve got an interesting job. Lots of variety.”

“Yeah. Over the years, I've done just about everything there is to do on oil rigs.

When I was fifteen, my father made me spend the summer hauling and threading pipe, stuffing mud, all the dirty work. He thought he was punishing me for being a jock instead of a bookworm.”

Kate smiled. She couldn’t imagine Jake having spent a lot of time curled up with his textbooks. “Was it terrible for you?”

“It was the most fun I’d ever had. Dad’s idea was that I'd come home and thank my lucky stars he was sending me to Houston Jesuit, and that he was willing to foot the bill for my MBA. But I loved the oil business—the puzzle of seismic readings, the excitement of bringing in a gusher like we did this morning.

“I didn't even mind breaking my back proving I could work as hard as the biggest, toughest roughneck on the crew.”

Kate couldn’t help noticing how Jake's expression softened when he talked about his work. “So did you quit school and stay out in your father's oil fields?”

“Not exactly. I went home and made a deal with the Old Man. I promised him that if he'd let me work the fields every summer and scrap the idea of sending me to the Wharton School of Business, I'd hit the books hard enough to get into petroleum engineering at Texas A&M. He was disappointed, but he agreed. Instead of a wizard financial analyst, he got a hell of a field engineer.”

“So everybody got what they wanted in the end,” Kate murmured.

“More or less. The Old Man still stews because his son won't be the one to take over the company. Deep down, though, he knows Scott, my oldest sister's husband, is far more qualified than I am to take over when he retires—at least, I hope he does.”

“It sounds as though you have a wonderful family.” Kate sighed, a little envious.

He shook his head. “You wouldn't think so if you heard my mother and sisters giving me hell.”

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

22

“I'll bet you give them reason to.”

“I guess so. Especially since my divorce. But it drives me nuts, the way they gang up on me. I’ve had every single female between eighteen and eighty paraded in front of me like a prize cow at auction. My old man’s desperate for me to provide him with a grandson, and it seems like the rest of my family’s obsessed with getting me settled down. You're an only child, aren't you?”

When he directed the question to her, Kate guessed he'd divulged as much of himself as he intended to. “Yes. I always wanted brothers and sisters, but it never happened.”

As she watched the roadway sights pass by, Jake's easy silence and the soothing strains of a Gershwin medley lulled her out of her melancholy reverie.

* * * * *

When he pulled into the parking lot beside a club called the Sandcastle, Jake looked over at Kate. Suddenly he appreciated the quiet time they’d spent together for the last miles of the drive.

“Hey, we're here,” he said quietly, sorry to have to break the silence.

“The place seems quiet tonight.” She looked around, apparently checking out the few cars in the parking lot.

Jake smiled. “Yeah. Why don't we go inside and do something about filling our stomachs? I don't know about you, but I'm half starved. This place does serve food, doesn’t it?”

“If you like barbecue or frozen pizza.”

He saw her struggling to unfasten her seat belt and reached over to help. When their hands touched, heat sizzled through him like an electric current.

Jake told himself to cool it.

As he circled the car, he listened to his inner voice’s warning. He'd enjoy a night or two of fucking around with Kate Black if she was willing, but he wasn’t about to get involved.

Wrapping an arm around her slender waist, Jake led Kate into the club. Catching a whiff of the sweet flowery perfume that had kept him halfway hard all the way from her place, he had to fight the need to lean across the table where they’d just settled and bury his face in the tantalizing hollow between her breasts.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked instead.

“White wine will be fine.”

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

23

A gusher and a possible seduction deserved something a bit more festive than that.

“We'll have champagne.”

“All right.”

“I’ll go see what they have.” With that, he took off for the bar to place their order.

“Do they have any?” Kate asked when he came back to their table.

Jake liked the way she spoke, soft and gentle sounding. “Yeah. I can’t vouch for the quality, but they’ve got a bottle of something the bartender swears is champagne. I ordered us some food, too.”

Kate’s smile brought his cock to instant attention.

It wasn’t Kate. He’d been without a woman for too damn long. Any halfway attractive female would turn him on.

Testing that theory, Jake singled out a buxom blonde at the bar and imagined her writhing hot and willing beneath him. He pictured her glossy red lips locked onto his cock as she took him deep into her throat. His cock didn't rise to the occasion the way he'd told himself it would.

Hell, he didn't want just any woman. He wanted Kate. He looked back at her and frowned.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“I'm just hungry.” And he didn't want to be that kind of hungry, not for this particular woman as opposed to any attractive female. “Where's our food?”

“It's coming now.”

“Good,” he growled at the moment his cell phone rang.

Welcoming the distraction, Jake snatched the phone off his belt and brought it to his ear.

He should have guessed. Skip and Max weren’t coming to join them. Now there’d be just him and Kate. No buffer to take his mind off fucking her.

Was that good news—or bad?

Jake hated feeling ambivalent. “Okay,” he said, ending the conversation and meeting Kate’s questioning gaze. “It’s just going to be us. Skip says they’re having trouble controlling the gusher.”

“Problems?”

“I doubt it. If I don’t miss my guess, he decided I’d rather have you to myself.”

“Oh.”

Most women Jake knew would have laughed or made some coy little comment. But not Kate.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

24

Jake's mood improved when the bartender showed up at their table with a bottle and two water-stained saucer champagne glasses. “This is fine,” he said after tasting the no-name stuff and managing not to choke on it.

The effervescence of that first taste of dry, sparkling wine stayed on his tongue while a waitress set plates of barbecued chicken and beef on the table.

Kate took some meat and brought it carefully to her lips. “Watch out, honey, it's hot,” he warned, imagining those soft, full lips closing around his cock the way she sucked the last of the sauce off her fork and into her mouth.

Hell, if he didn’t put a lid on his imagination, he’d soon be fucking her right here on the tabletop.

Jake dipped a piece of chicken into fiery barbecue sauce and popped it into his mouth.

“Tastes so good,” she murmured, flicking her tongue out to capture a spot of sauce that lingered at the corner of her mouth.

That tongue would taste delicious tangled up with his.

She didn't say much, but left him to enjoy his food in peace. He liked that.

Jake liked watching her, too. Would her dark brown, curly hair feel as silky as it looked? Would it crush beneath his touch like the rose petals in his mom’s garden?

He imagined her legs wrapped around his waist and his cock buried to the balls in her tight wet pussy.

He wanted her tonight.

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

25

Chapter Three

But he wondered if one night would be enough.

He was pretty certain it wouldn't. A fast, easy fuck wouldn't satisfy his lust.

He wanted to learn the feel of her satiny skin against his own, to keep breathing in her clean, flowery fragrance until he had his fill.

He pictured how his dark, rough hands would contrast with the pale skin of her breasts—her slender hips and thighs. Tonight she’d taste like cheap champagne and spicy barbecue and hot, sexy woman. And her gentle touch would drive him crazy.

Damn it, he wanted to sample every inch of her sexy little body before digging in for the carnal feast he had in mind.

Even though he knew she was the last woman on earth that he should be lusting after.

The second-to-last, he amended, a bitter taste coming to his mouth at the thought of Alice.

Because he guessed he could easily care for Kate, Jake made a conscious effort to focus on the similarities between her and his treacherous ex-wife.

Country girls from the Bible belt, seemingly sweet and interested in simple pleasures. Both…he couldn’t come up with any other parallels except the main one: they both had an uncanny ability to make him think with his cock, not his brain.

Willing his blood to stop flooding his already throbbing crotch, he looked away from her and scowled down at his plate.

“What's wrong?”

Goddamn it, even the apparent concern in her voice turned him on.

He grappled for a plausible excuse for his discomfort that didn’t have to do with sex, love, or betrayal. “I was thinking about getting your well hooked onto the pipeline,” he finally said, improvising.

“Oh.” Leaving him to his own meal, Kate began to eat again.

He finished everything on his platter, but he hardly tasted a bite.

“Jake! That you?”

Glad for the distraction, he looked up and recognized Mel Harrison. Mel looked pretty much the same as he remembered, even though it had been years since their wild, summer roughnecking days.

“Mel. How are you?” he asked, pushing his chair back and coming to his feet.

“Great. Never better. You still hanging round oilfields?”

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

26

“Yeah. How about you?”

Mel's ambition twelve years ago had been to keep a band together and take it on the road. The big country boy had even tried to talk Jake into forgetting about college and joining up as his lead singer.

“Hanging in there. You've heard of ‘Texas Fire,’ haven't you?”

“Can't say that I have.” Belatedly, Jake remembered his manners. “Kate, this is Mel Harrison. We used to work my old man's rigs together. Mel, Kate.”

“Hello there, sugar. Old Jake's gone and got himself a pretty lady.”

“I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Harrison.”

Jake liked the way Kate's cat eyes sparkled when she greeted his old friend.

“Well, Ms. Kate, get your man to stick around. ‘Texas Fire’ is gonna be the entertainment tonight. If you sweet-talk ole Jake, I bet you could get him to sing for you. He never could play guitar worth a hoot, but his voice used to make the ladies shiver clean down to their toes.”

“You sing?” Kate asked. “I’d never have guessed.”

“I don't. Not for years. This worn out old roughneck conned me into trying it, back when I was wet behind the ears. The summer between high school and college, we worked on the rigs all day and played sleazy honky-tonks half the nights.”

Jake sat back down and gestured toward an empty chair. “Join us.”

“Just for a minute. Gotta join the boys and get warmed up. Stay, you can listen and dance. That is, if you're too much the big bad oil man to come up and do a number with us for old times' sake.” Mel sank onto the straight-back chair.

“Jake, go on. I'd like to hear you sing,” Kate said, her quiet words as soft and melodic as any Jake had ever heard.

“You heard your lady. Hey, it'll help us out, too. Libby, our singer, is down with a bad cold. She's gonna try to make the second set, but I'll just have to fill in until she comes.”

“You? You can't carry a tune in a bucket.”

“Damn. 'Scuse me, sugar. I sing better than you ever thought of playing guitar, you conceited polecat.”

“Compliments like that won't get you jack shit—sorry, honey. You wouldn't mind?” Jake asked, knowing he'd be better off singing with the band than holding Kate in his arms on a public dance floor.

“I'd love to hear you.”

“Then it's settled,” Mel said. “You remember the old songs, Jake?”

Ann Jacobs

Firestorm

27

“I remember how to read a fake book. I think. You sure you want to chance it?”

“Yeah. We'll do the lead-in, then call you up.”

After Mel had left, Jake told himself it was okay to want to fuck Kate. Not to start caring about her.

The hell of it was, he liked Kate. Couldn’t help himself. Her excitement at the prospect of hearing him sing had thawed some of the ice his ex-wife had left around his soul. Alice would have gone berserk if he'd ever suggested leaving her alone at a table while he took a trip down memory lane. The contrast made him smile.

That summer he’d filled in with Mel’s band had produced some happy memories.

He wished when he looked at Kate that he could roll back the years.

“You really want to see me make a fool of myself?” he asked instead.

“I’m sure you won't do that. What kind of music do they play?”

“We used to play light rock, a little country and western, easy stuff. I doubt if Mel's changed his style much.” Jake relaxed while they finished off the bottle of cheap champagne, and after laughing at some jokes the lead-in comic had told, he was downright mellow.

Kate couldn't help smiling. Jake was showing her a side of him she hadn't imagined he possessed. Yes, he was arrogant and cynical. The more she saw of him, though, the more she believed she hadn’t scratched the surface of who he was.