The Widow and the Wildcatter: A Loveswept Classic Romance (3 page)

If the truth be told, Chance liked everything he saw. The freckles gave her skin a velvety look that made his fingers tingle, while her generous mouth bespoke a woman of spirit.

His eyes dropped briefly to the chambray shirt that shrouded her slender frame, and he wondered if it might have belonged to her late husband. Whatever, she looked sexy as hell in the man-sized shirt.

It was her coloring that really intrigued him, though. With that bonfire of red hair and those sparkin’ blue eyes, she reminded him of a wild well just begging to be tamed. And anyone with a lick of sense knew that was a challenge no “oilie” could resist.

Joni could feel the powerful drive of the drill bit shaking the trailer floor, touching off the craziest vibrations in the craziest places as she studied Chance with the same thoroughness he was using on her.

To her, he fit the mold of the independent oil man—a rough and ready gambler who played by his own rules. His form-fitting T-shirt displayed a sinuous body with long, fluid muscles that came from lifting pipe, not pumping iron. Years of working in the Oklahoma sun had tanned him to perfection.

Despite the rumpled black hair and the two-day growth of beard that shadowed his daredevil face, she couldn’t help but notice the network of lines flanking his kinetic green eyes—lines that told her how often he laughed and how much he enjoyed the risky business of discovering oil.

Nor could she ignore the frankly sensual mouth that shocked her into realizing that her first impulse was to kiss him.

Guiltily she glanced down at her wedding band, remembering a June bride and her farm boy vowing to love, honor, and cherish “till death us do part.” She strove to recall Larry’s round, serious face, but her mind’s eye refused to cooperate. All she could see was that dimly lit barn and a pair of scuffed work boots—

“How did he die?”

Joni raised her head in confusion, her three-year-old screams still echoing in her ears. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your husband.” Chance had a gut feeling the guy had done a real number on her. “How did he die?”

“What difference does it make?” She swallowed hard, drowning out those horrible screams. If only she could eliminate the nightmares that easily. “Larry’s gone and you’re my last hope.”

He started to tell her not to go pinning her hopes or anything else on him—he had enough trouble without that. But before he could speak the door opened, admitting all the outside noise and an oil-smeared Tex.

“Good news, boss,” the roughneck said to Chance. “We’ve found the pay in the Redfork formation.”

Chance welcomed the interruption as much as he did the news. Maybe more. He picked up the drilling record and got down to business. “Let’s get a sample and get it logged.”

“Right,” Tex replied.

Joni could feel the sudden charge in the air. It was as if a hot wire had just sent an electric spark through the trailer.

It seemed like eons since she’d been a part of something good, something exciting, and she would have given her eye teeth to stay and see what happened next. But fearing she would only be in the way, she reached for the recipe card that now lay on the desk.

“No.”

The quiet command stopped her cold. She drew her hand back quickly and looked curiously at Chance.

He gave the log to Tex. “Mrs. Fletcher and I have some unfinished business to take care of, so go ahead without me. You know what to do.”

The roughneck’s grin gleamed whitely in his blackened face as he reached to pull the door closed behind him. “Consider it done.”

When he was gone, Chance picked up the card and carried it to the window, studying it intently in the lemony light that seeped through the blinds and trying to sort through feelings that had been a long time in coming.

It was a damned difficult thing to do, dividing past from present and separating emotion from experience. On the one hand, this could be the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow he’d been
chasing; on the other hand, it could be the beginning of the end of his lifelong dream. Either way, he couldn’t rush the process.

Until now, Joni had been too busy making her case to really size up the man she’d been searching high and low for. Given this breather, though, she realized she just might be getting in over her head.

He wore his hair a bit longer than was considered the fashion, as though he didn’t give two hoots in hell what anybody else thought. But the black strands looked so springy and inviting, it took every ounce of willpower Joni possessed not to reach out and touch them.

She had a slim view of a profile that could have been carved by the restless wind, but mostly her view was restricted to his long, sinewy back. The heat had plastered his T-shirt to his muscled skin, making her conscious of the way his wall-to-wall shoulders tapered to a trim waist and taut buttocks.

He flipped the card over suddenly and read the other side, then turned to face her and asked, “Ever make it?”

“M—make what?”

“Buttermilk pie.”

“Oh, no.” Embarrassed by her momentary lapse, she hastened to clarify. “I got the card out of Grandma’s apron pocket only a couple of months ago. See, she died giving birth to my daddy that day, and Grandpa had kept her things in the cedar chest in the attic. I didn’t even know it existed until he sent me up there to dig it out.”

A smile graced her lips as she studied the small
card in his large hands. “I’ve been meaning to make one, but what with taking care of Grandpa, tending my tomatoes, and trying to find you, I haven’t had time.”

Chance took in her worn clothes and work roughened hands, wondering when she found time for herself, and Joni realized she looked like something the cat dragged in.

Her blue chambray shirt had belonged to Larry. She’d stayed up late one night altering it down until it was only a couple of sizes too large for her. Her jeans were stiff with mud, and her waffle stompers … well, they’d seen better days.

As the silence thickened, she began twisting her wedding band in a nervous gesture that, for some reason, irritated the hell out of Chance.

“Tell me something,” he demanded tersely. “How much life insurance did your husband have?”

She went pale as a ghost. “What’s that got to do with our oil well?”

“You asked me for twenty thousand dollars, remember?” He felt like a real heel, putting her through this, but he had her dead to rights. “I’m just trying to make sure I won’t be throwing good money after bad if I decide to drill on your land.”

“If you doubt my integrity, Mr. McCoy—”

“You haven’t answered my question, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“Nor will I.” She squared her narrow shoulders determinedly and put her hand out, palm up. “Now, if you’ll give me back my card, I’ll get out of your hair.”

Chance looked at her, all earth and fire and sky,
and braved the elements with a smile. “You don’t like me, do you?”

Joni had the grace to blush. “Let’s just say that we don’t have much in common and leave it at that.”

“I think you’re wrong,” he challenged her laconically.

“I don’t.” She wiggled her fingers impatiently.

He kept the card firmly in hand. “You’re aware, aren’t you, that the oil industry is just now starting to come out of its worst price slump since the Depression?”

She kept a tight rein on her temper. “And you’re aware that while the price of oil was going up to thirty dollars a barrel a few years back, the price of corn was going down to a dollar fifty a bushel?”

“You’ve had price supports.”

“And you’ve had tax breaks.”

He tried another tack. “The main reason I’m in business today is that I had enough revenue from my stripper wells to carry me over the hump.”

She cut him off at the pass. “Well, the main reason we quit growing corn last year is that we were losing fifty dollars an acre.”

Their eyes met, and they engaged in a visual battle of wills that made their verbal skirmish seem tame by comparison.

Chance began to notice things about her that he hadn’t noticed before. That her nose had an aristocratic bent, but her slightly squared jaw could have belonged to a pioneer. That her sadly neglected hands were as fragile and fine-boned as those of an ascetic. That for all her slight build, she had the heart of a fighter.

Little did he know that Joni was fighting her budding attraction to him as fiercely as she was fighting to save her farm.

He simply felt the determination radiating from her every pore and called a truce. “There’s no use in our even discussing that twenty thousand dollars until I’ve run some tests on your land.”

She dropped her hand but held her rising elation in check. “What kinds of tests?”

“Rock and soil samples, for starters.”

“How long will that take?”

“A week.” He shrugged those massive shoulders, causing his muscles to ripple beneath his T-shirt. “Two at the most.”

“That’s cutting it pretty close.” She didn’t mean to sound pushy, but she was running out of time. “Our bank note comes due three weeks from today.”

He looked down at the map, then up at her. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

She frowned. “Taking Grandpa to the doctor.”

“What about Sunday?” Damn, but she had a sexy mouth—wide and curvy, with a lower lip that said she gave as good as she got.

Her frown segued into a smile. “Making a buttermilk pie.”

“Sounds good to me.” He flashed her a grin, revealing a set of strong white teeth, and they both laughed.

An ear-splitting hiss followed by a chorus of ribald curses told them he was needed on the rig floor.

He returned her card and reached for his hard hat. “No rest for the wicked.”

She stuck out her hand. Catching sight of her chipped nails and chapped skin, she promptly withdrew it. “See you Sunday.”

His beer bottle sat full and forgotten on the desk as he watched her walk to the door. It’d been a long time since a woman had captured his imagination and challenged his intellect. Longer still since a woman had commanded his respect.

“By the way, Mrs. Fletcher …”

Joni turned back reluctantly.

Chance surveyed the exquisitely feminine body beneath the man’s shirt, rousing feelings between her blue eyes and jeans that she’d thought she’d buried forever.

“You were saying, Mr. McCoy?”

He cocked his hard hat at that rakish angle and gave her his rogue’s gallery smile. “Remind me to show you just how much we have in common.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Chance took off a pair of aviator sunglasses and stuck them into his jacket pocket as he crossed the porch. “It just occurred to me that I’m probably interrupting your dinner.”

The clock in the entryway chimed the noon hour as Joni unhooked the screen door. “On the contrary, we decided to eat a little later today, thinking maybe you’d like to join us.”

His swift stride slowed. “I hope you didn’t go to any extra trouble on my account.”

She made a
tsk
ing sound. “This from the man who tricked me into baking a buttermilk pie?”

His answering grin was totally unrepentant. “What do you say we skip dinner and go directly to dessert?”

Laughing now, she held the door open for him. “Come in and meet Grandpa.”

He nodded. “Great.”

Joni stood with her back against the doorjamb as he wedged himself past her. But still his body made brief contact with hers, and every cell went hot and cold with excitement.

At the same time, air raid sirens went off in her head. In a raw silk jacket, pale salmon polo shirt, and jeans, he looked no less dangerous than if he’d stormed her house wearing a curved scimitar in his belt and clutching a long-barreled rifle.

For his part, Chance was hard-pressed to reconcile this vision in soft blue jersey with the woman who’d visited him at the drilling site.

Her wild Irish hair had been tamed into a topknot, which made her freckles seem more pronounced and her eyes even larger than before. The open collar of her simple shirtwaist dress paid homage to that Botticelli neck, while its gently full skirt draped those fine filly legs.

And considering the state of her hands, it came as a real surprise to find toenails the color of pink tea roses playing hide-and-seek with the straps of her white sandals.

Which reminded him …

Joni saw that he’d zeroed in on her wedding band and she began fiddling with it, turning it round and round on her finger as she said, “Grandpa’s waiting for us in the living room, Mr. McCoy.”

Chance knew damned good and well she was hiding behind that ring, but he let it ride for the moment. “After you, Mrs. Fletcher.”

The peeling paint on the exterior of the farmhouse had spoken with sad eloquence about her struggle to make ends meet, but inside she had created an environment seemingly untouched by either tragedy or time.

Sunshine streamed in through two leaded glass windows that wore a vinegar-and-water sparkle. Between them, and behind a cherry settee that looked as if it dated from the Civil War era, a crazy quilt hung artfully on the wall. Pine plank flooring added its own glow. A ceiling fan provoked a cool breeze; come winter, the fieldstone fireplace would provide warmth.

A scarecrow of a man in Big Smith overalls and a faded plaid shirt pushed himself up by the armrests of an overstuffed club chair that had been the ultimate in comfort in the 1930s.

“Keep your seat, sir,” Chance said as he crossed the room.

Bat Dillon’s breath came hard and fast and difficult, but he didn’t know the meaning of
quit
. “The day I can’t stand to greet a guest is the day they can lay me in my grave.”

Chance laughed and stuck out his hand, feeling an instant kinship with the feisty old codger. “You must be Grandpa.”

“What’s left of him,” the old man confirmed, proffering his own knobby hand.

After making the introductions, Joni excused herself and went to the kitchen to fix them all some iced tea.

The pork steaks she planned to cook for dinner were thawing on the countertop, and the buttermilk
pie she’d baked that morning was cooling on a wire rack. Much to her surprise, she caught herself humming a tune she’d heard on the radio as she arranged their glasses and spoons and the sugar bowl on a japanned tray.