The Cowboy Takes A Bride

“I thought they were supposed to teach you in college to find out the facts before jumping to conclusions,” Grant commented dryly.

A muscle along his jawline throbbed out his frustration as he took full measure of the pretty little thing who’d just called him a con man. Any man with the audacity to make such an accusation would have found himself cheek to cheek with the nearest wall.

Arms up in the air, Paddy jumped into the middle of the fracas. His complexion was even ruddier than usual as he attempted arbitration. “Caitlin, surely you remember my speaking of Keith Davis, my partner from years ago. Grant’s his son.”

A frown creased Caitlin’s brow. Recognition glimmered beneath the surface of her memory like a dark fish rising from the depths.

“Keith Davis… Wasn’t he the man who…”

“The man,” Grant supplied, “who was killed in the explosion that nearly bankrupted this company years ago. The explosion that left second-degree burns over fifty percent of your father’s body.”

Caitlin turned her attention upon her father. “The one that caused you and Mother to—”

Words failed her as she searched Paddy’s stricken eyes for an answer to the question that had obsessed her for years. Growing up, the subject of her parents’ separation had been expressly taboo. When she was younger, Caitlin had found a photograph in her mother’s album of a strange mummy-like creature staring back at her from a hospital bed. Laura Leigh had curtly explained that it was Paddy, shortly before she made up her mind to leave him.

When with typical adolescent candor Caitlin expressed the opinion that it was unbelievably cold of her mother to abandon her father in such a state, Laura Leigh had replied cryptically, “We were both burned in that fire, Caitlin. Someday when you’re older, maybe I’ll try explaining it to you.”

For some reason that day never came. Caitlin hoped that with the passage of time, the truth would finally come out. Unfortunately, Paddy had no more intention of pillaging the past than her mother.

“Let’s leave old times well enough alone except to say that Grant’s father was the best friend I ever had. In fact I never met a better man—until the day his son showed up at one of my rigs. Despite the fact he held me personally responsible for his father’s death, he said he was willing to learn the business from the bottom up. The only thing he asked of me was a paycheck. Promised to earn his keep, and, by God, girl, he has more than done that.”

It was impossible to miss the effect these words had upon Grant. He stood perceptibly taller, and the moisture clouding his eyes was clearly an embarrassment to him.

Coming from a man not easily given to compliments, Caitlin was aware how rare such praise was. What she would have given to hear her father speak so highly of her! Unbidden, a seed of jealousy sprouted in her heart for the man who had somehow managed to usurp her hitherto unshakable position as the apple of her father’s eye.

“Am I to take it then that you somehow feel duty bound to Keith’s son?” Caitlin asked. Unloosed from a throat tight with emotion, her voice sounded high and strained.

“Contractually I’m not obligated to anyone. But when you consider that Grant came here on his own to bust his butt for a company on the brink of bankruptcy, yes, I think it’s fair to say that I feel an obligation to him,” Paddy responded shortly.

Caitlin flinched against the reproof in her father’s voice. Then hardened herself against it. However nicely Paddy gilded it, something didn’t sound quite right in his abbreviated explanation. Until proven otherwise, Grant would remain suspect in her mind. The thought intensified her desire to stick around and see what exactly this man was up to.

“Let me get this straight,” she said, gesturing toward her father with graceful, long fingers. “You blame yourself for an act of God, then spend time teaching this bleeding heart everything he wants to know about the oil business out of sheer pity, and you can’t so much as give your own daughter a solitary chance to earn her keep around here?”

Paddy was not a man accustomed to having his judgment questioned. “It wasn’t pity,” he snapped. “Grant’s proven himself many times over.”

Despite the anger Caitlin’s question aroused in him, Grant nonetheless considered it fair. In fact looking back on it, he couldn’t think of anyone presenting a more pitiful image than he had that day he’d arrived with his hat in hand, humbly asking to be taught the tools of the very trade that had claimed his father’s life. Having targeted Paddy in his mind for years as the cause of that fatal accident, it had been all he could do to keep from throttling his father’s partner. The last thing he’d expected was to ever like the old codger who managed somehow to take him in without compromising his dignity by offering him not a hand out, but a hand up.

Grateful that Paddy had glossed over years of heartache with one broad, sweeping stroke, Grant nevertheless could not forget that there was far more to the story of how their partnership came about than Paddy was telling. It was just like Paddy to leave the telling of that to him when and if he ever decided to share it.

“If you’re trying to put a price tag on what was owed me,” Grant growled, “you’ll have to tell me the going rate to replace a father.”

Caitlin drew her breath in sharply as her heart cried out the answer to Grant’s inquiry. No amount of money in the world! As difficult as it had been growing up in a broken home, Caitlin loved both her parents dearly and couldn’t imagine life without either one.

For the first time since meeting this man, she felt an inkling of sympathy for him. He may look as impervious as a Roman gladiator now, but she mentally calculated his age and figured that he must have still been in high school when tragedy befell his family. Her throat closed around the image of a beautiful, dark-haired teenager acting as his father’s pallbearer. And of a tearful, bereft mother leaning on him for support. It was Caitlin’s understanding that the mere thought of losing Paddy in such a hellish manner had been enough to compel her mother to abandon the one true love of her life. Maintaining that she was too young to be a widow, like poor Cissy Davis, Laura Leigh had shortly thereafter packed her bags and headed back to the security of her parents’ home in San Antonio.

Caitlin bit the inside of her mouth in a nervous habit that survived her childhood. “I didn’t mean it to sound like that. It’s just that I feel obligated to look after my father’s interests. It is awfully strange that he hasn’t mentioned you to me before.”

“As much as I appreciate your concern,” Paddy interjected with a crooked smile. “I’m a grown man accustomed to making my own decisions. Maybe I didn’t feel the need to explain myself to you. Then—or now.”

With that, he ran his hands through his silver hair. “This conversation is over. The only thing left to decide is what to do with you, young lady.”

Fighting the tears that welled up in her eyes, Caitlin set her jaw in the same determined way that her father had of leading with his chin whenever things looked their bleakest. She was not about to come all this way just to be brushed off. There was far more at stake here than just a job.

Her self-worth was quivering on the line.

“I’ll tell you what you can do with me,” she countered, each word an articulated bullet. “You can back off and let me do my job!”

Grant had to admire the lady’s grit. Having expected her to employ the age-old female tools of alternately crying and pouting, he was struck by Caitlin’s fortitude in standing up to Paddy Flynn, the terror of drillers and corporate giants alike. It aroused in him a grudging respect.

Suppressing a smile, he imagined her reaction to the strictly male observation that she was indeed very beautiful when she was mad. He was mesmerized by the attention she paid the gold locket nestled in the hollow of her throat. The way she was stroking it so lovingly made Grant wonder if it was some kind of a magic talisman. Maybe a religious medal. Perhaps a lucky charm to protect her from catastrophes, assorted imaginary ills, and hard-hatted villains.

Neither Caitlin’s voice nor her resolve quavered as she continued the fight to get her way. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll offer my services totally free of charge for one month. If I can’t prove my worth to you in that time, I’ll accept your decision to replace me. No questions asked. No hard feelings.”

“No way!” Grant exploded. Alarm bells were sounding in his head. One only had to watch the way Paddy was thoughtfully scratching his chin to see all hope of banishing this woman from the premises go up in a magician’s poof of smoke. “I don’t have time to be baby-sitting some college kid whose knowledge of an oil field is limited to what some dried-up old professor asked on a midterm.”

No matter how pretty she is! he added silently to himself.

“No one asked you to,” she countered, twisting her necklace around her index finger and wishing it was the man’s thick neck instead. “Besides, I don’t see that you have much choice in the matter. Whether you like it or not, you need a geologist. It’s going to take some time to line another one up. Why not at least let me fill in during the interim? What have you got to lose?” she asked, her eyes flashing him a challenge in emeralds.

Besides my sanity and the friendship with your father that I value above everything else in the world?

“Just my time, this oil rig, the entire business, and my physical well-being when the crew decides you might make an interesting diversion some lonely night,” Grant snorted with an angry wave of his hand.

A shiver raced through Caitlin at the thought. “I can take care of myself,” she retorted, not bothering to explain about the defense class she had taken in college for physical education credit. If the need were ever to arise, she knew how to fell a man like a tree.

Grant rolled his eyes at this assurance. “I’m sure you can—at a sorority party or a poetry reading. But we’re not talking about the latest trends in social awareness here. This is an oil rig, not a library or an office. You can’t protect yourself here with a thick book and that withering look you’ve perfected.”

A degree in geology hadn’t prepared her for dealing with such hardheadedness. “Maybe I should have majored in archeology,” Caitlin murmured sweetly.

Grant’s eyebrows arched into question marks.

“That way I would have been better prepared to deal with such an archaic male attitude. I don’t know why you have a chip on your shoulder the size of the state of Wyoming, but it seems like you’re just afraid that I might be good at what I do.”

“What I’m afraid of,” Grant clarified with an angry jab at the air, “is that your father won’t be able to let his own daughter go when the time comes.”

Paddy started to point out that he was in the room and capable of speaking for himself, but Caitlin cut him off before the first syllable was out of his mouth.

“You’ve made it perfectly clear that you are the one in charge of hiring and firing. If in a month’s time you haven’t changed your mind about me, I’ll abide by your decision. Daddy won’t have anything to say about it.”

“Sounds more than fair to me.” There was a hint of admiration in Paddy’s voice.

Grant’s groan was of theatric proportions. “I don’t like it.”

“What you mean is that you don’t like me,” Caitlin observed. “You don’t have to. You just have to work with me.”

She stuck out her hand and forced a decision, one way or the other. “Do we have a deal?”

Thinking he’d rather kiss a rattlesnake than shake her hand, Grant’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Like I have a choice.”