King's Ransom (Oil Kings Book 2)

by Marie Johnston

  Hours later, he popped back out. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going to take me more than a day to get all this down,” I said, stunned. New respect bloomed for the nameless, faceless suits I’d passed on the way here.

  “You’ve got a week.”

  When my gaze flew to him, his eyes crinkled in the corners. “Kidding.”

  Beckett didn’t outright smile much. If I’d grown up with stupid-full bank accounts and a ton of well-adjusted siblings, I wouldn’t stop smiling.

  He hit a few more buttons and handed me a phone. “The password is the same, and the scheduling program is on both.”

  I swallowed hard at the name of the program he used. It was the one he’d purchased after backing out of the deal he’d offered Adam. My brother bordered on obsessive, and organization was like a drug. Even as a dud on my couch, Adam had his shit arranged. His dirty cup, always on a coaster, sat three inches away from his bag of chips. His games were organized, but not alphabetically. It depended on his moods. Sometimes I found them arranged according to gaming systems or by rating. Once in a while, he switched it up to the level he was on, or the main character’s hair color. Role-play, individual or group mode. When Adam was going to college and had to juggle due dates, real dates, and his work schedule with group classwork, he’d designed a program they could all log in to and coordinate together. It wasn’t a highly unique program, but Adam made it fun and easy, more like a social media app, and word had spread.

  Beckett pulled me out of my memories when he glanced at his watch. “Why don’t we break for lunch?”

  “What time do you want me back?” I would’ve packed a lunch, but after splurging on clothing for the first time in my life, I’d had the impulsive idea to eat out for lunch. There were so many eclectic eateries downtown. I’d walked past them for years. Today, I was going to be one of those people who went out for lunch instead of grabbing cooled leftovers from serving trays and peanuts from the bar.

  “We’ll go together.”

  Right, the fiancée bit. We hadn’t discussed those terms yet, or if I would indeed be hired for that role too. He probably wanted to get to know me before planting a big diamond on my finger.

  That meant I had to spend time with him, not just trying to ignore the soothing smell of his aftershave and the way heat rolled off his body every time he leaned over to use the keyboard. I’d fallen into the mindset of office drone learning new tasks. I’d forgotten I was here to possibly marry the guy. Good thing I’d never been the type of girl to dream about my perfect wedding and my perfect man.

  “Where should we go?” he asked.

  “You’ll have to choose. I’ve never eaten downtown.”

  His eyes widened. “And you’ve lived here your whole life?”

  I wasn’t ashamed of being raised on a limited budget. “If it didn’t have golden arches, we didn’t eat there.”

  Understanding darkened his eyes. He must’ve put my statement together with the fact that I had worked two jobs up until yesterday and figured out my family’s income level growing up.

  “What do you like?”

  “Broke kids don’t grow up to be picky.” Not when they were broke adults.

  He blinked. “Gotcha. There’s a burger place on Sixteenth that’s amazing. We’ll start there.”

  The walk to the restaurant was brisk and…interesting. It was hard to study Beckett when he walked next to me, but unlike the clipped strides of all the guys around us, Beckett swaggered. With his rolling gait, he hadn’t been raised on concrete like I had been.

  Curt greetings breezed past us. “Hey, Mr. King.” “How’s it going, Mr. King?” Or just a short “King.” It was a given that their gazes slid to me and back to him. I was dismissed so easily, it was as if I were in a bubble of invisibility.

  Beckett greeted each person by name. I tried to take notes in case that was expected of me in my new “job” but quickly gave up. I hadn’t bothered to remember regulars’ names at the bar. Once they became permanent fixtures on the barstool, their tips didn’t change because I could say, “How’s it going, Bill?”

  We reached the burger place and he held the door open for me. It was an automatic move for him, one no doubt ingrained from childhood. The warm glow blooming in my belly had no business there in the first place.

  I wasn’t special. I was another business deal for this guy, complete with contracts like the ones I’d filled out yesterday.

  Once settled into a booth, I fiddled with the paper band around my silverware. I didn’t know this guy and I wasn’t used to dining with my bosses. I bullshitted with Frank at Nellie’s, but he was probably as old as my dad would be if he were still alive.

  Beckett tapped through his phone like I wasn’t there and that was just fine with me. These few moments before ordering gave me a chance to study him out of the corner of my eye.

  Still as good looking as before, but even better up close. His hair was trimmed close to the scalp and he was clean-shaven, but I could picture him with a little scruff and a cowboy hat pulled down low.

  Flutters rippled through my belly. All kinds of men filtered through Denver. Ultra athletes. Yuppies. Even cowboys and ranchers. Somehow Beckett could fit in with any of those, except the men I hung out with.

  Not that I dated much anymore. Work consumed most of my time and the rest was spent cleaning the house and making sure Adam didn’t shrivel up on the couch.

  The server appeared at the booth. I ordered first as Beckett clicked his phone off. His complete attention was on the college-aged waiter. He was direct, polite, and efficient.

  How would I have handled serving Beckett? Customers came with all kinds of personalities, but I lumped them into two categories: those who saw me and those who didn’t. Some nights, I was relieved to wait on those who didn’t see me. They ate, drank, paid their tab, gave me a mediocre tip, and left with no drama.

  The ones who noticed me were lumped together. They pitied my lot in life either because they were super friendly or because they had once waited tables and pitied me. Then there was the subsection of those who wanted to date me, and I’d have to coax and bribe them to pay their damn bill so I wasn’t left covering their unpaid tab when I turned them down.

  Beckett wasn’t giving off a pity vibe, but he’d probably leave a big tip, subconsciously grateful he wasn’t in the food service industry. I’m sure my ragged look had influenced his proposal. Give the pauper a hand up, not a handout.

  “I have a meeting this afternoon,” he announced.

  “I’ll be fine in the office.” I doubted anyone would stop in. What a tomb. In my first hour, I had missed my catering gig and the hustle and bustle that came with it. There, I only watched the clock to make sure we had food placed and presented on time, or tables broken down and loaded by a specific hour. I ran in and out of buildings as we loaded and unloaded platters and prepped food.

  Most of the places I catered at least had windows.

  His dark gaze pinned me. “You’ll need to come with me, take notes, and add dates to the master schedule, and afterward, I usually rely on my assistant’s general impression of how the meeting went. And about the people involved. Will that be a problem?”

  I could opinion the hell of out his meetings, but I didn’t think those were the kinds of observations he was looking for. Another detail bothered me. “If we’re going to come out as engaged in the next four months, won’t it be weird that I started as your assistant?”

  “It’ll be stereotypical.”

  “That happens a lot?”

  “In reality? I don’t know. In other people’s minds? All the time.” He shrugged and scanned the restaurant. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

  His phone buzzed and I lost his attention.

  If I had been his legitimate assistant and not some chick he’d hired off the street to stick it to his Grams and the legal confines of his trust fund, it would totally matter to me. I took pride in good honest work. There’d been a time
when my actions had been less than honest. I’d taken the easy route to earning a living and it had turned into the hardest part of my life, a part I was still dealing with. But I wasn’t his legitimate assistant, so it wouldn’t matter to me either.

  Our food arrived and I carefully cut my burger into smaller slices so I wouldn’t be wearing ketchup on my blouse to the meeting. Beckett had no such hesitation and I tried not to be jealous of how everything came easy to him.

  After I finished, I pushed my basket to the side. “What’s this meeting about?”

  Beckett hadn’t looked at me once throughout the entire meal. I’d dabbed my mouth until my lips felt dry, quadruple-checked my front for globs dropped on my chest, and fiddled with my hair. Is this what I had to look forward to?

  “I’m evaluating a new-to-market app.” The muscles of his jaw flexed. “It has limited uses, at least for a guy, but I can see the potential.”

  Limited uses for a guy? Was Beckett just a tech bro and the app was for lipstick, or clothing, or…whatever he thought women were supposed to be obsessed with?

  He cleared his throat and gazed across the restaurant. “That’s actually why I want you there. It’s a program that tracks the intimacy between couples and makes recommendations. It’s loaded with suggestions, challenges, and…stuff of that nature.”

  Feeling wicked, I shook my head like I didn’t understand. “What stuff? And why wouldn’t that be useful for a guy?”

  The bastard must’ve smelled the challenge. “Because men are already sitting around thinking about how they can get their girlfriend to give them a hand job in a public place. And whether they can go down on their partner in a dark movie theater without getting noticed. Most of us don’t need to be encouraged to fuck our partners more.”

  Heat wicked up my body and I struggled not to squirm against the seat. Each suggestion he made created a vivid image in my head—and he and I were the stars.

  I took a slow sip of water. His pupils dilated and his jaw clenched as he watched my throat work, but he didn’t look away. I couldn’t let him dominate this conversation or my role in this farce would be fucked. He’d bulldoze me and I’d plant myself beside my brother.

  “Mmm. I don’t know about that.” And I wasn’t just being contrary. “My years as a bartender have taught me that men have insecurities and periods in their life when virility isn’t pouring out of them. The middle-age spread starts. Little kids keep them up all night. Their wives or girlfriends are tired and depressed and the guys are frustrated and feel powerless because for once, sex won’t solve everything. That’s on top of all their own career concerns, bouts of depression, and stress over a massive mortgage.”

  Beckett’s expression sharpened with each point. He relaxed into the booth and considered what I said. “So an app like this—would it help?”

  I snorted. “Advertise in the bathroom stalls of every bar in Anytown, USA, and it’ll get downloaded.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “I want more than a flash in the pan. But she’s a marriage counselor, so I think it’s worth looking at.”

  “The app’s cheaper than her hourly fee, right?”

  Another ghost of a smile. “That’s actually close to her tagline.”

  The server came bearing the bill. I was about to reach for my card when Beckett handed him a hundred. “Keep the change.” He slid and stood, the server already forgotten. Beckett wasn’t looking at me to see if I was impressed with his generosity toward us poor folk. “Ready?”

  Nope. His mind was on work. Emotionally withdrawn and professionally selfish. No wonder the guy was still single.

  Chapter 6

  Beckett

  Lunch had been a test. How long had it been since I’d been so sex starved that I couldn’t control my body when an attractive woman ate? But her lips. Plump and pink…they’d keep me up at night.

  And her cunning amber eyes. They spoke louder than her matter-of-fact statements. She’d been uncomfortable going out to lunch with me, painfully so once the food came and she was worried about spilling on herself. But then I’d mentioned our meeting and she’d had spot-on insight. Thanks to her experience as a bartender, she knew more about the male population than I did. I had my dad and my brothers to go off of. A sex app? A waste of gigabytes.

  But to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Blow? It could help them weather the doldrums of their life together, or even save their marriage.

  Only now I was going to have to go to a meeting and talk about sex—with Eva sitting next to me.

  “My driver will be waiting by the office tower.” I almost held out my arm for her, but we weren’t there yet. Being with her, thinking about marriage, yet not touching her and teaching her the inner workings of my day, scrambled my brains. I had four months to get to know her. We’d be married in name only.

  Although she hadn’t asked about that part of the arrangement. I got the sense that she was feeling out the job—and me. If I turned weird, she’d be gone, and that thought fueled my stress levels.

  I’d never worried about my real dates’ lack of commitment. It wasn’t usually a concern. None of my relationships had lasted more than six months. The women wanted more. More talking, more emotions, more access to my life—one had even tried to break into my computer. They asked about my dad, about what happened to my mom, and begged to see the ranch. Until Dad’s wedding, I’d been home only once since I left ten years ago, and that had been for my oldest brother Aiden’s wedding last year.

  He was following in Dad’s footsteps, running King Oil, but he’d married a librarian, taken her on a whirlwind honeymoon, and changed her address from Mountain View, Montana, to Houston. He’d married her because he wasn’t about to lose the trust money. All of us had known but her, the poor girl. She was a woman in love, swept off her feet by the oil tycoon. As soon as they’d said their vows, I’d left.

  Disgusting.

  I wasn’t going to be that guy. Eva knew the deal. As payment for her time, she’d get half of the trust when we divorced. Thanks to Mama, the trust was immune to any prenup. I was paying Eva enough in the meantime, and pleased that she might actually be a competent assistant. I had a virtual one that had taken over many of Wilma’s old duties, but a real person to bounce ideas off of was invaluable.

  That it would be Eva was getting better and better.

  A black sedan was parked in the loading zone in front of the office tower. I opened the door for Eva. She peeked around the interior as she slid inside and greeted the driver.

  I went around to the other side and got in. “Rick, this is my new assistant, Miss Chase.”

  “Eva, please.” She buckled herself in and muttered, “This is weird enough as it is.”

  “We’re meeting Dr. Magdalene Herrera at her clinic in Boise.”

  Eva had been looking out the window, but she whipped around to look at me. “Idaho?”

  “It’s a quick flight there and back. The meeting will be no more than an hour.” Eva’s brow was still scrunched. “She made room in her schedule, but her clients come first.” I wasn’t often pushed off, but Dr. Herrera thought she had the power. I wasn’t the only company interested in purchasing her program.

  Unlike the others, I didn’t need her program. Though the idea of technology paired with human relationships hit close to home. So far, no human had paired well with my technology.

  Eva stared out the window. “When do you expect we’ll return?”

  “You’ll be home no later than eight. Is that a problem?” I respected my employees’ personal lives, but was Eva really balking at working late on the first day?

  “No. That should be fine.” Her tone was brighter, but there was a ring of insincerity to it.

  She might as well get used to my schedule now. Rick took us to the airport and she didn’t say a word. My brothers and I shared a private plane, thanks to King Oil. Eva shadowed me as I ran through the itinerary with Rick and the pilot. Her acute interest in our surroundings was hard to miss.


  Wide eyed, she studied the airport, the car, then the Gulfstream in front of us. I pointed to the stairs leading to the plane’s entrance.

  “I hope you paid attention. You’ll be the one discussing the details with them next time,” I told her as we boarded.

  She stalled at the landing, gawking left and right. The flight attendant greeted her and ushered her forward to one of the bucket seats in a pod of four facing each other. The other woman ran through buckling and safety pamphlets. A delicate line formed between Eva’s brows as she listened intently to each word. I was puzzling over the attendant’s sudden interest in catering to Eva when it hit me.

  The attendant had recognized a first-time flyer before I had.

  I took the chair across from Eva. Usually when I flew with Wilma, she sat in a different pod to give me room to work while she wrapped up last-minute plans. During the flight, she did crosswords or knitted. All my brothers had handmade stocking hats from Wilma. And scarves and socks. Wilma had two grown kids, and before the grandkids started arriving, my family members were the recipients of her projects.

  After checking with me, the attendant stepped away.

  “You haven’t flown before?” I asked.

  Eva kicked back in her chair and adopted a haughty expression. “Yes, darling. I went to Paris last weekend.” The plane started its taxi and Eva clutched the armrests. She winced at her white knuckles. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Not at all.”

  She smiled at my wry tone. We didn’t speak as the plane took off. I pretended to work on my phone, but I was paying more attention to the wondrous expression on her face.

  She leaned over to stare out the window. “Whoa. So, this is your life? A driver? A plane? Do you have a home in Cherry Creek? A cabin in the mountains?”

  My lips thinned. Coming from her, my life sounded absurd. When I dated someone like Cara, an NYC heiress with a lavish lifestyle and actual weekend trips to Paris on her private jet, I felt too normal to relate to them. But around someone like Eva, I was Cara.