Black Gold

by Ruby Laska

  "Sing," she said abruptly, determined to change the direction of their conversation.

  "Pardon me?"

  "I said, sing. Please. That's what we're here for, right? I mean, it's nice up here and all, but I don't have all day."

  * * *

  Chase looked at her with surprise. He couldn't figure her out, the way she ran hot and cold. For a moment there, he could've sworn she was into him, with those soft blue eyes gazing at his arms, that sweet little smile playing around her lips. Next thing, she was busting his ass as though he'd begged her for an audition.

  Which he didn't even want. Hell, he'd never been happier with his work than the last six weeks on the rig. Being part of a team, learning his way around the massive equipment, carrying his weight and feeling pleasantly exhausted at the end of the day... and then that magic moment when they brought up the black gold from the earth, the precious oil glistening among the dirt and rocks and drilling mud. It wasn't until his father was dead that Chase finally believed he'd never end up like Gerald: spending his life in boardrooms and on airplanes, working with spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentation as his hands grew soft and his sciatica and heart disease weakened him. Chase had spent the last decade working on his music, playing local venues in Red Fork and writing songs and teaching kids how to play guitar, but it wasn't until Gerald was in the ground that he realized it had all been an effort to run away. Well, he wasn't running any more. He was an oilman now, making more than enough money, building a future, living among friends. Gerald would have hated knowing that Chase made his living with his hands and his sweat—but Chase finally didn't care what Gerald thought.

  It was just a damn shame that when he finally found a woman who caught his eye, she too wanted him to be something he wasn't. And he wasn't about to change, not even for those irresistible soft curves, that silly skirt that seemed to slide up of its own accord to show off her pretty dimpled knees, those bright red-tipped toes in those crazy shiny high-heeled shoes...

  "I'm not singing," he burst out, more gruffly than he meant to. "I never asked you to come out here in the first place. I've got plenty of chores I could be doing—Matthew and Zane are putting up sheetrock today and I ought to be helping. I don't want to go to Nashville. I have no intention of singing for a living. I'll go along to dinner for Sherry's sake, because she's a good girl with real potential, and I'd like to see something good happen for her, but that's it. The sooner you drag her back to Tennessee with you, the sooner you'll leave me in peace."

  His voice trailed off at the end. The speech had taken it out of him. Or, more likely, he had mixed feelings about Regina leaving him in peace—or leaving, at all. Why couldn't Regina McCary have been the dental assistant who worked on his teeth last week, or the girl who came out to read the meter last month? Both of them had seemed plenty interested in him, which was pretty remarkable given the scarcity of red-blooded women in this town. The dental assistant had even written her phone number—along with a sketch of a smiling tooth—on the back of his reminder card. But he hadn't called either of them. Lovely as they were, Chase felt like he was leading the right life for the first time he could remember, and he wasn't about to do anything to mess that up. Relationships meant drama, and drama was the last thing he needed right now.

  But for a woman like Regina... if she hadn't been sent to plague him about his singing... if she could have just had some normal job... hell, that might be worth a little sacrifice.

  "Just one song," she said softly. "Please."

  It was the "please" that did it. That, and the scent of lilac drifting up from the hedge that grew out of control along the fence by the house. And maybe the feel of her softly rounded arm against his. God, she had soft skin, milky white and cool, and for one brief flash, he imagined his hand circling those delicate forearms as he—

  Holy cow, where had that come from? Chase cleared his throat, unable to look at her lest she know from his expression what he'd been thinking. He launched into the first few bars of "All My Ex's Live in Texas," more to distract her than anything.

  She laid a hand on his arm. "Not that one."

  He stopped abruptly, confounded by her touch. He could feel every one of her fingertips against the back of his hand, and his damn imagination had them sliding up over his arm to his shoulders, circling around to his back, seizing him hard and pulling him against her as she—

  "Why not?" he growled. "You don't like George Strait?"

  "I like him fine. I just want to hear one of yours."

  "My what?"

  "Oh, please." He dared a look at her and saw amusement twinkling in her eyes. A stray lock of blond hair had come loose and fluttered against her cheek; it was all he could do to resist brushing it away from her face, all the better to kiss her. "You don't think I know every single country standard, every song written in the last decade? I've got every writer worth his or her salt in my contact list. I've commissioned work for some of the top talent in town, and I know those songs by heart by the first time they're sung in public. And I know where that song you sang the other night came from, precisely because I've never heard it before."

  "Oh yeah?"

  "You wrote it," she said. "And now I want to hear something else you wrote."

  He stared at her for a long moment, trying to decide whether to argue, tell her she was wrong, refuse to play this game. He could do it—he'd gone up against the best and won, his teenage sullenness beating even Gerald Warner, head of a Fortune 500 company, who never lost arguments. There was no way some hundred-pound bit of woman was going to wear him down. Chase Warner did exactly what he wished these days, no more and no less.

  "If I could buy tomorrow in a store," he found himself singing.

  What was he doing? "If I Could Buy Tomorrow" was a song he'd never sung for anyone, something he wrote the night his father was rushed to the hospital, his life slipping away fast after the heart attack that would kill him by morning. "Tomorrow" was all of his regrets and wishes in a few verses, the only outlet Chase had that night because he couldn't cry, couldn't do anything but stare at the gray-faced man in the bed, wishing everything had been different.

  * * *

  "Don't stop," Regina whispered.

  Chase looked like he was being tortured. His handsome face was twisted in what looked like pain, and for a moment, she thought he would storm out of the tree house and leave her there. Instead, after what seemed like eternity, he continued.

  "I'd take it to the register, and pay for it with wishes and regrets."

  God, his voice was beautiful. It was low and lilting and seemed to reach every inch of her, from her ears to her heart to the nerve endings along her skin. "That's a money voice right there, honey," Meredith would say—often did say, when she signed a new client—but it also had the very rare quality of making her feel like he was singing only to her. That was something you couldn't train into a person; no amount of voice coaching or practice could—

  "I'd trade today and yesterday for one more chance..."

  He closed his eyes and paused, and Regina caught his breath and waited. Don't stop, don't stop, she urged him silently, wondering who he'd written the song for, what woman had inspired the melody that wound through that low register in a minor key, both achingly sad and sweet at the same time. A woman who'd left him?

  But what woman would leave a man like this?

  Her gaze drifted again to the loose threads around his shirt, the worn leather boots. A gold-digger, that's who. A woman who measured a man in terms of what he could buy, not who he could be.

  Someone like her.

  He opened his eyes and the moment was over. "And blah blah blah, a few more verses of that," he said casually, as though he hadn't just out-sung most of what passed for talent in the recording studios these days.

  "You haven't sold your songs, have you?" Regina pushed away her wistful longing, and forced herself to think like the businesswoman she was supposed to be. "You kept all the rights? How many songs do yo
u have?"

  "Slow down there, woman." Chase let his voice take on a lazy drawl. "I haven't sold anything but a few cheap CDs I made about five years ago—I may still have a few in a box somewhere. But like I keep telling you, that life's over. I'm perfectly happy—more than happy—with where I am now and I'm not planning on ever getting on a stage again."

  "You just did," Regina pointed out.

  "Only because I was drunk."

  "I have more than a few clients who work that way more often than not."

  "Not worth it. Look, this has been fun and all, but I've got to get back and earn my keep."

  "There's got to be something I can say to make you reconsider. Look, it's natural to be put off by rejection."

  He laughed. "Honey, I've had so much rejection in my life that I don't know if I'd be able to operate without it."

  Regina got the distinct feeling he wasn't just talking about his music. So it was a woman, one who'd not just broken his heart but done it cruelly. Which was none of her business, at least not her personal business, since that was another check in the do-not-disturb column for Chase Warner. Regina liked her men Teflon-tough. But, as his future agent, she had to know what she was dealing with. And if rejection was his albatross, then she'd just find a way to make sure he had a taste of success, enough to encourage him to keep going.

  "So if there's nothing else, I'll head down the ladder first, and that way I'll be able to catch you when you catapult out of here in those crazy shoes," he said and started to get to his feet.

  Regina grabbed his arm. She saw her hand shoot out and close around his wrist, and had time to marvel at the fact that her body seemed to be moving independently of her mind before she tugged him back down so hard he went down on his ass, shaking the whole tree house. She had time to register that things were going horribly out of control before her other hand grabbed him around the neck and pulled him toward her.

  But after that, she didn't register anything at all except the feel of his lips on hers, the delicious sensation of his hands finding the curve of her waist and then pulling her into his lap, the sound he made as the kiss went deeper, part growl and part admonition and part promise.

  She kissed back with everything she had, and if she could no longer claim she didn't know what she was doing, if she let loose her professional sensibilities like so much dandelion silk sent drifting on the breeze, somewhere deep in her heart she knew it was worth it to kiss Chase Warner. Because he kissed nothing like Carl Cash did, nothing like the wholly unexceptional string of boyfriends before that, nothing like any man in the state of Tennessee and North Dakota and every state in between—she'd bet her life on it.

  He pulled away.

  "What the hell?" he demanded, and this time he really did get to his feet, fast and with a clomping of boots on board that shook the tree house again and not at all the way it had before. He dumped her out of his lap and she landed gracelessly and watched helplessly as he started over the side, moving with the speed of a man who was very keen on being somewhere else as soon as possible.

  But when only his head and shoulders were still visible over the side of the three house floor, he stopped.

  "What was that?" he demanded. "Is that part of the package—do you throw in a free grope for all your clients?"

  Regina winced. "I've never—I don't—"

  "Damn, I'm such an idiot," he said, shaking his head. His beautiful mouth tugged down in disgust. "I get it now. This is how you compete with that other guy."

  "Do you mean Carl? What did he say to you? Because he and I have sort of a past, he doesn't—"

  "He gave me his card," Chase said coldly. "But at least he didn't try to kiss me. Guess he's got some kind of professional ethics or something."

  Regina winced. She had to make this right. Kissing Chase Warner had been completely out of line, but she'd never done anything of the sort before and she couldn't bear for him to think otherwise.

  "It isn't what you think," she said.

  "No, obviously not. I'm sure you're not used to guys turning you down. I'm sorry you had to bring out the big guns like that, especially since it doesn't change my answer." He shook his head, frowning. "Jeez, I guess I have been more hard up than I realized."

  He was all the way down before Regina even got her foot on the first rung. With a sinking heart, Regina cast around for an apology. Obviously, he wanted nothing to do with her. She deserved that. But she still had to prove to him that she wasn't simply trying to use him.

  She put her other foot on the rung below, then took another step gingerly. "Wait," she called, her face up against the tree trunk, afraid to turn around lest she lose her balance. "Please, don't go."

  But there was no answer. He was probably all the way back to the bunk house by now, off to tell his friends about the crazy woman who'd attacked him.

  "Damn it," she muttered, her hand almost slipping off the rung above. Tears sprung to her eyes. She wasn't dressed for a quick escape. And now she had no choice but to tramp back through the weeds by herself because there was no way her singing cowboy was going to pick her up and carry her, not after she'd flung herself at him.

  Tears of frustration gathered in her eyes, obscuring her vision. She put her foot down on the rung below and it slipped off the edge, and her hands scrabbled for the handhold she couldn't see. She shrieked as, for a long second, she was suspended by one hand and the toe of one useless shoe—and then she fell.

  * * *

  Chase Warner had been several yards down the path when he heard her shriek. He ran back toward the tree, his heart in his throat. What he been thinking, leaving her there? She was liable to break her neck, wearing that ridiculous getup. And, oh God, there she was, crumpled lifeless in the grass at the foot of the tree, her skirt hiked up her motionless legs—

  She sat up. Bits of twigs and grass clung to her hair, and there was a grass stain on her blouse. Her jacket was pulled halfway off one arm, the fabric torn. But she was alive.

  "Oh holy hell," he said, more angrily than he intended. She struggled to her feet, looking more like a newborn colt than anything, and started furiously brushing off her clothes.

  "I'm fine," she muttered, her cheeks stained bright pink.

  "What did you land on? What about your neck? Your spine?"

  She backed away from him, bumping into the tree. Her blue eyes were shiny and wet.

  "Are you crying? Oh sweet Mary, you're crying," he said, and then bunched his hands into fists because, if he didn't, he was going to take her into his arms again just to make her stop. And that would make him twice the fool, wouldn't it? Falling for her feminine wiles not just once but also on the rebound? He should've run and kept running. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if she'd somehow faked that fall just to reel him back in.

  "Oh," she gasped, her face going white.

  His heart skipped a beat for the second time. "What? What is it? Your back? Your leg? Do you feel faint?"

  He reached out to support her, convinced she was about to pass out from the pain. She held up one hand to stop him, her expression mute with horror.

  One of her long, red nails had broken, the crescent tip barely connected to the rest of the nail.

  Thank God he hadn't touched her. Chase let his arms fall to his sides. "Your... nail? You're crying over a goddamn broken fingernail?"

  She stared at him, lips parted in horror. As he watched, her face crumpled, her chin wobbling and her long lashes blinking away tears. "I'm not crying," she said in a wavering voice. "And if I was, it would be because you—you're the most—you don't even—"

  And then she pulled off her shoes, hopping from one foot to the other in a way that made the tails of her blouse flutter, and took off running down the path, whimpering and cradling her shoes to her chest like they were newborn kittens.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Chase stood in front of his closet, staring at the row of shirts. Every one of them was at least five years old. Five years ago was the last time he'
d made any decent money, the summer he'd picked up a sweet construction job to supplement his teaching and the few singing gigs he scraped together.

  In May—after the funeral, after the reading of the will and the sale of the company that Gerald had instructed take place after his death, after the inheritance hit Chase's bank account—there was a day when Chase walked out the door of the cramped basement apartment he'd been renting and wondered if he should go shopping. He had certainly put off buying a lot of things: new clothes, a smart phone, a car that started when the temperature dipped below forty degrees.

  But he couldn't bring himself to do it. His father had left him enough money to live on for at least a couple of decades, more if he didn't upgrade his lifestyle. Chase finally could afford to tour beyond rural Arkansas, to spring for some time in the recording studios in Little Rock, to invest in headshots and a wardrobe to go along with his demo tapes.

  And standing in the doorway that fine spring morning, Chase suddenly understood that his dream—the ten years he'd spent practicing and writing songs and playing in every back room and roadhouse in the county—had all been for nothing. No, not for nothing—for Gerald. It had all been meant to prove something, to prove that he was worthy of his father's attention.

  But accompanying that blinding realization was a second one: it wouldn't ever have worked. There was only one version of Chase his father was interested in spending time with, and that was the imaginary son who would be exactly like himself. Gerald had been many things—a shrewd businessman, a motivating and fair boss, a wise investor—but he lacked the ability to appreciate that his only child needed to follow a different path. Now he was dead, and nothing that Chase could have done would ever have made Gerald love him.

  If I could buy tomorrow in a store...

  Of all the songs he'd written—and there were binders full of them, back in the storage unit, though he knew most of them by heart—"If I Could Buy Tomorrow" had been the song that most expressed his feelings about his father. It played in his mind the morning of the funeral as he polished his worn dress shoes and put on his only suit and drove to the church, where he sat in the middle of the crowd of employees and people from the business community who he'd never met, paying his unspoken respects. He'd written his longing and his sadness into that song, his wish that there could have been a day when Gerald accepted him the way he was: not a businessman, but a man who liked to work with his hands, who got satisfaction from honest labor and sweat. All the years of working in construction by day and singing at night, it was the construction jobs that Chase had most loved. He'd just never stopped and thought long enough to realize it. Would Gerald have accepted him any more easily if he'd become a derrick hand years ago? Probably not—but at least Chase would have accepted himself.