by Fran Baker
“It was my grandfather’s hat.” Chance slid swarthy fingers up and down his tea glass, where condensation had made it slippery.
Joni watched his long, lean fingers stroking the glass, studied the shading of hair on his knuckles, and could just imagine …
“I thought so.” Grandpa put the hat back on the smoking stand that separated the easy chairs. “I helped your mother chase it down the day he found our oil.”
“He called it his ‘witching hat.’ ” Chance wiped away a droplet of moisture with his thumb, and Joni noticed how clean his nails were.
“If I live to be a hundred, which I won’t, I’ll never forget the sight of him prancing around this field like a man possessed.” The memory brought a sparkle to Grandpa’s eyes.
“He showed me the steps one night when he was feeling no pain.” Staring at the amber-colored tea that bore such a strong resemblance to the whiskey that had killed the oil witch, Chance smiled wryly. “I have to admit it looked pretty wild.”
“You kept the hat as a momento?” Grandpa asked.
Chance laughed, but there was little humor in the sound. “For what it’s worth, which isn’t much.”
Joni wondered what private pain seasoned his sarcastic comment, but she didn’t feel it was her place to probe.
“How about a cook’s tour of the site?” Chance asked then.
“I’d like that,” she agreed.
“If you don’t mind,” Grandpa said around a yawn, “I think I’ll skip the tour and take a little nap instead.”
Chance stood. “There’s some bunks in back if you want to stretch out.”
Grandpa nodded. “That’d be great.”
Joni put her pots and pans and pitchers in the cooler and set it by the front door while Chance got Grandpa settled down.
She had to laugh when she noticed that a new calendar from the People’s Bank of Redemption had replaced the out-of-date pinup girl on the wall.
“What’s so funny?” Chance asked when he came back.
“You,” Joni answered with a firm smirk.
“Oh, yeah?” He crossed the trailer in two long strides that left him standing so close, she could see the tiny gold flecks in his green, green eyes. “What’s so funny about me?”
“For one thing, I can’t quite picture you down on your hands and knees scrubbing the floor.”
He grimaced. “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
“And for another, I can’t imagine your putting out a welcome mat that says ‘Wipe your feet or prepare to meet your Maker.’ ”
He grinned. “Desperate situations call for daring solutions.”
They were whispering so as not to disturb Grandpa. But they needn’t have bothered because the noise from the rig protected their privacy as securely as the walls and doors did.
“Have I thanked you yet for bringing dinner?” Chance placed his hands on either side of her waist.
“Not properly.” Joni put hers on his broad shoulders, surprised by her own boldness.
Emerald eyes rayed into blue. “How could I thank you properly?”
Her sapphire gaze caught his fire and returned its radiance. “Well, you could write me a bread-and-butter note.”
“That doesn’t sound personal enough.”
“Or you could send me some flowers.”
“There isn’t a florist within forty miles of here.”
She tilted her head back. “Well, then you think of something.”
He lowered his. “I already have.”
Joni answered his descending mouth with her own escalating need. Her lips parted, all but begging to be possessed. Her body became a bundle of nerve endings, aching everywhere for his soothing touch.
Chance heeded her silent yearnings and melded their mouths together. His tongue pressed home, seeking and finding its counterpart. One of his hands slipped below her waist to cup her firm bottom. The other inched upward to the outer curve of her breast.
Sorrow was a thing of the past, parting a thing of the future, she thought as she threaded her fingers through his sable-thick hair and bound him to her for the time being.
Reality intruded with a crunch and a shudder, and the resulting silence was deafening.
Chance lifted his mouth from Joni’s, muttering curses by the carload. Then he smiled a little crookedly, slipped an arm around her waist, and led her to the door. “Sounds like the cook’s tour just turned into a fishing trip.”
She went with him willingly. “What are we going fishing for?”
He stopped only long enough to plop a hard hat on each of their heads. “A broken drill pipe.”
The grinding rumble of the diesel engine had ceased, but there was an air of bustle about the crew. They were getting ready to raise the upper end of the pipe so they could pull the lower part out of the hole and make repairs.
Joni had worn her oldest jeans and her waffle stompers, so she wasn’t worried about getting muddy. She stood in a corner on the rig floor. But instead of feeling excluded, as she had the last time, she felt as if she really belonged.
Tex gave her the high sign, and Skinny fell all over his own feet when she thanked him for what he’d done for Grandpa. The other roughnecks nodded in passing.
Chance issued orders left and right, which everyone hustled to obey. When the upper part of the pipe had been raised, he screwed the fishing tool to the end of it.
The tool was a heavy metal cylinder of slightly greater diameter than the pipe. It looked like a giant lead pencil with a very long tapered point. Around the taper were closely cut teeth that gave it the appearance of a round file.
While the roughnecks watched the fishing operation, Joni watched Chance.
The brim of his hard hat threw his masculine features into dusky shadow, but the calm, serious line of his profile told her how much he loved his work. His arm muscles knotted under the sleeves of his T-shirt, and her eyes roved hungrily on down to his thighs, corded and strong as they strained against the fabric of his jeans.
He’d left his gloves in the trailer and was guiding the metal tool with his bare brown hands. She swallowed hard at the memory of his touch and turned away, trying to forget and failing miserably.
“I think I’ve got it,” Chance said just then.
Joni turned back to him, and sure enough, he was hauling the broken pipe out of the hole.
Skinny stood in awe of his skill. “I can’t believe you snagged that sucker on the first try.”
“That’s because I’ve got better things to do than to fool around with this all day.” Chance looked at Joni and smiled, his straight white teeth a brilliant contrast to his dark face. Then he turned the repair work over to Tex and started across the rig floor.
“Where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?” he asked, giving her a look of wicked amusement.
“As I recall,” she answered, all innocence and light, “you were going to give me a cook’s tour of the site.”
His grin widened. “How about a bird’s-eye view instead?”
She glanced at the nearby scaffold and shuddered. “No thanks.”
“You’re afraid of heights?” Remembering how she’d started to come after him that first day, he really was surprised.
“I get a nosebleed if I stand on a chair,” she admitted. “I’m liable to have a hemorrhage if I go up on a scaffold.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“A blood transfusion.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I!”
Chance bent his knees, bringing his face down on a level with hers. “Do it for Grandpa.”
“Now you’re playing dirty pool.” She knew that Grandpa would give his right arm for an opportunity to go up on the rig.
His grin was as good as an admission of guilt.
She looked at him, her blue eyes enormous under the brim of the hard hat. “I’ll go up on two conditions.”
“Name ’em.”
“First, you have to wear your s
afety line.”
“Are you afraid I’ll fall?”
She lifted her chin a notch. “Yes.”
He nodded decisively. “I’ll do it.”
“And second, we go only as far as the first platform.”
“I’ll tell Skinny to start the engine.”
Before she could say another word, Joni found herself wearing a safety line and a tentative smile. Her knees felt a little wobbly when the scaffold lifted off, but she was fine as long as she didn’t look down. At least that’s what she kept telling herself.
Chance stood right beside her, a reassuring arm around her shoulders and the safety line around his waist. He’d gotten some strange looks from his crew when he buckled up, but a deal was a deal.
“What do you think?” he asked after they stepped off the scaffold and onto the platform.
Having conquered her initial fear, she could answer honestly, “It’s beautiful!”
Even the wind held its breath at the dramatic blend of brilliant sky and rolling terrain.
Grass tall enough to hide a man on horseback covered the far hills, shimmering silvery-green in the sunshine. Closer to home, dark red windrows striped the fallow fields. Her healthy tomato plants looked tiny, but she could definitely make them out on the west side of the farmyard, while the weathered house and outbuildings stood as monuments to the pioneers who’d erected them.
Chance didn’t feel his usual restlessness as he surveyed the land that had been in Joni’s family for four generations. Quite the opposite, in fact. And wasn’t that odd? He’d always had a wanderlust that couldn’t be quenched. But there he stood, at the top of the world, fighting the urge to put down roots and make some plans for the future.
Joni turned to him, her safety line stretching taut and her smile as trusting as a child’s. “I feel so free—like I’ve grown wings!”
He studied her sun-kissed cheeks, tinged pink now with excitement, and the eyes as big and blue as the sky behind her. And though it pained him to admit it, he knew it would never work. Simply put, oil and water didn’t mix.
Taking her by the elbow, he guided her back on board the scaffold. “We’d better be going.”
“But we just got here.” She didn’t understand his abrupt about-face.
He gave Skinny the signal to bring them down, and the rumble of the diesel engine precluded a reply.
They rode to the rig floor in silence, with him trying to put her out of his mind and her trying to figure out what thoughts churned behind his forbidding scowl.
Not until her feet touched solid ground did it occur to Joni that she’d been too preoccupied to feel any fear on the way down. Two small steps in the right direction, she realized proudly.
Chance knew why she was smiling and wanted to congratulate her. Instead, he kept his voice impersonal. “I’ll send one of the guys over to the trailer to help you load up.”
Her voice held a faint reediness. “Will you be coming home for supper?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
The silence stretched as taut as a drilling cable about to snap.
She toyed with her wedding ring, turning it back and forth on her finger. “Any sign of oil yet?”
In danger of touching her, he shoved his hands, palms out, into his rear pockets. “There was a show in the sand, but we’ll have to bore deeper.”
“Did you send a sample to the state.”
“Yes.”
“Have you gotten the results back yet?”
“They called me this morning.”
She saw something flicker over his face before he masked it. “What did they say?”
“What difference does it make?” A muscle jumped along that Mount Rushmore of a jaw. “If I didn’t think there was oil here, I sure as hell wouldn’t be wasting my time drilling for it.”
Joni remembered his caustic remark about his grandfather’s hat and realized that the geology report from the state hadn’t been good. Disappointment swamped her, not so much for herself as for Chance.
When had the man become more important than the money? Maybe from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. Lord knew, he’d had her going in circles ever since.
She opened her mouth to tell him that she really didn’t care about the oil, that she’d rather have him than all the crude in Oklahoma, when the mud pump throbbed and drilling got under way again.
“I’d better get back to work,” Chance said, and turned to climb the steps that led to the rig floor.
“What time will you be home tonight?” Joni knew she sounded like a clinging vine, but she couldn’t help herself.
Halfway up the steps he stopped and turned back, casting a long shadow over her. “I think it’s best for both of us if I just live in the trailer from now on.”
She clomped up after him until she stood nose to chest with him. “What about the Fourth of July parade?”
“What about it?”
“You promised Grandpa he could ride in your convertible.”
“That was before—” He broke off in mid-sentence and made a taut, thin line of his lips to seal the unsaid words inside.
Her body strained toward his. She loved the smell of his skin—the scent of honest labor mixed with his healthy man odor. “Before what?”
“Forget it.”
“Before what?”
Chance didn’t want to hurt her, but she’d left him no choice. “Before I realized that I can’t hang on to anything and you can’t let go of anything.”
Joni recoiled as if he’d struck her, then rallied on the strength of her love. “You hung on to your grandfather’s hat.”
“A stupid sentimental gesture on my part.” He rebuffed her attempt to read any significance into it.
She grabbed handfuls of his T-shirt. “Why is it so damned difficult for you to admit you care?”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He clutched her wrists so hard they hurt.
She held on as tenaciously as a bulldog, grinding her knuckles into the solid wall of his chest. “Does it make you any less a man to admit that you kept the hat because you loved your grandfather?”
“No more than it makes you any less of a woman to admit that you had no control over Larry’s actions.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean I know that Larry killed himself.”
Shock made her grip go slack. “Who told you?”
He forced her hands down. “I also know that you found him in the barn when you got home from work, and—”
“Who told you?” she repeated tautly.
He ignored this inquiry too. “That you’re still blaming yourself because you weren’t there to stop him.”
“Dr. Rayburn talks too much for his own good.” She remembered the men standing out in the driveway the night of the dance and put two and two together.
“And you talk too little for yours,” he said harshly.
She wrenched her wrists free of his bruising hold. “What right do you have to go snooping around behind my back, anyway?”
“You took me for twenty thousand dol—”
“I did no such thing!”
“You knew I wanted to drill where—”
“I was desperate!”
“You couldn’t collect on Larry’s life ins—”
“I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to.”
“Your loan application was rej—”
“I thought you were the answer to our prayers.”
He nailed her in place with a hard stare. “You’re getting pretty good at leading me around by the nose, aren’t you?”
She turned the full blue blaze of her eyes on him. “I don’t deserve that!”
“A kiss here, a feel there.” He made it sound so calculated on her part, she felt sick. “If it weren’t for Grandpa, I’d have to wonder who drew the map.”
She looked at him, stunned. That he could think her capable of such a terrible betrayal after all she’d been through �
� Somehow, the past and the present became tangled in her mind. And something inside of her snapped.
“Damn you, Larry Fletcher!” Joni swung blindly, the stinging crack of her palm hitting a chiseled cheek. She was striking back the only way she knew how. “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you myself!”
But it was Chance who wore the dark red imprint of her deep-pent rage. Chance who raised his hand in retaliation, then dropped it. Worse yet, it was Chance who left her standing on the steps in a welter of guilt and confusion, calling over his shoulder from the rig floor, “Go home, Joni, before I hurt you worse than Larry did.”
Sad to say, he already had.
Eight
The Fourth of July dawned as faultless and clear as a perfect diamond.
Joni spent the better part of the morning packing a basket for the picnic supper that would follow the parade and precede the fireworks display. She fried chicken just the way Grandpa liked it, with lots of crispy brown crust, then deviled a dozen eggs and iced an angel food cake for dessert.
That done, she went outside and picked some ripe red tomatoes to slice and chill. With the bread and butter sandwiches she’d already made, they would round out the meal.
She felt a boundless sense of accomplishment as she checked the rest of her beautiful tomatoes. Next spring, she planned to expand her acreage and branch out into other vegetable crops. The food broker she was dealing with in Oklahoma City had told her there was a growing market for specialty produce. Asparagus, beets, baby carrots, broccoli, spinach … The possibilities were endless.
It might not be farming as Grandpa had known it, but small-scale intensive operations like this could improve farm income and diversify the economic base in rural areas. Better yet, it might well be the way to keep the homestead in the family.
The steady rhythm of the drill reminded her of the more immediate problem. Chance had neither called nor come by the house since the day she’d slapped him, and she could only assume that he wasn’t going to the parade. That left her to drive the pickup, which suited her fine, but Grandpa had really been looking forward to riding in the convertible.
In all honesty, Joni wasn’t sorry she’d slapped Chance. Not that she believed physical violence ever solved anything, but he’d asked for it with that insulting remark about the map. What she regretted more than anything was that Grandpa had to suffer as a result of her actions.