Josie bit her lip. Her whole world was falling apart, and she had only to look at Wade to know how furious he was about everything that was being revealed here tonight. Finding her trembling knees would no longer support her, Josie sank down on a step stool. “I wish you hadn’t said that,” Josie muttered. It made her look like that much more of a dilettante in Wade’s eyes.
Bitsy moved closer, the diamonds at her throat and in her ears glinting in the fluorescent light. “Honestly, Josie, did you really think that I wouldn’t call your father to let him know that you had decided to move part of your money over to Wyatt Drilling accounts?”
At mention of that little bit of ingenuity, Big Jim exploded. “Damn it, Josie, we have money set aside for exploration at Wyatt Drilling!” he scolded. “Had you just asked—”
“And how could I have done that?” Josie retorted hotly. “You were out in the jungle at the time and incommunicado, remember?” Josie surged to her feet and pointed at Wade. “He was about to pull the plug on the whole operation when he found out a woman was in charge.”
Wade folded his arms in front of him. “It didn’t seem like something you would have done,” Wade told Big Jim.
“You’re right,” Big Jim agreed sagely. “I wouldn’t have left Josie in charge of your drilling project or any other.”
“Right. if left up to you, all I ever would have been able to do is file papers and answer telephones at Wyatt Drilling!” Josie exploded. “If it had been left up to you, I never would have been given a chance to prove myself!”
Big Jim frowned. “That’s because you don’t belong in the oil fields,” he said gently.
Josie felt herself go white, then red. “That’s not what you said when I was a kid!” She countered hotly.
Big Jim took off his straw hat and slapped it against his knee. “That’s because I wanted to spend time with you! I wasn’t asking you to take on wildcatting as a career.”
“But a career in wildcatting is what I wanted!” Josie told her father passionately.
Big Jim’s lips tightened. “The oil fields are no place for a woman.” He turned to Bitsy for help. “Ask your mother.”
“I don’t have to ask my mother.” Josie tossed her head indignantly. “I know you don’t belong there, Mom. You never did. But I do belong there, and furthermore I proved it when I talked Gus into helping me, hired my own crew and struck oil with the very first discovery well I dug.”
“How did that happen, by the way?” Wade asked curiously, his eyes turning even grimmer. “Because I sent over a contract and it was returned to me with a signature.”
Josie flushed bright red. “I signed my own initials, JLW, which happen to be the same as Big Jim’s,” Josie admitted reluctantly. She held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. She had never been more miserable or ashamed of herself in her life. “And before any of you say anything else,” she said huskily as tears pricked her eyes, “I know I never should have done it. I knew it almost the moment after I had express-mailed the contracts back to your office, Wade.”
“Then why didn’t you call it quits then?” Wade asked.
Josie flushed even more beneath his close scrutiny. “Because I didn’t want Wyatt Drilling to lose out on a lucrative contract just because my father had taken a consulting job for a big oil company in South America,” she replied quietly. “Because I saw it as a chance to take the kind of risks I’ve always been afraid to take. Because I knew I could do it, and I wanted everyone else to know it, too.” She looked at Wade steadily. “You were never going to lose money on the deal, nor was Wyatt Drilling. I knew from the beginning I’d use my trust funds to repay both if the well came up dry.”
“Which is why you kept digging when everyone else would have been tempted to quit,” Wade theorized.
“No,” Josie corrected in frustration, upset. “I kept digging because I knew the oil was there on the property, and I knew it was on that particular site.” Josie swiveled around. She turned to Big Jim, needing him to understand why and what she had done, too. “All the studies aside, I can’t explain how I know—I just do. Just like you know, Dad.”
“You should have told me,” Wade interrupted, drawing her attention to him once again.
“You should have told all of us,” Bitsy and Big Jim agreed.
“But I didn’t,” Josie said sadly. She laced her hands together. “And I can’t go back and change that now. All I can do is apologize for my duplicity and the fact I went over the line this one time in my life, and try to move forward with the career of my choosing. Which happens to be wildcatting. The question is,” she paused for a heartbeat of silence as she read the mixture of angst and disappointment on their faces, “are any of you going to forgive me?”
Silence rebounded in the storeroom. Outside, they could hear the music and the sounds of the party. “Of course we can forgive you,” Big Jim said gruffly. He enveloped Josie in a big bear hug.
Bitsy hugged Josie, too. “Though I’d feel better if you gave up this lunacy and came back to work for the foundation,” Bitsy added, as the two women drew apart.
“Mother—” Josie gave her a look.
Only Wade had remained silent
Noticing, Big Jim turned to Bitsy. “Maybe we should take this up with Josie tomorrow, now that we know she’s okay,” he told Bitsy gently.
Bitsy nodded.
“Feel free to join the others for dinner, dancing and champagne,” Wade said smoothly.
“Thanks,” Bitsy and Big Jim said together. “We will.”
Josie’s parents departed. The awkward silence between them deepened. His disappointment in her evident, Wade stared down at Josie grimly. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I. Not so much about what you’ve done, although that in itself is bad enough, but about everything you didn’t feel you could tell me.”
The lack of understanding in his eyes was as chilling to her as the thought of a life without him. In a panic she edged close enough to see the brooding glint in his eyes, the stubborn set to his jaw. “You’re angry.”
“Hell, yes.” Wade compressed his lips into a thin white line. He braced his hands on his waist and glared down at her. “Can you blame me?”
Josie paused, took a careful breath. She had to make him see what he was doing before it was too late. “For your reluctance to even give me a chance to apologize for what I’ve done and make amends?” she said softly, looking him straight in the eye. “Yes, Wade, I can blame you for that.” Just as she blamed herself for the bulk of this mess.
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” Wade demanded furiously, aware—as was she—that Josie’d had plenty of opportunities to confide in him, and she hadn’t.
Feeling as if the words had thorns, she said, very carefully, “I didn’t know how you’d react. Especially since I knew—in other cases—you had refused to get involved with someone who had their job by virtue of nepotism. What was it you said—business and nepotism were a bad risk? And because you’d already been burned by Andrea, the caterer, and thus had suffered your fill of what you called dilettantes and debs.” Josie swallowed. “I didn’t want you to think I was the same thing, and I knew, at least on the surface, it certainly looked that way. And there was so much money involved here—it just seemed to make it even worse, especially from your point of view.”
Great. Another person who thought he had a cash register for a heart, Wade thought bitterly. Which was ironic, because around her he’d been all heart. “The truth is,” Wade conceded grimly, so full of pain and fury he didn’t know whether to shake her or hug her, “you’d have been happier if you’d never had to tell me what you’d done. Wouldn’t you?”
“Of course,” Josie said, looking at him as if it were ridiculous of him to even ask. She had never wanted to feel the way she felt right now. She had never wanted to be in a position again where she’d have to constantly worry she’d make a misstep and feel his crushing disappointment in her. She’d never wanted to be in
a position where she’d have to constantly worry that Wade would leave her, like her dad had left her mother, because she wasn’t going to be the kind of wife or woman Wade wanted.
She didn’t want him to leave because the fling was over and he was just looking for a way out. Any more than she wanted him to leave because he didn’t want to be married to a wildcatter.
She wanted to be free to be who she was, to know she could make mistakes and still be loved. She wanted to know that forgiveness was an option, that she no longer had to prove herself every second of every day. But judging by the disillusioned look on his face, it didn’t look as though that was going to happen, either, Josie realized sadly.
Wade backed her to the door and caged her with his arms. “Would you also be happier if we had never gone to bed together—never gotten involved?” he demanded, looking even more betrayed
Josie swallowed. “You make it sound cold-blooded,” she murmured hotly. Like she’d had a choice in the dictates of her heart.
He cut her off with a scoff of contempt “I’d say the deception part of it had to be cold-blooded.”
Josie stiffened. She held her head high as she forced herself to admit, “I regretted not being able to talk to you, to tell you what was in my heart, more than you’ll ever know.” Her voice caught; she had to force herself to go on. “But I also knew it would be better—for you, for me, for my father and his company—to discuss all this after our business had been concluded in a positive manner.”
Wade quirked a brow. “I see. You just didn’t trust me to be capable of understanding or sympathizing with your predicament.”
Josie drew a breath. She was darned if she was going to take the entire blame for this! “You don’t seem to be understanding very well now,” she said evenly, studying the ruggedly handsome lines of his face.
“Maybe because I just found out I slept with a woman I damn near fell in love with and asked to marry me—who didn’t think I had enough heart in me to be there for her when and how she needed me to be there.”
Josie was silent, realizing her buttons hadn’t been the only ones that had been pushed. He’d been hurt, too. Badly.
Tears gathered in her eyes. “You’re right. I didn’t trust you—or us—enough to level with you right away. But when I see you reacting the way you are now, I know I was right to worry how you’d take it.” She curved her fingers around his biceps, hoping to get to him with touch in a way she wasn’t able to with words. The rigidness of his arms, the fact he clearly did not want her touching him, made her drop her grip.
She swallowed hard around the gathering knot of emotion in her throat. “I don’t want a relationship like my parents’, Wade, any more than I want to make my parents’ mistakes. They walked away from each other when they found out they weren’t perfect, when they disappointed each other. They never gave their relationship a chance. They just decided to call it quits. I want someone who will give me a second chance when I need one.” Josie tipped her head back. She paused and wet her lips, knowing she had never been more vulnerable in her life than she was at that instant. “Can you do that?” she whispered softly, emotionally. “Can you give me a second chance?”
Wade shook his head. He stepped back, away from the door, away from her. “No,” he said softly, heavily, “I can’t.”
Chapter Twelve
“I’ve got just about everything ready to turn over to you, Dad,” Josie told Big Jim as she greeted her parents from the doorway of her trailer and ushered them inside. She had been up all night, preparing to hand over the reins and get her dad—and whoever he selected to replace her—up to speed. Josie picked up a stack of folders from her desk. “Here’s the chronology of the drilling, every single aspect of it, recommendations for future drilling based on problems we encountered the first time around, plus possible sites for a few more wells on the property.” And that, she thought, should do it.
Big Jim handed the folders right back to her. Crossing his beefy arms in front of him, he settled on the edge of his desk. “I’m not here to fire you, Josie.”
Watching her dainty mother settle gingerly on the edge of the beat-up sofa, Josie flushed. “I can’t imagine why not,” she told her dad ruefully, “after the way I behaved.”
Big Jim looked out the window at the drilling rig, then back to Josie. “You struck oil,” he reminded her proudly.
Unable to sit still for one second since she and Wade had called it quits the night before, Josie paced back and forth.
“Yes, I struck oil,” she reiterated wearily, wishing she could be even one-tenth as proud of herself as her father seemed to be this morning. “But only by using every trick in the book to usurp the authority to do so.” Looking back, Josie still couldn’t believe she had ever gotten so carried away with ambition.
“That’s true,” Big Jim agreed sagely, “but you’re not going to do it again.”
“You’ve got that right!” Josie sighed. She halted in front of the window. She saw Ernie, Gus and Dieter on the derrick platform, getting ready to meet with the production crew that would soon be arriving to make arrangements to pump the oil they’d found out of the ground.
“What you did took guts,” Big Jim continued gently. When Josie said nothing in response, he got up, crossed to her side and put his hands on her shoulders. “I was wrong not to give you the same chance I would have given any son of mine, Josie,” he told her gruffly.
Hardly able to believe what she was hearing, Josie turned to face him. “But I am prepared to rectify that now by doing what I should have done from the first,” Big Jim continued seriously. “And that is welcome you into the company I started with open arms. I’m making you a vice president of Wyatt Drilling and putting you in charge of all operations here while I’m in South America for the next six months. You can hire more staff, run things the way you please and take the jobs you want There’s only one concession on your part, Josie, and it’s one your mother and I absolutely insist on.” Big Jim paused to look at Bitsy. “No more using your Corbett family trust fund to finance any further oil exploration. I’m giving you a Wyatt Drilling Company budget and you have to stick to it, come what may. Agreed?” he stipulated heavily.
“Agreed,” Josie said, feeling both joy that she’d finally made her lifelong dream of being a lady wildcatter come true, and relief that she’d finally set things to right with her family.
If only the rest of her life could be as quickly and easily straightened out, she thought wistfully.
“You don’t look very happy, darling,” Bitsy noted gently, coming up to stand on the other side of Josie.
Josie basked in the comfort and understanding her parents were giving her. She paused, finally feeling secure enough in their love for her to be able to confide her innermost fears. “I just wish I felt better about how I got this,” she said softly. She wished she felt better about the unconscionable way she had deceived and, yes, used Wade. Because the truth was, the end did not justify the means. Not ever. And if she had realized that earlier, she might not have found—and fallen head over heels in love with—and then finally lost Wade.
“Look, the way it happened aside,” Big Jim told Josie, leading her over to the sofa, “I’m very impressed by what you did here and so is your mother.”
“Your father and I were up most of the night talking, Josie.” Bitsy guided Josie to a seat in the middle of the sofa. She sat on one side of Josie. Big Jim the other. “He made me see you have a real talent for wildcatting,” Bitsy continued. “And, as much as I’m loath to admit it, Josie, even I can see that you love this a lot more than you ever did working in an office at the foundation. So, no more pushing you to go back to Dallas,” Bitsy said firmly. “It’s a new world and time I joined it.”
“There’s only one thing left to be worked out,” Big Jim said with a look at Bitsy.
Bitsy nodded in total agreement with her ex-husband. She leaned forward and clasped Josie’s hand. “What about Wade?” Bitsy asked Josie with a g
entle, understanding glance.
Finding she could no longer sit still, Josie surged from the sofa and began to pace once again. “It’s too late for us,” she told her parents grimly, wishing with all her heart that things were different, but suspecting sadly they never would be.
“Maybe not,” Bitsy said gently.
Josie had kept hoping he’d come to his senses and come after her, forgive her and give her another chance. But that was unrealistic. She knew how he felt about loyalty and trust. She’d failed him on both counts. Like it or not, there was no chance in all of Texas that he’d forgive her for that.
“YOU’RE A FOOL if you let this one get away.”
Wade looked up to see all three of his brothers striding into his ranch house. Scowling at them all, he went back to packing up his belongings.
Shane lounged in the doorway. He curved both his hands around his National Rodeo Champion belt buckle. “I told you we didn’t have a minute to spare,” he said to Jackson and Travis.
Wade scowled. He was in no mood for company and probably wouldn’t be for some time. “Spare me the man-to-man speeches, guys.” He didn’t need his three brothers telling him how swiftly Josie had turned his entire life upside down, or that she had changed him in ways that no one had thought possible.
For the first time in his life, he felt that there were other things beside the bottom line, besides dollars and cents. She had made him feel as if he did have a heart. And knew exactly what to do and say and how to get close to another human being. She had made him feel that he wouldn’t have to spend the rest of his life alone, settling for inane small talk and meaningless affairs instead of heart-to-heart talks and soulful lovemaking.
When he had been with Josie, he had seen his future, had felt he could have everything he’d begun to fear was permanently out of his reach. Only to be duped again!
What was wrong with him that he hadn’t seen this coming? Wade wondered furiously. That he could be so blindsided again? There were limits, after all, to how much and how often a man could be hurt and humiliated.
Wildcat Cowboy (The McCabes of Texas #2) Page 19