by Diana Palmer
“Cal Barton!” she ground out, shocked.
He laughed, letting her twist out of his arms with a face that looked sunburned.
“Roué!” she accused, straightening her apron.
He lifted an amused eyebrow. “And worse,” he confessed. “You will get used to it.”
“I suppose I must, but I hope that you are reformed. Now that you are a respectable married man,” she emphasized.
“We must both hope so. Now, will you get your things together, please, and I will ask Chester if he can take us to the depot. I hired a horse to come out here, and he will have to be returned as well. I think it a bit premature to expect you to ride double with me.”
“I wish that I could ride,” she confessed. “Melanie started to give me lessons, but I’m afraid I didn’t get very far.”
His face changed. “Riding will be something of a requirement for you,” he said enigmatically. “It is one thing you will have to know.”
“Why? We can hire a carriage in Beaumont, can we not?” she asked with some confusion.
He was thinking about Latigo and any time they spent there. Summers and holidays with his family would be expected, and she would love it there. He knew it. But first he had to find some way to tell her.
“Never mind that for now,” he said.
“You ride very well indeed,” she said. “It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”
His pale eyes narrowed as they slid over her. “I noticed everything about you the first time I saw you,” he said. “You were exquisite, standing there in your fashionable suit and that silly little French hat.”
She was very still. “How did you know that the hat was French?”
His mother had one similar to it. He was hardly likely to admit it. He pursed his lips. “Perhaps you told me.”
Her eyes darkened. “Perhaps another woman did.”
His eyebrows shot up and he grinned. “Jealous?”
She whirled, her skirts flying, and went to open the door.
“Nora?”
Her head turned. “What?” she demanded.
He loved that temper. It was going to be a source of delight to him all their lives. It made her blue eyes sparkle like sapphires, and made her face radiant with color. “I haven’t looked at another woman, in even the most innocent way, since the first time my eyes touched you.”
The way he said it made her toes curl in her shoes. He had a deep, slow way of speaking to her that was exquisitely tender.
“But it pleases me that you would mind if I had,” he added.
The doorknob was cold under her fingers. She caressed it slowly. “I would not have blamed you,” she confessed tightly.
“I would have blamed myself, though.” He joined her at the door. His big, lean hand covered hers warmly. “That will never become an option to me,” he said. “If we argue, and we will from time to time, I will never consider shaming you in such a way. I am that much like my married older brother, who dotes on his wife and son. I think you will like them, and the rest of my family, when I take you home to them.”
She shifted her eyes to his handsome face and caressed it with a gaze that made his knees feel weak.
“You are not…ashamed of me anymore?”
“Oh, my God, forgive me,” he whispered with raw pain. His arms swallowed her up, crushed her, riveted her to him. He bent over her with such a wave of love that it almost buckled his knees.
She clung to him, a faint sob escaping her lips. “I was so wrong,” she choked. “Wrong about you, about so many things! My father was such a snob, and I never realized how much I was like him until I came here. Now I cannot bear to go back and watch him denigrate people because they have less than he does.”
He bent and kissed her hungrily, moaning softly as she answered his kiss and held on tight.
“This is so sweet,” she whispered when they were both breathless and her cheek was resting on his chest. “We must kiss each other very often from now on.”
“Not in public.” He groaned.
She laughed, because she could feel why. It no longer embarrassed her. Well…not as much as it had. Her hips tugged back from him just enough for decorum.
“Coward,” he said silkily, laughing down at her flaming face.
“Oh, on the contrary, I have become very brave,” she teased. “Even my father would be amazed at the change in me, because I would not let him order me around now. He was good to me when I was younger, you know, even if he was very stern.” She pursed her lips, and her eyes twinkled. “All the same, I am very glad that you hit him.”
“At least you didn’t ask me to shoot him,” he said, and burst out laughing when he remembered the incident. “I thought Summerville was going to croak right on the spot!”
“He would have looked rather nice stuffed and mounted like one of the poor animals he shot in Africa,” she recalled. She became solemn. “He was not even sorry. He wanted to marry me for my father’s fortune, and he stooped to low means. It was terrible when he came to England and pestered me. I was mourning you and I wanted no part of him.”
“We have spent an inordinate amount of time mourning each other,” he observed, watching her. “In future, I do not plan to spend even a day separated from you.”
She smiled tenderly. “What a lovely thought,” she said as she stared at him possessively.
“Mmmmm,” he murmured, equally fascinated with looking at her.
There was a knock at the door. They moved back and opened it, and Chester stood there.
“I wondered if you would like Helen and me to drive you to the station,” he asked with a grin.
“How kind of you to offer,” Cal said, smiling. “Nora is on her way to pack.”
“It’s the least I can do, my boy. Would you like to see the new hay baler while she’s packing?” he added.
“Indeed I would!”
He bade Nora a fond farewell for the moment and went out with Chester.
“I don’t suppose you might be persuaded to return?” Chester asked as they neared the barn.
“No. I’m sorry. I enjoyed my time here, but I’ve tied up too much money in Beaumont to divide my loyalties now. I’m prospecting for oil,” he confessed ruefully. “This is the third well I’ve sunk and I’m hoping it will change my luck.”
“Isn’t oil prospecting a gamble?” Chester asked seriously, although the younger man’s resourcefulness impressed him.
“Yes,” Cal replied flatly. “But if I’ve learned nothing else in my life, it’s that few fortunes are gained without some risk. I want to make my own way in the world and not be dependent on anyone else for my keep.”
Chester misinterpreted that. “Well, you know, you were pretty independent here, and I’d try not to interfere…”
He chuckled and clapped the older man on the back affectionately. “I know that. It wasn’t what I meant. You know, you really should consider an investment in that field while there’s still time.”
“I’ve read about it in the Beaumont paper,” Chester confessed. “And if there really is a strike, the price on that land will go sky-high overnight. But it’s such a risk.”
“Life is a risk,” Cal told him. “I’m going to give you two percent of my stock.” He held up his hand when Chester protested. He looked at him fully. “If I hit, that will amount to a hell of a lot of money. You can buy this place back from the combine and run it the way you want to. Now that you’re on the right track with some modernization, you should have no trouble keeping it solvent.”
Chester was flabbergasted. “But why would you do that for me?”
He couldn’t tell the truth, that it was for Nora’s sake, because they’d been so kind to her. Not only that, he’d nourished a real affection for the family since he’d been working for them.
He put an arm around Chester. “Listen. Wouldn’t it just make you feel like a king to own part of a huge oil operation and tell your brother-in-law in Virginia how you got it?”
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Chester whistled. “Tut, tut, I’d rub it in until he was chased!”
Cal grinned at him. “So would Nora,” he added.
“I see!” He burst out laughing. “All right, then, I’ll accept your kind offer. But if you do hit it big, my boy, you really must take Nora back to Virginia to visit her family. Preferably in a golden coach.”
“I have something a bit more grand in mind than that alone,” Cal replied. His pale eyes were glittering, and Chester thought, not for the first time, that he was glad he had never made an enemy of the man. Cal had cold steel just under that characteristically warm good nature of his. He felt a bit sorry for his brother-in-law. And he sincerely hoped that Cal was going to bring in that well.
He would love getting richer. But what he would enjoy most would be seeing his brother-in-law bluster when the man he’d always looked down on turned up prosperous, with an elegantly dressed Helen on his arm. He didn’t think Helen would mind if her sister saw her that way, either. The one time the two of them had visited the Marlowes, it had been very uncomfortable. Nora’s father had considered himself so far above the Tremaynes that he spoke to them like servants during their brief stay. Cynthia hadn’t said a word about the treatment her sister received, although her face was sad. Chester had come home furious, and Helen hadn’t smiled for a week. The two sisters had come from the same wealthy background, but like poor Nora, Helen had been disinherited when her parents disapproved of her marriage to Chester.
Chester had secretly felt inferior ever since he’d married Helen. Perhaps Cal understood that feeling, and it was why he’d made his shocking offer. Whatever his reason, the offer delighted Chester. He only wished he had something to offer Cal in return for that stock. He’d have to see if he couldn’t manage a good Thoroughbred horse for the boy. He knew a breeder who owed him a favor, and Cal had something of a mania about good horses.
Chapter Seventeen
BEAUMONT WAS A GROWING town with a few thousand inhabitants. A quarter of the population was made up of black people, and there were several Jewish businesses there. There were also Italian and Dutch immigrants and even a few cowboys. It was a friendly city, but it lacked many of the modern industrial assets that would be required if a big oil field did lie near its borders, something that worried Cal and other investors.
The huge Gladys City development had at first been the object of scorn, and still was not considered a serious proposition by some people. Cal had been scoffed at by local businessmen for sinking money into such a pipe dream, and even while they worked to build his derricks, local contractors laughed at him behind his back. But like the other oil seekers, he believed in the development and had great respect for it, and its founder.
It had been to Cal’s advantage that no one locally knew of his background. It prevented anyone taking advantage of the fact that he had money.
His wasn’t the only outfit working at dragging oil out of the ground here. Captain Lucas, a brilliant gentleman with a Slavic background, had a rig nearby and had come up with some amazing techniques to combat the drilling problems that were peculiar to this coastal area of Texas. He, like Cal, had contacts in Corsicana to whom he could turn for drilling equipment and advice. The innovations that he and his men used in penetrating the pressurized salt dome, which also contained quicksand and large rock, were to revolutionize the oil business. There was even a rumor that J. D. Rockefeller and his people at giant Standard Oil had their eyes on Beaumont. Everyone was waiting. Waiting.
Meanwhile, there were dry holes and premature reports of failure and wild stories of outlandish strikes put about by out-of-town reporters.
Cal related this to Nora, who listened with fascination while they spent their first night in Beaumont in a hotel. He had gone out to the rig to check on the progress of Pike and the crew and had come back dispirited and tired.
“What’s wrong?” she asked when he took off his muddy boots and his jacket.
“Another snag,” he said wearily. “Captain Lucas has overcome his quicksand problem, but ours plagues us still. We had to send for yet another fish-bait bit from Corsicana.” He lay back in the chair with a groan. “I have so many people waiting, hoping, for success.” His eyes slid over her body. “I’m impatient. Captain Lucas has been drilling since October. He hit a gas pocket, but no oil. Not yet, at least. You’re so thin, Nora,” he added unexpectedly. “You must try to eat more, to regain your strength.”
“I have had very little appetite,” she told him. She smiled. “But now that you’re back, I am hungrier.”
He chuckled. “In a moment we must go downstairs for the evening meal.” He held out his hand. “But not yet.”
She gave him her slender fingers and was pulled down onto his lap. He bent and kissed her, and for a long time, not a word was spoken.
His hand smoothed over her bodice possessively, while she curled up in his arms and lay waiting for his mouth to return to hers.
“I don’t like to divert you,” she whispered, smiling, “but supper will become cold downstairs, and there is an apple duff, which our landlady remarked that she made from apples she had hoarded in the fruit cellar.”
He smiled back. “And you like apple duff?”
“I adore it. I adore you, too, but apple duff is irresistible at the moment.”
“In that case, let me change my boots for a pair of clean shoes and we will go down.”
He let her go while he went in his stocking feet to his suitcase and a minute later donned a pair of very expensive-looking leather shoes. She didn’t comment while she fetched her pretty black shawl to drape over her nice black dress, but she wondered about those shoes. Cal was still much like a stranger to her.
ALL THE TALK DOWNSTAIRS was of the Spindletop Hill, where Captain Lucas was drilling.
“Did you see the sky?” one boarder asked excitedly. “Lit up like a funeral pyre, it was, over that way.” He pointed, as if his audience could see through the wall.
“Yes, we did,” an elderly woman agreed. “It is Saint Elmo’s fire,” she added. “Sailors believe that when they see it, their ships will come safely into the harbor.”
“This is not Saint Elmo’s fire,” the boarder said indignantly. “It comes from where Captain Lucas is drilling.”
“He’s hit another gas pocket, likely,” another commented. “One day he’ll blow himself right off that hill. Or catch the whole thing afire.”
“They say there’s oil out there,” the boarder said.
“I’ll believe it when I see it. Pass the potatoes, please,” the elderly woman returned.
Nora and Cal exchanged complicated glances. He didn’t mention that he had an investment in the oil field. Neither did he take the elderly lady’s word for the lack of oil there. He needed an optimistic outlook.
Later, while Nora got ready for bed, he went down to the nearest saloon to meet his drill crew, as he’d arranged earlier in the day.
“Oh, it’s been a slow process, trying to sink a shaft in that unholy spot,” Mick Wheeler, the engineer from Corsicana, said, rubbing his bald head. The other four men, and Pike, who had joined them, nodded their agreement. “Like the other group that’s drilling near us, we had a problem getting the pipe out to the site right off. Then we had to borrow a rig to unload it from the train. Once we got the pipe in, we hit quicksand and it piled in and collapsed the sidewalls of the well.”
“Just like the first two wells,” Pike commented, “but they were in other areas, not on the hill. The problem of the quicksand and gravel took two weeks, and once we got past that, we had a blowout from a gas pocket.”
“Aye,” Mick agreed. “We’ve had to keep those circulating pumps going around the clock, which has meant trying to find more men for the crew. We have plenty who stand around and watch, but nobody will hire on.”
“They’re probably afraid of being laughed at,” Cal said heavily, fingering his beer. “Oil prospecting seems to be the favorite joke in this town.”
“They won’t laugh long once we strike oil,” Mick said curtly.
Pike looked not only worried, but nervous. He seemed uncomfortable, watching the door every time a new customer entered. “We should get back out to the site,” he said. “I don’t like leaving it unattended.”
“There’s a sentiment with which I agree.” Mick nodded. “Even though all we’ve got right now is a gas pocket, who knows what we may hit when we get down farther. Lucas hit rock when he was at eight hundred and eighty feet. We’re at eight hundred feet now.”
“We’ll hit rock, too,” one of the crew muttered, “and be right back where we started.”
“No, we won’t,” Cal said shortly. “If we hit rock, we’re damned well going through it! Lucas did, which means it has to be possible.”
“But how, man?” Pike exclaimed. “Short of begging the captain for his secret, which I won’t for one minute consider….”
“Cable Sam Drago out in Corsicana,” Cal told Pike. “I don’t care what it costs,” he added when the other man protested. He handed him a twenty-dollar gold piece. “Use it all if you have to. Tell him what problems we may run into and ask him for advice. Tell him to come out here if he has to. I’m not stopping for rock. Lucas got through it somehow. I want to know how.”
“You could ask him.” Mick grinned.
“I could. But fair is fair. I don’t expect him to help me beat him to the prize,” Cal said. “It’s a question of ethics. Besides, he’s already helped us with the valve. That’s enough to ask.”
“You’re right, of course,” Mick agreed.
Pike didn’t add his agreement. He still looked worried and out of sorts. “I’ll wire Drago in the morning. Come on, men.”
He was in an unholy rush to get going. Mick swallowed his beer with a wink at Cal and a whispered, “Maybe it’s a woman,” before he joined the older man.
Watching them leave, Cal puzzled about Pike’s unease. No, Pike wasn’t the sort to like women. He was a loner by nature, and there was something shifty about him. He’d better keep an eye on the man. If there was anything going on, he’d put Mick in charge and take his chances. If Pike hadn’t already found oil twice in other areas of the country, including Corsicana, he might have been less willing to take the risk.