The Cowboy Takes A Bride (The Bridal Bid #2)

by Cathleen Galitz

  “I told her we’d talk about it later—when we come to town to visit him.” Caitlin interrupted herself to drop a kiss upon Grant’s furrowed brow. “She’s still under the impression that I could get an annulment if I wanted one.”

  “I don’t suppose you told her that’s impossible now that we’ve slept together and I’ve sullied you.”

  “Is that what you think you did?” Caitlin asked, jumping to her feet in indignation. Her voice grew cooler than an air conditioner going full blast at the South Pole. “Sullied me?”

  “Isn’t that the way your mommy’s bound to look at it?”

  “I don’t give a damn what my mother thinks. I’m asking you what you think,” Caitlin exploded. Her face grew ashen as a new possibility entered her brain. “Or is it possible that you think I deliberately went about trapping you into marriage?”

  Despite the tension that filled the air between them with charged molecules, Grant smiled at the accusation. “Sweetheart,” he said, pulling her roughly back into his lap. “I’m not exactly the sort a privileged rich girl tries to snare. Rest assured the entire world sees you holding the short end of the wedding stick.”

  The surprise that registered in Caitlin’s phenomenal green eyes was almost enough to make him turn from the truth.

  Almost.

  “You’re the one who’s bound to feel trapped sooner or later—”

  Caitlin put a finger to his mouth in an effort to stop any more deplorable words from coming out.

  “Let me finish,” Grant ordered, setting his lips in a firm line. He took a deep breath and gave the impression that he was drilling deep inside himself to find just the right words.

  “There’s an old saying,” he began. “When poverty knocks at the door, love flies out the window. I may not like the fact that your mother doesn’t think I’m good enough for you, the truth of the matter is, Caitlin, you deserve a better man than one who can offer you nothing more than the sweat off his back. A back in the process of being broken in half,” he added, thinking of the likely fate of L.L. Drilling Corp.

  Grant felt every muscle in his wife’s body tense. Rather than being placated by such painful honesty on his part, Caitlin looked hurt.

  “Do you really believe that I’m so shallow?” she asked.

  “God knows that I wish the rest of my life could be like last night. Unfortunately as nice as it sounds, we can’t spend the rest of our days in bed. Whether you want to admit it or not, the truth of the matter is that we come from real different backgrounds, darlin’. I was raised on elk meat and flour gravy. I suspect you dined on gourmet cuisine.”

  “So what?” Caitlin asked in a burst of petulance. “I don’t see how what we ate as children has anything to do with the here and now.”

  “Believe me, it does. I suspect that you’d tire of wild game pretty darn fast. I also happen to think that it wouldn’t be fair to ask you to live a life so far beneath what you’re used to. I can no more see you living from paycheck to paycheck than I can imagine you on your knees scrubbing out toilets. And the sad fact of the matter is, the likelihood of me being able to hire a maid any time soon is as about as good as us striking oil while we’re sitting here trying to change the sorry state of the world.”

  This rather long speech on his part was met by dead silence. Caitlin did not stir from her position in his lap. Sitting ramrod-straight, she did not move so much as a muscle.

  Grant rubbed a hand over his morning stubble and tried dislodging a lump the size of a baseball that was stuck in his throat.

  “All I’m saying is that you might be better off doing as your mother suggests and just forgetting about me. You’re going to want to pursue a new life back in Texas once this project—and this marriage is over.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, gripping him by the shoulders as if trying to drag him from a raging river. “If you think you can brush me off after sleeping with me for just one night, you can just forget it. I have every intention of sleeping with you for a lifetime.”

  Moist with unshed tears, her eyes were luminous jewels, emeralds shot through with the fire of defiance. Grant loved the stubborn way his wife stuck out her lovely chin when she was determined to have her way. Placing a kiss there he murmured, “That’s a lovely thought, but I won’t hold you to it, sweetheart.”

  Caitlin refused to be dissuaded by the funny feeling in her tummy that his endearment evoked. “Just in case you’re not sure what I’m trying to say, let me clarify. Whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with me, cowboy.”

  “The only thing either of us is stuck with is an unreasonable deadline and a promise to your father to keep his company afloat—at least until his heart is strong enough to withstand the news that his company is likely to go belly-up.”

  “You mean bankrupt?” Caitlin gasped, slumping into a kitchen chair of her own.

  At the horrified expression on her face, Grant realized his mistake. He swore softly under his breath. He should have expected that Paddy would protect his daughter from the worst.

  “You didn’t know?” he asked.

  “Only that things have been better in the oil business and that he has his hopes pinned on this particular rig.” Caitlin’s face was ashen, her voice reed thin. “I had no idea it was that serious.”

  “Don’t worry,” Grant said, laying a comforting hand upon her shoulder. “Paddy’s sure to have protected your assets.”

  Hurt that he would think her concerned only for herself, Caitlin replied dryly, “The amount of credit you give me is overwhelming.” Jumping to her feet, she began to pace in agitation. “How long do we have?”

  “Less than two weeks.”

  “Two weeks?” she groaned in disbelief. No wonder Grant had been so upset about taking the time to do that core sample she had insisted upon. No wonder her father had been pushing himself so hard.

  “We’d better get to work then,” Caitlin declared, dismissing the morning’s dishes with a critical eye.

  Grant didn’t have the heart to tell her it looked hopeless. In the best of circumstances, the oil business was a crapshoot. What with Paddy laid up and them being shorthanded, their chances of salvaging the company in two weeks were next to nothing.

  Two weeks was barely time for a woman of privilege to truly consider the implications of living from hand to mouth. Barring any miracles, when the company went bust, Grant would be just another in a long line of out-of-work oil field hands looking for a job. He was sure that Laura Leigh could relate horror stories of what life was like beating a trail between rigs in the extremes of Wyoming’s unpredictable weather.

  “You can sit here in defeat if you want,” Caitlin declared, interrupting his somber musings. “But I’m not about to give up without a fight.”

  With that, she swept out of the room in a swish of satin that stirred the scent of perfume left lingering in the wake of her sudden departure. Grant shook his head at his wife’s determination. He supposed she planned on using the same magic to save her daddy’s company that she employed in turning him from a frog to a prince.

  The sound of someone pounding at the front door so startled him that Grant almost spilled his coffee. Since the only time any of the men came calling was to deliver bad news, it didn’t bode well.

  “That’s probably poverty I hear knocking at my door,” Grant said cynically to the dregs in his coffee cup, “telling me that the honeymoon’s all but over.”

  Fifteen

  “Boss, you gotta minute?”

  Don Schaunders stood in the doorway of the trailer with his hands in his pockets, maintaining eye contact with the top of his steel-toed boots. “I think you’d better come to the floor.”

  One glance at the lost look on his relief driller’s unshaven face assured Grant that whatever awaited him was not favorable news. A dozen possibilities raced through his mind. None of them conjured up any pleasant images.

  “Tell me what happened,” he commanded.

  “Looks li
ke we’re stuck in the hole.”

  “Let me put on my boots, and I’ll be right there,” Grant assured him. “Don’t do anything until I get there.”

  Having already been designated as the official whipping boy, Don was relieved to discover that the boss wasn’t particularly interested in looking for someone to blame. Instead Grant preferred assessing the situation himself.

  Everyone knew the timing couldn’t have been any worse. How unfair for fate to add yet another weight to a bar already bent beneath its heavy load of trouble. A superhero would have difficulty bench-pressing any more bad news.

  Making their deadline under optimal circumstances had been a long shot in the first place, but Paddy was a consummate gambler who thrived on such challenges. And Paddy wasn’t here to buoy their flagging spirits. Shorthanded, everybody was exhausted and out of sorts. Add to that disastrous combination the fact that the boss had up and married the owner’s daughter, a wet-behind-the-ears geologist determined to do everything by the book, and you got a crew that was confused, fatigued, and a little suspicious. Between an unexpected honeymoon and what appeared to be an impending divorce, they worried whether Grant was capable of handling yet another emergency.

  Not a man among them was unaware of the dangers of working with someone who couldn’t keep his mind on business. Several were missing fingers from similar experiences. Others had witnessed firsthand the untimely death of fellow crewmen on other rigs. Poor Bernie who had been rushed to the hospital along with Paddy was just another example of what happens when a man’s concentration wanders from the perilous task at hand.

  Tugging on the laces of his boots, Grant knew he had to move fast to get whatever the problem was fixed with minimal delay. Their shoestring budget was seriously frayed, and they simply could not afford any lag in work. The truth of the matter was it wasn’t just an expensive drill bit stuck in that hellhole. It was the entire future of the company.

  Grant called out to Caitlin who was in the process of getting into her work clothes in the back bedroom. “I’ll meet you on the drill floor as soon as you get dressed. It seems we have yet another crisis, and I could probably use your opinion.”

  Slamming on his hard hat, he wasted no time getting there himself. Caitlin was right on his heels. They both arrived to find everybody standing around, looking anxious, and waiting for further instructions.

  Because they were shorthanded, the mud man had attempted to cover two jobs. While filling in for the missing floor hand, he had neglected to keep a close enough eye on the circulation material, and the mud had gotten too thin. The result was much like pouring water into a mound of sugar. A portion of the hole had caved in around the drill bit.

  To say that they were stuck was an understatement. Over twenty thousand feet below them, the bit was sealed so tightly in its tomb that all the pressure the blocks could pull were unable to budge it an inch. If it was anything like being buried alive beneath a mountain of debt and misgivings, Grant knew the feeling only too well.

  “What do you think?” he asked Caitlin. “Anything in the last core sample that could shine some light on our current predicament?”

  “It doesn’t look good,” she said, trying her best to keep her voice level so as not to give way to panic. “A combination of sand and shale probably caused the hole to collapse. My suggestion is to cut the pipe above the bit with an explosive charge, pull out the pipe, and fish the bit out. If we get right on it, we could be back in business before you know it.”

  Caitlin added that last sentence to cover the doubts dragging her heart to her toes. Proper procedure and regulations demanded no less than what she was recommending. The time required was a luxury they could ill afford, but to her knowledge there was no way of getting around it. It seemed all their hard work was destined to crumble beneath circumstances beyond anyone’s control.

  “I have a better idea,” Grant said.

  Caitlin could almost hear his mind shifting into high gear. The resignation in her eyes was suddenly replaced by a glimmer of hope.

  “We’re going to pump some oil straight down to the bottom of this hole and see if we can’t lubricate the bit enough to drill up through what’s caved in. It’s a bit unconventional, but the way I see it—”

  “A bit unconventional!” Caitlin interrupted, almost choking on the word. “It’s not only unconventional—it’s insane.”

  She felt compelled to remind him that one of the rudimentary principles of drilling was that it was done with a carefully controlled combination of water, mud, and chemicals. Despite the lowly connotation his name might imply, the mud man in charge of maintaining the proper mixture for the changing conditions was highly respected in the business for his expertise. What Grant was proposing was little more than a childish regression to making mud pies far below the surface of the earth.

  Determined to stand her ground on this issue, Caitlin placed her feet shoulder width apart. “From everything I’ve read—”

  “Sweetheart,” Grant interrupted.

  The word that had been intended to mollify had the exact opposite effect upon Caitlin who hotly resented being patronized before the crew.

  “Yes, darling?” she hissed.

  “There’s a whole lot more to the oil business than what you read in books. There’s experience and intuition and—”

  “And utter nonsense!”

  Trying to compose herself after this outburst, Caitlin continued in a more solemn, self-possessed manner. “Nobody wants this rig to pay out more than I do. For God’s sake, its failure could mean a relapse for my father. But no matter how important it is to the success of this company, Daddy wouldn’t ever deliberately—”

  Unable to stand the censure in those dazzling green eyes a second longer, it was Grant’s turn to interrupt. “And just who do you think taught me this little trick? None other than your precious daddy himself. And if he were here right now, that’s exactly what he would do under these circumstances.”

  Duly reminded both of her inexperience and the fact that Grant knew her father far better than she did, Caitlin glared at her husband through a haze of tears that she absolutely forbade to fall in public. Though her mother had always maintained that a thin line separated love and hate, until this very moment, Caitlin hadn’t known just how slender that thread was.

  In a flash of insight she understood that it was not an issue of background, money, or education that doomed their marriage. Their differences went far deeper than comparisons of elk meat and flour gravy to Veal Cordon Bleu. It struck Caitlin as ironic that Grant was actually the snob he accused her of being. His contempt for her credentials was as ingrained as his resentment of her past. A past of pampered privilege which he pictured without thought to her childhood loneliness or the obstacles she had faced in obtaining her geology degree over her mother’s, grandparents’, and all of “polite” society’s objections.

  Marriage to Grant was bound to be a collision of his experience pitted against her education. With sudden certainty, Caitlin doubted whether he could ever accept her as an equal in this marriage.

  And she could accept no less.

  “It appears there’s nothing I can say to change your mind,” she said, trying hard to look and sound impassive. “You’re going to do whatever you want anyway, aren’t you?”

  Aware that she was referring to more than just his decision on how to best proceed with this particular problem, Grant met her steady gaze directly.

  “Yes, I am,” he admitted. “As much as I appreciate your opinion, Caitlin, I’m still the boss around here, and we just don’t have the time to do this by the book.”

  Seeing the look of defeat upon her lovely face, Grant longed to take his wife into his arms and reassure her that everything would work out all right. Just as he had seen his own father do for his mother countless times before. Unfortunately when things hadn’t worked out as promised, Cissy hadn’t been able to cope.

  “Schoolbooks don’t have all the answers, Caitlin. An
d neither do I. But after working my way up in the business from the bottom up, I’ve developed a nose for oil. Call it a gut feeling. Call it instinct. Call it whatever you like. I’m telling you, we’re so close to hitting oil that I can almost smell it.”

  Afraid that it was desperation that he smelled, Caitlin was tempted to assuage her hurt feelings by stalking off and leaving him to manage without her help. Unfortunately knowing only too well the constraints under which they were all laboring, she could hardly expect the crew to remain by Grant’s side if his own wife were to walk out on him at such a critical time. She felt forced to abide by her husband’s decision, if only out of loyalty to her father.

  “Then I suggest you tell me what I can do to help and we’ll see about getting this show on the road,” she said, biting the words off in crisp syllables.

  The look of surprise that crossed Grant’s face was quickly replaced by a flicker of pride in his clear blue eyes. The courage and determination his pretty wife displayed in the face of impending doom was daunting. He had expected her to abandon him—just as every other woman had at the most critical times of his life. That she would acquiesce so meekly to having her opinion overridden before the crew was almost as astonishing to Grant as the fact that she was made of sterner stuff than either of their mothers, both of whom chose escape when life got hard.

  Caitlin was her father’s daughter as well—and so much like him that it caused a smile to hover about Grant’s lips. Acknowledging the sacrifice to his wife’s pride with a slight nod of his head, he began issuing directives. As the crew scurried off in all different directions, he turned to Caitlin, allowing her a glimpse of tender gratitude glowing in his eyes.

  “Thanks for your support. I appreciate your sticking around to help,” he added.

  “I’ll stay as long as you need me,” she replied.

  I need you for the rest of my life, Grant longed to admit, but before he could, the first barrel of oil arrived and with it a flurry of activity that pushed personal considerations aside.