And given what he had heard of Sami’s situation, she would probably welcome the income a drilling lease could offer. He would present it that way—as a chance to get out of her current job—and she would almost certainly jump at the opportunity.
He stared at the letter.
Could LeeAnn have had it in here—in her bedroom, for Chrissakes—the whole time? He pressed his fingertips against his forehead.
Damn hippies. Flakes, every last one of them.
Had he really been seduced into thinking she was any better? That their differences didn’t matter?
What an idiot.
He gritted his teeth. It didn’t matter what she wanted. If she couldn’t even be depended on to check the pile of papers on her own nightstand, then she was too unreliable for him.
He was here to do a job, he reminded himself. Not sex up the landowner.
Jesus. What had he been thinking? That move could have cost him his promotion—could have cost him his job. Hell, it could have cost him his whole career.
And now, that job required him to take an offer to Sami.
No matter how much it upsets LeeAnn.
He dismissed the thought. It didn’t matter what LeeAnn wanted. Folding the letter carefully, he grabbed his pants from the floor and pulled them on. He needed to get back to town as quickly as possible.
LeeAnn would have to drive him back to his truck, he realized as he heard her moving back toward the bedroom, humming.
Should he tell her what he had found?
Or should he simply make the offer to Sami and her sister?
He rubbed his eyes and shook his head. Apparently, at some point he had begun to believe LeeAnn’s adamant assertions that the rights couldn’t have been severed from the title.
And they might not have been—not legally, anyway.
Not yet.
But, assuming he could prove who wrote it, this letter would definitely serve as the legal basis for action. Natural Shale Oil and Gas could begin moving it through the court system, proving the intent to pass the drilling rights down to Sami and Beverly. And eventually, they would win.
He tried not to consider what it would mean for LeeAnn.
The sex was a distraction, he reminded himself. He had a goal, and this paper got him one step closer to that goal. As soon as he settled the rights, the promotion was his.
So. Should he tell her he had found the letter?
No. If she was too flaky to discover it herself, then she could find out about it after he’d done his job. He didn’t owe her anything.
Anger pulsed through his head, hot and heavy. Jonah tried to ignore the fact that it was directed as much at himself as at LeeAnn.
By the time she reached the doorway, he was fully dressed, the fragile paper tucked carefully away in his shirt pocket.
“Something’s come up,” he said. “Could you take me back to town?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Now lean toward the door. Stretch your arms as far up and out as you can. Breathe in, then out.” The words came out almost on autopilot as LeeAnn led the class in the cool-down stretches.
She couldn’t quit thinking about Jonah’s strange attitude all the way back into town. He had hardly spoken a word, and she could see a muscle jumping in his jaw when she asked if he wanted to join her for dinner after her class. His curt “No, thanks” didn’t really come as a surprise given his body language, but she still couldn’t figure out what was going on with him.
“Lie down on your mats,” she said, sitting down and folding her own legs into lotus position. Although she couldn’t quite bring herself to focus on the meditation and breathing exercises, she felt certain none of the students recognized her inner turmoil.
That was one thing she’d learned in her yoga training: how to look unruffled.
No matter how she really felt.
As the students rolled up their mats and began filing out of class, she unplugged her phone from the wall where she had been charging it and glanced down to see a text from Sami.
“Call me ASAP,” it said.
Her stomach sank. It was an odd message—Sami wasn’t the sort to be vague, and she wouldn’t request a call if it weren’t serious. Had something happened to Beverly?
She hit Sami’s number and held the phone to her ear, waving as the last student left the room.
Sami didn’t even say hello. “I’m so glad you called.”
“Hey, cuz,” LeeAnn said. “What’s up? You okay?”
“I am, but I think you need to come over here.” Her voice sounded oddly stretched.
LeeAnn’s anxiety ratcheted up. “Of course. Any hints?”
The words came out in a rush as Sami spoke. “Jonah Hamilton just left my house. He says the mineral rights belong to me and Bev, and Natural Shale Oil and Gas has made an offer.”
All the blood drained from LeeAnn’s face, pooling, it seemed, in her chest, constricting her lungs. After a long moment, she dragged in a breath. “Do you know why he thinks that?”
“He said he’d found another letter.” Sami’s voice echoed apologetically across the line. “I think you should come over.”
Pacing back and forth in front of the overstuffed couch where Sami sat in her tiny apartment, LeeAnn stared at the photocopy of the letter on the coffee table. Her gaze moved back and forth between it and the offer letter sitting next to it.
“That’s an awful lot of money,” she said, her voice flat.
“I know,” Sami almost whispered.
“That rat bastard.” LeeAnn hit the end of the room and spun around, hard and fast, stomping toward the other wall, fewer than ten paces away.
Sami’s anxious voice followed her. “I can’t turn it down, Lee. I’m about two weeks from busted—Bev and I are still paying off Daddy’s funeral, my car payment is late, not to mention my rent, and I don’t know how much longer I can work in the same office with Alexander now that I know he’s married.”
A harsh laugh escaped LeeAnn as she finally came to a stop in front of the coffee table. “We sure do know how to pick ’em, don’t we?”
“I’m so sorry.” Her cousin’s hands twisted together.
Panic spiked through the misery LeeAnn had felt since she’d arrived. “You can’t take it, Sami. We can’t let him—them, the oil company—win. Gran would hate it.” As soon as she spoke, she wanted to pull the words back in—it wasn’t fair to Sami.
This isn’t fair to me.
And through the misery and panic ran a ribbon of bright, hot anger. Was this why Jonah had seduced her that afternoon? Had he found the letter, then decided to…what?
Distract me.
At the very least, keep her from interfering—keep her busy until it was time for her class, then make his offer to Sami when she couldn’t intervene. It all made sense. Even the weird, silent ride back into town together.
And she’d thought Darrell had been bad.
Well, okay, Darrell was awful. But Jonah was every bit as terrible.
Talk about knowing how to pick ’em.
Tears welled up in her eyes. Sami, mistaking the tears for an expression of sorrow over the land, was quick to respond. “I won’t, LeeAnn. I won’t take the offer. I know how much the ranch means to you, and I would never do anything to hurt you.”
The whole situation is unfair to everyone except Jonah.
LeeAnn could change that—at least a little. Brushing the water from her eyes and pushing all other thoughts from her mind, she shook her head. “No,” she said to her cousin. “I was wrong. You can’t say no to the money.” She turned to look Sami in the eye, working to make her voice clear and firm. “I don’t want you to turn it down. I want you and Bev to take the offer and the money. Pay off all those bills and take some time to find another job.”
“But what about the ranch? Gran would be so disappointed.” A desperate note wove its way into the objection.
“Gran would want you to be taken care of, too.” LeeAnn was certain of that,
even if everything else in her world was falling down around her.
Still threading her fingers together as she, too, stared at the offer, Sami said, for the second time since LeeAnn’s arrival, “Jonah said it would take a few weeks for everything to be finalized. Maybe I’ll figure something else out between now and then.”
Jonah said. Pain stabbed through LeeAnn’s chest, and she abruptly stood up. “I need to get back home.”
“No. Wait.” Sami sat straight up. “I have an idea. Let me make a phone call.”
…
The next morning, LeeAnn sat with her hands tightly clenched together in her lap, gritting her teeth. Sami had reached out to her boss, an attorney, and he had offered to go over the paperwork with them both to make sure they understood their options.
LeeAnn had spent the whole night tossing and turning, trying to ignore the scent of Jonah still on her sheets, trying to avoid thinking about what he had done. Finally, she had gotten up and changed the linens, tossing the Jonah-fragranced ones into the washing machine, turning the water on hot and choosing the high-speed cycle, ignoring the eco setting entirely. She had finally gotten a few hours’ sleep after that.
Now, although she knew she should be preparing to listen carefully, she couldn’t help but consider Alexander J. Wills, Esq., as he sat behind his extraordinarily shiny chrome-and-glass desk reading through everything they had brought.
So this is the man who seduced my cousin?
He wasn’t LeeAnn’s type, for sure—far too skinny white boy, as Sami’s friend Martina would say, all lines and angles, his brown eyes serious behind his glasses as he flipped through the stack of papers in front of him with long, pale, ascetic-looking fingers.
Contrasting Wills’s to Jonah’s muscular virility came to her all too easily, and LeeAnn cursed silently. She needed to get Jonah out of her mind. He hadn’t meant anything he said. The fact that she was here, trying to determine if she had any legal recourse to keep Natural Shale off her land, was proof enough of that.
Finally, the attorney leaned back in his chair and peered at the two women over the rim of his glasses. “It looks here like Natural Shale is banking on you, Ms. Walker, not putting up a real fight. There is currently no official record of the mineral rights having been explicitly severed from the property title. However, the company has in its possession two documents that suggest that by the late 1990s, at least, the mineral rights belonged to George McKinley, Samantha’s father.”
Sami winced a little at Wills’s use of her full name.
He has to know she hates that. What kind of man would call her by a name he knows she hates?
Then again, what kind of married man would date his new secretary without telling her he was married?
Untangling her hands, LeeAnn leaned forward. “What are our options?”
Wills took off his glasses, folded them carefully, and rapped them gently against the desk. “As I see it, you have four options. One, you can waive the rights, leaving them to Samantha and her…sister, was it?” He flipped his index finger out and gave it a slight wave.
“Beverly, yes.” Sami nodded, glancing at LeeAnn out of the corner of her eye, gauging her reaction to the possibility. LeeAnn worked to keep her face expressionless.
Breathe in…one, two, three…out, one, two, three, four…
Adding a second long finger, Wills said, “Two, Samantha and Beverly can waive the rights, leaving them with you, but thereby giving up a sizable rental income that could, under these contracts, increase significantly if any wells are successful. And three, you could both claim the rights, and the whole thing can go to court.”
Wills dropped his hand back to his glasses and picked them up. The tapping noise he made lodged itself behind LeeAnn’s right eye, where she could feel a headache forming, throbbing in time to Wills’s taps.
She rubbed her fingertips against her temples. “Do you mean go to court against each other?”
Wills shrugged. “Possibly. Though Samantha will undoubtedly benefit from Natural Shale’s backing.”
“Are you saying I would lose, just because they have a couple of letters?” The pounding in her head picked up tempo.
He shrugged and unfolded the glasses. When they were again perched on his nose, he pulled the two letters out of the papers and placed them side by side. “Not necessarily. If letters were enough to guarantee a victory, they would have gone straight for a court date, rather than trying a workaround like getting their landman into your files.”
Right. So if she hadn’t taken Jonah at his word, hadn’t believed him enough to let him onto her land, into her home…
…into my bed…
If she hadn’t trusted him, she wouldn’t be in this position.
“And now?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
Wills shrugged. “Now they have two points of data. They know it’s worth their time and effort. They’ll subpoena all your records and put their best experts on it to comb through everything.”
Sami, who had been staring at the floor, absently rubbing her thumb across the pearls of one of her necklaces, sat up straighter. “You said there we had a fourth option?”
“Yes.” Wills opened both hands wide, palms up, gesturing toward the women. “The two of you, along with Beverly, could come to a private agreement to split proceeds, and then all act as signatories to any agreement with Natural Shale.”
LeeAnn and Sami stared at each other for a moment. LeeAnn looked away first. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “And the only way to get out of this without a lot of money—and trouble—is to sign over the rights and let Natural Shale drill?”
This time, his shrug included a throwaway motion of one hand. “You might be able to find an environmentalists’ group to back you. And you could conceivably fight every step of the way, from drilling rights to right-of-way agreements for the trucks. But in my opinion? Yes. You’re looking at a long, drawn-out fight that you are at least as likely to lose as you are to win, and that will cost you more than you might be willing to spend.”
More than I can spend. More than I have.
Bending over to gather her purse, LeeAnn bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying. “Thank you, Mr. Wills,” she said, holding out one hand over the desk as he rose to see her out. “Sami, I’ll call you in a few days. I have a lot of thinking to do.”
“Of course.” Wills ushered her to the office door, but paused with his hand on the knob. “One question, if I may. If you are so opposed to drilling on your land, why did you allow one of Natural Shale’s agents free access to your records?”
A harsh huff of laughter escaped her. “That’s a good question, Mr. Wills.”
She glanced over her shoulder, but caught only a glimpse of the misery on Sami’s face before the closing door cut off her view.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Staring out over the ranch, LeeAnn raised her arms above her head and drew in a deep breath, counting silently as she breathed in and out, trying to decide what she should do. She had been here for hours. Finally, she had given up and called her cousin to ask her to come over.
By the time Sami gets here, she promised herself, I’ll have made a decision.
But instead of calmly weighing her options yet again, she kept coming back to Jonah, even though every time she thought of him, her stomach roiled.
How could I have been so stupid?
She had talked to him about everything that mattered to her—her parents, yoga, the ranch. Everything.
She had taken him into her bed.
And shower, a wry internal voice reminded her. She pushed the memory away.
She had trusted him.
Quit thinking about Jonah. Figure out what to do about the drilling rights. Handing them over meant hurting the land. Fighting them meant hurting Sami.
She couldn’t see a way to live by her principles. No matter what she did, she feared she would be hurt the worst.
Om…
She
was still considering her options when the crunch of tires on caliche alerted her to her cousin’s arrival.
But when Sami rounded the corner of the house, her step more tentative than LeeAnn had ever seen it, she knew what the decision had to be. It was the only possible choice—and had been, ever since Sami had shown her the offer.
Even if it broke her heart.
“I’ve decided to sign over the rights,” she said, as soon as Sami was close enough to hear.
“You have?” The sudden brightening of Sami’s eyes convinced LeeAnn she had done the right thing.
“Yes.” She held out her arms to enfold Sami in a hug. “I want you to have the money.”
Only once Sami was gone again did she allow herself to collapse onto her mat. Rubbing her eyes, she pulled in a deep, ragged breath.
Despite her resolution to move on, she found herself thinking about Jonah once more. She still couldn’t believe he had found a letter and hadn’t told her.
I can’t believe I trusted him.
What was wrong with her? Why did she continue to get attached to men who lied and cheated and used her to get what they wanted, without any consideration for her?
First Darrell, now Jonah.
Okay. That wasn’t entirely fair. Jonah hadn’t ever lied—not really. She had known from the beginning that he was trying to find a way to allow his company to drill on her property. But she had truly believed that he would tell her if he found anything.
She had allowed herself to relax around him.
She hadn’t merely let him into her home. She had allowed him into her bed. And…
Oh, no. Am I really in love with Jonah?
“Dammit,” she whispered, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes. She pulled her knees up to her chest and banged her forehead gently against them, cursing with each bump.
She had known from almost the beginning that she and Jonah Hamilton were working at cross-purposes. He might not have seemed like the enemy, but he was.
It had been foolish of her to forget that.
If only she hadn’t thrown herself into his arms that first day in the diner. Would she have been able to keep her distance if she had known who he was, why he was there?
Opposing the Cowboy Page 15