The Cowboy Takes A Bride

Despite the blood tie connecting Paddy to his daughter, Grant couldn’t bring himself to believe his friend would circumvent his authority by hiring Caitlin without so much as asking him first. Even as softhearted as he was, surely Paddy had sense enough to know that a drilling rig was no place for the daughter he was certain was as pure as virgin falling snow. A likely story, in Grant’s opinion, only if she went to college at a convent. The probability of any woman who looked like that remaining chaste into her twenties was even slimmer than his chance of hitting that deep pocket of oil and salvaging this godforsaken company any time soon.

Grant wiped the back of his neck with a red bandanna and considered the scene playing on the ground below him. It appeared his hellish day was about to get even hotter. From Caitlin’s animated gesticulations, he imagined she was at this very moment describing to her father just how “beastly” his hired hand had treated her. A smile played upon Grant’s lips. He wondered how she would react to the news that he was more than just some menial hireling. If it weren’t for the fact that her certain histrionics might well drive a wedge between him and the man he had come to think of as a father, Grant would have looked forward to the performance. The Blue Blood and the Redneck.

No doubt it had a certain Hollywood ring to it.

Stuffing his bandanna back into his hip pocket, he decided it was pointless postponing the inevitable. As hesitant as he was about breaking up this touching family reunion, it was time to officially make the formal acquaintance of Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Petulance.

Caitlin was so moved by the sight of her father that she momentarily forgot all about those odious men and their Viking leader, Redneck the Terrible. Safe in her daddy’s arms, her only thought was of how glad she was to be with him again. For so many years, distance and her mother’s judgment had kept them apart. Now at last a college graduate, Caitlin was free to do with her life as she wished—and what she wanted more than anything else in the world was to make up for lost time with the father she adored.

Oh, she had taken Psych 101 and knew that most girls idolized their daddies. She also knew that eventually the harsh light of reality shattered their childish beliefs that their fathers were invincible. But what she could never get her professor to understand was that her father really was that which John Wayne personified in all those wonderful old movies: the most honorable, kindhearted, heroic man who ever lived.

Tears filled her eyes as she pressed her ear against his heart and took comfort in its steady beat. She felt all of ten years old again in her father’s arms. Safe, secure, and happy. Caitlin was determined not to let anything pull her from the refuge of those arms ever again.

“As much as I hate to interrupt this touching moment, we really do have work to do around here.”

Grant’s voice sounded like the gravel crunching beneath his feet as he approached. He moved slowly, hoping to give them enough time to disengage from the tearful embrace that twisted his guts into a tight, tangled knot.

God above, what he would give to hug his own father one more time!

Taking the pained look on his face for disapproval, Caitlin gave him a disdainful once-over. Her voice was laced with righteous indignation when she turned back to her father. “Daddy, I’d appreciate it if you would tell this, this…two-bit tool pusher just who is in charge around here.”

The self-satisfied smirk she tossed Grant’s direction indicated a little groveling to keep his job was in order.

“Yeah, Daddy,” Grant mimicked, disregarding her haughtiness with a sarcastic grin that deepened the dimple in his chin. Crossing his muscled arms across his chest, he continued as if she weren’t there at all. “Since your daughter isn’t inclined to listen to me, would you mind telling her exactly who is responsible for the hiring and firing of personnel in this company?”

Paddy was grinning as he shook his head. “If you two kids would stop fighting long enough, I’d like to introduce you to one another. Maybe then we can go about getting things squared up to everybody’s satisfaction.”

Though that seemed highly unlikely, both Caitlin and Grant felt duly chastised by Paddy’s use of the word kids. Instead of grown-up men and women, independent and capable in their own right, they may as well have been errant siblings squabbling in the back of the family vehicle on one of those interminable vacations that tests a parent’s sanity.

Eager to be the first to appear reasonable and adult, Caitlin patted her father’s arm soothingly. “You’re right, of course. And if somebody would just calm down for a minute, I’m sure you can straighten him out in no time flat.”

Ignoring Grant’s pointed glare, Caitlin focused her attention upon her father’s pallor. He looked older than she remembered. It was no secret that Paddy scorned diets devoid of meat and potatoes, and according to him, exercise was just for people who didn’t have real jobs that demanded physical exertion. Winding her arm through his, Caitlin scrutinized his features more closely. The broken blood vessels in his nose and the sweat on his brow made her nervous. Excessive heat and stress was a bad combination for a man of his age and temperament.

“Are you trying to give my father a heart attack with all your theatrics?” she hissed at Grant.

“Me?” he gasped in disbelief. “You come flouncing onto this rig like the Queen of the Nile, prancing around in front of the crew in those tight jeans acting like you own the place, and I’m the one who’s upset your father?”

Caitlin’s mouth flew open. “Flounced!” she repeated, taking obvious exception to his choice of words. “Pranced!”

Grant cupped a hand to his ear. “Do I hear an echo?”

“Now, now, children…” Paddy’s sigh bespoke a weariness that was bone deep. “It wouldn’t do to have us airing out our family laundry in front of the crew, now would it? I suggest we take our differences inside the trailer away from prying eyes, and sift this all out over a nice, cold beer.”

Caitlin pressed her lips together in a disapproving line. “You know what the doctor said about your triglycerides.”

“You’re not about to start that nonsense again, are you?” Paddy asked. He glanced toward Grant and explained in a note of exasperation. “She likes to nag me about my diet. Says my cholesterol, triglycerides, and conglomerates are all too high.”

The misapplication of his words brought a smile to Caitlin’s face. Despite his grumbling, she knew that her father loved the way she fussed over him.

“You know it’s for your own good,” she persisted.

“Piss-h, posh.” Paddy quickly amended the intended oath and shot Grant a warning glance. Clearly he didn’t want his lily-white princess discovering her daddy had the vernacular of a seasoned drill sergeant.

Grant rolled his eyes. As far as he could tell, this little gal’s power was nothing short of amazing. In less than fifteen minutes, she had his crew acting like wild, hormone-imbalanced adolescents and Paddy like a sainted father straight off some serial from the early days of television. It was sickening to watch and reason enough to reinforce Grant’s resolve to harden his heart against all women. Those like Paddy’s Laura Leigh and his own mother only desert you when times get tough. Those like Aunt Edna use trickery and guile to get what they want. Suspecting that Caitlin straddled both categories, Grant wanted nothing more from her than distance.

He certainly did not want to be trapped in close quarters with her. Those cat-green eyes studying him as if he were her next meal made him way too nervous. Grant suspected that if she were to ever train those phenomenal eyes on him the way she did her father, as if he were the best thing God ever created, he would crumble into pieces like the proverbial Gingerbread Man. And like that desperate little cookie in his favorite children’s story, Grant was determined to run, run as fast he could from this cunning little fox.

“Your daughter’s not the only one worried about your health,” he said slowly as if measuring his words into a beaker. “I don’t think you need a beer either, and considering the fact that Harry just got canned for drinking on the job, I can hardly show up on the drilling floor with beer on my breath.”

Much to Grant’s surprise, Paddy conceded with an affable nod of his head.

“Good point. You and Caitlin can have sodas instead.” Without waiting to hear any argument, he put an arm affectionately around his daughter’s shoulders and directed her toward the trailer. To the delight of the crew, he called out over his shoulder, “Take a break, boys!”

Trailing miserably behind them, Grant couldn’t help recalling that old adage about blood being thicker than water. It fit like a fist in his throat.

He tried not to focus on the tight fit of those designer jeans across her trim backside as she sashayed through the sagebrush in front of him. Grant knew he shouldn’t resent Paddy focusing all his attention on the daughter he’d seen so infrequently over the years, but knowing and feeling were two completely different things. Jealousy reared its ugly head. With the return of the prodigal child, Grant expected Paddy to ask him to kill the fatted calf any minute now.

“Don’t worry,” he heard Caitlin reassure Paddy. “Before you know it, my cooking will replace that petroleum in your veins with healthy red and white blood cells.”

“More’n likely you mean blue blood,” Grant mumbled stepping around them to open the door. Despite his personal feelings toward this hellcat, he was bound to give courtesy its due.

“Such a gentleman,” Caitlin quipped with a deprecating little moue.

Certain that one good kiss would be all it would take to wipe that smirk off those pouty lips, Grant imagined bending her swanlike neck back, pressing his lips against hers, and taming that fiery temper with a single mind-numbing kiss. A mere taste of his potency was sure to leave this pretty little princess limp and willing in his arms. After hanging around with college boys, Grant very much doubted whether Caitlin could handle a real man.

As if trying to shut out such disturbing thoughts, Grant slammed the door behind him. He blamed lack of sleep for the wayward turn his thoughts had taken. Lack of sleep and a decided lack of female companionship. The next time he got to town, Grant vowed to remedy that situation. Even if he liked Caitlin Flynn, which he decidedly did not, he valued his relationship with Paddy far too much to screw things up by even thinking of becoming involved with his precious daughter. Not that Caitlin would risk a nosebleed to look down from her pedestal upon mere oil field trash such as himself.

Stepping in from the intense sunlight outside, Caitlin needed a moment to adjust to the relative dimness of the trailer. Dust motes danced before her eyes. She was surprised to see that the trailer was relatively tidy, though hardly luxurious. Dishes were washed and drying in the wire rack over the sink, clothes were picked up, magazines were stacked neatly beside a sturdy couch of blotchy tweed blends, and an afghan she had lovingly made for her father for Christmas several years ago was draped neatly over the back of a black vinyl recliner. Considering the gritty conditions of the location, Caitlin was impressed. Her father had never struck her as being a particularly fastidious housekeeper.

“Have a seat, darlin’,” Paddy said, pointing to a small kitchenette table and two chairs.

Caitlin obliged, and Grant took an extra folding chair from the closet and set it up directly across the table from her. They exchanged cold glances while Paddy drew an old metal tray of ice cubes from the refrigerator and unceremoniously cracked it on the counter. A minute later he set two glasses of pop and a bottle of ice-cold beer on a table so flimsy that it wobbled beneath the elbows he propped there an instant later.

“There now,” he exclaimed, joining them. “Isn’t this cozy?”

Too cozy, Caitlin thought, drawing herself up primly in her chair so that her knees wouldn’t brush against Grant’s. Those long legs of his could no more be contained beneath the tiny circumference of that table than his ego could be contained within the band of the hard hat he placed between them like some symbolic barrier.

Paddy raised his beer in a salute and took a deep, satisfying draught.

“What’dya say we start over? Caitlin, I’d like you to meet Grant Davis.”

Davis. Davis. Davis… The name sounded oddly familiar. Caitlin searched her memory but couldn’t place it. She seriously doubted whether he was related to any of the San Antonio Davises that her mother set such store by.

“And, Grant, this is my daughter, Caitlin.”

When this introduction was met with nothing but loud, hostile silence, Paddy’s good humor exploded. “Just what exactly is the problem here? I can’t imagine why a friendly visit from my favorite daughter would inspire such animosity in you, Grant, or how—”

Grant turned to Caitlin in disbelief. “Then this is just a social visit? You led me to believe that… Well, in that case, I’m sorry that I acted like such a—”

Interrupting his apology with an angry wave of her hand, Caitlin focused her response upon her father. “No, it isn’t just a visit. I’m here to go to work for you, Dad. I hope you didn’t spend a fortune to send me off to college just to pat me on the head and send me off like some cute little puppy. You didn’t, did you?”

“Of course not,” Paddy sputtered. “It’s just that I don’t think we’re looking for a geologist, honey.”

“We’re not,” Grant confirmed tersely.

“Yes, you are,” Caitlin countered. Eyeing her father’s beer disapprovingly, she crossed her fingers behind her back and blurted out a plausible, abbreviated version of the truth. “I ran into your old one down the road a ways. He said to tell you that his services had suddenly become indispensable to another company that was paying better. I took the liberty of telling him that you already had a replacement—me!”

“What?” bellowed Grant, jumping to his feet.

He had been wondering where Doug was. The fellow prided himself on his punctuality, if not actual ability. Finding it hard to believe that a rival company had poached him, Grant’s eyes narrowed. There really was no polite way of suggesting that Paddy’s daughter was a liar.

Shaking his head solemnly, Paddy scolded, “You really shouldn’t have done that, honey.”

“Yes, I should’ve.” Caitlin placed her elbows on the table, cupped her chin in her hands, and leaned forward intently. She looked her father square in the eye. “Look, there’s no reason for you to pay somebody to do what I’m willing to do for free. It’s the least I can do for all you’ve done for me. Besides, I want to. Badly. Not to mention that I have a vested interest in our business myself. And it is the perfect opportunity for us to spend some time together.”

“Caitlin, darlin’,” Paddy replied with a note of pleading in his voice. “A rig’s no place for a beautiful girl such as yourself. I wanted you to go to college so you’d never have to do hard physical labor like me. Like your grandmother, God rest her soul, a poor charwoman working her fingers to the bone, saving all her hard-earned pennies to send her sons to America for a better life. That’s what I sent you to college for, a better life.”

Taking her manicured hands into his own, he cradled them gently. “Hands such as these are meant for a laboratory, for diamond rings, for holding my grandbabies some day. Not for grubbing in the dirt with a bunch of lewd men out in the middle of nowhere.”

The tenderness her father’s words inspired disappeared at the implication that she couldn’t take care of herself. It seemed to Caitlin that she had spent her entire life trying to convince others just how capable she was. Foolishly she had hoped a degree would eliminate the need for this very conversation. However, she understood that lashing out at her father in feminist rage would get her nowhere fast. Instead she took an altogether different route to getting her way.

“I appreciate your concern, but what I really need is a job, not kid-glove protection. The market isn’t exactly booming for inexperienced college graduates. What with downsizing, companies are hiring experienced geologists for about the same pay as entry-level workers. If I ever hope to get a better job than flipping burgers at some fast-food chain, I’ll have to get some experience first. The way I figure it, the best way for me to get experience is to work with the best. And that’s why I came to you.”

Grant saw something soften in Paddy’s eyes. He had to hand it to her. Caitlin had a real knack for winding her old man as tightly around her little finger as the chain around the rig’s rotary table.

Paddy ran his hand through his still thick shock of graying hair. “Well, since you put it that way…”

“Don’t forget about the financial benefit to the company. They don’t come any cheaper than me.” The smile Caitlin flashed her father was warm enough to completely melt the last of the ice in Grant’s soda. He knew he had to intervene fast.

“And don’t you forget,” he interrupted in a burst of disgust, “that I’m the one who does the hiring around here. And at the present time I’m not inclined to hire a slip of a girl for any position.”

“Now, now,” Paddy said, taking another draught of his beer. “Let’s not be so hasty, son.”

Son!

The word ricocheted through Caitlin’s brain like a sniper’s bullet. How dare her father use that word with this arrogant jerk! Deep down she suspected that Paddy secretly had always wanted a son. A son to work with side by side. A son to turn the business over to when it became too much for him. A son he could be proud of. All her life Caitlin had tried to make up for her sex by being the best she could at everything she undertook. She couldn’t help wondering whether Paddy would have been so willing to grant full custody to her mother had she been a son instead of a daughter. “How dare you try to tell my father how to run his business?” she snapped at Grant. “If I were him, I’d run you off on the spot for such impudence.”

Still standing, Grant leaned his considerable height over her and answered in a laconic tone, “I dare because I’m not just some lackey you can push around at will. Like it or not, I’m your daddy’s right-hand man, and I have as much at stake here as he does.”

Three

Determined to look Grant eye to eye when she confronted him, Caitlin leapt to her feet. Her chair clattered to the floor behind her.

“Is right-hand man your official title, or is that just a fancy way of saying you’ve wormed your way into a heart too kind for its own good?” She attempted to lessen the difference in their heights by standing on tiptoe and anchoring her hands to her hips for ballast. “Do you expect me to believe that my father simply turned the running of his business over to you because you graciously volunteered to be the son he never had? Let me assure you, mister. I’m not about to stand by and watch you destroy what it’s taken my father an entire lifetime to build.”

“Caitlin, stop it!” Paddy’s voice cut through the air like the crack of a bullwhip. “Stop it right now before you make a bigger fool out of yourself than you already have.”

Tears stung her eyes. Caitlin could count on one hand the times that her father had raised his voice to her. To be thus admonished in front of this outsider was almost more than she could bear.

Accusation laced her voice as she demanded an answer. “How can you just sit there and let your employee treat me with such contempt? The next thing I know he’ll be telling me that you want to make him a full-fledged partner.”

Paddy flinched from the betrayal glistening in his daughter’s eyes.

Grant railed against it.

Was it so unimaginable that he could have procured his boss’s high regard by any but underhanded means? Paddy had promised the entire crew a bonus if they could make this hole pay out before the deadline. He had, in fact, intimated that there would be an extra special something awaiting the man who worked the hardest to prove himself as he went through the ranks. Though no one knew exactly what the prize was, Grant hoped it involved enough money to secure that ranch that he’d been dreaming of for so very long.

Caitlin’s overly emotional reaction to the idea that her father might share the burdens of the business by offering his second in command a chance at a partnership only served to underscore Grant’s opinion of women. Any man unfortunate enough to ever forget that the “fairer” sex was only out for personal gain was destined to be very sorry indeed. All that hype about Caitlin’s coming here just to be close to her daddy was nothing more than a convenient cover to check up on her assets.

The inheritance factor was just one more thing for Grant to hold against her. But then, what could he expect a little princess from the suburbs to understand of earning one’s keep by the sweat of your brow? Of the pride that comes of making something of yourself out of the ashes of defeat? Of loving a man like Paddy Flynn not for the width of the financial security net he could weave beneath you, but instead for his honesty and decency?

“I thought they were supposed to teach you in college to find out the facts before jumping to conclusions,” Grant commented dryly.

A muscle along his jawline throbbed out his frustration as he took full measure of the pretty little thing who’d just called him a con man. Any man with the audacity to make such an accusation would have found himself cheek to cheek with the nearest wall.

Arms up in the air, Paddy jumped into the middle of the fracas. His complexion was even ruddier than usual as he attempted arbitration. “Caitlin, surely you remember my speaking of Keith Davis, my partner from years ago. Grant’s his son.”

A frown creased Caitlin’s brow. Recognition glimmered beneath the surface of her memory like a dark fish rising from the depths.

“Keith Davis… Wasn’t he the man who…”

“The man,” Grant supplied, “who was killed in the explosion that nearly bankrupted this company years ago. The explosion that left second-degree burns over fifty percent of your father’s body.”

Caitlin turned her attention upon her father. “The one that caused you and Mother to—”

Words failed her as she searched Paddy’s stricken eyes for an answer to the question that had obsessed her for years. Growing up, the subject of her parents’ separation had been expressly taboo. When she was younger, Caitlin had found a photograph in her mother’s album of a strange mummy-like creature staring back at her from a hospital bed. Laura Leigh had curtly explained that it was Paddy, shortly before she made up her mind to leave him.

When with typical adolescent candor Caitlin expressed the opinion that it was unbelievably cold of her mother to abandon her father in such a state, Laura Leigh had replied cryptically, “We were both burned in that fire, Caitlin. Someday when you’re older, maybe I’ll try explaining it to you.”

For some reason that day never came. Caitlin hoped that with the passage of time, the truth would finally come out. Unfortunately, Paddy had no more intention of pillaging the past than her mother.

“Let’s leave old times well enough alone except to say that Grant’s father was the best friend I ever had. In fact I never met a better man—until the day his son showed up at one of my rigs. Despite the fact he held me personally responsible for his father’s death, he said he was willing to learn the business from the bottom up. The only thing he asked of me was a paycheck. Promised to earn his keep, and, by God, girl, he has more than done that.”

It was impossible to miss the effect these words had upon Grant. He stood perceptibly taller, and the moisture clouding his eyes was clearly an embarrassment to him.

Coming from a man not easily given to compliments, Caitlin was aware how rare such praise was. What she would have given to hear her father speak so highly of her! Unbidden, a seed of jealousy sprouted in her heart for the man who had somehow managed to usurp her hitherto unshakable position as the apple of her father’s eye.