Only respect for her father kept her from rolling her eyes. Yes, the horror that her parents, two of the most serious people on the planet, had given birth to one equally serious son and a big-mouthed, bright-color loving daughter, who had a son out of wedlock but still never knew when to stop joking. She wondered if she and her father couldn’t just once have a meeting during which he didn’t compare her to her super-organized and efficient saint of a mother.
“Daddy, is there something I can help you with? Because I’ve still got to get the social security checks ready for tomorrow.”
His lips thinned. “Yes, there is something you could help me with. Maybe you can help me understand why you’ve been messing around with Alexei Rustanov again?”
Eva broke into a cold sweat at just the mention of his name. “I haven’t been messing around with—“ She couldn’t even say his name out loud. “Can I ask where all this is coming from?”
“If you haven’t been messing around with him, why did his company just decide to buy Drummond Oil out of the blue?”
Her heart clenched. He wouldn’t. Not because of one kiss and five minutes of dry humping. But a certain dread was already starting to pool in her stomach, even as she said, “I’m sure that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
He father lifted his thick eyebrows. “Really? Because when I tried to set up a meeting with his people in regards to the future of Drummond’s main business, and the source of seventy-percent of our town’s funding, I received an interesting call back from his executive assistant. He said Rustanov himself would take the meeting, but only if it’s with you.”
Eva shook her head. “No, I can’t. I can’t meet with him.”
Her father leaned forward, his face all business. “The taxes Drummond Oil and their employees pay are what funds both your salary and mine. They employ the vast majority of the adults who live here, and they’re responsible for eighty-percent of all charitable donations. If Rustanov decides to suddenly withdraw his support or, heaven forbid, move the Drummond Oil headquarters somewhere else, this town will die.“
Her throat had gone completely dry. Though she wanted more than anything to say she couldn’t face Alexei again, she knew she would have to. Her father wasn’t exaggerating. Drummond Oil really was the life-blood of the town, providing its sole industry. If Rustanov moved the Drummond Oil headquarters, the majority of her neighbors, many of whom she also counted as friends, would be out of a job. This included both Rodriguezes, who would have to put off their adoption quest until they could find another source of income.
Eva herself could always find a position as a social worker somewhere else, in fact she had been thinking about doing just that for a couple of years now that she had enough money in savings for her and Aaron to live comfortably until she found another job.
But Drummond Oil had always been a friends-and-family kind of business. Many of the people who worked there had inherited their jobs from their parents, just like she’d inherited hers from her mother. But unlike her, many of them hadn’t even bothered to get a degree in order to take on the administrative work of running the offices of a company that hosted wells in several parts of the state. Drummond’s own well had gone dry a couple of decades ago, but back then the company’s namesake family had decided to keep their headquarters in Drummond because it was central to all their other wells, and also because the family still had a home in the area. One of the reasons her father was such a local hero was because after the family sold Drummond Oil to a larger oil company, he had convinced that company to keep the headquarters in Drummond with a mix of tax breaks, business savvy, and one good-old boy, booze-filled weekend.
But now Alexei Rustanov owned Drummond Oil. And he wanted to meet with her.
“I’m no good at business meetings,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“I know you aren’t,” he answered. “But in this case, it’s real simple. You’ve got to convince Rustanov to keep the Drummond Oil headquarters here. Tell him we’ll do whatever it takes, give him whatever incentives he wants to keep the business here. If you have to grovel at his feet, do it. Now is not the time to finally grow a sense of pride, little girl.”
Despite the circumstances, Eva found herself more irritated with her father than her manipulative ex-boyfriend. “It’s not about pride, it’s about my son. I can’t let him find out about Aaron.”
Her father sat up, his head tilting to the side in angry confusion. “What do you mean, find out? You said you told him and he didn’t want anything to do with Aaron. I thought that was why you left his name off the birth certificate and didn’t seek him out for child support.”
She winced. “It’s a little more like I figured he wouldn’t want anything to do with Aaron, so I kind of didn’t tell him.”
“You kind of didn’t tell him.” Her father’s posture had become rigid with anger. “So let me get this straight, little girl. First you moved in with this Russian boy against my wishes. Then you got pregnant. Then you didn’t even tell him he had a baby coming and it was his. Then you put yourself in his sights again. And now he’s bought Drummond Oil, not even knowing you and him have a seven-year-old son?”
When her father summarized the story that way, it did sound really, really bad. “I know I’ve put Drummond in a really terrible position, Daddy. And I’m really sorry. But he cannot find out about Aaron.”
“He sure as hell can’t,” her father agreed. “If he finds out you’ve been hiding a son from him, Lord knows what he’ll do. I don’t know what happened between you two that has him suddenly buying up Drummond Oil and wanting to meet with you, and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to know, because my blood pressure is high enough as it is. But whatever you did, you need to get on that plane tomorrow, and go to New York to fix it.”
“Tomorrow!” she said. “I can’t just drop everything and drive all the way to Dallas to go to New York.”
Her father gave her a small, tart smile. “Eva, I warned you against getting mixed up with this boy, and now look where it’s gotten us. You can and will drop everything. And you will do whatever it takes to save our town, which we’ve both pledged to serve to the best of our abilities.”
“Okay, Daddy, I’m just going to point out that you warned me to stay away from him because he was in your words, ‘fresh off the boat,’ ‘couldn’t even speak English,’ and ‘would never amount to anything.’ I have no idea if he’s officially got his citizenship or how his English is coming along, but you were definitely wrong on at least one of those accounts. He’s made something of himself and now he’s got you, me, and this whole town under his thumb.”
To her surprise, Eva actually felt a bit of pride in Alexei welling up inside her. Who would have thought the Russian security guard who could barely afford a rundown efficiency would own her hometown one day?
Her father glared at her. “This is all your fault, young lady. If you had kept your legs closed or at least chosen a black boy—” He broke off, obviously too angry to continue down that road. “Your mama and me didn’t raise you like that. ”
Once again, a volcano of regret erupted inside her. He was right, they hadn’t raised her like that and she had been a dutiful daughter up until she met Alexei, but he had awakened her until-then latent wild child. Funny Eva had morphed into crazy-in-love Eva and nothing her father said or did had gotten through to her. She had only been with Alexei for six months, but now her short affair was once again coming back to bite her in the butt. And this time it wouldn’t be just her father’s good name that would suffer. This time, everyone in Drummond might lose their jobs because of her.
“Fine, I’ll go,” she said, not wishing to argue with her father, who was at least half-right about the foolishness of her past actions. “I’ll do it for Drummond and I’ll do it for Aaron. If I don’t go, he might get nosy and start poking around for other things to manipulate me with.”
Perhaps feeling a modicum of remorse for sending his daughter into a known dragon’s den, her father relaxed his stiff posture and said, “You won’t have to drive to Dallas. He’s sending a private plane to the Drummond airfield to pick you up.”
Eva stood, feeling too guilty to look her father in the eye. “Just have Berta email me the details. I’ll be there. Now I’ve got a lot of work to do before I leave.”
She made a hasty exit then, but peeked over her shoulder at her father as she walked out the door. He looked like she felt. Grim and sad.
Chapter Five
EVA stayed at the office until one in the morning in order to get things where they could run without her for a day or two. She thanked her stars Aaron was currently staying with her brother, his wife, and their twin daughters all summer in Italy, where her brother was a Foreign Service officer.