Kitabı oxu: «Millionaire on Her Doorstep»

Chapter One

“You’re not going to use that thing on me!” Horrified. Adam stared at his aunt Justine as though he was certain the woman had lost her mind. The tall redhead had worked as an R.N. in Ruidoso’s medical clinic for years and was famed for her gentle, expert care with patients. But at the moment, Adam thought she looked more like a perfect assistant for Dr. Frankenstein.

The older woman pulled the trigger on the electric machine in her hand and the jigsaw blade buzzed loudly. “I know it looks like something I pulled off a carpenter’s truck, but believe me, if you want that cast off your leg sometime before lunch, you’ll have to trust me. Otherwise, I’ll have to get out the old handsaw.”

His eyes riveted on the buzzing blade, he asked, “You can’t put something on the plaster to melt it off? Water? Bourbon? Acid?”

She chuckled. “You big, strong men are all alike. Scared to death of a little needle. Keel over in a dead faint at the first sign of blood. If it was left up to you males to have the babies, the world population would quickly dwindle.”

Justine grabbed his foot and propped the blob of white plaster against her thigh. Adam clutched the edges of the examining table and braced himself for what was to come.

“If it was left up to me...” He stopped, his breath lodged in his throat as Justine guided the blade into the cast. White dust boiled as the saw ate through the chalky material.

“If what was left up to you?” his aunt prompted as she guided the blade up and over the region of his ankle.

Trying not to think of his newly healed bone being cut in half, Adam said, “The world population would be zero. I don’t ever intend to have kids.”

Justine made a clucking noise of disapproval. “Your mother would kick you in the rear if she could hear you.”

“She probably would,” Adam agreed. “But I’ve told her Anna and Ivy can give her grandchildren, No need to count on me to keep the Murdock and Sanders bloodlines going.”

With the cast cut from one end to the other, Justine set the electric saw aside and carefully pried the plaster away from his foot Adam was relieved to finally see his ankle and foot were still intact after six long weeks of imprisonment.

She rubbed her hand over his ankle and the top of his foot, then seemingly satisfied he was healed, she smiled up at him. “You have a thing against babies and children?” Justine asked him.

“Actually, I like kids. But having them without a wife doesn’t work well. And I don’t want one of those. I don’t want a woman telling me when to get up, when to eat, when to go to bed, how to spend my time or money.”

With her hands on her hips, his aunt stepped back and pinned him with an admonishing look. “You’ve never had a wife. What makes you think we do all those things?”

He let out a tiresome groan. Justine and his mother, Chloe, were sisters. In all likelihood, this conversation would be discussed between the two of them. He really should make an effort to choose his words more wisely. But why bother? His mother already knew his feelings on the matter.

“Oh, I hear things from my married buddies. And I’ve had a few girlfriends who gave me plenty of clues as to what it would be like to have a woman permanently attached to me,” he told her. Then with a grimace, he swiped a hand through his dark auburn hair. The loose wave flopped once again on his forehead. “That’s not to say I think marriage is a bad thing. After all, Charlie seems to love being a husband and father. And now my sister, Anna, is walking around in a fog of wedded bliss. But I’m convinced none of that is for me.”

Justine tapped a forefinger against her chin as she carefully studied her nephew. “I’ve never been one to meddle in your life, Adam.”

“So don’t spoil your record by doing it now,” he retorted.

Ignoring his tone of warning, Justine said, “The past few years you’ve gone through women as if they were a stack of shirts to be tried on for size.”

Adam snorted. “That’s right. And none of them fitted.”

Justine sighed. “I know you don’t believe it, Adam, but there is a special woman out there for you.”

“No, Aunt Justine, that’s where you’re wrong. All the special ones are taken. One way or the other.”

They both knew he was talking about Susan’s death. But thankfully she decided now wasn’t the time to bring up Adam’s tragic loss.

Justine patted his shoulder. “Don’t get too cross with me. It’s just that your old aunt is more concerned about your mental health than the state of that skinny foot of yours.”

Adam glanced wryly at his bare foot. “My mental health is dandy now that I’m back in New Mexico. And don’t go comparing my foot with Charlie’s. That son of yours should’ve been a football player instead of a Texas Ranger. The profession would’ve been a helluva lot safer, if you ask me.”

Justine smiled impishly. “A helluva lot,” she agreed, then pointed to his newly mended bones. “But it appears to me that being an oilman isn’t all that safe, either. I can’t ever remember Charlie going around on crutches for six weeks.”

Leaning forward, Adam gave the vinyl padding on the examining table a loud slap. “You just made a good point, Aunt Justine. Being an oilman didn’t cause my ankle to get broken. A woman did this to me!”

One of Justine’s brows arched with wry amusement. “Really? I thought you got hurt on the job.”

Adam shot her a tired look. “It was on the job! The woman was crazy....” He broke off with a shake of his head, and Justine laughed. “Oh, go get the doctor, would you? I’m supposed to meet Dad in twenty minutes.”

Laughing softly, she turned to leave the examining room. “Okay, I’ll let you off the hook this time. But one of these days I want to hear how you actually broke that ankle.”

When Adam arrived at the offices of Sanders Gas and Exploration thirty minutes later, he bypassed the receptionist and three secretaries, went straight to his father’s office and rapped his knuckles against the dark oak door.

Behind the wooden panel he could hear muffled voices. Good, he thought. The new geologist his father had hired was already here and hopefully ready to go to work. There were a lot of new projects waiting for decisions to be made, and now that he was free of the cumbersome cast on his foot, he was raring to get started on them.

A second later, the door opened. His father, Wyatt, still handsome and dark-headed at the age of fifty-five, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the large office.

“Adam! Come in. I was wondering if you were going to make it,” he exclaimed with cheerful affection. “I see you finally got that damn cast off. How does your ankle feel?”

Adam glanced to his left where a desk and several pieces of leather furniture were grouped near a glass wall. The toe of a heavy work boot and part of a leg encased in faded denim peeked out from one of the chairs, but the high back prevented a clear view of the person sitting in front of Wyatt’s desk.

Turning his attention back to his father, Adam said, “Right now, my ankle is as stiff and swollen as the fat end of a baseball bat. I had to cut the instep of my boot with a pocketknife just to get the damn thing on. A five-hundred-dollar pair of ostrich boots at that! But the doctor says it’s healed and it’ll soon get back to normal. I just hope the man knows what he’s talking about.”

The older man gave Adam’s shoulder an encouraging slap. “You’ll be able to run a footrace in a couple of weeks. And as for the ostrich boots, they’re not nearly as valuable as your neck.”

Adam chuckled grimly as Wyatt nudged his son toward the desk and accompanying chairs. “Come on. I want you to meet our new geologist. I believe you two are going to work wonders together.”

The chair slowly swiveled to face the two men, and Adam instantly halted in his tracks.

“You!”

He very nearly shouted the one word as the woman rose gracefully to her feet. She was exactly as he remembered. Tall, long-legged, with curves that were full and lusty. Her long brown hair was thick and coarse and streaked by too much time in the sun. At the moment, it was braided in the same way his mother braided the tails of her horses before a muddy race.

“You two know each other?” Wyatt asked. With a puzzled frown, he glanced from his son to the woman he’d just invited into the company.

“This is your son?” she asked Wyatt in a voice as husky as Adam remembered.

His eyes traveled from the rope of hair lying against the jut of one breast to the look of disbelief on her face. “As if you didn’t already know!” Adam drawled mockingly.

Ignoring him, she turned dark brown eyes on Wyatt. “I thought your name was Sanders.”

“It is.” the older man assured her.

She looked at Adam, and he suddenly felt as if a boot heel had landed in the middle of his gut.

“Down in South America, you were introduced to me as Adam Murdock,” she said, her voice full of confusion.

“I am Adam Murdock,” he snarled. “Adam Murdock Sanders. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t know.”

“Adam!” Wyatt exclaimed. “What’s the matter with you? Ms. York hasn’t done anything to you!”

“The hell she hasn’t! She very nearly killed me. She put me in the hospital and my foot in a cast for more than six weeks!”

Sparks flew from Maureen York’s dark eyes as she pinned him with a glare that would have withered a lesser man. “I didn’t do anything to you! You did it to yourself!”

“Sure. I’m the one who swerved to miss that damn dog!”

Her brows shot up with indignation. “Would you have had me kill it?”

“That would’ve been a helluva lot better than killing me!”

A deep shade of rose spread across her high cheekbones. “Nothing would’ve happened to you if you’d been wearing your seat belt. Like I told you to in the first place. But no. You had to play macho man and—”

“I wouldn’t have—”

“Whoa! Whoa now!” Wyatt shouted above their voices. “I think there’s been a mistake here and—”

“There sure has,” Adam interrupted hotly. “And the mistake was hiring this—” he gestured toward Maureen “—this maniac.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sanders,” Maureen spoke up. “I didn’t realize this—” she inclined her head toward Adam “—this man was your son. Otherwise, I would’ve saved the time and trouble for both of us and told you I couldn’t accept the position in your company.”

Seeing the whole situation was escalating out of control, Wyatt shook his head at her. “Please take a seat, Maureen, while I have a word with Adam. It won’t be but a few minutes. I promise.”

She weighed his plea for a moment, then with a reluctant nod returned to the chair she’d been sitting in earlier. As for Adam, Wyatt hustled him out the door and down the hallway to a storeroom.

“What in hell’s come over you?” Wyatt shot at him the moment the door closed behind the two men. “I’ve never seen you act so rude and overbearing in my life! Ms. York is a damned good geologist. One of the very best. We’re lucky to be getting her. If we still are. Thanks to you.”

Adam deeply respected his father and loved him even more. From the time he was a small boy, he’d known he wanted to grow up and be just like him. He’d wanted to be an oilman and a damned good one. He wanted to be known the way Wyatt was in the business. But there were times he clashed with the older man, and this just happened to be one of them.

“Dad, Maureen York is the woman who was driving me out to the rig site down in South America. She was the woman who wrecked me. Do I need to say more?”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “Adam, you know the woman didn’t purposely wreck the Jeep to hurt you. And I had no idea the Maureen woman you’d mentioned that day in the hospital was this one! You only told me she was giving you a lift out to the rig. I didn’t know she was a geologist or even that she worked for an oil company. I thought it was some girlfriend you’d picked up down there and she was simply giving you a ride!”

“She was giving me a ride all right!” he growled, then seeing the impatient look on his father’s face, he let out a heavy sigh. “Look, Dad, even if she didn’t intentionally wreck the Jeep, she has a list of other problems. Frankly, I don’t think I could work with her for two days, or even two hours.”

Wyatt folded his arms across his chest and leveled a stern look on his son’s face. “All right, tell me what sort of problems she has.”

“She’s reckless. Opinionated. Stubborn. And disrespectful.”

“In other words, she’s a whole lot like you.”

Adam shook his head. “Dad, you know what I mean. She’s—well, she’s a woman in a man’s world. She doesn’t fit.”

“She’s smarter than any man I’ve come across. She’ll be a big asset to the company.”

“Find me someone else to work with and you can cut my salary in half.”

Wyatt’s brows shot up. “You’re serious!”

“Damn serious,” Adam told him.

Wyatt studied him for long moments. He’d seen that look on his son’s face before. Stubborn, defiant, even a little reckless. And he felt as if thirty years had rolled back and he was staring at himself in the mirror.

“Well, I’m serious, too,” Wyatt told him. “I can see you’re letting your personal feelings get in the way of the real purpose here. To get gas and oil from the ground and eventually to the consumer.”

Ducking his head, Adam jammed his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and stared at the toes of his cowboy boots. His ruined cowboy boots. But he tried not to think about that now. He could probably forget that Maureen had slung him out of that open-topped Jeep, too. But could he bear to be around her day in, day out? The woman bothered him in ways he didn’t want to think about.

“I have no personal feelings for Maureen York,” he said bluntly.

“It didn’t sound like that a few moments ago when you were practically biting her head off,” Wyatt pointed out. “Did the two of you...you didn’t come on to the woman down there in South America, did you?”

Adam appeared shocked by his father’s question. “Dad, Ms. York is probably getting close to thirty!”

Wyatt’s expression grew wry. “Since when did a few years’ difference in ages ever stop you?”

Adam had the grace to blush. “Well, maybe she isn’t that much older than me. But I can safely say she’s...far from my type.”

“Good.” Wyatt gave Adam’s shoulder an encouraging pat. “Then it won’t be a problem for you to go back into my office and assure her you’re looking forward to working with her.”

“I’ll do my best to lie like hell.”

Wyatt chuckled. “Trust me, Adam, in a few months’ time, you’ll be thanking me for hiring the woman.”

Maureen had almost decided not to wait another minute when the door to the office swung open and Adam Murdock Sanders entered the room. She immediately rose to her feet and clasped her hands behind her back.

“Where is Mr. Sanders?” she asked him without preamble.

“I’m the Mr. Sanders you’ll be working with. My father has gone home to our ranch.”

Maureen moistened her lips and told herself to remain calm. She’d never been an emotional woman. It was one of the reasons she was successful in spite of her gender. But there was something about this young man that got under her skin like no one ever had.

“Look, Mr. San—Mr. Murdock Sanders,” she corrected pointedly, “I believe you and I both know we could never work together.”

Adam totally agreed. But as his father had voiced a few minutes ago, this was one time he was going to have to put his personal feelings aside. This earthy-looking woman was a highly intelligent scientist. He’d been around her for less than a day, but the short time had been enough for him to conclude she’d known her business.

He walked to the desk and propped one hip on the corner. “I’m willing to try.”

“Because your father is forcing you to?”

Adam tried not to bristle at her question. “Wyatt doesn’t force me to do anything. He isn’t that sort of father. And I’m not that sort of son.”

Looking at him, Maureen could well believe he wasn’t a man to be pushed around. In spite of his young years, he already had more presence than a man had a right to possess. And it wasn’t just his physical appearance. Though heaven knew how the sight of his lean, broad-shouldered body shook her right to the marrow of her bones.

“Yes, I can believe that. I can’t see you bending to anyone.”

Adam’s gaze searched her face for a clue as to where her thinking was headed. Yet somewhere along the way he forgot why he was looking. Instead, he began to take account of her high cheekbones, smooth golden skin and chocolate-brown eyes. Her wide, full lips were stained with cherry-red lipstick, and the bright contrast against the rest of her bare face was the most erotic thing Adam could remember seeing on a woman.

Deliberately clearing his throat, he said, “Look, Ms. York, I realize we don’t know each other that well and—”

“Four hours at the most,” she interrupted.

Adam nodded, then feeling as if the office was closing in on him, he turned and walked over to a small table holding a coffee machine, paper cups and other fixings.

“Would you like coffee? Or there’s a soda machine at the front of the building,” he offered.

“Coffee will be fine,” she accepted. “Leave it black.”

He poured two cups and carried one to her. He’d intended to simply hand it over, then move away. But as he’d discovered in the short time he’d been with her in South America, his intentions went awry whenever he was near Maureen York. Instead, he remained less than a step away from her, his eyes going once again to her red lips. “I...understand you really weren’t trying to kill me. It just seemed that way.”

“Believe me, Mr. Sanders, if I’d been trying to murder you, I’d have found an easier, more thorough way than slinging you out of an open-topped Jeep.” She sipped the coffee, grimaced at the bitter taste, then leveled her eyes on his face. He had strong, bony features, darkly tanned skin and eyes as green as a wet emerald. His hair was the rich color of polished mahogany and flopped onto his forehead in a thick wave. If she had to describe his looks in one word, it would have to be sexy.

“Do you actually believe we can work together?” she asked him.

Adam couldn’t imagine getting any sort of work done while in this woman’s company. But he was going to keep that opinion to himself. Sanders Exploration needed a good geologist in a bad way. If it had to be Maureen York, then he’d do his best to be a professional about it.

“I can forget our first meeting if you can,” he said.

She smelled like lilacs on a warm summer night, and before Adam could stop them, all sorts of questions about her were running through his mind.

“How generous of you,” she replied.

A pent-up breath drained out of him. If his memory served him right, she’d told him she was divorced and that she’d worked as a geologist for nearly ten years. Other than that, he knew nothing about where she’d come from or how his father had managed to ferret her out of a long list of potential candidates for the job.

“I’m trying to be,” he agreed.

Maureen took another sip of coffee. “I, uh, the next day after the accident, I was on my way to the hospital to check on you, but an unexpected call forced me to turn around and head to the airport to catch a plane back to the States. I called the hospital later, and a nurse assured me you were going to be fine. I was glad.”

Back in the hospital, Adam had told himself he didn’t care if Maureen York had the courtesy to see if he was going to live or die. But now...well, hell, he felt like he was fifteen instead of twenty-five. It was downright ridiculous how much better her explanation made him feel.

“I have been...fine. Just hampered with a cast.” He forced himself to move away from her.

At the corner of the desk, he picked up his coffee cup and carried it over to the glass wall. The pineand spruce-covered mountains spread in a panoramic view to the south. Reluctantly, he kept his eyes on their beauty rather than Maureen York’s.

“What brought you here to Sanders Exploration?” he asked. “Six weeks ago, you obviously had a job with a good company.”

Maureen was wondering the same thing herself. She hadn’t been unhappy with her former employers. Their headquarters were based in Houston and you couldn’t get any closer to the oil and gas industry than that. She’d been paid a top-notch salary and the people she worked with had been easy to deal with. But she’d been feeling stifled by the city. And though she hated to admit it, she’d had to face the fact that her life had grown stagnant. She wanted and needed a change. Still—if she’d had any idea this man was a part of Sanders Exploration, she never would have agreed to hire on.

“For one thing, I wanted to get out of Houston. I didn’t dislike the city, but I was tired of living in an apartment and dealing with the fast pace. I want a house with a yard and trees.”

He couldn’t stop his eyes from cutting over his shoulder at her. “Sounds like you want to settle down rather than gear up for work.”

Squaring her shoulders, she walked around the desk and joined him at the windows. “I guess you could say I’d like to slow down. But not in the way you’re thinking.”

His dark green eyes met her brown ones. “I didn’t know there was any other way for a...woman.”

Her nostrils flared as she wondered why anything this man could say or think should matter to her. True, she would have to work with him, but she’d dealt with far worse. So why did she let his little innuendos fire her temper? It was silly.

“You might be interested to know that all of us women aren’t pining to get married. We can have a life without a man.”

“Really? My mother thinks a woman has to be with a man and a man has to be with a woman before they can ever be truly happy.”

Something about his voice, the way he talked about men and women made her feel as if she were a very young teenage girl just learning how it felt to be flirted with by a handsome boy. Yet Adam Sanders was far from being a boy, and she had long since passed the flirting teenage years.

“Your mother must be a hopeless romantic,” she murmured, then turned away from him and settled her gaze on the mountains stretching for several miles in the distance.

And Maureen York wasn’t a romantic. She hadn’t said the words, but Adam had read them on her face just before she’d turned her head away. Well, that was fine, even good, he thought. It was a relief to know she wasn’t searching for romance. It would make their job together so much easier.

“This job will send you to all sorts of places, particularly here in New Mexico. It’s not likely you’re going to get much time to spend in that house with a yard.”

She looked at him from the corner of her eye. “You don’t want me to take this job, do you?”

Fearing she could read his expression, Adam kept his gaze firmly entrenched on the view outside the glass wall. When his father had purchased this office building more than twenty years ago, he’d also bought several adjoining lots to keep any sort of neighbors at bay. To this day, beautiful woods of pine, spruce and aspen grew right up to the back of the building, and at most any time of the day, chipmunks and birds could be seen feeding right outside the windows.

“I don’t have the final say-so whether you work here or not. My father has that right,” he told her.

“That’s not what I said,” she pointed out.

“I think you’ve come here searching for something you couldn’t find in Houston. I don’t think you’ll find it here, either.”

How could he know what she was searching for? Maureen wondered crossly. She swallowed the last of the bitter coffee and tossed the cup in a trash can sitting next to the desk. “Are you an authority on geologists or women or both?”

“I don’t profess to be an authority on anything.” he retorted.

She smiled, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Then don’t try to figure me out. More than one man has tried it and failed.”

That got his instant attention, and he twisted around and pinned her with a stare of disbelief. “Look, Ms. York, I’m not trying to analyze you. I just want to make sure you’re here to work. This may not be like the huge company you worked for in Houston, but we do sink a lot of holes. If you came out here thinking this job was going to be easy, then you might as well head back to Texas.”

She walked to within a step of him, folded her arms across her breasts and looked up at him. “How old are you, Mr. Sanders?”

He frowned as though he couldn’t believe her question. “Twenty-five. Not that my age has anything to do with this conversation!”

“Hmm. Well, I was just amazed that you got so smart in such a short length of time. It takes most men many more years than you’ve acquired.”

Adam could rightly say without a drop of conceit that he’d always found it easy to converse with women, to charm and cajole them around to his way of thinking. He normally had a gift for gab. Especially with the opposite sex. A trait he’d been told he inherited from his birth father, Tomas Murdock, who’d died shortly after he was born. But this woman was not like any he’d encountered before. He wanted to kiss her and strangle her. He wanted to shake the haughty confidence from her face.

She dropped her arms, and his eyes fell to the generous line of her breasts. Beneath the mint-geen cotton shirt, he could see the faint outline of her lacy bra. He tried not to think how she would look without either piece of clothing.

“I guess you could say I’m a...fast learner,” he drawled.

Noticing the line of his vision had strayed lower than her face, Maureen folded her arms back over her breasts and glared at him. “I can tell you right now, the only reason I’m going to stay with Sanders Exploration is your father. He’s a man who’s highly admired in this business, and now that I’ve met him, I can see why. I’m flattered to have the chance to work for him. And I’ve decided it would be foolish to throw it away just because he has a cocky, know-it-all son.”

His brows lifted as his lips spread into a devilish grin. “So this means we’ll be working together?”

“Against my better judgment.”

It was certainly against Adam’s judgment, too. But he wasn’t a man to back away from a challenge. “My dad will be pleased to hear it.”

She smiled then. A sumptuous little movement of her lips that packed enough power to curl Adam’s toes.

“You don’t have to bother saying you’re pleased, too.” she countered.