Wildcatter's Woman Read online

  He took hold of her wrists and pulled her arms down. “It was the challenge of finding it I wanted,” he said. “That’s my reward, because I finally caught the carrot that’s been dangling in front of me. Now it’s yours, so you’ll never have to worry about tomorrow again. You’re financially secure for the rest of your life.”

  “It isn’t important to me anymore.” Vanessa tried to make him understand. “I can’t let you give me the proceeds from this well—your well.”

  “It’s too late now.” He shrugged lightly. “That’s an irrevocable trust—signed, sealed, and delivered to you. All I’m entitled to receive are my drilling costs.”

  “That isn’t right,” she protested.

  “Yes, it is.” Race smoothed a hand over her cheek and let it glide down to caress her neck. “It’s never been the money for me. I just want to chase the rainbows. You know as well as I do that I’d pour all that money into another ‘hole in the ground.’”

  “But—”

  He pressed a silencing finger to her lips. “No buts,” he stated firmly. “This strike has enabled me to get all the financial backing I need to develop the rest of this gas field. I’ll be drilling thirty or forty more wells in this area with damned good odds of tapping this same capacity. My company is going to be rolling in money when they start coming in.”

  Vanessa relaxed, some of her concern for the cost of his generosity fading. She remembered now that wherever there was one well, invariably there were several more at close intervals.

  “But I’m not going to stop looking elsewhere,” Race went on, “just because I found it here. In the wildcatting business, you can be a millionaire one day and flat broke the next.” He glanced at the partially rumpled document she was holding. “But you’re going to be secure.” He winked. “You can support me in my old age.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t be too proud?” Vanessa mocked with a deliberately provocative glance. “Not too long ago, you wouldn’t even let me buy you dinner. You swore you’d never accept anything from me.”

  “Yeah, but I can always pretend that it’s really my money.” He grinned.

  “Chauvinist,” she laughed.

  “If you want me to eat my words, I will,” Race declared, becoming serious. “Because my pride had a lot to do with our problems.”

  “I don’t want you to eat your words,” Vanessa replied, but her curiosity was aroused by his last remark. “And I don’t think it was your pride as much as it was my blindness.”

  He shook his head in silent denial while his fingers absently stroked her neck. “When you walked out on me four years ago, I wanted to come after you and beg you to come back. I needed you so much—but my pride was hurt. It wouldn’t let me tell you how much I loved you—how much I needed you. It made me lash out and hurt you in childish vengeance.”

  “I did some hurting of my own.” Vanessa remembered some of the cutting words she’d said to him. “You seemed so impregnable, Race, as if nothing ever reached you—not even me. At the time, I thought it was the money and security that I needed and that you weren’t giving me. But that was never the real cause. I didn’t think you needed me,” she admitted at last.

  “I need you,” Race affirmed huskily. “My damned pride kept getting in the way. I swore I’d never come to you until I could lay a fortune at your feet. That’s why I never came near you these last four years.” There was a wry twist to his mouth. “It was quite a blow to my pride when you came here to tell me about Dad’s heart attack and I was so broke I couldn’t even afford the extra gasoline money to make the drive to New Orleans. I must have been a masochist to take you to my apartment that night.”

  “I thought I was one for going,” Vanessa admitted. “Especially when I saw your neighbor and the souvenirs from other female friends strewn around your apartment.”

  “Were you jealous?” He tipped his head to one side.

  “Insanely so. But that’s also when I started realizing what I’d given up when I left you.” A remnant of that jealousy returned. “If you really loved me all this time, how could you sleep with another woman?” It was a hesitant question, showing the hurt she’d felt.

  “Vanessa,” Race murmured, “haven’t you learned the difference between making love and having sex? God forgive me, but I never loved any of them. I’m not even sure if I liked them. You are the only woman I love—the only woman I’ve ever loved. I made my own hell these last four years.”

  “I didn’t realize how lonely I’d been without you until we were together again,” she admitted.

  “We aren’t going to be lonely anymore,” he promised, and brushed her lips with a kiss. “Will a soon-to-be-very-rich woman consent to be a poor wildcatter’s wife?”

  “Yes…” Vanessa sighed contentedly, and studied him with a dreamy look. “I’m very lucky. A wildcatter has to be the only man who would give his woman her own gas well.”

  A throaty chuckle came from him at her remark. “I have to admit that’s true.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” she wondered aloud. “You said you weren’t going to come to me until you could lay a fortune at my feet. But you didn’t do it.”

  “I was afraid.” His gaze searched her face with a vaguely desperate look. “I was afraid I would be buying your love. And I wanted you to love me, not my money.”

  “That’s why you didn’t tell me.” Vanessa realized he’d been testing her.

  “I was going to, but I changed my mind at the last minute,” Race explained. “I had Dad and the bank’s attorneys draw up all the papers, and signed them so I could give them to you.”

  “Phillip knew about this?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “It was after I told him about this trust fund I was setting up for you that he mentioned you were having second thoughts about our divorce. That’s when I knew I had to find out whether you loved me for myself—and not for the security I could give you. I was scared you wouldn’t, so I had one drink to find the courage to see you. It took about a half-dozen before I could gather up the nerve to go to your shop.”

  “It was the first time I’d ever seen you drunk,” she recalled, able to smile about the incident now.

  “It’s a wonder you didn’t throw me out.”

  “You needed me.”

  “I always have. To tell you the truth, that morning-after was the first time I thought I had a chance of winning you back. It just stood to reason that if you were willing to look after me when I was falling-down drunk, then you had to care about me. That’s why I was still at your apartment, because I had to find out how much.”

  “Now you know,” Vanessa murmured, and moved to shorten the distance between their lips.

  “Now I know,” he agreed, bringing the conversation to a close.