Black Gold (3 page)

"I'm here for professional reasons," she said vaguely. When she slid into the booth, her skirt floated up prettily and she smoothed it down with her slim hand. Chase checked for rings and saw none, just bright red nail polish.

"From out of town?" Chase asked, aware of his slurred speech. "Reason I ask is, Buddy's Tavern is a little off the beaten track."

"Don't want to share this place with outsiders?" Regina asked. "Keep it to yourself or something like that?"

Chase laughed. "Something like that. Or more accurately, most folks don't want to drive five miles out of town to find it when there's a new bar popping up every week in town, seems like."

"Because of the oil boom?"

"Yes. Local population doubled in the last few years, the town can barely keep up with all the new folks moving here. Got people sleeping in trailers and basements and tents. They're putting up apartments and houses as fast as they can, but it's not fast enough. But bars? They'll damn sure build plenty of those before they get around to churches and restaurants and schools."

The waitress came by and gave Regina a scrutinizing look. "Another Sex on the Beach, sugar?"

"Um, I think I'll switch back to gin and tonic. Heavy on the tonic, if you don't mind. And whatever he's having." She slipped a twenty onto the waitress's tray before Chase had time to reach for his billfold.

"Uh... coffee?" Chase asked.

The waitress laughed. "Not a chance, buster. No way I'm brewing a pot just for you. Might be able to dig up an old bottle of Kahlua..."

"No need," Chase said hastily. "Maybe a glass of water?"

The waitress rolled her eyes, tucking the twenty into her apron as she left.

"So I'm flattered and all..." Chase said. Through his beery haze, he was beginning to wonder why such an attractive woman had picked him out of all of his friends. After all, Calvin was the best looking, and Jimmy had the body women swooned over. Even Zane had more than his fair share of game, though Chase had never figured out what Zane had that women found so irresistible.

"Allow me to speak directly," Regina said, taking a slim sliver case from her purse. She flicked it open with her shiny red nails and pulled out a card.

"Oh, wait," Chase said, his heart sinking. "I should have guessed. You're with that other guy."

CHAPTER THREE

"Other guy?" Regina looked confused.

"Look here, I don't mean to be rude, but let me save you a little time and trouble. I'm not interested." Chase slid out of the booth, or tried to, anyway, but he managed to get his feet tangled and nearly fell on his ass.

"Wait," she said quickly, grabbing his wrist. "Please don't go yet."

Chase stayed where he was, at the edge of the seat. The waitress returned with their drinks, setting the glass of water down hard enough to slosh water onto his lap. It was ice cold, and the shock of it served to wake him up a little. He squinted at the card Regina had handed her, the letters swimming before his eyes.

"You're a talent agent, right?"

"Well, yes...."

"Then let me point you toward someone who actually has some talent. You see that gal up there, getting ready to play?"

Sherry chose just that moment to launch into "I Fall to Pieces," her voice impossibly mature beyond her years, hinting at heartbreaks and hard-won wisdom.

"She's delightful," Regina said, leaning in close in order to be heard. "And I'll be speaking with her as well. But I'd like to focus on what I could do for you. At least agree to meet me somewhere where we... can talk without distractions."

When you're sober
, Chase imagined her thinking, and ducked his chin guiltily before remembering
she
had crashed
his
birthday party. That even now he ought to be back with his friends, shooting pool and flirting with Marjorie, who helped her husband out behind the bar and was quite a hot commodity for a woman in her sixties.

But that was the problem. In a town where the ratio of men to women was a depressing four-to-one—and many of the women were locals who'd just as soon see the rigs pack up and leave, except for the money that came along with the noise and commotion and traffic—it had been months since Chase had touched a living, breathing woman, much less had an actual date. In fact, if he'd known how hard it was to meet women in Conway, he might've tried a little harder to enjoy himself in Red Fork before he left, maybe spent a little more time with the handful of women he used to casually date. Some of the guys he worked with went home to wives and girlfriends on their weeks off—or drove two hours to a casino, or four hours to Bismarck, or five hours to Billings, looking for female company—but Chase hadn't gone anywhere except a camping trip with Calvin and Jimmy during which they mostly talked about how much they missed women. It had been so long since Chase was with a woman that he was having an imaginary romance with a woman who sold abdominal exercise machines on late-night infomercials.

And here in front of him was a living, breathing woman who, if Chase's brain hadn't been completely addled by six weeks of backbreaking work on the rigs and a fair amount of alcohol in the last few hours, was gorgeous by anyone's standards.

She uncrossed her legs, revealing a bit of lacy underskirt and a stretch of smooth, creamy skin above her knee, and recrossed them. He could swear she knew exactly the effect she was having on him. And he didn't care.

"Oh, hell," he muttered, lurching out of his chair. "Fine. Tomorrow. I'll meet with you tomorrow."

"Excellent! What would be convenient for you, Mr. Warner? Would you like to meet in the lobby of my hotel?"

"No hotels," Chase said automatically. He hated hotels, and had ever since childhood, when Gerald decided the easiest thing to do would be to haul his son around the country with him on business trips every time a nanny quit. And they quit often, perhaps because Gerald couldn't seem to understand that their job description did not extend to entertaining their boss in bed.

And that meant that Chase spent a lot of very long days stuck in hotel rooms with only pay-per-view and his home-school textbooks for company. "And call me Chase. Probably best if you came around to the ranch."

"Ranch?"

"It's walking distance from here. There's a sign—well, there used to be a sign, now there's just a sign post." Jimmy was still getting used to the truck he bought himself last month, that was twice as big as the one he owned before, and he had clipped the post on his way into the drive a week earlier. The hand-carved wooden plank bearing the words "SUGAR HILL RANCH" had fallen on the roof of the truck's cab, so there was twice as much bodywork to be done. Everyone had stayed out of Jimmy's way for a while after that. "But it's easy to find," Chase finished lamely. "Ask anyone to point you to Sugar Hill."

Regina was tapping on her phone. "Just give me the address and I'll use the GPS."

"Phone service isn't all that reliable out here. Look, maybe I should just drive into town and meet you."

It probably was the best idea: to meet her on neutral territory. At the Bluebird, maybe, where they served slab bacon the owner cured himself. Or the Tip Top Truck Plaza, where the food was terrible but the company was always amusing. The regulars were men who'd gone bust during the last oil boom, now old and grizzled, whiling away their mornings over coffee.

But anywhere they went in town, Regina would have to endure the yearning glances of every man who walked by. And Chase, even in his inebriated state, was pretty sure he didn't feel like sharing her attention. Of course, the bunkhouse residents would be every bit as likely to find Regina irresistible. The difference was that they would all behave—if not for Chase's sake, then because they were scared of Jayne.

"Naw, never mind. It's easy enough to find. You know the road you drove out here on?"

"Route Fifteen?"

"Yeah, and then you turned left on Pedersen Road? Well, we're another half-mile or so down the road. You get to the creek, you've gone too far. Drive's on the right."

Regina had been tapping the whole time he was talking. Chase wondered how much she'd been able to enter on the tiny screen. She finished typing and slipped the phone into her purse.

"It's a date," she said briskly, shaking his hand. "What time shall I plan to come?"

"We're up early," Chase said. Then he amended, "Most days, anyway. Tomorrow we might, uh, be moving slow. How's nine?"

"That will be fine. I look forward to it."

Chase watched her go, enjoying the way her skirt flared over her nice, smooth backside. Behind him, he heard some of the guys hooting and whistling, and he could feel his face heat up.

"Hell of a birthday present!" one of them called, and Chase checked his watch and discovered his birthday was officially over, and realized he was looking at his twenty-eighth year in a whole new light.

*   *   *

A dark form was leaning up against her rental car.

Regina dug in her purse for the mace she had carried ever since the age of twelve, when she'd first been allowed to ride the train by herself in Chicago. She'd never had cause to use it, but after too many late-night episodes of
Law & Order
she wasn't about to take a chance.

She wouldn't have guessed that her opportunity would have taken place in town whose welcome sign read "Welcome to Conway—Home of the Coyotes—Population 6,200"—but then again, Conway had doubled in size since the oil boom began several years ago. In fact, that same sign had been spray-painted by some joker who'd turned the six into a twelve with red paint.

Of the thousands of newcomers, surely at least a handful were bad apples: drifters, ne'er do wells, men on the run from their past. And it was just her luck that one of them was waiting for her right now.

"That's my car," she said with as much confidence as she could muster, mace at the ready.

"Well, that's a relief. These rental cars all look alike—glad I got the right one."

Regina lowered her mace-spraying hand in dismay. Carl Cash grinned, his white teeth glinting in the moonlight.

"What do you want, Carl?"

"This is a little awkward, but it turns out that the motels in this town are full up."

"Really," Regina said, her voice frosty. She was well aware of the housing shortage, having made her own reservation three weeks ago. She'd only been able to get the room because of a last-minute cancellation when a worker returned home to be with his wife, who had given birth a month prematurely. And the only reason the motel had given her the room was that she'd put all of her professional skills to work: calling every day, being unfailingly pleasant to the front desk clerks, and slipping in a little extra incentive in the form of a crisp bill stapled to her business card and delivered overnight.

Naturally, Carl hadn't thought to try any of those tricks. He might have the biggest talent agency in Nashville—but he didn't get there by going out of his way to be nice to underlings.

"Yeah, it's the damnedest thing. Oil companies got whole blocks of rooms rented out. You can't get in for any price."

"You're just figuring this out now? In the middle of the night?"

"Well, I had Mindy calling around. I thought for sure..." His voice trailed off into a shrug, and Regina winced on Mindy's behalf. Even though Carl paid her well, he would have thought nothing of making her stay late to try to find him a room.

"Let me guess. There weren't any rooms when you decided to follow me up here. Which, by the way, was when again?" Regina didn't really need an answer. The minute Carl heard her vacation message on her voice mail, he would have called Meredith, who had ratted her out. She felt the urge to strangle both of them all over again.

"So I was thinking," Carl said, as though she hadn't spoken. "How about if I come bunk with you? I'll sleep on the sofa."

"No. Absolutely not."

"Only for tonight. I'm sure Mindy will find something for tomorrow. Come on, Reggie. For old time's sake."

Regina unlocked the door, and then reached past Carl and opened it. "If you'll excuse me," she snapped.

Wisely, he stepped out of the way. Regina slid into the seat, her heart pounding. Damn Carl. It had been almost two months since she moved out of his downtown loft and back into the cozy little apartment on the east side of Nashville, which, thank heavens, she'd never given up.

Carl rapped on the window with his knuckles. Regina started the car, staring straight ahead, and inched forward. He walked along beside the moving car, continuing to bang on the glass. She could hear his muffled voice pleading with her.

It was going to be a long night for Carl. Well, what was left of it, anyway; the dashboard clock read 12:42 a.m. He didn't have a ride back to town, and even if he found one, he'd probably end up sleeping in the bus station. Did Conway even have a bus station? Maybe there was an all-night diner. Or a homeless shelter.

Regina's resolve wavered. Carl was good at a lot of things—you didn't get through Harvard business school without a few skills—but he was helpless when it came to taking care of himself. He probably hadn't even remembered to pack a bag.

She slowed to a stop. Rolled down her window a half an inch.

"I knew it, baby," Carl crowed victoriously. "You still want me. I'm your ticket to paradise, you'll see."

He made it halfway around to the passenger side before she floored it. The last thing she saw in the rear-view mirror was a very shocked looking ex-fiancé watching her peel out of the parking lot.

CHAPTER FOUR

Pedersen Road looked different the next morning. In the dark, the trees along the side of the road had looked slightly sinister; she had imagined wild animals skulking among their trunks. The twinkling lights strung around the tavern door had been a welcome beacon.

At five minutes before nine, she drove past Buddy's and barely recognized it. The doors were shut tight and secured with a length of heavy chain and a padlock. Trash overflowed a giant steel can into the parking lot, which held only one vehicle—an old rider mower. A boy of about fifteen was picking up cans, stomping on them to flatten them, and throwing them toward the recycling bin. He had a hell of a throwing arm. Regina wondered if he put it to use on the local high school football or baseball teams.