Leaving Necessity (3 page)

I don’t want to be here.

Clara left the rental with the terrible tire behind today, opting to take Uncle Gavin’s giant Dodge pickup instead. As always, he had left the keys hanging on a hook in the kitchen, just inside the back door.

Everything was just as he had left it the evening he had gone out for a walk and ended up having a heart attack just a few blocks away.

Blinking the tears away, she flipped down the visor and checked her makeup. Eventually she would have to quit sitting in the truck in the parking lot and go inside the restaurant to meet the foreman.

Glancing at her cowboy boots on the floorboard of the passenger seat, she once again considered wearing them.

No. She had no idea what this guy she was meeting might be like. If she had to go out to look at any oil wells, she could change shoes. In the meantime, she would stick to her high heels. They were her power shoes, the ones she wore when dealing with a particularly difficult client.

She hoped she wouldn’t need them.

But if she was going to walk into this situation blind, she needed every psychological boost she could get.

When she left Mr. Pritchard’s office the day before, Clara had assumed the attorney would set up the meeting with the company foreman in an office—either the company’s office, or the attorney’s. Apparently, though, Uncle Gavin had conducted all of the business out of his home office, so Aerio Oil and Gas didn’t actually have a company office. And by the time she got the message from Mr. Pritchard about the meeting, his office was closed for the day.

If only she hadn’t crawled into her bed in her childhood room and taken a long nap as soon as she got home, she might have been able to intercept the phone call and arrange to meet this guy someplace other than one of Necessity’s only two restaurants.

Granted, Maryann’s had great food, as did The Chargrill. Both businesses drew in customers from several counties, and were part of what kept Necessity from becoming a ghost town. But they were also two of the places Clara most wanted to avoid.

Breakfast at Maryanne’s meant she was much more likely to run into … people she wanted to avoid.

Just admit it to yourself. You don’t want to run into Mitch.

That particular fear was stupid. Necessity was tiny, with only about a thousand residents. In general, the longer she stayed here, the higher the chance that she would run into Mitch.

But the possibility that he would be here, at this restaurant, right this moment, was still pretty low.

Anyway, for all she knew, Mitch didn’t even live here any longer.

Yeah, right.

The last time she had given in to the temptation to check him out on social media several years ago, she hadn’t seen much—he apparently didn’t use the site very often—but he had Necessity listed as his current home.

Crap. There she was, thinking about him again.

Quit stalling, Clara.

With a final deep breath, she opened the truck door and swung herself down to the ground. Tilting her chin up, she squared her shoulders and slung her bag over her shoulder. Mr. Pritchard emailed a copy of the will to her before he left the office yesterday, and Clara had barely had time to print it out before she left this morning. But she had a printout in her folder, just in case she needed it.

Pulling open the restaurant door, she stepped inside and was instantly assaulted with the familiar sights and smells and sounds. Waitresses in matching turquoise uniforms moved from table to table, the scent of bacon frying and pancakes cooking drifted through the air, and underscoring it all was a steady hum of people talking in that Texas drawl she hadn’t even realized she missed.

Under other circumstances, she might have taken a moment to reminisce.

Instead, almost immediately after she noticed the overwhelming sense of nostalgia, she froze, all thoughts but one wiped from her head.

At a table toward the back of the room sat Mitchell MacAllan.

Alone. Here.

And he was waving at her.

Mitch.

* * *

For the last ten minutes, Mac had been watching Clara through the window of Maryanne’s as she added makeup to what looked to him like a perfectly made-up face.

Maybe overly made up. He had always liked the way she had looked without the stuff.

That’s not who she is anymore, he reminded himself. Not who I am, either.

And he would keep telling himself that for as long as necessary.

Anyway, something about the defiant way she had slashed the color across her lips suggested that she was more interested in adding psychological armor than she was in the cosmetics themselves. The fact that she dropped her sunglasses down over her eyes only added to the impression of someone gearing up for battle, somehow.

He couldn’t see more than the top of her blonde head as she moved from the truck to the restaurant door, but he found himself tracking her carefully nonetheless.

His wave as she moved through the door was supposed to be casual, but at the look on her face, his arm faltered.

Even around her sunglasses, he could see all the blood drain from her face at the sight of him.

I thought she would have been prepared to see me.

For that matter, Mac thought he was prepared to see her.

Never
.

Even as the word crossed his thoughts, he knew it was truth. Even ten years later, she still had the same effect on him she always had—his breath caught in his throat and his heart leapt in his chest, as if reaching out toward her. Part of him wanted to jump up from the table and wrap her in a hug.

Don’t be an idiot, MacAllan
, he admonished himself.

He did allow himself to stand, watching Clara as she took off the sunglasses, scanned the room, and walked toward him.

“Hello, Mitch,” she said when she got closer, her voice carefully neutral. “I take it you’re the ‘Mac’ I’m supposed to meet with.”

Her tone didn’t indicate that it was a question, but he answered her anyway. “Yeah. It’s pretty much all I go by these days.”

Up closer, he could see tiny differences between the girl who had left Necessity all those years ago and the woman who stood in front of him now. Differences beyond just the heavy makeup. This Clara had tiny crow’s feet around the corners of her eyes and faint strokes etched around her mouth—not so much lines as indications of where those lines would end up as she aged.

Her mouth was held more tightly than it had been when he had known her before, and the strain on her face that he had seen at the funeral was still there, though this time he wasn’t sure if it was caused by grief or by his own presence.

“I take it no one clarified that for you?” He waved her to the seat across from him.

“No.” She answered shortly, turning her attention toward draping her purse over the back of one of the mismatched chairs in the restaurant.

She still moved the same way, each action spare and precise. And those motions still held his attention in ways he couldn’t explain.

“I’m sorry about that. I guess we all assumed Gavin had told you I was working for him. I would have made sure you weren’t blindsided with it, otherwise.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew they were a mistake. He hadn’t meant to remind her of the reason she left Necessity in the first place, but there it was, less than ten sentences into the conversation.

Every muscle in her body tensed up, though he suspected not everyone would have recognized it.

No. I have special insight into that particular reaction, dammit.
He’d caused it more than once, after all. But only one time that truly mattered.

Nothing for it but to plow forward. “I’m sure you want to get started as soon as possible, so I brought all the most recent records with me—flow rates, fluid levels, the number of loads we’re selling from each well, how much salt water we’re producing, things like that.”

Mac reached down to pull his laptop out of its case on the floor, ready to start cluing in the new owner. Petroleum prices might be down—hell, they were lower than Mac had ever seen them in his lifetime—but he was absolutely certain that with careful management, he could keep Aerio going.

If he could keep Aerio going, then he could keep a lot of people in Necessity employed.

Though Gavin Graves hadn’t discussed it much, Mac knew that the town was a big part of why the older man had invested in the small oil company in the first place. Set back from the interstate as it was, Necessity was a dying community. When the manufacturing plant had relocated to an easier shipping location, at least ten local families had needed someone to find work.

Gavin Graves had offered that work.

Clara’s next words froze Mac’s hand on his computer, her tone as cool as the icy stare she turned toward him.

“I’m not interested. I simply want to know how quickly I can either close or sell the company.”

* * *

Although she wouldn’t have admitted it aloud to anyone, the stricken expression on Mac’s face actually pleased Clara a little bit. It was fine with her if he felt a touch of panic at her comment. It was the least she owed him.

She hadn’t intended to announce her intention to sell quite so quickly. Initially, she had planned to go through the entire farce of a company inspection, if only to try to figure out what Uncle Gavin had been thinking when he made that a condition of selling or shutting down the business.

As soon as she saw Mitch, though—it’s Mac now, she reminded herself—she had known precisely what her uncle had intended.

He wanted her to spend time with Mitch.

Mac.

Whatever his name was.

Changing his name didn’t change his basic personality flaws.

More to the point, it didn’t mean that she was going to be tricked into wasting her time on this stupid scheme.

Even if it was her uncle’s last wish.

“Here,” she said, pulling a manila folder out of the messenger bag she had slung over the back of her chair. Flipping through it, she handed a sheet of paper to Mitch. “Just sign this for me, we can go over all these…assets…and then I can be on my way.”

The suspicious look Mitch gave Clara suggested that he wasn't likely to be buffaloed as easily as she hoped—as easily, say, as someone who didn't  know her at all.

“What is it?" he asked.

And if she still knew Mitch, he wouldn't let it go. Blowing out an irritated breath, she explained. “This certifies that you have shown me all of the relevant information about the company. You can sign that, we’ll get it notarized, and then I’ll be out of here.”

Mitch leaned back in his chair, leaving the computer in the bag on the floor, after all. “I can’t sign that.”

“Sure you can. We can go across the town square over to Mr. Pritchard’s office, his secretary can notarize it, and we can call it a day.”

As Mitch shook his head, Clara saw a few glints of silver mixed in among the dark strands. Even now, she could remember the feel of it under her hands, silkier than it looked. His skin had always been tanned, but now it was so darkened from working in the sun that she could no longer see the tiny freckles across his nose. She used to trace lines between those freckles with her fingertips, fascinated by everything about him.

Now, she realized, she was staring as if she were drinking him in, as if her eyes had been waiting for another chance to see him, to trace every added line, remember every lost freckle. When she glanced up from his nose, she found his gaze intent upon her, his hazel eyes serious.

God. Now she couldn’t remember what they were talking about.

Selling the business.

Right.

“All you have to do is say that you showed me everything,” she insisted. “Then I can sell this company sooner.”

“There’s only one problem with that.”

“Yes?” Clara didn’t try to hide the irritation she was certain came through in her tone. Mitch needed to know how much she hated the fact that she was stuck in Necessity until she dealt with her new inheritance.

“I don’t want you to sell the company at all.”

I was afraid of that.

Clara didn’t say it out loud, but as soon as she had seen Mitch sitting there, she had expected him to try to stop her from selling Aerio.

The premonition didn’t make any logical sense. After all, he had been the one who had wanted her to leave all those years ago. He had been more than ready for her to go, as she recalled. After all, Clara leaving had meant that he could get on with his own life.

The image of Sarah Barnes’s arms wrapped around his neck intruded into her thoughts, and it was all she could do to keep from snarling. It had taken her a long time to wipe that picture from her mind after she had left—at least, she thought she had erased it. Apparently all it took was one look at Mitch’s face and she was right back where she’d been at eighteen, devastated.

But she was older now.

Wiser.

So what if she had never met anyone who touched her heart the way he had?

She didn’t have the emotional connection to Mitch that she had back then.

Nothing he says can shake me.

Now if only she could bring herself to believe that.

At any rate, she didn’t have to show him that he still affected her. She had spent years in advertising in New York City. She knew how to deal with cranky clients. And more to the point, she knew how to convince people to do what she wanted them to.

It’s all about attraction and intimidation.

She wasn’t about to try to use attraction on him. That left intimidation.

Tilting her chin up, she gave him her best cold stare, the one she used when faced with a client who thought her Texas accent meant she was stupid, or a pushover. “That’s not your decision to make, Mitchell. It’s my company to sell or not, as I please.”

He leaned his elbows on the table, tenting his hands and resting his chin on his fingertips. “I go by Mac now. And although you’re perfectly correct, of course, it is my decision whether or not to lie about fulfilling the terms of the will. I won’t do that.”

She had really hoped he wouldn’t point that out. Drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly, counting to ten in her head before answering. Mitch just watched her through narrowed, hazel eyes, with the same calculating look he’d always worn when preparing to do something he knew she wouldn’t like.

Something was missing, though—the glint of humor that used to underlie all his comments had disappeared. Despite that last week, most of her memories of him were of someone who smiled, a lot.

The lines on this Mitch’s face weren’t smile lines.

If she had been forced to mention it aloud, she would have said this Mitch carried some heavy, underlying sadness.

She would never say so out loud.

Instead, she did what she had done back then, and buried any other feelings she might have in a deep, burning anger. “You’re going to make me go through this farce of learning about the company? Seriously?”

Mitch slowly folded his hands together until his hands were clasped, his fingers interlaced. “I am. Seriously.” He paused, a muscle in the side of his jaw jumping as he considered his next words.

Dropping his forearms to the tabletop, he bent toward her, his voice low and intense. “In fact, I’m going to do more than that.”

Clara waited until he spoke again, trying to ignore the flutters that his nearness set free in her stomach.

Finally, his mouth quirked up in something that she might have called a smile, if it had been less predatory. “I am going to convince you not to sell at all.”

* * *

Clara’s mouth dropped open and she stared at Mac, speechless.

But only for a moment. Then she plastered on a bright, fake smile. “Like hell you will.”

That fire in her eyes, right there. That was the Clara he remembered. Not the ice-queen who had calmly handed him the implement of his entire town’s destruction and demanded he sign it.

This was the Clara he knew—the one he knew how to deal with. Fiery and passionate and emotional.

The thought turned his smile genuine, but only for as long as it took him to remember what happened the last time he had decided to ‘deal with’ Clara.

His smile crumbled as if it had turned to ash and fallen away.

No. Mac needed to remember that he had hurt Clara—hurt her badly, even if he had believed it was for her own good. Anything he did now was only to save the company. He had made certain she left Necessity when they were teenagers, and nothing had really changed.

Clara would be returning to her life in New York soon.

Mac simply needed to make sure that when she left Necessity this time, she didn’t take all hope of the town’s survival with her.

“Want to take a bet on that?” he asked, mostly to forestall her as she began gathering her belongings to leave.

Clara, who had been stuffing her folder of papers back into her oversized leather bag, stopped, then slowly set the folders back on the table. “I’m listening.”

Mac’s mind spun as he sat back in the chair again, working to look calm even as he worked frantically to come up with a plan in the few seconds he had.

How long can I get her to stay? How long will I need to show her how much this town needs Aerio? How much will she need to learn about the business to really recognize what her uncle did for Necessity when he brought Aerio in?

“Two weeks,” he said aloud.

“No.” Clara raised one eyebrow. “One week. That’s all you’ll get of my time.”

“Then one week.” He raised his own eyebrows and held his hands open. “If I can convince you in one week not to sell, then you will keep Aerio and agree to let me run it for you for one year. At the end of the year, we can reexamine the agreement.”

“And if I choose to sell?” Her voice was cool, again. Mac preferred the other version of her.

The real Clara
.

“If I can’t convince you in a week that you shouldn’t sell the company, I will sign your papers and you can walk away.” He clasped his hands loosely on the table to keep Clara from seeing the tremor running through them. He couldn’t let her see how much this meant to him. Not yet.

“And if I don’t agree to any of this?”

Mac shrugged. “I won’t sign your papers at all, and you’ll potentially be stuck with some costly legal fees.” Technically, he didn’t even know if that was true. For all Mac knew, a judge could invalidate that particular provision of the will.

Then again, Judge Quincey Anselm had grown up in Necessity, and his cousin Alfred was Aerio’s engineer.

Clara might not know all the details of the various power connections any longer, but she knew how a town like Necessity worked. She didn’t weigh her options for long before she spoke. “Fine. You have one week. At the end of the week, I’m putting the company up for auction and going home.”

One week was better than nothing. Mac would take what he could get, and use every weapon in his arsenal to convince Clara not to sell. “Agreed.”

She stuck her hand out across the table. “Deal, then.”

As quickly as she had taken the bet, perhaps he should have held out for a full month. Or at least two weeks.

But it was done.

Now he had to figure out how to show her everything in only a week.

Mac reached out to take her hand without thinking about it first. He should have known better. Clara’s touch had always had an electrifying effect on him, and the passing years hadn’t seemed to dim his response to her.

For just a moment, as they clasped hands over the table, their eyes met, and it was as if no time at all had passed. Her skin still felt the same, some part of him noted absently. Her grip was sure, not timid like some women’s handshakes, but her skin was satiny and soft.

By the way she froze and stared at him wide-eyed, she felt something, too.

Suddenly, the next week stretched out in front of him, an endless torture of soft skin and huge brown eyes, of whole days filled with Clara’s presence.

What have I done?