Leaving Necessity (8 page)

He couldn’t deny it. “Yes.”

“And tonight? Was that meant to seal the deal?”

“No. Clara.” The protest died half-formed, before he could even get it all the way out of his mouth.

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Sleeping with her hadn’t been as cold and calculating as she made it sound. But if he were completely honest, he had to admit that somewhere in the back of his mind he had thought that maybe if she had an additional reason to stay, she would be more likely to keep the oil company going until the prices picked back up and it was a more profitable business again.

As if I have ever been enough of a reason for her to stay in Necessity.

“You don’t have to answer.” Clara’s voice was heavy. Mac could hear the pain underlying her words, but she didn’t give him any time to speak. “You always were good at manipulating my feelings to get the results you wanted.”

He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that he hadn’t been manipulating her.

But I was.

She sighed. “I’m not angry. I know you always believed that you were doing what was best for me. But that was never up to you.” Standing, she tilted her chin toward the front door. “I’ve got a lot to think about. I think you probably remember the way out.”

He snapped his mouth closed. “I’ll go get my boots.”

She hadn’t moved when he came back downstairs, fully dressed in his clothes, still reeking of smoke. “I’ll go out the back way,” he offered.

“No. I don’t care what anyone here thinks, especially Mrs. Jordan. Leave by the front door. Let the whole town see you.” She shook her head and laughed again. “Anyway, it’s too late. She’s already seen your truck.”

Once again, Mac considered trying to explain his actions, but he could tell it would do no good. Not now.

Not yet.

Without a word, he walked out of the house and down the front steps.

But not out of her life
, he vowed.

Even if he didn’t know how he would manage it, he was not going to let Clara Graves go so easy this time.

Never again
.

Bright morning sun shot through the kitchen windows several hours later as Clara stared blankly out over Mrs. Jordan’s flower garden, waiting for the coffee to brew.

She hadn’t been able to sleep well after Mitch—Mac—had left. Instead, she had spent the rest of the night tossing and turning as she wondered what her life could have been like if she had stayed in Necessity.

Stayed with Mac.

What if I hadn’t let him run me off, just because he thought it was good for me?

Now the lack of rest was showing as a pounding headache.

Oh, wait. I think that’s actual pounding. On the door.

Only one person would come around to beat on the kitchen door with what sounded like a stick—or a cane.

“Come in, Mrs. Jordan,” Clara called. “It’s unlocked.”

“Oh, good,” the old woman said, opening the door and depositing a white bakery sack on the kitchen table. “You have coffee ready. Have a seat, honey, and I’ll get us all set up.”

Lacking the energy to fight what was clearly a losing battle, Clara dropped into a kitchen chair while Mrs. Jordan bustled around, setting out plates with fruit-filled kolaches and mugs full of steaming coffee.

“There, now,” she said, sitting down across from Clara and taking a long drink of her own coffee. “What are you going to do about Mitchell MacAllan?”

The blunt question surprised a bark of laughter out of the younger woman. She ran a hand through her hair and blew across the top of her mug before taking a sip. “I don’t like being maneuvered.”

“Humph.” Mrs. Jordan bit down into a peach pastry and nodded thoughtfully as she chewed. “You think that’s reason enough to run off the best man you’ll ever know?”

Rolling her eyes, Clara followed suit, taking a moment to savor the cherry kolache Mrs. Jordan had put on her plate. “I like my job.”

The old woman waved away that objection. “Your uncle told me all about your job. Said there wasn’t a thing about it you couldn’t do from right here. We got high-speed internet now. You don’t need to live in New York City.”

Clara tilted her head and laughed incredulously. “You are a bossy old biddy, you know that?”

Nodding her head, Mrs. Jordan took another bite of pastry, chewing and swallowing before she answered. “Yes, ma’am, I do know that. It’s one of the benefits of living as long as I have.” She shot a mischievous grin in Clara’s direction. “Along with knowing exactly what other people ought to do with their lives.”

“Okay, then,” Clara said. “What should I do?” She leaned back in her chair, prepared to listen.

* * *

Mac stood outside Gavin’s—Clara’s—door, a manila folder in hand, and took a deep breath, preparing to knock.

It was later in the day than he had planned to arrive. But he had stayed awake until dawn, working through the things Clara had said to him and just … remembering.

He hadn’t come up with a plan until sometime after sunrise, and it had taken most of the morning to put that plan into action. Tracking everyone down had taken him well into the afternoon, and the previous night’s fire meant he had to spend part of the day filling out paperwork.

At this point, he felt almost delirious with exhaustion. Somehow, though, that seemed like the right frame of mind to approach this particular meeting.

Maybe, if he could exhaust himself enough, Clara wouldn’t be able to break his heart this time.

Yeah, right.

Raising his hand, Mac reached out to rap on the doorframe, but before he could complete the motion, Clara pulled the door open. 

“Come in,” she said.

She looked beautifully disheveled, her blonde curls in disarray and her feet bare. Although they had clearly been through the wash at some point during the day, her jeans were the same ones she had worn all week, now streaked and stained beyond hope of repair. She again wore one of Gavin’s T-shirts knotted up around her waist.

Just seeing her made him want to take her in his arms.

No. He had a purpose here. And that purpose didn’t involve kissing her senseless, as much as he might want to.

“We need to talk.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

They spoke at the same time, their words overlapping one another. Mac gestured as if inviting her to lead the way. “You first.”

“Let’s go to the living room,” she suggested. When they were seated across from one another on opposite sides of the low coffee table, she leaned forward in her chair. “You go first,” she said. “I think I might need to hear what you have to say before I tell you what I’ve been considering.”

“Okay.” Mac took another deep breath, then pulled several sheets of paper out of the folder he carried and spread them across the coffee table. “Here are the papers you asked for. They’re signed and notarized, and prove that you spent the required time with me learning about Aerio.” He leaned back into the cushions of the couch. “You can sell the company now. Many of us in town would prefer you not simply shut it down, but that is entirely your right.”

He watched as Clara slowly picked up first one sheet, then another, staring at them and chewing on her bottom lip. His heart pounded as he waited for her response, and he sent up a quiet prayer that she wouldn’t put almost everyone he knew out of a job.

“Tell me why you did this?” she asked, glancing up from examining the notary public’s seal stamped across the bottom.

Mac rubbed his eyes and tried to find the right words. “Because,” he finally said, “you should have been angry.”

Clara’s quizzical glance prompted him to continue.

“You were right. I was trying to manipulate you. I always have. I told myself it was for your own good, or for someone else’s good—but in the end, it wasn’t fair to you. And I gave up any right to try to influence your decisions the night I decided that it was in your best interest to think I had cheated on you.” He shrugged. “Even last night wasn’t fair to you—though I didn’t mean to pressure you, that’s how it turned out. But what you do with your inheritance should be entirely up to you, a decision you make when you’re ready. Not one that you’re forced to when you’re still grieving, still figuring out what’s next.”

Clara listened to this speech without speaking. When Mac fell silent, she went back to perusing the signed documents in front of her. Finally, she stacked the paperwork neatly, and dropped it on the table. “I don’t need that any longer.”

She leaned down and pulled a folder out from under her chair, then handed it to Mac.

“What’s this?” he asked warily.

“I don’t want to sell the company,” she said. “But I don’t want you to be the foreman any longer.”

Mac opened the folder carefully, as if it might hold a rattlesnake poised to strike. “Some sort of severance package?”

She didn’t even owe him that much—and he was glad to know everyone else was going to be taken care of.

“Just read it.”

He skimmed through the first page, but then his eyes crossed and the words swam. “Wait. What does this say?”

I must have read that wrong.

As she watched him blinking in an attempt to process what he was seeing, a slow smile spread across her face. “That is someone acting in your best interest for once.”

Standing, Clara came to sit on the couch beside him, where she threaded her arm around his and intertwined their fingers together. “That paper assigns you co-ownership of Aerio Oil and Gas. All you have to do is sign it.”

With a negating shake of his head, Mac tried to shove the papers back into Clara’s hands. “You can’t make a decision like that based on less than week back at home.”

Clara’s smile lit up her whole face. “You’re right. I can’t. But I have spent the last ten years doing everything I could to leave Necessity behind, and never really managing it.” Her voice dropped. “It’s time I came home. And I
can
make the decision based on that.”

With her words, a tightness in Mac’s chest eased, like the loosening of a vise he hadn’t even realized had been clamped around his heart. As he bent down to claim her mouth with his own, she whispered, “I’m never leaving Necessity again—not without you.”

“I can’t believe I agreed to do this,” Mac muttered, tossing two suitcases into the back of the extended cab of the pickup Clara had inherited from Gavin.

“Bobby will take care of Aerio while we’re gone,” Clara said, swinging herself into the cab on the passenger side. “He can cover things on the ground here—especially now that Duke’s been arrested for causing the Rittman site explosion.”

“I know, I know.” Mac pulled away from the curb, waving at Mrs. Jordan, who was outside watering her garden. “But two weeks is a long time.”

“I have to give my notice at work,” Clara said absently as she watched the tiny downtown slip past—Mr. Pritchard’s office, Maryann’s, The Chargrill, the single grocery store. In the rearview mirror, she could see the whole downtown rendered in miniature over the words “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”

Isn’t that the truth?

It hadn’t been that long ago that she thought she would never see Necessity again.

Now, she couldn’t wait to get back and start her life.

Odd, what a difference just a few days could make.

With one hand she reached over to twine her fingers through Mac’s, and glanced up to find him smiling at her.

“Hi,” he said softly.

“Hey.”

The sudden thump of the truck on the road caused Mac to curse and grab the steering wheel with both hands. Slowly, he pulled over to the side of the road.

“We don’t have time for a flat tire,” he said, glancing at the clock.

“I’ll get it,” Clara said as she opened her door and prepared to swing down to the ground.

“I’ll take care of it,” Mac said, tugging his own door open.

“Absolutely not.” Clara’s wide, teasing grin stopped him as she shook her head. “Step off, cowboy. I’ve got this.”

* * *

There are always more people to thank in the creation of a book than can ever be fully named. Special thanks to Keta Diablo, for inviting me to contribute to a boxed set; I might never have gotten around to writing this story otherwise! Thanks to Clint for the text that sparked the title and the idea, and for information about life in small oil and gas. Enormous thanks to the glorious Eli Constant for creating the most perfect cover I could imagine. To Amber for late-night hilarity and proofreading, and to Anita for last-minute proofreading. To Kim for being an amazing beta reader. To my family, for love and support above and beyond anything humanly reasonable. To Lateia for continued WD plans and reminders of what’s really important. To Deb for reminders not to hide. To Erin for word-counts and PMing galore. To Mark for movies and conversation. To Gary and Lisa for parties when I need them. To all the Blazing Indies: y’all keep my steady. I love you all.