Texas Fall (3 page)

Riley settled back in his
desk chair and considered the two files in front of him. Which should he look
at first? The contents represented more possible matches to the shale he was
looking for, but he was only one person.

“You need to hire a
manager,” Kathy informed him helpfully from her chair opposite.

“I have managers,” Riley
defended. He did. CH Consulting hired an awful lot of people, so many he had a
department in the tower with Hayes Oil that just dealt with hiring and
personnel. CH itself, though, he liked to think it was just him and Kathy
against the world. The last thing he wanted was someone else in the office.

“I found someone,” Kathy
interrupted his thoughts.

“How?” Riley said. Who was
Kathy to think that she could find him a manager, someone he could respect and
would work with him. The instant reaction died when all she did was fold her
hands in her lap and tilt her head in question. “Who? I meant to say who?” he
lied.

“Tom Hendry. He’s looking
to move away from Santone Corp, and I thought he’d be an ideal fit for us.”

“Why is he leaving Santone?”

Kathy leaned forward.
“Between you and me, he’s never going to have room to become more there.
Everyone knows they’re stuck in the old ways and it’s family first with them.
He wants different, and you could get him now when he’s still hungry for
success. Add in the fact he’s been working trying to build an ethical team at Santone,
and you have a ready-made manager.”

Riley attempted to recall
Tom Hendry. Short and wiry, he had a way of holding himself that was all confidence
and purpose. Riley remembered several occasions at different meetings when Tom
was there and he’d shone in amongst the old, steady oil business families. Hayes
Oil had their issues with Santone Corp. Old Josiah Harrold had gone to fat a
long time back, and his son Josiah Junior, or JJ, as he was called, was just a
complete waste of space. Too much like Jeff for Riley’s liking. The fact that
Tom Hendry had fallen out with Santone gave him currency in Riley’s estimation of
him.

“I’ll call him,” Riley
said.

“Actually, boss, he’ll be
here at ten thirty,” Kathy informed him.

“You, did… you…?” Riley
could argue that this was
his
company until he was blue in the face.
But, hell, Kathy was good at her job, and she knew the business from a very
different point of view.

“Here is the package I
thought we could offer him.” She slid another file, this time a blue personnel
file, across the table. “He scraped through college, but his instincts are as
diamond as yours are.”

Riley took the file but
didn’t open it. To open it was to admit to Kathy that he wanted to bring in
someone else. He knew he needed to; he couldn’t spread himself as thin as he
had been doing. He wanted to spend more time at home with the kids, with Jack,
and this could be the way forward.

“Okay. Send him in when he
gets here.”

Kathy stood and smoothed
down nonexistent wrinkles in her skirt. “I’ll go and get coffee and cake,” she
announced. She left, and Riley stared down at the file with the label of Tom’s
name.

His first call as soon as
she left was to his dad. Thank God Jim answered. He’d understand why Riley was
so hesitant to do this. He had to know how difficult it was for Riley to let go
of any of this. Surely?

Instead he got something
very different.

“About time you took
someone else on,” Jim Bailey said firmly. “You’re working too many hours, and
you’ll drop the baton at this rate.”

“But—”

“No buts, son. It won’t
hurt to spread your workload a little, get a sounding board in, someone with
your instincts.”

“But what if he isn’t as
good…”
as me
, Riley finished internally.

Jim chuckled. “You will
never find someone who you think is as good as you at working for CH. But he’s
young and he’ll learn from you.”

“Young? I’m only five
years older than him.”

“Only five years in age,
but you have a generation of experience. Just talk to him and see what you
think. Oh, and your mom asks if you and Jack could bring the kids over for
dinner, she has a new mac and cheese recipe she wants to try out for Max.”

Max’s absolute favorite
food was mac and cheese, and Riley loved that his mom was making the effort; still,
something had to be said. “She does know he’s the only one who likes that stuff?”

Jim’s chuckle turned into
an outright laugh. “She’ll find a way to put cheese sauce in dessert as well,
you wait and see.”

Riley ended the call with his
dad and checked the clock. Kathy was deadly serious about this if she’d gone
across the street for coffee and cake. That was normally
his
job and the
only time he got away from the office. Still, the break gave him time to clear
some more paperwork from his desk. By ten thirty he’d worked his way through
anger, resentment, and was now on the resignation leg of giving in to having
someone work with him.

Tom arrived, and with
coffee and slice of cake, he was shown into Riley’s office where Riley was
pretending to work. He gestured for Tom to sit and kept on pretending long
enough to push down the nerves. In his head he had interview questions.
How?
When? Why?
But none of them really happened.

There was Tom looking all
fresh-faced and wide-eyed in a suit, balancing cake on his knee and holding the
coffee in his hand. His dark hair was curly and cut close to his head, his
brown eyes warm, and he was smiling. No, grinning. Shouldn’t he be nervous or
something?

He placed the plate on the
desk and balanced his coffee on it, then stood and extended his hand, which
Riley took immediately. “Tom Hendry,” he said. His hand was warm from the
coffee and his tone enthusiastic. He sat down as soon as he’d finished.

“Riley Campbell-Hayes,”
Riley offered even though he really didn’t need to.

“It’s a pleasure to
finally meet you, sir,” Tom began. “Officially, I mean.”

Riley didn’t tell Tom he
should call him Riley, he just forged ahead with the one question that wouldn’t
leave him alone. “What happened at Santone?” Riley asked in response. “Why are
you leaving?”

Riley wished he could pull
the words back when Tom’s smile fell and the confidence that held him upright
slid a little. He looked startled even though he had to have been expecting the
question at some point. Maybe he just didn’t expect it so early on in the
interview.

“Personal reasons, sir.”

“Riley.”

“Riley, sir.”

“Just Riley. I’m going to
need more than that if I let you in here.” He gestured at his trays of files
and folders, at the rolled maps and the piles of mail. “Santone has a lot to
gain from you working with me. You could take the information from here and
sell it big back there.”

Tom pulled himself up
straighter in his chair and looked affronted, but he managed to school his
features to become calm and composed. “The implication at Santone was that I
had hit the glass ceiling. That because I am not a family member, I wouldn’t move
much beyond office manager. And…”

“And?” Riley prompted.

“JJ made a pass at me.”

Riley sat back in his
chair, he’d had no idea JJ was gay or bi or whatever. Interesting what you found
out in a job interview.

“And you weren’t
interested?” Riley asked. He immediately realized he’d asked the wrong way,
that his question sounded all kinds of personal and certainly not politically
correct. “My apologies, I meant, there are no subsequent issues following on
from this? Are you taking things further?” Jeez, was he supposed to even ask
that either? The two halves of Riley warred. On the one hand, he wanted to
march Tom to Jim and offer legal support for anything and everything that had
happened to Tom at JJ’s hands; on the other, he certainly did not want to make
enemies at Santone. In the end compassion and his own innate confidence he
could handle anything won out, and he knew the answer wouldn’t matter even
before Tom gave it.

“No, I’m not,” Tom said.
“It’s not worth my time, nor my money, and I’m not a kid. I floored him with
one hit, and he didn’t come near me again. Although I’m thinking hitting him
just reinforced the whole
you’ve hit the glass ceiling
problem.”

Riley let out a snort of
laughter, then composed himself quickly as he realized he needed to remain
professional at all times. Still, Tom smiled.

“Do you go around hitting
all your bosses?”

Tongue-in-cheek, Tom
smiled as he answered, “Only the married ones in the closet who push their
luck.”

Riley nodded his head in
agreement. “So tell me a bit about your experience…”

They talked for ages, cake
forgotten, coffee cold as they discussed ethics and economies and oil. Riley
found himself relaxing with each passing minute. Tom really knew his stuff, and
he’d be wasted where he was at Santone. Here at CH he could be a partner in the
workload, and Riley would give him the space to follow his instincts. Riley
only really had one more thing to check. He pulled over the closest map, the Alpha
four plotting source map that he’d been putting to one side for weeks as a
to-do item. The site started on this side of the US/Mexico border, passing over
to Nuevo León, and the potential was huge.

With the help of the
private sector, Nuevo León had new highly trained state police,
policía única
,
and they were working hard to replace police officers suspected of corruption, as
well as strengthening the law. They wanted the billions in energy investment
that was out there, and they were courting companies like Hayes Oil to invest.

Riley didn’t unroll the
map, simply handed it to Tom.

“Tell me what you think,”
he said.

Tom hefted the map and
slid off the clip. He glanced at the desk, then at the floor, then out of the
door, then back to the floor. “Can I?” he asked, gesturing at the carpet.

“Go ahead.” Riley did all
his best work poring over maps while sitting on the floor with his legs
crossed.

Tom rolled out the map and
used a tape dispenser and his own cell phone to hold down either edge. Settling
himself in a crouch, he examined the map.

“Wow,” he finally said.
“Seriously? Are you doing anything with this? Because working on the border is
tricky.” He looked up at Riley. “But there are incentives, and Nuevo León has
all the new security initiatives, and the places are open for business. The
fact that the field starts this side of the border, we could—sorry, you could…
wait.” He moved to his knees and peered closer, and Riley hitched his pants and
sat opposite him on the floor. Tom was tracing a river bed and frowning. “You’d
need to—”

“I know—”

“And are we—?”

“Maybe.”

They didn’t need to say
much more; they were both on the same page here. Riley didn’t really have to
make a decision about whether or not to hire Tom. The enthusiasm in Tom’s eyes
was enough for him to put absolute trust in the same instincts he used with oil
exploration and ethical investments.

“The job’s yours if you
want it, pending the usual legal stuff.” He checked his watch. “You can start
in an hour. This will be your first field.”

Tom’s mouth fell open. He was
apparently floored and not afraid to show it. He scrambled to stand, and Riley
used the desk to copy him. Finally Tom extended his hand.

“Thank you, sir, you won’t
be disappointed.”

“Riley. Call me Riley.”

“Thank you, Riley.”

All Riley could think was
No, thank
you,
Tom.

* * * * *

Of course he hadn’t
counted on the Jack factor, the fact that Jack had met Tom in a not altogether
innocent situation. Riley spent most of dinner talking about the new manager,
how Kathy had been right about Tom’s instincts, and Jack grew quieter with each
moment. Riley didn’t put two and two together until they were loading the
dishwasher and Jack was utterly silent and kept looking at Riley with a worried
expression on his face.

“What is it?” Riley asked
carefully. He’d not seen this expression before, and he had to admit it concerned
him. Was Jack apprehensive about Tom having access to CH? Or did he fear Riley
having a young gay guy working with him?

Hayley had her homework
spread across the table, and Riley could see she was watching her dads with
absolute fascination. Evidently Riley wasn’t the only one to notice that Jack
was acting very strangely.

“You okay, Jack?” Riley
asked when Jack didn’t reply. But he did let out an unmanly
oomph
when
Jack grabbed his hand and dragged him out the kitchen door and over to the
first fence to the fields.

“I don’t know where to
start,” Jack began. He released Riley’s hand and leaned on the fence looking
out over pastures, his eyes locked on something in the distance.