DrillingDownDeep (8 page)

Because at some point during this whole insane encounter,
Michael realized who he was fucking.

Again.

He could feel her short nails against his back through the
T-shirt as she spasmed around his cock, coming as well. He stayed inside her as
they caught their breath. Maybe it was only for a second. Maybe longer.

But then he let her go, slowly, her legs sliding down, her
eyes opening, the only sound in the cabin their slowing breathing. When she had
her feet back on the ground, she wrenched away from him, her jumpsuit half on
and half off. He stepped away, giving her space, and she wiped her mouth with
the back of her hand and shrugged back into the jumpsuit, snapping her bra shut
in the process.

Hands on hips for a second, he then zipped himself up as
well.

And it was only then that he took in what he’d done.

Not the smartest move he’d ever made, that was for sure.

He waited for an acknowledgement of what he’d just realized.
Most women he could put out of his mind very easily, whether he’d slept with
them or not. All except the mysterious Shelly. And now
her
. Vanny. He’d
lain awake almost all last night trying to figure out why, but it was only when
he kissed her, tasted her,
fucked
her that he recognized why.

They were the same woman.
This
woman.

Once he saw it, he wondered how he had not known right away.
It was just that it was so out of context. They hadn’t sent a private eye at
all, or even a white-collar Transcoastal employee, but a
roughneck,
for
Christ sake.

That was probably why she was so hostile with him from the
minute he got on this rig. That and the fact she was sabotaging it.

After a minute of her saying nothing and glaring at him, all
Vanny and no Shelly, he realized she thought she was still fooling him. But her
coloring and wide-eyed innocence weren’t going to change his mind now.

Apparently though she was planning to go on pretending she
was just an employee he’d fired and then fucked.

Which of course was kind of true too, as bad as that
sounded. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to feel guilty about it. She’d been
with him all the way,
both
times, and she was guilty of far worse
crimes. Well, not exactly crimes, unless the bomb counted of course.

Jesus. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

She broke the silence. “I almost forgot you had a cock
underneath those fancy clothes like every other guy. If I’d remembered it, you
never would’ve gotten the jump on me like that.”

“I’m not sure what just happened qualified as getting the
jump on you.”

She harrumphed. “You probably forgot you had a cock too. So
busy pushing people around with your money you didn’t have to bother with
pushing the
weaker sex
around with how strong you are.”

“I wasn’t trying to push you around.”

“No. You were trying to fuck me. Right after you fired me.
Nice.”

“And actually, I did. With some very competent help on your
end, I might add.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that.”

“Am I still fired?”

Man, she was a piece of work. Fucking him for the files.
Fucking him for her job.

Blowing his mind in both cases unfortunately.

He had a sudden inspiration. “I can’t simply take your word
for it that you aren’t responsible for the bomb and let you stay on the job. I
have a responsibility to my shareholders and to the other employees on this
rig.”

“Yeah, well, if you ask the other guys on this rig, you’ll
find
they’d
take my word for it. But with people like you, what you
think is all that matters I guess. But the fact you fucked me anyway, no matter
how—”

“Maybe I was offering you another job.”

She snorted. For as hot and lovely as she was, she sure as
hell didn’t behave how he had come to expect women to behave, especially around
him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve parted ways with my last mistress recently. I’m in the
market for a new one.”

The snort this time was full bodied and drawn out. More like
a guffaw. “Your
mistress
? Fuck!”

“Yeah. Fucking,” he snapped. “That’s a job requirement.”

She didn’t seem offended. Amused was more like it. “Aren’t
you afraid I’ll blow up your pantry or sabotage your tea parties?”

“No, but you don’t know much about being a mistress if you
think you’ll be having much to do with my pantry or my tea parties.”

“Oh?” She fastened the jumpsuit, asking casually, “So what’s
involved? I dress in black leather and smack your sweet little ass with a
whip?”

Oddly, he was the one who seemed to feel offended here. “In
case you haven’t caught on, I’m not exactly a submissive.”

“Is that your fancy city word for a wimp? ’Cause I’m not
sure I’m taking your word for that.”

The impulse to push her back against the door and rip her
clothes off again just to prove it, or maybe to shut her up, was almost
overwhelming. Thankfully he was civilized enough not to give in to it.

But he was very much afraid he wasn’t kidding about the
mistress gig. God, he wanted her in bed, teaching her a lesson or two…
no
matter who she was.

“You’ve got a smart mouth, Vanessa. Perhaps we should put it
to better use.”

“Bring it on, handsome.”

“You talk tough. I wonder how tough you really are.”

“Tougher than you could possibly imagine.”

“So? Do we have a deal?”

She laughed again. “Mistress. What is that job category? A
step up from whore?”

“Better paid.” He tossed out a sum, winging it here.

“Whoeeee! That’s a lot of money. Nicer name than whore too.
But no thanks, Mr. Big Shot.”

“Why not? You’ve already auditioned for the role.”

“What the hell do you mean by that? You’re the one who
grabbed me first. I wasn’t
auditioning
for anything. I just got sort
of—whatever. I like a good fuck as well as anybody else. You think just because
I’m not a guy that’s not true?”

“Yeah. You’re quite the feminist. Anyway, the offer’s open
all week. I’m evacuating this rig and you and I are going to be on the first
helicopter out. Once we land, you can go where you want, but I’m going to the
Four Seasons and that’s where I’ll be if you change your mind. You know where
that is,
don’t you
?” he said pointedly. “So think about it.”

He’d wait to call her on the Shelly thing.

Until she accepted his offer.

“Hi there, Pops.” Vanny leaned in to kiss her father’s
grizzled cheek lightly.

“Vanessa!” He’d taken to calling her that lately, instead of
the Vanny she had always gone by, and she worried sometimes that he was
confusing her with her mother. But she had enough to worry about as it was, so
she generally let it go.

“Surprised to see me?”

She nodded to the gray-haired Mrs. Feldman, the caretaker.

“Well, yeah. What about work?” He spun the wheels of his
chair furiously, apparently in an attempt to get closer to her as she went to
the fridge, but he only succeeded in making a quick circle with his chair.
“Damn thing.”

“You’ll get the hang of it, Pops.”

“Did something happen on the rig? Why are you home after
only a week?”

She took out the milk and got a glass.

She considered lying. It was what she should have done. But
the bond she and her father shared had always precluded that. Even if she
tried, he would know when she wasn’t being straight with him.

“I got fired.”

“Oh no, girlie,” he said softly. “My poor little girl.”

She sat at the table, straightening its red-checkered
tablecloth in the process, and poured her glass of milk. “Oh stop, Pops. I’ll
get another job. It’s no big deal.”

He wheeled his chair up next to her. “What happened? Were
you still digging around in this whole mess?”

“No, I wasn’t. Honest. But it sort of got back to me anyway.
There was this hotshot on the rig, one of the, well, actually
the
top
guy from the company that bought Transcoastal and I was giving him a tour.”

“Oh no, honey. Did you mouth off to him?”

“Uh, duh?”

Her father shook his still-full head of hair, much like O’Malley
had his balding one when she’d actually been doing it.

“But that’s not what got me fired. Actually, this guy, this
Michael Reynolds, was pretty fair about that. But just when I was starting to
feel not so bad about him, I found a bomb, right in the corner of the galley,
and he was with me.”

Her father’s face lost color.

“He disarmed it before I could stop him.”

“Why the hell would you stop him?”

She took a swig of the milk. “I mean before I could take a
look at it and do it myself. And then, well, once he had, he jumped the gun and
assumed I’d planted it.”

“Because of your relationship to me.”

“No!”

Lying to her dad didn’t work any better than it usually did.

“This is all my fault,” he said. “What is going
on
on
that damn rig?”

“How could it be your fault any more than it’s mine? You
didn’t tamper with those valves and I didn’t plant the bomb and that’s that.
I’m glad we’re done with Transcoastal. Whatever’s going on there has nothing to
do with you and me. We can start fresh, somewhere else.”

“I could never leave. You know why.”

“She’s dead, Pops! Not visiting her grave every chance you
get isn’t going to change that.”

“I wish you had known her.”

She stood up abruptly. He’d never talked about her mother
before. She sure as hell didn’t want him to start now.

He grabbed her hand and she was startled at how white and
thin and bony his felt. “We got to get you well, Pops. We have to.”

“Don’t you worry about me, little girl. You worry about
you.”

Mrs. Feldman harrumphed. “I need to get paid, Vanny. If you
lost your job, I’m not going to be able to come here. And what about your
father’s medical bills? Since his health insurance got cancelled too, who’s
going to pay for those? Because you know your father needs—”

“That’s enough,” her father cut in, sounding firm and strong
and more like his old self. “This is between my daughter and me. You stay out
of it.”

“I will if I get paid, you old coot!”

Vanny smiled and then brought her father’s hand to her cheek
for just a second, reveling in how much she loved this one person. Even if she
never got to love anybody else, at least she had Pops.

“You’ll get paid, Mrs. Feldman.” She dropped her father’s
hand. “There’re plenty of rigs around. With my skills, I’ll get another job, no
problem.”

Mrs. Feldman regarded her suspiciously, but Pops smiled. “My
Vanny can do anything she puts her mind to.”

She wondered if that was quite true. If she had to
put
her mind
to being Michael Reynolds’ mistress, could she?

* * * * *

Vanny spent the first few days she was home making some
discreet calls out of her father’s hearing to a few fellow roughnecks, trying
to feel around for a job on another rig. All the answers came back the same.
Unless she could get a recommendation from Transcoastal and an explanation
endorsed by them as to why she’d left, no other company would touch her.

From the time she had started working, she’d never been
without a job. And she didn’t like the feeling. Bills that seemed harmless when
a paycheck was coming in on the other end suddenly took on an ominous significance.
She scanned the mortgage bill for the ranch house and did some quick
calculations. There wasn’t much wiggle room in how long she could keep paying
it.

When an overnight letter came for her father, she looked at
it dubiously.

“From Transcoastal,” she muttered as Pops looked on. “If
they’re going to sue you, I swear to God—”

She ripped open the letter and read the first paragraph.
“Oh.”

“What is it? I don’t have my glasses. Tell me.”

She read, “‘Upon further consideration of the incident on
the
Treasure Driller
on…’ Yeah, yeah, okay, here it is… ‘We have decided
to reopen the investigation and pending results of that investigation may
reinstate all pension and medical coverage for you, Mr. Donald. Please be
advised as well that—’”

She continued reading, but silently.

“What? What else?”

“Just a bunch of legalese. No guarantees, blah blah blah.”

“Well, now. There you go. Transcoastal is a good company.
Always has been. It just had bad folks running it for this last little bit of
time. Didn’t I tell you that the sale wouldn’t be such a sorry thing? There
couldn’t be any worse set of crooks than the crew that was in there anyway.”

“Jury’s still out on that.” Heading to the computer, she
brought up her father’s banking information, not that there was much good news
there.

“See, things are turning around,” Pops said from his chair
behind her. “Maybe they’ll give you your old job back too.”

“Don’t count on it.”

On impulse, she brought up her own banking information and
looked at the recent deposit from Transcoastal. Her last check. But right after
it, today in fact, there was another deposit, this time from Michael Reynolds.
Of course he’d have access to her banking records from Transcoastal. It was the
sum he’d named to her on the rig. The whole sum.

“Cocky bastard,” she muttered, staring at the bank balance.

It would take care of a lot of her immediate problems. Ones
he’d caused in the first place anyway. Maybe hold them over until Pops got his
pension back and she could somehow get another job.

She should just keep the money and let him shove his
insulting offer up his ass.

Or maybe she’d tell him off to his face.

Or maybe…

She headed to her room.

“Vanny, where you going?”

“To clean up. And then I’m going into the city.”

“But where will you be?”

She shut the door on her father’s questions.

This sure as hell wasn’t something she wanted to discuss
with Pops, no matter which way she came out on it.

By the time she made it to the Transcoastal headquarters in
the center of the “loop” that formed the freeway system around Houston, it was
late afternoon. And no one should be outside in late afternoon in Houston. It
was too damn hot. She didn’t have to glance at the thermostat in Pops’
dependable old truck to know that. She parked in an underground parking lot to
avoid the heat, but had to walk the equivalent of a few blocks in one of the
many underground tunnels that crisscrossed the city to get to the building.

Standing in the blue-marble lobby with the miniature of a
ship in the center brought back uncomfortable memories. She’d been a
Transcoastal employee for years and her father for years before that, but she
could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in this building. The
last time was for her meeting with that creep Crable.

But every time she’d ever been here, even hand in hand with
her Pops as a little girl, the snooty receptionist—whoever she happened to be
at the time—treated her like crap. This time seemed to be no exception.

“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked, in a tone
suggesting she meant the exact opposite—
may you get the hell out of my fancy
building so that I do not have to help you?

“I’d like to, ah…” This was going to sound ridiculous. She
should have just gone to the Four Seasons, like he’d said to, but somehow that
had seemed as if it’d be a capitulation she wasn’t sure she was going to
make…yet.

But she suddenly realized she would never be let up to see
the CEO. There were probably all kinds of complicated rules about who got to go
up to the executive suite and see the CEO and who knew what else.

She started to turn away when the receptionist called out,
“Wait! Are you by any chance Vanessa Donald?”

She turned around. “Huh?”

The receptionist glanced down at her desk then back up at
her. “I have a picture of you here, but it’s from your file. It’s not very
good.” Nice to see some things never changed.

“You
are
Vanessa Donald, correct?”

Oh no. Vanny looked around wildly for the security guards
she was sure were about to burst out of nowhere. Was she even banned from the
building because she’d been fired for sabotage? Maybe they did that. Maybe they
wouldn’t prosecute her father, but Michael Reynolds would prosecute her.

Of course, the mistress thing didn’t fit in too well with
that theory.

But maybe he’d been making fun of her.

When she looked back, the receptionist was murmuring into
the phone. “Yes, it’s her… What? I can’t leave my post. I can’t— Yes, of
course, Miss Prentiss.”

She hung up and came around the big oak reception desk. The
girl was so swanky in her fitted black-and-white checked dress that Vanny
regretted her decision not to dress up. Next to the well-dressed receptionist,
she felt frumpy in her low-slung jeans and sleeveless white shirt over a tank
top-style tee.

“I’m to bring you up, Miss Donald,” she said, sounding
positively meek.

“Up?”

“To the executive suite. Right this way.” She showed her to
an elevator in the corner of the lobby that Vanny had never noticed before. The
receptionist waved a key card around her neck in the general direction of the
elevator door and it opened. “I’m one of the few people around here who has
access to this elevator.” Some of her sudden meekness fell away with the
reminder of her important elevator status.

Both of them remained silent for the quick trip up
fifty-five floors to the only stop this elevator made. The executive floor at
the very top of the building.

When the door opened, Vanny was greeted by yet another
polished female who put her to shame.

“Miss Prentiss!” the receptionist cried in surprise. “You
didn’t have to get up. I could have brought her in.”

“That’ll be fine, Jill. You may return to your desk.” Miss
Prentiss—a stunning brunette with shiny hair piled in a perfect chignon—took
Vanny’s arm and led her down the carpeted hall.

She glanced back as the elevator door closed on a still-open-mouthed
Jill.

“These offices are a touch garish, I know,” Miss Prentiss
confided with a gesture toward the ornate paintings on the walls. “Mr. Reynolds
likes a more modern look, but we haven’t had time to do any redecorating. So
much to do. And we’re only here half the time at most. We spend the other half
in New York. Sometimes London.”

Vanny had absolutely no idea what to say to that. “Oh.”

Miss Prentiss ushered her into a lavish suite, probably
twice the size of Pop’s ranch house. “Is this his office?” Vanny couldn’t help
asking.

“Oh no. This is my office. Please have a seat.” She pointed
toward a bank of maroon leather couches. “Mr. Reynolds is in a meeting, but
he’s instructed me to interrupt if you should arrive. I took it upon myself to
get you up here first before I actually went into the meeting and informed him.
I hope you don’t mind.”

Vanny stared at her. Leave it to Michael Reynolds to have a
Stepford Secretary.

“No, I don’t mind,” she said. “In fact, if he’s busy, maybe
I should come back some other time.”

“Oh no, please don’t do that.” The slightly higher
intonation in Miss Prentiss’ smooth voice was the only indication that the
suggestion may have upset her, or upset her as much as a Stepford Secretary
could get upset. The woman looked at her now as if considering whether she
might bolt. “Please sit down,” she urged.

Taking pity on the poor woman, Vanny did.

“Now, you’ll stay right there, won’t you? If you’re gone
when I come out—”

“He docks your wages?”

“Please, Miss Donald. I’ll only be a minute.”

Vanny had no idea who Michael’s secretary thought she was.

Actually, probably exactly who she
was
. Mistress in
training, job offer extended but not yet accepted, not quite on the hook.

“No rush,” she said.

While the woman was gone, Vanny got up again, hoping it
didn’t trigger some secret alarm, and walked around the office. There were a
bunch of photographs on the wall. Michael Reynolds with a past president or
two. Michael Reynolds with an older man who must be his father. Famous faces
were in nearly every picture. She had known his family was filthy rich, but she
hadn’t really let their influence sink in yet.