Leaving Necessity Read online

Like she bolted ten years ago.

  A glimpse of her profile showed pale skin, much paler than she had been when he had known her. The result of a decade in New York City, probably—not as much sun up there. Plus losing her uncle. She wasn’t crying now like she had in the church, but she looked drawn. Worn. For all that people in town gossiped about the fact that she never came back to Necessity to visit, Mac knew Clara loved her uncle with all her heart.

  Much more than she liked Necessity.

  Certainly more than she had ever loved Mac.

  Rolling his eyes at the maudlin direction his thoughts were taking, Mac pulled out a chair and took a seat on the back row, almost directly behind Clara, where she was less likely to catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of her eye.

  Turning cowardly in your old age, Mac?

  Maybe, he admitted to himself.

  He would have to talk to her eventually. But not until he had some idea of whether he and his crews would even have jobs tomorrow. That meant sitting through the reading of the will.

  So here he was, seated in the back row like a coward, as if he hadn’t spent the last decade learning to live just fine without Clara Graves in his life. He even managed to sit up straight, as if the sight of her didn’t still tear him up inside.

  Yeah. He would have to talk to her eventually.

  But he didn’t have to tell her anything about himself—nothing that mattered, anyway.

  Never again.

  Chapter Three

  I’ve inherited an oil company?

  Maybe she had misheard. After all, her attention had drifted away a little in the midst of a long list of small assets Uncle Gavin had left to friends. Not family, though—Clara and Gavin were each the only family the other had.

  Her eyes had misted up a bit at that thought, until she was jerked out of her thoughts by the sound of her name and something that sounded suspiciously like a business name with “oil and gas” in it.

  Clara stared at the attorney sitting behind a desk at the front of the room, and had to remind herself to close her mouth before she spoke up to interrupt the older man’s reading of the will, waving her hand in the air a little to catch his attention. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pritchard. Could you back up a little?”

  He blinked at her from behind rounded glasses. “Certainly, Ms. Graves. What part should I repeat?” Clara had known John Pritchard for most of her life, and even when she was a child, he had called her “Ms. Graves,” as if she were as important as the adult clients of his law firm. She had adored him for that. But at the moment, she wished he were less courtly, and more direct.

  “The part where it sounds like you said Uncle Gavin left me some kind of oil company.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Mr. Pritchard pushed those glasses up on his nose, scanning the papers in front of him, then read the passage again. It said something about the company and its holdings and rights and some other things that didn’t quite make sense to Clara about the company’s vitality and viability and conferring with the company’s current foreman.

  “Just to clarify: that means that Aerio Oil and Gas, LLC, belongs entirely to me?” She tried to keep her voice from squeaking, but she didn’t entirely succeed.

  “We can discuss it in detail momentarily, but almost, yes,” the attorney replied. He raised an eyebrow at her, as if making certain she was ready for him to keep reading.

  Almost? What did that mean?

  Slumping back into her chair with a surprised whoosh, Clara nodded and waved her hand again, this time motioning Mr. Pritchard to keep reading.

  An oil company? What had Uncle Gavin been thinking? This was not what she thought he meant when he told her he had “invested a little in oil and gas.”

  She listened with only half her attention as Mr. Pritchard finished out the reading of the will.

  The rest of it was pretty simple. With the exception of a few mementos and monetary gifts left to people like the woman who had cleaned his house every week for as long as Clara could remember, Gavin Graves had left everything to Clara. Much of it was specified in the will—the house and all its contents other than those otherwise disposed by the will, an old Mustang he had restored years before, a new Dodge pickup truck, and several bank accounts—but the document also closed by noting that everything not otherwise mentioned went to Clara.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Mr. Pritchard said, standing. “In the next few days, I will be contacting those of you to whom Mr. Graves bequeathed personal gifts.”

  Clara kept her seat as several townspeople came to offer their condolences, some for the second or third time that day. A cynical part of her couldn’t help but wonder how many of them were more interested in getting a better look at her after ten years in order to add fuel to the gossip fire than their sincere expressions and kind words might otherwise suggest.

  That’s not fair, Clara. She could almost hear her uncle’s kind voice chiding her.

  With a sigh, she finally stood up. “Tell me more about this oil company, Mr. Pritchard?”

  The attorney nodded. “Of course. But really, Mac will be able to tell you more.” He gestured behind her.

  When she turned to look, though, all she caught was a bare glimpse of a dark-haired man in jeans and a cowboy hat as he shut the door behind him.

  “Mac?” she asked, turning back to Mr. Pritchard, whose brow creased in a frown.

  “The foreman. Your uncle didn’t tell you any of this?”

  “No. This is the first I’ve heard of the oil company.”

  “Well, I’ll set up a meeting between you for tomorrow.” Bending to make a note on his calendar, he suddenly paused, then stood up straight. A worried expression flitted across his face. “If that’s okay.”

  “Tell me again why I need to meet with him?” If it worried Mr. Pritchard, it might not be a good idea.

  “The will stipulates that, if you are planning to sell Aerio, you must work with the current foreman of the company to conduct a thorough review of all aspects of the company before doing so.”

  Clara tilted her head. “Is that even enforceable, legally?”

  The twist of Mr. Pritchard’s lips gave Clara most of the information she needed. “Not following the guidelines could allow the sale to be challenged in court,” he clarified. “Although you might be able to get a judge to strike down the provision, it would take time and money that could be spent just as easily fulfilling the terms of the will.”

  “Fine.” She smoothed down the skirt of her black dress before picking up her matching Balenciaga bag. “Give me a call once you have the meeting scheduled? Thank you again, Mr. Pritchard.”

  As she walked out toward her rental car with its mismatched tire—the one she hadn’t yet had a chance to deal with—she tried not to think too much about the next few weeks. Still, she couldn’t help but realize that she had more to do here than she had anticipated.

  I’m not going to be leaving Necessity as quickly as I had hoped.

  But she was definitely going to get the hell out of Dodge—or at least Necessity—as soon as possible.

  *

  Mac had heard his name as he slipped out of the attorney’s office, but he hadn’t turned back.

  Coward, that mocking voice in his head repeated. Shoving the thought out of his mind, he headed out to his truck.

  He had also heard enough to know that John Pritchard would be contacting him to meet with Clara the next day. Until then, he had work to do. Wells to see to, reports to run, problems to solve.

  Pulling his pickup out of the parking spot and onto the road, he headed out to the Rittman B site again. Mac almost hoped Duke was out on the ranch today. He was in the right mood to take the rancher down a few notches.

  Getting into an argument with the landowner wouldn’t do anyone any good, though, and might cause more trouble than any satisfaction he might gain from it would be worth.

  After all, it looked like he and his guys would have at least a few more days of work. From what he could d
ecipher of the legal language as Pritchard read the will aloud—and Mac had gotten better at reading contracts in the last few years than he ever anticipated—Clara couldn’t sell the company until she had thoroughly reviewed all aspects of it. With his help, apparently.

  His stomach twisted, even after ten years.

  Why did Gavin make her inheritance contingent on working with Mac, in particular, to review it? Clara could just as easily go over the financials with an accountant.

  Of course, if she got all of her information from an accountant, she very well might sell the business immediately. Or worse, shut it down. At least now he might have the chance to convince her to keep the company going—to make sure Bobby and Juan and George and all the other guys still had jobs, could still buy groceries and feed their kids.

  If Mac had any sense at all, he would be more worried about the welfare of all the Aerio employees than he was about how Clara might act when they were finally forced to speak to one another.

  If he were willing to acknowledge it to himself, though, he’d have to admit that everything about this situation tied him in knots. For the first time ever, he almost wished he hadn’t accepted this position in the first place.

  The fact that Clara was the owner’s niece had been the only reason Mac had hesitated at all when Gavin offered him the job running Aerio’s crews. He didn’t know how much Clara had told her uncle about the reason she lit out of Necessity, but Gavin Graves was no fool. He knew that Mac had something to do with Clara’s decision to leave and never come back.

  Yet Gavin had never brought up the past. In fact, he had never hesitated to talk about his niece in perfectly normal tones—about Clara’s life in New York, her job at the advertising agency, the trips he took to visit her every few months.

  Meeting with Clara will be fine. We are both adults now. Our breakup was a decade ago. We have both had plenty of time to move on.

  And he would just keep telling himself that for as long as he needed to.

  Besides, he had more important things to do right now than worry about Clara. Like take care of a burned-out pump motor.

  He only hoped it would be enough to keep him distracted from thinking about tomorrow’s meeting with his high-school sweetheart, the only girl he’d ever considered marrying.

  As if anything could ever be that distracting.

  Chapter Four

  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.”