“You kind of didn’t tell him.” Her father’s posture had become rigid with anger. “So let me get this straight, little girl. First you moved in with this Russian boy against my wishes. Then you got pregnant. Then you didn’t even tell him he had a baby coming and it was his. Then you put yourself in his sights again. And now he’s bought Drummond Oil, not even knowing you and him have a seven-year-old son?”
When her father summarized the story that way, it did sound really, really bad. “I know I’ve put Drummond in a really terrible position, Daddy. And I’m really sorry. But he cannot find out about Aaron.”
“He sure as hell can’t,” her father agreed. “If he finds out you’ve been hiding a son from him, Lord knows what he’ll do. I don’t know what happened between you two that has him suddenly buying up Drummond Oil and wanting to meet with you, and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to know, because my blood pressure is high enough as it is. But whatever you did, you need to get on that plane tomorrow, and go to New York to fix it.”
“Tomorrow!” she said. “I can’t just drop everything and drive all the way to Dallas to go to New York.”
Her father gave her a small, tart smile. “Eva, I warned you against getting mixed up with this boy, and now look where it’s gotten us. You can and will drop everything. And you will do whatever it takes to save our town, which we’ve both pledged to serve to the best of our abilities.”
“Okay, Daddy, I’m just going to point out that you warned me to stay away from him because he was in your words, ‘fresh off the boat,’ ‘couldn’t even speak English,’ and ‘would never amount to anything.’ I have no idea if he’s officially got his citizenship or how his English is coming along, but you were definitely wrong on at least one of those accounts. He’s made something of himself and now he’s got you, me, and this whole town under his thumb.”
To her surprise, Eva actually felt a bit of pride in Alexei welling up inside her. Who would have thought the Russian security guard who could barely afford a rundown efficiency would own her hometown one day?
Her father glared at her. “This is all your fault, young lady. If you had kept your legs closed or at least chosen a black boy—” He broke off, obviously too angry to continue down that road. “Your mama and me didn’t raise you like that. ”
Once again, a volcano of regret erupted inside her. He was right, they hadn’t raised her like that and she had been a dutiful daughter up until she met Alexei, but he had awakened her until-then latent wild child. Funny Eva had morphed into crazy-in-love Eva and nothing her father said or did had gotten through to her. She had only been with Alexei for six months, but now her short affair was once again coming back to bite her in the butt. And this time it wouldn’t be just her father’s good name that would suffer. This time, everyone in Drummond might lose their jobs because of her.
“Fine, I’ll go,” she said, not wishing to argue with her father, who was at least half-right about the foolishness of her past actions. “I’ll do it for Drummond and I’ll do it for Aaron. If I don’t go, he might get nosy and start poking around for other things to manipulate me with.”
Perhaps feeling a modicum of remorse for sending his daughter into a known dragon’s den, her father relaxed his stiff posture and said, “You won’t have to drive to Dallas. He’s sending a private plane to the Drummond airfield to pick you up.”
Eva stood, feeling too guilty to look her father in the eye. “Just have Berta email me the details. I’ll be there. Now I’ve got a lot of work to do before I leave.”
She made a hasty exit then, but peeked over her shoulder at her father as she walked out the door. He looked like she felt. Grim and sad.
Chapter Five
EVA stayed at the office until one in the morning in order to get things where they could run without her for a day or two. She thanked her stars Aaron was currently staying with her brother, his wife, and their twin daughters all summer in Italy, where her brother was a Foreign Service officer.
At first when her father had come up with the idea of her seven-year-old son spending the entire summer in a foreign country without her, she had balked. But he insisted spending time with a male role model under sixty would be better for Aaron than another summer in all-day camp. Plus, Aaron had wanted to visit his Uncle Steve and his cousins, and he was such a good kid, she found it too hard to deny him one the few big things he’d asked her for.
But now it felt like it had been fate’s way of cutting her a break. She just hoped she could get this situation with Alexei mitigated before he returned in three weeks, further complicating an already complicated situation.
She arrived at the airfield, which was located about fifteen minutes outside Drummond with an extra large coffee in hand and wearing a pair of large white sunglass to protect her bleary eyes from the bright Texas sun.
She parked her car outside the small, corrugated metal building, which held a couple of benches for departing passengers to sit on. When she got out, she was surprised to see Berta’s maroon Lincoln also parked outside the tiny building. And she was even more surprised when she walked in and found her father’s longtime assistant and three other middle-aged black ladies sitting on the benches, waiting for her. Two of them worked in civil services like her and Berta, and one of them was a vice president at Drummond Oil.
“How ya’ll doing?” she asked, the typical Texas greeting rolling off her tongue, despite the fact she was emotionally and physically exhausted and did not at all feel like being social during the short time she had before her flight was set to leave. Still, she was the mayor’s daughter, and she had been trained to be unfailingly polite to the town’s citizens, no matter what. “Ya’ll came to see me off? How sweet.”
But Berta’s eyes were glued to Eva’s yellow T-shirt and red denim skirt paired with Croc flip-flops. “See, I told you we would need to do an intervention,” she said to the other three women. “Well, come on then. We don’t have much time.”
And before Eva could protest, the four ladies set upon her, stripping her down to her bra and panties, and replacing her comfortable clothes with a slinky black dress that showcased her cleavage and just barely walked the line between sophisticated and out-and-out sexy.
They then pulled a cordless flat iron and manicure supplies out of nowhere and proceeded to straighten her hair, which she had been wearing in a large twistout, and paint her bare nails a vampy red. Last but not least, they chucked her beloved Croc flip-flops and forced her poor feet into a pair of stilettos.