Undeniably Yours Page 3

  But her.

  Her. Something about her had taken hold of something inside him. And try as he might, he couldn’t shake it loose.

  It was only Thursday of Meg’s first week at Cole Oil, and she already wanted to fling herself out a window.

  She’d woken this morning to formless, inexplicable fear. It had been percolating inside her all day, constricting her lungs with an imaginary iron belt that kept notching tighter, tighter, tighter. Go away, stress, she thought frantically. Please. Let me breathe, eat something, relax, sleep. Function.

  “You’re doing fine, Meg.” Her uncle regarded her from behind his desk. He’d just spent thirty minutes explaining an oil and gas exploration deal that Cole Oil was in the middle of negotiating.

  “I’m trying.”

  Uncle Michael, her father’s younger brother, strongly resembled her father. He had a head full of impeccably cut gray hair, a lean build, a closet filled with dark gray power suits, and a squirm-inducing stare. Meg had read articles by reporters who’d used words like powerful, brutally smart, and distinguished to describe the Cole brothers. All accurate.

  “I know it’s difficult for you to take all this on.” His eyes missed little. “I’d spare you from it if I could.”

  “I know.”

  “But we’re all bound by the way Cole Oil is structured. We all have our roles. I’ve had more practice at mine than you have, that’s all.”

  She nodded.

  His cell phone vibrated, and he glanced at it. “Excuse me for a second?”

  “Sure.”

  He went to work typing a text message. Behind him, through a long bank of windows, the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas shimmered in the afternoon light.

  When her great-great-grandfather, Jedediah Cole, had been thirty-five years old, he’d struck oil in East Texas. Endless barrels of black gold, untold riches, and ceaseless hard work had flowed from that original lucky hit.

  Jedediah had been determined that his legacy, the Cole Oil empire, would withstand the test of time. He’d not wanted the decision-making power that would drive Cole Oil forward to be fractured more and more with every subsequent generation as one man’s shares were passed down and split among that man’s children. So he’d decreed that 51 percent of his company would always be passed down intact to the oldest child. The one who held that 51 percent also served as chairman of the board and president. The other 49 percent of the company belonged to the remaining shareholders, who were still to this day Cole family members.

  Since every previous generation of Cole men from Jedediah on down had had oil-loving oldest sons, the responsibilities had passed along in happy fashion.

  Until now.

  Thankfully, they weren’t about to appoint her as either chairman of the board or president. But her uncle and her other relatives certainly did expect her to spend the next twenty or thirty years working to earn the right to attain those positions.

  Meg caught herself nervously twirling her earring back and returned her hand to her lap. She glanced at her uncle’s profile. Clicking sounds filled the silence as he continued to tap out letters on his phone.

  Michael had followed a parallel path to her father’s. Both had gone to the University of Texas, both had been trained up in the ways of the company, both understood the innermost cogs of the oil business. They’d spent their lives working in this towering building side by side. But because Michael had been born second, he and his two sons had always known that while they would be important men, indescribably wealthy, well respected—they would never inherit the controlling share of Cole Oil.

  That fact had always blanketed Meg with guilt, more so since Michael had brought her here to Dallas. She could believe that he’d made his peace with her father as the head of Cole Oil. But she knew it must be difficult for him to have to accept her—a woman far his junior in years, knowledge, and experience—as the company’s majority shareholder.

  What a joke! She didn’t even accept herself as the majority shareholder. She’d done nothing to earn that kind of power.

  Her uncle set aside his phone and returned his attention to her.

  “I want you to know,” she said, “that I’d give all this to you if I were able.”

  “Not going to happen. You’re my only brother’s only child, Meg.” Determination marked his tone and expression. “I’ll help you. I’m going to look out for you and your best interests, no matter what.”

  She didn’t have anything to say to that. In the whole of her life, she’d never had anything to say in the face of her uncle’s will.

  “It’s quite a birthright. You’ll see that soon enough. I only wish you’d come to work with us years ago, so that this process could have gone more smoothly.”

  “My father and I had a deal.” That she’d had to fight very hard for. “He agreed that for the first ten years after college I could choose my own career—”

  “And when those ten years were up, then you’d come to work here.”

  “Yes.” She’d always suffered from a lack of interest in Cole Oil, a sense that she was meant for something more and different, and a longing to live her own life. Meg could see now that she’d been impractical and selfish to bargain with her father for the right to follow her heart. Following her heart had only ever led her down steep and icy pathways that she bitterly regretted later. “The . . . the ten years still aren’t up.”

  “The deal no longer stands, Meg. He died, and because he died, we need you here now.”

  “I know.”

  He flicked his fingers. “I never liked that deal.” She could see a twinge of condemnation in his eyes.

  The iron around her chest drew tighter, and her pulse picked up speed. She needed to escape. Quickly, she made her excuses and let herself out, her uncle’s attention pursuing her.

  As she approached her father’s office, her two executive assistants rose to their feet. They watched her with the intensity of well-trained dogs waiting for a treat, clearly hungry for her to give them something to do. They were extremely qualified, organized, and fabulous in every way.

  Meg was having difficulty liking them.

  “I need some time alone,” she murmured, then slipped inside before they could begin firing questions.

  Within her father’s office, Panic—capital P—swooped down and seized her from head to toe. She released the buttons on the front of her suit jacket and kicked off her shoes. She went to the desk, rummaging through it with shaking hands in search of her sudoku.

  She couldn’t do this. How did they, any of them, think that in her inexperience and ignorance she could do her father’s job? She didn’t deserve the money she’d inherited or the position here. She’d been born, as simple as that. And her birth had sealed her fate. Her heartbeat thundered. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t pretend—

  Quit it, Meg! Think about something else before you lose it.

  She shuffled to her current puzzle and forced herself to sit quietly and concentrate. “God, come. Help me. Please, come.”

  For long minutes, she tried very hard to do nothing but take deep breaths and think about numbers and squares. It helped a little, but not enough. Her breathing grew shallow, and she started to feel like she couldn’t get enough air. Pins and needles pricked the ends of her fingers, and her whole body began to quake as if she had chills.

  Stubbornly, she wrestled against the anxiety. She kept working the puzzle and making her muscles soften until eventually, her symptoms began to relax their grip on her.

  As soon as she’d reached a rudimentary level of calm, she pulled her little book of Bible verses out of her purse. The verses were grouped together based on theme. She’d not had a lot of cause for the chapters on marriage or parenting, but she’d just about memorized the section on worry.

  She read through several of the familiar verses, some of them over and over, letting them sink into her mind. Then she went into the adjoining private bathroom and dangled her wrists and hands under a
stream of cold water. Feet planted on hard tile, she stared at herself in the mirror.

  Her face looked white and bleak.

  With sudden, aching intensity, she missed her father.

  Gripping the edge of the sink, she started to cry. Sobs wracked her body and tears streamed down her face, falling off her chin into the basin. Her relationship with her father had always been distant and difficult. He’d been an infrequent visitor to her childhood, and when they had been together they’d mixed like oil and water—the bullheaded man obsessed with his career and his quiet, sensitive daughter. She’d last seen him over Christmas, and even then they’d stuck to their roles: him, unable to stop himself from bossing her around; her, simmering in resentment and feeling like she’d disappointed him because she wasn’t (and never wanted to be) the person he’d hoped for.

  Regardless of all that, he’d still been her father, the only parent she’d had, and she’d loved him. Meg wasn’t certain if he’d loved her back, but at the very least he’d protected her. According to their deal, he’d even sheltered her from Cole Oil.

  My father’s gone.

  In response, she could almost sense the presence of the Holy Spirit drawing near, comforting, reminding her that even though she’d lost William Cole, God remained.

  I don’t know what to do, Lord. I can’t see my way forward. Please show me.

  She’d been a lukewarm Christian for most of her life. But after the devastation she’d gone through five years ago, she’d thrown herself on God’s mercy and discovered that He had a lot of grace to offer. Enough even for her. Meg understood with absolute certainty that whatever strength she possessed came from Him. On the days when she hadn’t wanted to get out of bed in the morning, He’d rescued her.

  She’d been doing so much better, feeling so much stronger and more sure of herself in recent years. Then her father had died, and now she was falling again.

  A worried Christian. That defined her current state. Worried. Christian. Two words that shouldn’t have gone together. An oxymoron.

  She knew very well that God was holding out His hands to her through this situation, asking her to trust Him completely. She was trying! But she must not be doing it right. He hadn’t given her a spirit of fear. This wasn’t how He intended her to be. And yet here she was anyway: a worried Christian overcome with anxiety.

  “I’m so sorry,” she breathed, then mopped at her face with a paper towel.

  Her cell phone rang. When she saw Sadie Jo’s name on the screen, she answered immediately. Sadie Jo’s sweet and reassuring voice flowed through the line. She’d called to check on Meg and offer support.

  Meg squeezed the phone, thankful. God had led her through rough patches exactly this way countless times in the past. Just when she was about to have a meltdown, a neighbor would knock on her door, a friend would invite her out for dinner, a loved one would call.

  Then and now she recognized these small interventions for exactly what they were: God throwing her a lifeline through the words and hands of His people.

  Chapter Three

  Just what she didn’t need to cap off her first week as Mistress of Whispering Creek and Head Know-Nothing at Cole Oil: a visit to the horse farm she’d vowed to shut down.

  Yippee!

  Meg arrived at the farm on Friday afternoon ten minutes early. Even so, she found Bo waiting outside for her, standing alone in the little car park area wearing jeans, boots, and a pale blue cowboy-cut shirt. The interlocking initials WCH for Whispering Creek Horses had been embroidered in tan thread on his shirt’s pocket.

  Meg winced inwardly. Apparently the people out here even had their own shirts.

  He held her door open for her as she got out. “How are you?”

  Nutty. “Fine.”

  “I’m glad you made it. Thanks for coming.”

  “Sure.” The nervousness and pressures of the week had frazzled her badly. She longed to sink into a hot bubble bath, chomp antacids, and drown her sorrows in the biography of Claude Monet she was reading. She’d seriously toyed with the idea of having her assistant call Bo and cancel. But in the end, she hadn’t gone that route because, very plainly, she’d told him she’d come. “So this is the horse farm.”

  “This is it. One of our barns, anyway.”

  Meg paused, shielding her eyes so that she could take in the details of the place. There’d always been a barn on this site, and her father had always kept horses here for him and his buddies to ride. But the structure that stretched across the land in front of her—redbrick with white trim and a gabled gray metal roof—was entirely new. A short wing that held the front double doors protruded toward them from the center. Otherwise, the structure formed a long east-west rectangle. “How many barns are there?”

  “Five.”

  She glanced at him with surprise. “All this large?”

  “Yeah. They’re spread out around the property so we can keep the horses separate.”

  Dutch doors evenly marked the front of the barn. The upper sections of some of them hung open. Three horses had stuck their heads through and were regarding them with interest.

  As they approached the entry, tall-reaching trees shaded their progress. Blue pansies lined the base of the barn and also surrounded the two posts that supported a white sign that read Whispering Creek Horses in tan letters. Like everything her father had touched, the horse farm oozed quality.

  “This barn here,” Bo stated, “holds broodmares.”

  “I see,” she said, though she wasn’t precisely certain what that meant. “How many acres does the entire farm take up?”

  “Over four hundred.”

  Another surprise. She hadn’t realized that her father had given up a third of his ranch to the farm.

  Bo held open one of the front doors for her. She passed through, grateful that she’d stopped at the house to change. She’d decided on an ivory wraparound sweater and a pair of skinny jeans that tucked into her wedge-heeled suede boots. She’d have felt laughably overdressed touring this place in her suit and heels.

  The interior of the building welcomed her with the smell of hay, horses, and leather. When they arrived at the main corridor that ran the length of the building, she glanced to her right and came to a halt, startled.

  At least twenty people stood quietly in a semicircle, all looking at her, all wearing light blue shirts that matched the one Bo had on. Her emotions veered downhill. These were the people she’d fired. Would fire in six months.

  “Everyone,” Bo said, “this is Megan Cole.”

  They answered with murmured greetings.

  “Hello.” Meg pasted on a smile and tried not to fidget over being the center of so much attention and, worse, the person who’d axed their jobs.

  “Do you mind if I take you around and introduce you?” Bo asked.

  She wanted to say “Yes!” and book it out the nearest door. “Not at all.”

  Bo led her to the closest person. “This is my brother Jake. He’s the trainer here.”

  Jake took off his cowboy hat and shook Meg’s hand with a firm, muscled grip. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too.” Jake and Bo shared similarities. Same height, same work-hardened body, same shade of brown hair, though Jake’s was longer. But they also shared a glaring difference. Jake’s face held a prominent scar that started at the slope of his nose, ran along his cheekbone, then curled under his jaw. Meg made an effort to look him in the eye while pretending not to notice it.

  Bo guided her along, telling her each person’s job title. He used terms like rotating man, groom, yearling manager, and night man. His employees, four women and the rest men, ranged from a sweet elderly gentleman who looked like he ought to be spending his days in a convalescent home, to a teenage boy who must have come straight over in his mom’s car after sixth

  period.

  She hadn’t felt good about firing these people to begin with. She felt considerably less good about it now that she could attach faces and names to eac
h of them. These people had real lives, and she knew that they counted on real paychecks.

  Despite that they must be harboring caution, disappointment, or downright hostility toward her, every one of them welcomed her with courtesy.

  When Meg had met the final person, the room fell silent. They watched her, waiting, as if they expected her to say something.

  Why had she agreed to visit? Goodness, what a mistake. “Ah, thank you for having me for a visit this afternoon. I appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to come and meet me. This is a beautiful facility, and it’s clear that you all take a lot of pride in it, which you should.”

  The air writhed with hidden resentments.

  Meg’s stomach gnawed. “I . . . I know my father would want me to express gratitude to you on his behalf. As all of you know, he was very passionate about his horses. So thank you . . . for all you’ve done.”

  More painful silence.

  “That’s it,” Bo said to the group. “Thanks. Y’all can return to work.”

  As his employees moved off, Bo drew Meg over to one of the stalls.

  “Are the shirts some kind of uniform?” she asked in a low voice.

  His lips quirked. “No, we only wear them on special occasions. Like when a potential buyer comes to look at a horse.”

  “You wore them for me today?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Because having you visit is a special occasion for us.”

  Her forehead furrowed. Surely not so special that it merited assembling all the employees in their matching shirts? He must have known that meeting the staff would tug at her heartstrings and fill her with guilt. “Did . . .” She re-cinched the tie of her sweater and straightened to her full height. “Did you ask me to come out here today so that you could try to change my mind about closing the farm? Because I’m planning to close it down, exactly as we agreed.”

  “I know you are.”

  “I don’t want to give you any false hopes.”