You should visit this area sometime.”
“Yeah, maybe I will.” He figured he’d stalled long enough. “Listen, Mom, I’ve got some bad news.”
“Is it your brothers? Are they okay?”
Striker cursed under his breath at the fear in his mother’s voice. He should have started differently. “No, it’s not my brothers. We’re all fine. It’s your father. I’m sorry, Mom, I just found out that he’s passed away. Heart attack. In his sleep, so he didn’t suffer.”
She was silent.
Striker swore silently. He shouldn’t have just spit it out like that. He should have worked up to it gently. Sure, his mother was a steel magnolia, but even she was bound to be upset by news like this. She might be strong, but she also had a softer side. “Mom, are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s just a surprise. Somehow I thought he’d always be down there in Texas, running King Oil.”
“Yeah, well, about King Oil…it seems that he didn’t disown us the way we thought.” He told her about the terms of the will as briefly as he could.
“I had no idea my father was planning something like this,” his mom said. “How do you feel about it all, Striker?”
“I’m ready to obey my orders.”
“Of course you are. But that wasn’t what I asked.”
Striker tossed in his shaving kit before closing his seabag. His mom wasn’t just tough yet caring, she was also incredibly astute. She could probably sense that he was upset about this turn of events, despite his best efforts to hide that from her.
He loved his mom, but there was no way he was talking about his emotions with her. He hadn’t done that since he was ten and he sure wasn’t about to start now. “Listen, I’ve got to go, Mom. I’m sorry to be giving you such bad news about your father.”
“What about the funeral? When will it be?”
“Funeral?” Striker repeated, not even having thought of that.
“He didn’t want the fuss of a funeral,” Kate said from behind him, startling him. “He had a private burial earlier this week.”
Striker couldn’t believe Kate had slipped past his customary awareness of his surroundings. As a Force Recon Marine, his very survival depended on him being able to keep his head at all times, in all circumstances.
He’d dealt with combat situations. He’d completed surgical strikes in the dead of night. He’d successfully executed search-and-destroy operations. So why was one rich blonde throwing him?
“Let me get back to you on that, Mom. We’ll talk again soon.” Jabbing the end call button, he tossed his phone aside to glare at Kate. “What are you doing in here?”
“I was wondering how much longer you’d be? Our flight leaves in two hours, we really should be at the airport right now.”
“You’ve never heard of knocking before you enter a place?”
“I did knock, you didn’t answer. The door was ajar, so I came in.”
Leaving doors open? Striker never did that. Another sign that he didn’t have his head screwed on straight at the moment.
He narrowed his gaze on her, trying to figure out exactly what it was about her that was getting to him. She was pretty, but he’d dealt with pretty women before. Quite successfully.
She was classy and wealthy.
Okay, those were things he tended to avoid in his women.
Not that he went for trashy girls. But the ones born with a silver spoon in their mouths tended to hit him the wrong way. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why.
He’d turned nineteen during that summer he’d spent with his grandfather in Texas. His grandfather had thrown a big party, big in the way only Texans know how to accomplish. Wanting to show off, his grandfather had chosen a superexclusive country club as the location.
The entire thing had been a disaster as far as Striker was concerned. Not at first. At first, he’d been flattered by the attention of all the girls. What hormone-driven male of that age wouldn’t have been?
He’d been pursuing one girl in particular, Carolyn Sinclair, for weeks. Like Kate, she’d been a sexy blonde with long legs and a lot of class. He’d been dancing with her, real close, when his grandfather had stopped the music to make the announcement that Striker would be joining him at King Oil.
Striker had been stunned. He’d been upfront with his grandfather from the get-go. Striker was following in his father’s proud footsteps and becoming a Marine. No way was he becoming an oilman.
To this day, Striker could still vividly remember the horrified look on everyone’s face when he’d joined Hank at the podium only to contradict his grandfather’s words. Striker had agreed to spend the summer to please his mother, he’d told the crowd, but his plans remained unchanged. Striker was joining the U.S. Marines.
The attitude of the crowd changed faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind.
The girls, with their big hair and even bigger bank accounts, had turned their backs on him. As for sweet Carolyn…well, she’d told him what a loser he was in no uncertain terms, throwing a hissy fit in front of everyone, shouting that the only reason she’d bothered to spend any time at all on a redneck like him was because of his grandfather’s money. So much for her “classy” ways.
Yeah, it was safe to say that the entire thing had left a very bad taste in his mouth and the desire to distance himself entirely from rich chicks born with silver spoons in their mouths.
His gaze settled on Kate. Unfortunately there was no distancing himself from this rich chick. He was stuck with her.
Kate wondered what she’d done to aggravate Striker this time. He was staring at her with those intense green eyes of his. There was no reading this guy’s thoughts. He was a pro at disguising them. But the aggravation, that came through loud and clear.
She shifted her attention away from the brooding Marine and instead glanced around the studio apartment.
She suspected it was a furnished rental. Aside from a glimpse of a few brightly colored Hawaiian shirts hanging in the almost-empty closet, there was nothing much to give her any additional insight into Striker’s character. The only personal items were two framed photos on the dresser. One looked to be of his family—his parents and brothers—and the other appeared to be a beach house of some kind.
The room was all done in monochromatic beiges, except for the bold Native American colors of the comforter on the neatly made bed. Her eyes remained on the bed while her mind wandered into forbidden territory.
Did Striker sleep on his back or on his side? Did he sleep in the nude? She imagined the sheet falling around his waist…
She reined in her wayward thoughts. Oh, no, she wasn’t starting this again. Having fantasies about Striker. Absolutely not. This was where she’d gotten into trouble in the first place.
Closing
