Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 74597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 373(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
He was drifting, and not in a good way. He’d been numb for a very long time.
“Hey, are you all right?”
His brother had always known when he was on the edge. Even when they were thousands of miles apart, but then that was what being a twin meant sometimes. “I’m fine. It was a lot. He thought he was having a heart attack. Turned out to be his gall bladder. Apparently years of eating chicken fried steak has an effect. But they took it out with a laparoscope, and he won’t even have much of a scar. Doc wants him to take it easy for a couple of weeks. Mom is in full-on warrior-queen mode, so I think he’ll fall in line. The whole staff is dedicated to keeping him rested.”
A chuckle came over the line. “That should drive him crazy. But seriously, I’m sorry you had to deal with that alone. I’ll be out at the ranch as soon as I get back.”
Their family home was a working ranch they’d grown up on. It was part of the business that was more about tradition than money. Malones had been in Texas long before it was a state, and the Circle M had been their home. Even after they’d started making their money off oil, they’d stayed on the ranch. Lots of people would have left the country for the wealth and luxury of the city, but not his father. No. His father still rode herd and fixed fences and woke his ass up before the crack of dawn so they could get ranch work in before they went to the office.
There were times he spent months on a rig just to get some damn sleep.
God, he’d thought he was going to lose his father, and then his father wouldn’t ever know his wife or his kids. He shook it off.
“Good. They would love to see you, but I’m in Dallas and I’ll be here until I head out to the island retreat.” It was why he was here instead of at home, probably cursing at his dad because he would try to be active long before he should.
Unfortunately, corporate espionage didn’t care that his father couldn’t get on a plane anytime soon. The asshole who wanted to sell Malone Oil’s revolutionary tech to a foreign government didn’t give a shit that JT Malone hated the very idea of a corporate retreat. If they canceled it, they lost the opportunity to catch a spy in the act. At least that was the way the CIA had explained it. He really did hate the bullshit that came with corporate retreats. He couldn’t imagine how much he was going to hate one where he had to deal with the CIA, too.
Though it might not be so bad if he was able to get to know that gorgeous redhead. At least if his father was leaving him with a big problem, he’d also handed him a beautiful distraction.
“Whoa, we’re going through with that? I thought the retreat was Dad’s thing.”
“It was Dad’s thing and now it’s mine.” Like most of his world. That was what happened when a person was the heir to a multi-billion-dollar oil company. When his twin had decided to evade his fate by joining the military, it had all fallen on JT’s shoulders. All of it. The business. His parents. The properties. The employees.
If his father had died…
There was a pause over the line. “I’ll talk to Big Tag. You don’t have to do this. I don’t care what the Agency is saying. There will be another chance. You don’t have to do their job.”
Of course he did. If he didn’t, the spy would set another drop location and they might not know where it was, might lose decades of innovation, and all because he didn’t like to socialize. “Look, Mike, Dad’s fine and we can’t reschedule this retreat. Even if we did there’s no guarantee the drop won’t happen somewhere else.” There was a throaty laugh and he glanced back at the bar. She was grinning from ear to ear as she laughed at something Sandra had said. Likely something very inappropriate. He’d only met the woman once before, but he’d heard tales from his brother of how she sometimes gave the big boss a run for his money in the sarcasm department.
“Then I should go. I can go in as you,” Mike argued.
It wasn’t anything he hadn’t already thought of. He wasn’t a spy. He hadn’t spent years perfecting a poker face. He was known for speaking his mind. The last thing he wanted to do was play games.
Unless he was playing with her. Yeah, he could think of some games to play with her. They would involve rope and long hours of worshipping every inch of her skin.