Free Firestorm by Ann Jacobs Page B

jeans up. She couldn't help reaching out and stroking the silky skin of his bare back when he sat beside her to put on his socks and boots.
    “You're so big, so beautiful,” she said, tracing well-defined cords of Jake’s shoulder muscles down to where they converged at his spine. She felt each nervous twitch, each subtle movement beneath her fingers. Maybe her touch affected him more than he wanted it to.
    “I’d stay if I could. Believe me, honey, there's nothing I’d like better than to crawl back into that bed and mess around with you all night long.” He reached out and tugged at her hand, pulling her up with him. “Come on, now, get dressed and I’ll drop you off with one of your friends.”
    Kate dragged the sheet around her when she realized she was still naked. To her surprise, she found that her still-tingling legs could support her weight. “I’d really rather stay here.”
    “Not as long as we’ve got a firebug running loose.” Jake bent and picked up the clothes he’d stripped off her not long before. “Here. You want to call first?” he asked, glancing toward the small table that held David’s picture—and a phone.
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    She couldn’t think of anyone closer than Becky who would welcome her gladly into their home. “I have a friend in Laurel,” she murmured. “But I can drive myself there.”
    “No.”

    * * * * *
    Within minutes Jake had settled Kate into his car and was headed toward Laurel.
    They’d stopped at the well to drop off the new drill bit he’d brought from Jackson and find out what progress the security men had made toward catching their other arsonist.
    With determination, he pushed aside the memory of what he and Kate had just shared—and the nagging urge to fuck her again and again—while he tried to concentrate on stopping the sabotage once and for all.
    “Why did you need another bit?” Kate asked, her soft drawl shattering his shaky willpower as it sent a jolt of need straight to his groin.
    “For the new well we’re going to start drilling next week.”
    “You’re going to put in more wells?”
    He glanced her way. “Yeah. We’ll be drilling wells in this oil field for several years, at least.”
    “You mean, you’ll be around here that long?”
    “Would it bother you if I were?”
    “No. I just didn't know you’d leased any other property around here.”
    “We have leases on around five thousand acres, more if the land man’s been doing his job for the past two or three weeks. If the price of crude goes up, we could be putting as many as a hundred wells in this part of Mississippi. Even with prices depressed the way they are now, we can make money on fifteen or twenty if we put them in the right places. Assuming we can stop whoever is trying to put the company six feet under.”
    Kate smiled, that gentle smile that lit her whole face up. “You'll catch them. I’m sure of that.”
    “Yeah. We will. Whatever it takes. The Oil and Gas Board's refusing to grant us any more drilling permits until we do.”
    Kate frowned. “I’m surprised that you've been able to lease so much of the land around here. Some of my neighbors have been up in arms since I opened my place up for oil drilling.”
    “There are some who are holding out. Mostly bigger landowners like you. But in the end, they’ll prove they’re as susceptible to the lure of money as anyone else is. Their crops have failed too many times in recent years. Their land is farmed out, and they Ann Jacobs
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    can’t eat their principles or their long-dead ancestors forever. Everybody needs money, and leases provide it. Oil wells on their land will make them rich. You certainly weren’t the only one to lease us a good-size section, honey, just the first.”
    “Then why are my neighbors being so mean to me? It’s as though I’m the only person within a hundred miles who’s put oil leases out on their property.”
    “I don’t know,” he said, thinking idly