Free Conquer the Memories by Jennifer Greene

she thought wryly.
    From those open windows, she had an inspiring view of the mountains, all smoky in the distance this morning. The rain last night, so rare for June, had drenched all the shrubs and greenery she’d planted a few years before. She needed to cut some roses and bring them in, she thought absently. And knew that it wasn’t the morning that was making her grumpy, but worry that Craig was overdoing it by going back to work so soon, even if it was only for a few hours.
    “Ready?”
    She whirled. He could not have looked healthier, her husband in his conservative white shirt with navy-and-gray patterned tie. A suit coat hung over his arm, matching his gray pants. He had on his tough go-to-work expression; a no-nonsense attitude radiated from his lithe stride. At least until his eyes appraised her from head to toe.
    “Now, black and white is very conservative,” she informed him.
    “Not on you.”
    “You don’t like it?”
    “You’ll draw eyes,” he said flatly. “In the next life, I’m going to marry a little mouse with a sunken chest who wears only brown.”
    She chuckled. “Don’t kid yourself, sexy. You’re not going to be rid of me in the next life, either. Not by a long shot.”
    “You’ve obviously had your coffee.”
    “In the next life, I’m the one who’s going to wake up nice and cheerful. You’ll be the meanie.”
    “You’ll still be stuck with me,” he said wryly, and swung an arm around her shoulder as they headed for the car.
    It was an hour’s drive to the construction site. Anticipation increased in Sonia as they neared the project. She hadn’t been there in months, not only because Craig had been involved in meetings in Washington, but because a site where shale oil was being extracted was hardly the most natural place for a woman to be, unless she wore a hard hat and geologist’s boots.
    Craig parked the car, viewing his wife’s antsy movements with a chuckle. “I have this terrible feeling you have a secret wish to run a bulldozer. Are you going to be able to contain yourself while I work through a few things in the office?”
    “What do you pay a bulldozer operator?” she demanded.
    “I refuse to answer that.”
    “You haven’t really told me in a long time how the project’s been going.” She understood the basics. Craig’s in situ processing method of extracting oil from shale was ecologically sound as well as profitable. That balance had always been the tricky thing. And Craig’s method, if anyone asked Sonia, was the only one that really worked.
    “How long are you going to be?” she asked him as they walked toward the two-story office building.
    “No more than an hour or two.”
    “I’ll just wander around, then.”
    “No,” Craig said swiftly.
    Sonia’s eyebrows arched up in surprise. “Craig, I don’t want to get in your way. You know I’m perfectly happy just poking around. Everyone knows me…”
    He obviously wanted her in sight, she thought with amusement. Mrs. Heath met him at the door of his office, her crinkly gray hair standing on end as it always did. Piles of crises had accumulated in his absence, all of which Mrs. Heath politely indicated he should immediately resolve.
    She served Craig a cup of coffee, then he went about the business of resolving. John was one of his geologists; his crisis had something to do with the marketing of nahcolite, a by-product of the extraction process. After that, Senator Brown wanted to discuss a section of the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act that worried him. After that, the director of the Bureau of Mines…
    Somewhere in midstream her husband seemed to realize he was holding her hand. He didn’t look the part of a lovesick teenager, Sonia thought with wicked humor; he looked very much the man in control. Tough and rough and hard and smart. She divested herself of his hand long enough to wander to the window.
    Outside was a barren wasteland of sagebrush with the sun beating relentlessly down on it. It