Page 10 of Ruthless Rustanovs
SIX MONTHS LATER
EVA’S father called just as she was finishing the paperwork for the Rodriguez’s home study.
After years of trying for a third child, the two Drummond Oil employees were hoping to complete their family through adoption.
This meant they needed a qualified professional to assure the Dallas-based adoption agency they’d chosen knew they were responsible people with steady jobs and the ability to feed another mouth.
In a big city like Dallas, these things were typically handled by someone affiliated with the adoption agency or a formal home study service.
But in a town like Drummond that only existed because it was home to Drummond Oil, it was Eva’s job to take on home studies along with her many other duties.
These duties included handling student counseling for the local school district, following up on domestic disturbance calls reported by the police, acting as child protective services, and handing out social security checks to the folks who preferred to pick them up at Drummond’s one-woman Social Service and Welfare office.
She thought about not answering when her phone rang just as she was getting up to leave.
But when she saw her father’s extension pop up on caller ID, she knew she had to.
The mayor’s office was only two doors down from hers.
He knew she was in the building and if she didn’t pick up he’d just make the short walk over to talk to her in person, delaying her further.
“Hey, Daddy,” she said, picking up the phone. “I can’t talk right now. I’m handling some important paperwork.”
“That can wait. I need to see you in my office.” Cleveland St. James’s voice rung through the phone line with austere authority.
Eva rolled her eyes, resenting how her father always made it seem like she should drop everything at her “little social work job” and come running whenever he called.
“It can’t wait. It’s adoption paperwork and if I don’t get it in the mail by three, it won’t get to Dallas on time.”
“Finish it up after we meet and I’ll have Berta overnight it for you.”
“You’re going to let me overnight it?” Now he really had Eva’s attention.
Her father was notoriously stingy about allowing anyone who worked for the town to overnight anything on Drummond’s dime.
“That’s why all these small towns are going broke,” he’d said the last time she asked to overnight something, as if every small town fiscal crisis had less to do with businesses closing down or relocating and more to do with frivolous employees.
“Is everything okay?” she asked him. Eva dropped her voice to a whisper, “Daddy, do you think you’ve had a stroke and just don’t know it? I hear that can happen.”
An irritated beat. “Eva Janelle St. James, get in my office. Now.”
Less than a minute later, Eva dropped into one of the brown, leather guest chairs in her father’s office.
Just like the home they lived in, Cleveland’s office was large and stuffed to the gills with leather furniture, hunting trophies, and framed commendations from political, social, and community organizations.
He scanned her jeans and neon-pink t-shirt with frank disapproval but didn’t say anything.
They’d already had many discussions about her refusal to wear a suit or even business casual in her role as Drummond’s only social worker until they finally agreed to let the issue lie.
Eva liked to be comfortable and she wasn’t going to budge on this.
Still, it didn’t keep her father from wearing his blatant disapproval all over his face every time they met during the course of the work day.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Daddy? I mean what could be so important that you’d be willing to break out Drummond’s dusty FedEx account?”
Cleveland heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I keep hoping one day you’ll grow up and realize not everything in life is a joke. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon. Thank goodness we had your brother first or you would be too much of a trial to bear.”
She tried to keep the hurt his words caused her from showing.
She didn’t know why his low opinion of her still bothered her.
It had always been this way between them, him wondering aloud why she couldn’t be more like her brother, Steve.
For a short time, she had actually managed to gain his approval when she decided to get her M.S.
in Social Work so she could take over the Social Services and Welfare Office post from her mother who had held the role for over thirty years.
The summer before she started the master’s program, he told anyone who would listen about his son who was in the Foreign Service program, and his daughter who decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
But that had been before their three-year estrangement and the birth of his, albeit illegitimate, only grandchild.
“I’m a social worker, Daddy. I realize everything’s not a joke,” she said. “But you have to have a sense of humor to do this job.”
“Your mother always took her duties very seriously. None of this waiting until the last minute to get important forms in the mail, no asking if I had a stroke when I told her I needed to meet with her about something important.”
Only respect for her father kept Eva from rolling her eyes.
Yes, the horror that her parents, two of the most serious people on the planet, had given birth to one equally serious son and a big-mouthed, bright-color-loving daughter who had a son out of wedlock but still never knew when to stop joking.
She wondered if she and her father couldn’t just once have a meeting during which he didn’t compare her to her super-organized and efficient saint of a mother.
“Daddy, is there something I can help you with? Because I’ve still got to get the social security checks ready for tomorrow.”
His lips thinned. “Yes, there is something you could help me with. You can help me understand why you’ve been messing around with Alexei Rustanov again?”
Eva broke into a cold sweat at the mention of his name. “I haven’t been messing around with—” She couldn’t even say his name aloud. “Can I ask where all this is coming from?”
“If you haven’t been messing around with him, why did his company just decide to buy Drummond Oil?”
Eva’s heart clenched. He wouldn’t. Not because of one kiss and five minutes of dry humping. But dread was already pooling in her stomach as she said, “I’m sure that doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
Her father lifted his thick eyebrows. “Really? Because when I tried to set up a meeting with his people about the future of Drummond’s main business and the source of seventy-percent of our town’s funding, I received an interesting call back from his executive assistant.
He said Rustanov would take the meeting, but only if it was with you. ”
Eva shook her head. “No, I can’t. I can’t meet with him!”
Her father leaned forward, his face all business.
“The taxes Drummond Oil and their employees pay are what funds your salary and mine. They employ the vast majority of the adults who live here and they’re responsible for eighty-percent of all charitable donations.
If Rustanov decides to suddenly withdraw his support or, heaven forbid, move the Drummond Oil headquarters to another location, this town will die. ”
Eva’s throat had gone completely dry. Though she wanted more than anything to say she couldn’t face Alexei again, she knew she would have to.
Her father wasn’t exaggerating. Drummond Oil really was the life-blood of the town.
If Rustanov moved the Drummond Oil headquarters, the majority of her neighbors, many who she also counted as friends, would be out of a job.
This included the Rodríguezes who would have to put off their adoption until they could find another source of income.
Eva could always find another social worker position, in fact she had been thinking about doing just that for a few years now that she had enough money in savings for she and Aaron to live comfortably on.
But Drummond Oil had always been a friends-and-family kind of business.
Many of the people who worked there had inherited their jobs from their parents, just like she’d inherited her job from her mother.
But unlike Eva, many of the employees hadn’t bothered to get a degree prior to taking on the administrative work needed to run the offices of a company with wells in several parts of the state.
Drummond’s well had gone dry a couple decades ago, but the company’s namesake family had decided to keep their headquarters in Drummond because it was central to all their other wells, and because the family still had a home in the area.
One of the reasons her father was such a local hero was after the family sold Drummond Oil to a larger oil company, he convinced the new company to keep the headquarters in Drummond with a mix of tax breaks, business savvy, and one good-old boy booze-filled weekend.
But now Alexei Rustanov owned Drummond Oil. And he wanted to meet with her.
“I’m terrible at business meetings,” Eva said, her voice little more than a whisper.
“I know,” her father answered. “But in this case, it’ll be real simple.
You’ve got to convince Rustanov to keep the Drummond Oil headquarters here.
Tell him we’ll do whatever it takes, give him whatever incentives he wants to keep the headquarters in Drummond.
If you have to grovel at his feet, do it.
Now is not the time to finally develop a sense of pride, little girl. ”
Despite the circumstances, Eva was more irritated with her father than her manipulative ex-boyfriend. “It’s not about pride, it’s about my son! I can’t let him find out about Aaron.”
Her father sat up, his head tilting to the side in angry confusion. “What do you mean ‘find out’? You said you told him and he didn’t want anything to do with Aaron. I thought that was why you left his name off the birth certificate and didn’t seek him out for child support!”
Eva winced. “It’s more that I figured he wouldn’t want anything to do with Aaron, so…I kind of didn’t tell him.”
“You kind of didn’t tell him?!?!” Her father’s posture was rigid with anger.
“Let me get this straight, little girl. First you moved in with this Russian boy against my wishes. Then you got pregnant. Then you didn’t tell him he had a baby coming.
Then you put yourself in his sights again.
And now he’s bought Drummond Oil, not even knowing you and him have a seven-year-old son? !”
When her father summarized the story that way, it did sound really, really bad. “I know I’ve put everyone in a terrible position, Daddy. And I’m really sorry. But he cannot find out about Aaron.”
“He sure as hell can’t,” her father agreed.
“If he finds out you’ve been hiding a son from him, Lord knows what he’ll do.
I don’t know what happened between you two that has him suddenly buying up Drummond Oil and wanting to meet with you after all these years, and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to know because my blood pressure is high enough as it is.
But whatever you did, you need to get on that plane tomorrow and go to New York to fix it. ”
“Tomorrow!?” she said. “I can’t drop everything and drive all the way to the airport to fly to New York.”
Her father gave her a small, tight smile. “Eva, I warned you against getting mixed up with this boy and now look where it’s gotten us. You can and will drop everything. And you will do whatever it takes to save the town we’ve both pledged to serve to the best of our abilities.”
“Okay, Daddy, I’m just going to point out that you warned me to stay away from him because he was, in your words, ‘fresh off the boat,’ ‘couldn’t speak English,’ and ‘would never amount to anything.’ I have no idea if he’s officially got his citizenship or how his English is coming along, but you were definitely wrong on at least one count.
He’s made something of himself, and now he’s got you, me, and this whole town under his thumb. ”
To her surprise, Eva actually felt a bit of pride in Alexei welling up inside her. Who would have thought the Russian security guard who could barely afford a rundown efficiency would own her hometown one day?
Her father glared at her. “This is all your fault, young lady. If you had kept your legs closed or at least chosen a black boy—” He broke off, too angry to continue. “Your mama and me didn’t raise you like that.”
Once again, a volcano of regret erupted inside Eva.
Her father was right, they hadn’t raised her like that and she had been a dutiful daughter up until she met Alexei.
He had awakened her until-then latent wild child.
Funny Eva had morphed into crazy-in-love Eva and nothing her father said or did got through to her.
She had only been with Alexei for six months before ending the relationship but now her short affair was coming back to bite her in the butt.
And this time, it wouldn’t be just her father’s good name that would suffer.
This time, everyone in Drummond might lose their jobs because of her.
“Fine, I’ll go,” she said, not wishing to argue with her father who was at least half-right about the foolishness of her past actions. “I’ll do it for Drummond and for Aaron. If I don’t go, he might get nosey and start looking for other things to manipulate me with.”
Perhaps feeling a modicum of remorse for sending his daughter into a known dragon’s den, her father relaxed his stiff posture and said, “You won’t have to drive to Dallas. He’s sending a private plane to the Drummond airfield to pick you up.”
Eva stood, too full of guilt to look her father in the eye. “Just have Berta email me the details. I’ll be there. Now, I’ve got a lot of work to do before I leave.”
She made a hasty exit but peeked over her shoulder at her father as she walked out the door. He looked like she felt: grim and sad.