“The other line is ringing,” she said, though it wasn’t. She just needed to get off the phone.
“I’ll see you soon,” he said, hanging up.
Kate hung up the phone and sat there staring at her computer screen. The wallpaper on her monitor was a photo of Lance, Mitch and her taken in February when Lance and Mitch had received word they were going to be accepted into the millionaire’s club. She’d bought a bottle of champagne and the three of them had toasted the brothers’ success.
Back then it had seemed fine that both Lance and Mitch thought of her as nothing more than an assistant. She had believed that one day Lance would see past her horn-rimmed glasses and cardigan sweaters to the woman beneath.
Clearly, that wasn’t the case.
She leaned forward, looking at the photo and realizing that part of the problem lay with her. Her thick dark hair was pulled back in a sloppy braid and her glasses were a little big for her face. She’d lost weight last year—almost eighty pounds—and hadn’t bothered to get new frames for her smaller face. In fact, all of her clothes were just the old ones. They were all faded and too big for her.
She looked like someone’s maiden aunt, she thought.
Having grown up in the Houston, Texas, suburb of Somerset, she was aware that taking care with her appearance was an important thing if she was going to catch a man’s attention. But being overweight had made everything she wore look, well, not very nice. So she’d stopped trying.
She reached out and brushed her finger over Lance’s face, trying to convince herself that she would be fine as he planned his wedding. That she could stay here in this office, working for the man she loved while he lived his life.
But she knew she couldn’t. The only way she was ever going to be happy with her life would be if she took control of it, the same way she’d taken control of her body by stopping her binge eating and focusing on making herself healthier.
There was really only one way for that to happen. She was going to have to quit her job at Brody Oil and Gas.
Lance wasn’t in the best of moods considering he’d just gotten engaged, a day he knew that most men considered one of the happiest of their lives. But then he wasn’t marrying for love; he was marrying to ensure the future of Brody Oil and Gas. He and Mitch had grown up in the fading dreams of their father, a man who’d let the Brody name get washed up and their wells dry out.
But with Mitch’s financial genius and his skills—hell make that luck at finding mineral deposits and oil reserves—they’d turned around Brody Oil and Gas.
He was back in Houston now, which was a relief. He hated being away from home for any length of time. He liked his life the way it was. Liked the roughness of his roughneck oil workers, liked the comfy feeling his secretary Kate gave him and liked that he had a home at the oil refinery that he’d never found anywhere else.
Few people knew that their old man had drunk away his fortune. Mitch and he had borne the brunt of the old man’s anger at the loss of that fortune.
He rubbed the back of his neck as he pulled his truck into the reserved parking spot at the offices of Brody Oil and Gas.
His cell phone rang as he was getting out of the truck. He checked the ID. “Hey, Mitch. What’s up?”
“I’m going to have to stay in DC a bit longer to work out the rest of the deal we put in place with your engagement.”
“No problem. Do you think you’ll be back for the Fourth?”
“Of course.”
“I invited Lexi to join me. I want her to start getting to know everyone here,” Lance said.
“That sounds good.”
“You know her better than I do,” Lance added, thinking of the woman he was going to marry. “I was thinking I should get her a little gift to say thanks for agreeing to marry me. Should I ask Kate, or do you think you could suggest something?”
There was silence on the line and Lance pulled the phone away from his ear to make sure he hadn’t lost the connection. “If you have any thoughts, just shoot me an e-mail.”
“I’ll do that. When are you going to tell Kate that you’re engaged?”
“Already did. Why?” Lance walked up toward the building.
“No reason,” Mitch said.
“Do you think I should have waited until I announced it to the rest of the company?”
“No,” Mitch said. “She’s not like the rest of the staff.”
“I know that. Do you think I should call Senator Cavanaugh to follow up on anything?”
“I’m handling that. Just keep doing what you usually do,” Mitch said.
“And that is?” Lance asked.
“Heavy lifting,” Mitch said.
Lance smiled. From the time they were very little, Mitch had relied on him to do the heavy physical stuff. It only made sense since he was the older brother, and Lance had learned early on that their parents weren’t going to watch out for either of them.
“Will do. See you on Thursday?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Mitch said.
He disconnected the call and stood there for another moment in the hot, Houston sun. It might sound like he was daft to others but he liked the burn of the summer sun on his skin.
The air-conditioning chilled him as he walked through the building. There was always a moment when he almost paused as he entered the office, unable to believe how he and Mitch had brought the empty, run-down company back to this. The lobby was filled with guests waiting to go up to different meetings. There was a full staff of security guards who protected the company.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Brody.”
“Good afternoon, Stan. How’s things?”
“Good, sir. Good to have you back in Houston,” Stan said.
Lance nodded at the man and walked toward the executive elevators. He got on and pushed the button for the executive floor. The ride was quick and he realized he was eager to be back to work. DC was like another world, a place he didn’t fit in. Here at Brody Oil and Gas, he not only fit in, he was in his kingdom.
He walked into his office and Kate glanced up at him. Her normal smile of welcome wasn’t as bright as it usually was.
“Welcome back, Lance. Steve from finance needs five minutes sometime today. I told him I had to check with you first.”
“No problem. I’m free this afternoon.”
“Good. I’ll take care of it.”
“Anything else I need to know about?”
She shook her head, a strand of her thick dark hair brushing her cheek. She looked up at him and her eyes seemed wider, those dark-chocolate orbs that he’d lost himself in a time or two. He shook his head. That was folly. Kate wasn’t the type of woman who’d be interested in an affair.
And despite his engagement, affairs were all he’d ever been interested in. He wasn’t the kind of man who could marry a woman he felt anything for. He’d learned from his father that Brody men didn’t handle lust or love well. They required devotion and dedication from their lovers or else they turned to jealousy. He had experienced it himself during his ill-fated love affair with his high school sweetheart April, when he was eighteen.
“Lance?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
He shook his head. “No, I was thinking about the trip to