Texas Curves Read Online Free Page A

have your way, you'll run and hide. So understand this -- I don't plan on leaving you anywhere to hide, sweet tea. The finance office at Midland shows your next semester is paid in full as of eight this morning. Enclosed is every dollar for every hour you will work at the McKinley site. If you still choose to run, fine. But I'll keep chasing. I don't stop until I get what I want, and I want you.
    Hawk
    Certain I was going to pass out, I let the money fall to the floor and wrapped my hands around the steering wheel. I bent my neck until my forehead rested against the wheel then I closed my eyes.
    Sweet baby Jesus, what was wrong with that man?
    Was it possible? Did Hawk McKinley really find me attractive? I took a few deep breaths in before I opened my eyes and stared at the money covering my shoes. I reached down, picked it up and counted through it. More than twice the five weeks left of summer shifts at Roy's. Hawk McKinley could afford it and much more, which kept the money and the offer within the realm of the cruelest practical joke I could imagine.
    Could it be a cruel joke? Everything I had read, hunkered down at the computer in the library on Sunday afternoon, suggested he was a good man. He didn't just give money to charity like the rest of his family did. When McKinley Oil donated to Habitat for Humanity after the tornadoes ripped through East Texas last year, he not only signed a very big check, but went and swung the hammer, too, taking all his local crew from Beaumont for two weeks.
    Was that all public relations or all Hawk?
    Knowing I wasn't going to figure out what McKinley was up to while I sat in the grocery store parking lot, I stuffed the money back in the envelope and drove home to change for my new job.
    **********************
    On the back of Hawk McKinley's letter was a map to the site offices. I knew the building and location. It was the only concrete structure around it for a good seven miles and the only thing standing in that area after the line of tornadoes that took out our house. It had been built in the eighties to hold dairy cattle during milking, but a drought had involuntarily changed the owner's mind before the equipment could be installed. The building had been sitting empty except for cobwebs and spiders until McKinley Oil leased the land after the wells hit.
    Parking along the side of the building, I was barely out of my car when I heard a string of curse words that would make a sailor blush. Then I heard something like the sound of metal striking metal. I followed the noise to the back of the building where I found a thickly mustached fifty something male still cussing up a storm as he battled a portable generator. With the way the man was swinging his wrench, I approached cautiously, letting my feet stir up the gravel so he could hear me coming.
    Looking up, his scowl softened. "You my new Girl Friday?"
    "If you're Red Addams, then, yes sir, I am." I could feel the heat coming off the generator.
    Roy had this exact model for when storms knocked the electricity out at the steakhouse. Without asking, I opened the main panel and started poking around a bit. The thermostat was opening, but it was half choked with dust. Taking the wrench from Red, I gave the area much softer taps, trying not to laugh. The Mustang wasn't the only piece of McKinley's equipment with radiator issues.
    After another minute spent checking the rest of the engine, I started it back up. "You have an air compressor on site? It could use a good blow."
    "Got one I can get back here this evening." Wiping a bandana across his dirt streaked forehead, Red gave a short nod telling me I had passed at least the first part of his inspection. "If you know your way around the computer as well as an engine, little girl, I'm going to owe Hawk a bottle of scotch."
    I smiled at Red. At more than twice my age, he could call me little girl if it suited him. Hawk could not, and I was going to let McKinley know exactly that at the first