Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

MIRA

S itting in the cafeteria—which was technically just the smaller dining hall on the rig—I was playing cards with my brother and some of the other members of the crew. Slate had taken over our dad's business when Dad had retired a couple years ago, and the first thing he'd done was to hire me as his VP.

Dad had passed since, but we were still working hard to make him proud. Together, we now managed Spiers Consulting, a firm which dealt with the oil and gas world. More specifically, offshore oil rigs. They were our specialty, and we advised on purchases, foreseeable future problems, and everything else relating to the successful operation of the rig.

"Did you guys hear the new owner is coming out today?" Jack H asked, pushing his sweat-dampened hair off his shiny forehead.

There was also a Jack B and a Jackie Q onboard, which was why the differentiation was necessary. I leaned forward, gripping my cards close to my chest as I arched an eyebrow at him. "Really? Why now? Is he thinking of selling it again?"

Andy shook his head. "I don't think so. Rumor has it he's already here, taking a tour with Evan. I heard he had a run-in with Big Dick in the mess. "

"Already?" I snorted. "That was fast. Although Big Dick does tend to run his mouth. I wonder what it was about."

"Doesn't matter," Jack H said as he shrugged. "The dude is a pretty boy. I doubt we'll be seeing much of him after this visit. He's probably just here to check out his investment."

"Yeah, just another hotshot here to check out his new toy before he gets tired of it." Andy sighed. "Now that he's made the effort to come out, how long do you think it's going to be before he sells again?"

"He's not going to do that," Slate said, running a hand through his dark hair as he sat up straighter. "If it's true that he had words with Big Dick, then I'm sure Mira is right and that it was because Dick ran his mouth. Trust me, I know this guy. We went to college together. He's not just some reckless city boy."

I glanced at my brother, hoping he was right about his friend. Unfortunately, even if his old engineering buddy from college wasn't just a reckless city boy, that didn't mean that the guys were wrong. Whenever the owners came out, it made people nervous on the rig.

This one more so than others we'd worked on because it'd been sold to this new owner just last year. In that sense, it wasn't so new anymore, which made it more disheartening that he was here now. While I trusted Slate completely, my brother was a loyal friend. He also wasn't the type to have kept in touch with some fancy billionaire out of college simply for the hell of it.

If this guy was still his friend—and he was—then he had to be a decent person. Slate wouldn't have offered him his friendship otherwise, but still. Even if my brother was loyal to a fault, it was entirely possible that this guy had come out here to do an in-person inspection before he made a final decision on whether or not to sell.

Since I didn't even know his name—only that he was a Mr. Jones—I had no similar issues about loyalty. Around here, I was one of the guys—until I had concerns to share with them, anyway—and so, I could join in the fun banter hazing the new guy.

"You're wrong about him," Slate was saying when I tuned back in. "Just give him a chance, okay? You might even like him if you keep an open mind. "

"Like him?" Jack H scoffed. "I doubt it, bro. The owners are always the same, too rich for their own good city boys who think owning an oil rig is a nice little side project to brag to their friends about."

"A guy like him could get into a lot of trouble on a rig like this," Andy chimed in. "If that happens and he gets hurt, you know we'll all be out on our asses, right?"

"You won't be." I punched his shoulder, sympathetic since I knew what he'd been through just last year when Jude and Flynn had sold the rig. But ultimately, he'd kept his job and despite the stress of thinking he might lose it, nothing had really happened.

Andy was still nervous about it happening again, though. I got that. He was young. Most of the other people on this crew had gone through the same thing, but they'd been through it before and it hadn't affected them as much.

For Andy, however, who'd had a new wife and a brand-new baby at home at the time, it'd been traumatic as fuck. Jack H frowned at me. "You don't know that we won't be out on our asses if some pretty boy who has no business being out here gets hurt on the rig."

"Well, to be fair, he does have business being out here," Slate said. "The rig literally belongs to him, which makes the entire thing his business."

"Yeah, but it's probably better if he just keeps doing it from afar," I said. I'd earned my respect here, and I'd done my time earning their trust alongside my brother. His blind faith in his friend wasn't going to make me switch sides. "How long is he here for? Do you know?"

"No idea," Slate said as he grinned at me. "Long enough to win hearts and build confidence. I can promise you that much. Just trust me, okay? He's not doing some pre-sale inspection, and he's not just a pretty boy. Although, objectively, I guess he is pretty."

I rolled my eyes at him. "You're not helping your case here, big brother. Either way, I hope he packed for a couple days ‘cause the storm isn't going to let up soon."

"What you mean to say is that you hope he packed the right stuff for a couple days," Jack H teased. "If he only brought suits and swimming trunks for sipping his cocktails at the hotel pool, he's in for a rough time."

"He's in for a rough time anyway," Peach grunted. I still had no idea what his real name was or why everyone called him Peach, but he rounded out our little quintet at the table.

I glanced at him, once again wondering if the nickname had something to do with the fuzz on his jaw but still not knowing him well enough to ask. "Why do you say that?"

"A city boy on a rig for the first time during a storm? Clothes aren't going to matter, is all I'm saying."

"Sure, but shoes always do." I winked before I returned my gaze to my cards. "Are we going to play or keep gossiping?"

"There's nothing to gossip about," Slate insisted. "Just wait until you meet him, okay? He's a nice guy. He also happens to be a fantastic engineer, a shrewd businessman, and?—"

"Are you his PR team?" I teased, cutting him off. "You sure sound like he hired you."

"He hired both of us, actually," my brother retorted, waggling his eyebrows at me as exasperation raced through his dark green eyes. "Would you please just give him a chance?"

"Sure," I said agreeably. "A chance to hang himself with his own rope."

A round of applause burst out around the table, and Jack and Andy started clapping and even Peach grumbled out a chuckle. I winked at Slate, pretended to bow, and then went back to our game of Go Fish!

As quickly as the subject of the new owner had come up, the guys and I dropped it, focusing our attention back on the cards. The game lasted about another twenty minutes or so, but it stopped completely when the main door opened again and a guy wearing a bespoke suit and impractical shoes walked in with Evan.

I laughed—until I realized that I knew him. Oh, no. Oh, shit.

Logan Jones . I hadn't put two and two together before, but I knew exactly who he was and I remembered the exact last time I'd seen him. My jaw almost hit the table as the realization occurred, but I managed to catch myself just in time .

What I couldn't do was stop the cards I was shuffling from spraying out of my hands and flying all over the place, drawing Logan's attention right to me. We locked eyes, and for the longest moment, time itself seemed to suspend as we stared at each other.

Those blue eyes with flecks of brown in them that made them seem almost like gold heated up, and I saw it when he got a flash of the devil in them. A shiver of remembered pleasure rushed down my spine at the exact moment that time restarted again.

My brother got to his feet, grinning as he swept forward. "Logan! You made it."

Fuck .

There. Slate just said his name.

My mind hadn't been playing tricks on me. The man who had bought the rig—the owner that Slate and I were under contract with—was Logan Jones, who also happened to be the last man to have given me an orgasm. A man I had been convinced I would never see again, and a man I still fantasized about whenever I was alone in my bed.

My heart sank, but my nipples got hard. This was not good, but one thing was for sure. My life on the rig had just gotten a whole hell of a lot more interesting—and more deceptive.

Because as it turned out, this Logan— my Logan—was one of my brother's best friends, and there was no way Slate could ever find out what had happened between us.