Chapter One

      Danetta Marist glared at the closed office door with all her might. He could just sit in there until he took root and grew into his expensive gray leather chair for all she cared. He never made mistakes; she did. If something was missing, then she misplaced it.

      “It isn’t worth putting up with you just to make car payments,” she informed the closed door. “I’m a great secretary. I could get work anywhere. All I have to do is reply to ads in the paper, and prospective bosses will trample you trying to get me to work for them, Mr. Cabe I-Am-The-Greatest Ritter!”

      She tucked a loose strand of curly light brown hair back into its high coiffure and her gray eyes stared daggers at the elegant wood door of his office. She twirled a pen in her slender fingers while she thought about the advantages of typing her resignation and stuffing it up his arrogant nose. Well, she wasn’t apologizing to that bad-tempered ex-drill rigger, not for anything. It wasn’t her fault that he got the calendar dates mixed up and went to a business meeting at the wrong restaurant and lost an important contract. Was she to blame because he couldn’t read?

      It was just like him to accuse her of doing it deliberately. He accused her of everything from stealing his pens to drinking his bourbon, and why she stuck with the job, she didn’t know.

      The pay was good, of course. And he did let her have the occasional hour off during the week to go shopping. And he wasn’t really all that bad…

      On the other hand, the office was forever full of salesmen speaking a strange language that seemed to have no relation whatsoever to English as they talked about various valves and parts of drill rigs and heavy equipment. Danetta knew how oil was removed from the ground, but the technical nature of her job was still Greek. She did know what a geologist’s survey looked like, and that the work the geologists did was top secret when they were looking for new oil fields. She knew that because her cousin Jenny, with whom she roomed, worked for Cabe Ritter’s father.

      But despite her halting attempt to say so, Mr. Ritter’s oilman father, Eugene, who seemed to spend his life looking for new ways to upset Cabe, had taken up one of her lunch hours explaining a geologist’s duties, along with many other things she’d never wanted to know about the oil business. Eugene owned an oil company for which Cabe no longer worked. That defection into the oil rig equipment business was the source of most of the friction between the older Ritter and his son. Cabe had been certain that Eugene would go bust during the oil glut, but he hadn’t. The old man had made money because he had super geologists on his payroll who could find things like strategic metals that he could sell to the government. It was all sort of cloak-and-dagger, as she’d learned from her secretive cousin Jenny, but the discovery of the metals made money even when oil didn’t.

      Danetta did nothing quite as adventurous and secretive as seeking important geological formations. She wrote up orders, took dictation, typed letters for her impatient boss, made appointments and caught hell on a regular basis. And when friends and family asked what the Ritter Equipment Corporation made and sold she just grinned and pretended to have gone deaf. Once, with a straight face, she actually told an uncle of hers that Cabe Ritter designed and built photon torpedoes. Unfortunately the uncle wasn’t a Star Trek fan, so things had gotten sticky for a few minutes, especially when the uncle happened to meet Cabe and remarked that he sure would like to see one of those planet-busters work.

      “Can’t you read, for God’s sake!” Cabe Ritter broke into her thoughts as he muttered over the intercom. “Why didn’t you tell me I had a chamber of commerce meeting at noon? It’s ten minutes until twelve, and the restaurant where we meet is twenty minutes away and I’m the program chairman!”

      With a sigh she pushed the appropriate button. “The meeting isn’t today, Mr. Ritter,” she said with forced pleasantness. “That’s tomorrow. You’re looking at the wrong date.” Again, she added under her breath. “This is April the tenth, not the eleventh.”

      There was a brief pause. “Who turned the page?” the deep, slow drawl demanded.

      “I guess I did,” she mumbled with resignation. “God knows, I turned loose the last hurricane that hit the coast and I’m sure I cause gingivitis and tooth decay—”

      “Shut up and come in here.”

      She picked up her pad and pen, smoothing her skirt over her full hips and straightening her white midi blouse. She was tall, but she had a perfect figure and long, sexy legs. Her thick light brown hair reached to her waist when she let it down. She looked very pretty with it left long, but she always pulled it up into a chignon while she worked and she was careful not to apply more than a touch of