“Coffee, huh?” The pilot laughs, providing the only measure of comfort I’ve felt since ice pierced our ship. “As long as I can see it in the snow, we should be fine, but we gotta be fast. Satellite projects those storms will be swinging back soon. And with the size of your team, even with five helicopters, it’ll take several trips.”
“I know you’re doing us a huge favor with this,” I say carefully, “and at great risk to your crew, but I have to ask. Any chance you have the means to repair this ship at least enough so it doesn’t sink before somebody can come back and retrieve it when the ice shifts?”
“We got a team of engineers with us,” the pilot says. “If it’s one thing we know how to prevent, it’s oil spills, Maxim.”
Maxim? How does he know me?
“That’s good to hear,” I reply, smiling and frowning, pleased and confused. “You guys are prepared. Who are you anyway?”
“Oh,” the pilot says, surprise evident in his words. “I thought you knew. It’s Cade Energy, sir. Your father sent us.”
31
Lennix
“We have an update on that ship stranded in the Antarctic. An American oil company was able to fly in and has rescued the team.”
Rescued.
The news anchor’s words leave me slumped in my seat at the bar, limp with relief. Our team is having drinks after a day of barnstorming Oklahoma’s most economically depressed rural areas. I’ve been checking for news constantly since The Chrysalis crisis was reported, but there had been little news and no change for hours. Now, surrounded by the people who have become as close to me as family over the last few months of the campaign, I hear the news that Maxim is going to be okay.
“Thank God,” I whisper, pushing a trembling hand through my hair. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes and burn my cheeks. “Dammit.”
I swipe at my face, trying to keep my composure, but I’m undone with the unfathomable relief of knowing Maxim has been rescued. I give up. I can’t stave off the sobs that wrack me right in the middle of the bar. After Mama and Tammara and so many losses, I had braced my heart for another, but one I wasn’t sure I could handle. To lose Maxim before I ever really even had him would have devastated me. I may have no right, and he may not even want to see me, but I’m already devising a plan to find him, to go to him. To hug him and kiss him and slap him across the face for putting me through that hell.
“You okay?” Mena asks softly, sliding a glass of whiskey toward me. “Kimba told me about Maxim.”
“Yeah, I just . . .” I struggle to evict the words from my throat, to pull myself together, but I’m distracted by the coverage on the large screen mounted over the bar.
LIVE from DFW International.
Dallas?
Two tall, dark-haired men emerge from a private plane, coming one after the other down a short bank of steps. A swarm of reporters closes around them. Shock rips through my body. How could I have been so blind?
I’m a fool and Maxim is a liar.
Warren Cade, dressed in his tailored suit and wearing his usual privilege like a mantle, grins at the circle of cameras and microphones. Beside him is a man who, now that I see them together, looks exactly like him. Maxim is a younger, more casually dressed version of his father with his longer hair, Berkeley sweatshirt, and dark jeans. Little dots of blood show stark leaking through the square bandage on his forehead.
“Mr. Cade,” a reporter calls.
Both men look toward the camera, the same patina of arrogance stamped on the handsome set of features.
“Um, Maxim Cade,” she says with a chuckle. “Sorry. How’s it feel to be back in the States after such a harrowing adventure?”
Impatience flashes in those peridot eyes I thought I knew so well.
“Uh, great,” he says, pushing a shoulder through the crowd.
“And you were scheduled to go to the Amazon next,” another reporter shouts at his back. “After such a close call, will you be rethinking that?”
Not breaking stride, his long, lean legs taking him closer to the luxury SUV waiting on the tarmac where his father stands, he glances over his shoulder and shoots the crowd that pirate’s grin. “Hell, no. I’m still going. Why wouldn’t I?”
Too many emotions roil in my belly. Too many thoughts whisk in my head. Betrayal. Fear. Relief. Something tender, an unopened bud that I crush before it can fully open.
“That’s him?” Mena asks, her eyes fixed on the screen as Maxim climbs into the vehicle behind his father.
“No,” I say, blinking dry eyes and knocking back her whiskey. “I don’t know who that man is.”
32
Maxim
“I wanted to thank you for everything, Dad,” I say, sipping the water served with the elaborate meal my mother had our chef prepare. I haven’t been in this house in years, and wasn’t sure I’d ever return.
“No need to thank me, son.” My father takes a bite of his steak and points to me with his fork. “Coming home where you belong is thanks enough.”
I stiffen, knowing where this is going and how it will end. This détente will be short-lived because, as much as I appreciate my father’s assistance, I can’t give him what he wants.
“Yes,” Mom rushes to say, her look bouncing between my father and me. “So good to have you home. We’ve missed you, haven’t we, Warren?”
My father sips his red wine and nods. “I hope this last incident got all this Greenpeace shit out of your system. Cade Energy needs you.”
His words fall into a vat of tension-laced silence. I finish chewing and carefully place my fork on my plate. “I’m not working for Cade Energy, Dad. You know that.”
His jaw ticks, the muscle flexing along his strong jawline. My jawline. My cheekbones. My eyes. My face.
My stubborn will, 1.0.
I’ve never admired and resented one person so simultaneously as I do my father. When he looks down the table at me, I know he feels the same way.
“You ungrateful fool,” he says through clenched teeth. His fist slams the table, clanging the glasses and silverware. My mother jumps and closes her eyes, resignation in every line of her body and on her face. “I rescue you and your conservationist friends. I fixed your stupid boat. I fly you home, and what do you give me in return? Defiance and rebellion.”
“No one asked you to,” I fire at him, my voice tight with anger.
“And what should I have done? Let you die?”
“If you saved me only to control me, then yeah.”
“Maxim,” my mother protests. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, we’d save you.”
“Maybe if he’d known I wasn’t going to toe the line, he wouldn’t have bothered,” I say.
“That’s a fucking lie and you know it, Maxim,” my father says, his eyes narrowed and his body tense. “All I’m asking is for a little bit of gratitude.”
“Which you have, but I’m not changing the course of my life to make you feel I’m sufficiently grateful.”
“What course? Another useless degree? More wandering the world collecting mud samples? You call that a career?”
“I have a career. I have a plan that has nothing to do with you. You’ll see, Dad. You have no idea who I am.”