I look at him with a raised eyebrow. “What are you suggesting?”
“Maybe a four or five day break for the guys would help. We could bring them to Ho Chi Minh City and they can blow off some steam. Get drunk, get laid, get in fights that aren’t with each other.”
“Maybe that’s not a bad idea,” I admit. “I could stay behind with a skeleton crew.”
“I was thinking you should go too,” he says. I turn to him and he holds my eyes. “When was the last time you had a girl?”
Um, never. I’m an entrepreneur running a twenty million dollar business in the middle of the fucking ocean. When the hell would I have time for something as frivolous and unimportant as getting a girl?
“You gotta settle down sometime,” Jamal says. “Meeting a nice girl would help take some of your edge off.”
“I like my edge,” I grunt back. Jamal is close to crossing the line, but he is family, so he has more leeway than the other men. He married my sister and is a good husband. If any of the other crew dared to speak to me like this, I’d grab them by the back of the neck and launch them off my rig.
“Don’t you want to have a family and kids?” he asks. “Otherwise, what are you working so hard for?”
“This conversation is over,” I say in a low controlled tone as I turn back to the ocean.
Fuck, he’s got my mind spinning now. Of course, I would love to find a wife. A girl to be obsessed with and fill up with a ton of babies. But in all of the forty-four years I’ve been on this planet, I haven’t found her. Not even close. I’ll know the one when I see her. If I ever see her.
My eyes narrow when I spot something in the water a few miles out. Is that a boat?
“Look over there,” I say, pointing to it.
Jamal peers over my shoulder. “That’s a boat! There’s a woman in there.”
I must need contacts because I can barely see her. I can just make out the image of someone rowing toward us with one oar.
I squeeze the microphone strapped to my shoulder. “Steve.”
He clicks on a few seconds later. “Yeah, boss?”
“There’s a stranded boat with a woman inside headed our way. Send someone to pick her up.”
“On it.”
I keep my eyes on her as she struggles to approach. She’s got heart, navigating her way through the ocean like that.
“Ohhh,” Jamal says with a grimace. “Looks like a Marine Protectors boat. It’s written on the side.”
“You can read that?” I say, squinting as I barely see a yellow blur smudged on the side of the boat. I definitely need contacts. I’m getting too old.
I bet it’s going to kill a hippie environmentalist to be saved by an evil oil rig owner. People like her have protested against us before, but what does she expect the world to do? The world needs oil and it needs people like us to get it. Her included. Even that busted-up boat she’s on needs gas for the motor.
I keep my eyes on her as she stands up and frantically waves her arms at us, trying to get our attention.
Whoever this girl is, she’s lucky to have washed up on my rig.
She’ll probably hate me but that won’t stop me from keeping her safe and from treating her right.
I may be a rough asshole boss, but I’m also a gentleman.
She’ll find that out soon enough.
Chapter Three
Shane
* * *
“Record profits last quarter, sir,” my accountant Wallace says as I look at the figures on the papers he’s just handed to me. “It’s been a heck of a profitable three years.”
I go over the numbers and feel the relief that always comes to an entrepreneur who finds out they can clear payroll, all the expenses, and have a healthy profit left over for themselves. I’ve done very well with this rig.
It was almost left for scrap when I discovered it twelve years ago. A Japanese company was pretty much giving it away and I scrounged up all the money I could and bought it. The first few years were rough. It was just me and a couple of ex-cons doing our best to manhandle the rusty metallic beast into submission, fighting the wind and waves and occasionally, each other. We got it up and running again and hired more people as we began to turn a profit.
All these years later and I’ve got a stacked bank account, but I’m stuck out here in the ocean with nothing or no one to spend it on.
I love this life. Being in the ocean, the waves, the wind, the storms, the freedom. I love grabbing an out-of-control pipe wrench and wrestling it down with my hands. I love the physicality, the roughness, being the alpha of a large crew of roughnecks. I love it all.