DrillingDownDeep by Angela Claire Read Free Book Online

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down on the compact vanity beside the closet.
    “Shall we get started, Miss Donald?”
    “Sure.” Without her hard hat, she seemed to take off some of
that attitude as well. Maybe they could play nice and forget about their original
rough start. Or the fact he wanted to jump her bones.
    They did, however, need to set one thing straight. “While I
have you both in here, though, perhaps this is the time to talk about what
happened up in the control room.”
    “The kid just got over-eager,” O’Malley explained. “He read
a gauge wrong. It was nothing.”
    “It better be. Because whether you say it out loud or not,
the oil spill that must not be named—”
    “I’m surprised you’ve even heard of Voldemort,” Miss Donald
snapped. “Studying up on his techniques, were you?”
    “And here you were not two minutes ago acknowledging that I
was the boss, Miss Donald. What happened to that?”
    She thinned her lips. In fact, she appeared to be sucking
them in, over her little white teeth, probably in an effort to stay silent. She
succeeded. O’Malley looked resigned. And scared.
    Good. That was something he was used to dealing with.
    “I don’t intend to have what happened on the Deepwater
Horizon happen here or on any of the other rigs Transcoastal owns. Now I’m
aware you’ve had a few accidents—”
    “Oh please,” she muttered. “Like you can compare a few loose
valves to the Gulf oil spill. Besides, you got your scapegoat, didn’t you?”
    Her silence hadn’t lasted long.
    “It’s precisely that kind of attitude, Miss Donald, that I
need to make sure we don’t take at Transcoastal. And if that means slowing down
the pumping, or slowing down the time before you get to your off-time or
whatever, so be it.”
    “As long as it doesn’t cost more money, I assume.”
    “Oil spills are the ultimate waste of money and should be
avoided at all costs.”
    “Eleven people died in that incident, in case you’re
interested.”
    “Additional incentive for safety I would imagine.”
    He did know eleven people had died. And he had felt as bad
about that as the rest of the country did. In some bizarre way, he almost
wondered if he was subconsciously trying to help, to do what he could, by
having Reynolds Industries buy Transcoastal.
    Of course the fact that it was a good investment didn’t
hurt.
    “Look, is that where all this hostility is coming from, Miss
Donald? You’re afraid Reynolds Industries doesn’t sufficiently feel your
pain ?”
    “I’m not afraid of it. I’m absolutely certain of it.”
    “Then you should be doing everything you can to make sure
such an accident doesn’t occur on your watch.”
    “I am, you asshole!”
    O’Malley groaned and Miss Donald herself clamped her mouth
shut, as if she wished she could take the words back. She probably did. Being
surly with the boss was one thing. Calling him an asshole was another. Not that
Michael had never been called an asshole, but it was usually after he fired someone, not as a reason for it. And again, he couldn’t recall being
called one by a woman. Not in the workplace at least. Plenty of ex- or
about-to-be ex-girlfriends certainly had. But that was another matter.
    He said the first thing that came into his mind. “If you
think I’m going to give you special treatment and take that kind of disrespect
from you because you’re a pretty girl, Miss Donald, you can think again.”
    Unwittingly, he’d apparently chosen exactly the right thing
to say to egg her on to further depths of insubordination.
    “Why, you condescending…” The swearing she started in on
made O’Malley shake his head.
    For his own part, he was a little startled by the sight of
this angelic-looking young woman spewing such foul-mouthed insults. When he’d
been breaking it off with his last mistress, a post-divorce Tiffany
Fischer—admittedly after she’d just given him a perfectly competent
blowjob—he’d been subjected to some swear words he’d never