Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins Read Free Book Online

with Prince Charming.
    My lips vibrated from the roar as we passed a large piece of equipment on the other side of an interior fence. My nose curled, too.
    “This place smells like poo,” I said. “Do they have a cattle feedlot in here?”
    One corner of Nick’s mouth lifted. So maybe his sense of humor had returned; the man did not function well on less than eight hours’ sleep. “That’s mercaptan. No feed yards.”
    Smells like cow shit anyway, I thought.
    I said, “This place is freakin’ huge.”
    The five-minute drive to the administration building ended at a surprising oasis. I counted thirty-two majestic palms tickling the skyline, their trunks encircled with nodding elephant ears. A manicured green lawn stretched from the road to a brown stucco building edged with beds of Ginger Thomas, the official flower of the Virgin Islands, bright yellow in a tangle of green bush. To the left of the entrance, tiny waterfalls cascaded over the rock ledges of four ponds, one into another, barely disturbing the black, white, and orange koi swimming between the lily pads at the bottom. Why had Petro-Mex gone to so much trouble?
    The industrial plant was spread out over 3,000 coastal acres and included the housing communities, the refinery proper, an enormous tank field, and a deep-water marine harbor. Nothing stateside compared to it in size, although there were larger similar properties elsewhere in the world. The relative isolation of this particular refinery, though, made for unique challenges and characteristics. The lack of pipelines connecting it to its markets led to the necessity of the big tank field and robust harbor, and because emergency services on St. Marcos were practically nonexistent, the refinery maintained a fire-rescue-emergency response organization bigger than that of a small city in the U.S.
    At the front desk, we had to register our laptops and phones. Jiminy Crickets, I thought, they really do mean business. Finally, a young local woman escorted us down the utilitarian halls to a windowless conference room at the center of the building.
    We entered the room and five dark-haired men rose in unison, their chairs rolling back silently over the hunter-green carpet. Like the previous night, the men spoke over each other in effusive greetings that were mostly directed at me. I obligingly presented my cheeks for their kisses and shook hands all around.
    Nick and I took a seat at the oval table and I eyed its thick mahogany top and glass cover. Damn, I’m going to get fingerprints all over it. I acknowledged to myself the difficulty of this Transformers moment, back from island wife/mommy/musician mode to the professional I’d been less than three years ago. Steady, girl.
    “Welcome, Nick and Katie. Katie, my name is José Ramirez,” said the one man I recognized from the Yacht Club the night before. The tall handsome one. He introduced the others. “We are so glad you have moved to St. Marcos and can help us. One quickly finds that the police here are of little help in matters such as this one.”
    “Nice to meet you all,” I said.
    “Happy to be of assistance,” Nick added, the formal at-work Nick I hadn’t seen since the days we had slaved away together at Hailey & Hart in Dallas. Hey, this guy is kinda sexy.
    “I hope that you did not have too much trouble getting here this morning? The security can be overwhelming to those not used to it,” Ramirez said.
    I agreed. “The security was intense. But so was the traffic. An eighteen-wheeler nearly took us out coming around the corner to the plant. It all but tipped over.”
    Nick shot me a look. What? It was true. I heard my mother’s voice in my head: “Katie, if you can’t think of something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
    Ramirez clucked. “It is a problem. We open our jet fuel rack at nine a.m. each day, and the local drivers race to get in line. If they are first to fuel up, they have the greatest chance of fitting in