Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page B

she had for the farm.
    Within three months, the plan became a reality. R.D. applied for his patent and began peddling his products, making the rounds of the various oil fields and calling on drillers. But it was hard to make sales. Few were interested in such revolutionary ideas. Only the drillers in trouble with stuck drill pipes or cave-ins were willing to listen. Most of them were skeptical, but desperate enough to try anything. However, his successes usually only guaranteed him that the next time the driller was in trouble, he would call R.D.
    Those first years were discouraging. And that discouragement was compounded by the stock market crash and then the death of his wife. A few times he would have given up, but his mother wouldn't let him. She encouraged him to expand, to set up a laboratory to test new products and equipment, and to hire field representatives to sell the company's products and educate the drillers on their use. The world might be suffering a depression, but the oil industry wasn't. Within ten years, he went from being a one-man operation to having seventy people on the payroll. He started buying up smaller companies, taking over their patents, quadrupling the size of his business. Suddenly he was a millionaire several times over.
    Thanks to the woman who believed in him: Abigail Louise Lawson. R.D. gazed fondly at the gilt-framed photograph of her taken a year before her death. Blue eyes smiled back at him from a face crowned with snow-white hair swept atop her head in a mass of curls, a pair of chandelier drop earrings dangling from the delicate lobes of her ears.
    "Real diamonds, they are, too." R.D. winked at her, as he had the day he'd given them to her. "You and me, we made 'em sit up and look, didn't we? Hell, we never did do what they expected. They all figured we would buy us one of those big fancy homes in River Oaks, but we fixed up River Bend instead—and reminded them all that Lawsons had been here long before most of them were. This time Dean's the Lawson who's foolin' 'em, marryin' that Torrence girl. And a damned fine wedding it's going to be, too."
    The gold mantel clock chimed the quarter-hour from its perch on the carved walnut shelf above the fireplace. As if he could hear her reprimand, R.D. grimaced faintly and faced the mirror above his dressing table once more.
    "I know I left this getting-ready business a bit late." He made his third attempt at tying the black bow tie. "But I had to go down to the barns and make sure they had the mares all harnessed up right and the carriage ready. Remember that fancy horse carriage I bought you so you could ride in that parade we sponsored to get people to buy war bonds? That's what the bride's gonna arrive at the wedding in. She's over at the cottage with her family, gettin' ready."
    He paused for a minute to stare at his reflection. He just didn't feel like a man about to turn fifty, despite the gray spreading through his thick hair. His face had the look of smooth leather with permanent creases worn across his forehead and around his mouth and eyes. There was no sagging skin along his strong jawline, although maybe just a little under his jutting chin, emphasized now by one end of the tipsy-tilted bow tie.
    Exasperated, R.D. yanked it loose and started over again, absently resuming his conversation with his mother's photograph. "You should see that carriage. Garcia has it covered with white flowers. Lilies of the valley, gardenias, and apple blossoms. It reminds me of those buggies they use in the Rose Parade. I'm having it pulled by those two matched gray Arabians. White as milk, those two mares are now. I've got 'em in the black harness with white plumes. That young Pole polished the leather on that harness until it shines like a pair of patent-leather shoes on a fancy nigger. I like that Jablonski boy." He nodded decisively. "He definitely has a way with horses. And he knows a helluva lot about the breed. Although, half the time I