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better than most guys. She’d reached the top of the food chain on an offshore rig at an age when most men would have been proud to simply be holding their own as roughnecks. But when it came to being a woman, well, that was turning out to be a whole lot harder than it looked.
    She cried and cried, really letting go, feeling very, very sorry for herself, biting her lip to keep from snorting and sniffling.
    And then her cell rang.
    She decided not to answer it. She kept on crying. In three rings, the call went to voicemail and again she was alone with her tears and her misery.
    Then the room phone rang. She tried to wait it out, but the minute it stopped ringing, it only started again.
    And she knew that if she didn’t pick it up, Jonathan would be tapping on her door, asking her what was the matter, hadn’t she noticed her phone was ringing?
    Oh, she could just hear him now. When one’s phone rings, Samantha, it is customary to answer it.
    If she let it get to that, she would have to reply and he would hear her clogged, teary voice and know that he had gotten to her, big-time.
    No way was she letting him know that. She’d held her own against some burly, badass roughnecks in her time. How could she let bird-boned, big-haired Jonathan get the better of her?
    She grabbed the phone. “What?” she demanded in a soggy, broken whisper.
    “Sam?” It was Travis. “Sam, what’s going on? You didn’t answer your cell. And I called the room twice.”
    “Yeah, I noticed.” A sob got away from her, followed by a watery hiccup.
    “Sam, are you all right?”
    She clutched the phone harder, feeling ridiculous and needy and weak and hopeless and sad. “I’m, uh…” She put her hand over the phone, swiped at her eyes and then groped for a tissue with her white-gloved hand.
    “Sam, talk to me. Please. What’s the matter with you?” He sounded so worried, so…scared even. For her.
    He was worried for her.
    That meant a lot.
    And then he said, “Sam, I’m coming over there. I’m coming over there now.”
    “No!” The word escaped her trembling mouth on a sob. “You can’t. Uh-uh.” She ripped a tissue from the tasteful beige box on the nightstand. “You know you can’t. You can’t even see me. Not until my final test.”
    “Forget the test,” he said and really seemed to mean it. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters if you’ve had enough. It’s not a big deal. We can call the whole thing off right now.”
    Call the whole thing off. He wouldn’t mind or be mad at her if they called the whole thing off.
    She could, she realized. She could do that. Call an end to this torture, give it up. There was no law that said she had to stick it out.
    She could give it up and head straight for her private hideaway in San Diego. Walk on the beach, soak up some rays.
    And then sign up for a new job on a different rig, go back to the challenging and profitable life she had made for herself.
    “What about—” another sob escaped her “—your mother?”
    “I’ll find some other way to get her off my back. Don’t worry about that. Just say the word, Sam. And you’re off the hook. I mean that. Sam? Did you hear me? Sam? Are you there?” Travis seemed really worried that she might have hung up on him.
    But she hadn’t. She was sniffling. And thinking…
    And coming to realize how very much she wanted this, how seriously invested she was in seeing the whole thing through.
    “Damn it, Sam. Say something.”
    And she did. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to give it up. I want to…get through this. I want to make good at it because it does matter. It matters a lot. And that’s why you can’t come over here. Because Jonathan wants it that way. And that’s fine with me. I am doing exactly what Just frickin’ Jonathan tells me to do.”
    “Uh. You are?”
    “Yeah. I am—and don’t you dare tell him I said the word frickin’. Got that?”
    “Absolutely. I won’t. Whatever you say. But—”
    “I