Dallas, Texas

"JR!" Sue Ellen walked quickly from the pool to the driveway as she heard his car arriving at Southfork, she was surprised, but thrilled that he was home, "hello darlin'", JR casually greeted his wife, kissing her on the cheek as he motioned her to walk with him into the house. He didn't have quite the same level of emotion that she did and he couldn't bring himself to fake it just for her, it would only lead her to believe that her concerns had been valid, but they weren't; they'd been perfectly safe the whole time they were in Midland and he didn't see any reason to overhype it. Sue Ellen was surprised and a little offended that he didn't seem very excited to see her, but she put it down to tiredness and possibly stress, he'd been working hard for the past few days and that was probably all catching up to him now that he was home. Entering the bedroom, Sue Ellen launched into nervous chatter, she was still a little unnerved by the whole thing, there were so many things that could have gone wrong, oil was a dangerous business, "I was so worried, especially when you didn't call. I thought you'd been hurt, or…" JR turned and looked at his wife, "shh… everything was fine, I told you. There was a fire on the first day, but we weren't the ones fighting it and it was mostly extinguished by the time we got there. The reason we were there for so long was more administration than anything else. We had to make sure that everything was done per instructions and the workers seem to work better when someone in authority is standing and watching, inspecting and making sure that it's up to code. I promise, we weren't in any real danger". He unintentionally told her more than he'd planned to, but he was beginning to realise that that was probably exactly what she needed to hear from him. His original plan to tell her nothing in an attempt to shield her from bad news obviously wasn't working in the way he intended it to, she seemed to worry about the unknown just as much if not more than she did about the facts.

"You…you're sure you weren't in danger?" she looked up at him with tears in her eyes; she hadn't realised that she'd done it again, but the lack of communication and her tendency to overthink things meant that she'd been holding in a lot of feelings. JR felt a rare emotion, he actually felt a little bit guilty, his father had told him to call his wife and he did eventually, but perhaps he could have avoided her worry if he had just openly communicated with her in the first place. She seemed to have a need for constant approval and reassurance and he'd gotten the method of dealing with her all wrong, perhaps he needed to rethink the way he talked to her, she was a lot different to him and he tended to forget that sometimes, assuming that everyone saw things the way he did. "Sue Ellen, look at me. I am the vice president of Ewing Oil and daddy is the president, I promise you, we pay people a lot of money so that we don't have to personally deal with problems like that. However, it is our company, we have to make an appearance when there's a situation, it would be terrible publicity if we avoided going out there and left everyone else to deal with it. We really were just there to assess the situation and make sure that everything got back on track after the fire; there was no danger, I was perfectly safe the whole time", he looked her in the eye and hoped that she knew he was telling the truth, he needed her to understand and accept his word. Reassurance and dealing with a lot of emotion wasn't something that came naturally to him and he wasn't sure how much more he could say after those comments, he needed her to be an adult and realise that sometimes his job led him toward dangerous situations, but that was just how his job was and he couldn't change it. He did his best to delegate the dangerous work to other people, but he had a responsibility to the company and their employees to make sure that everything was ok. Sue Ellen felt better as he reassured her, it was the kind of thing she'd needed to hear days ago but hadn't heard from him, so her mind had gone to the worst place, "I'm glad you're home safely. I love you JR", she looked him in the eye as she spoke; ultimately she worried because she loved him and she didn't want to lose him, and she wanted him to know that.

"JR, will you be home for dinner?" Jock knocked on JR's office door and entered, asking him the question though he already had a fair idea of what the answer was going to be. "Hm, well I've got a few more things to catch up on here and I don't think they can really wait, so I'm going to stay. I'll try to make it home in time for dinner if I can though". Jock nodded and didn't oppose JR's decision, usually he would have insisted that JR be home for family dinner, but their four-day absence from the office meant that the paperwork had been piling up and a late night was probably necessary. It was just something that came with the job and he appreciated JR's willingness to do whatever was necessary for Ewing Oil's success. As president of the company, Jock was able to assign a lot of the paperwork and other administration duties to his employees and sometimes that meant that JR ended up with a lot of reading and writing to do. It was good for JR to do that work though, he needed to learn and know everything in preparation for the day when he took over the role of president of Ewing Oil; only then would he be able to assign more of the duties he disliked to other people. Jock nodded, said goodbye and left the office and JR went back to working. JR was surprised when a few minutes later there was a knock at his office door, he'd assumed that he was the only person left in the office; "do you need any help with anything?" Julie stood in the doorway and JR grinned, he knew her game, but she was offering to help and that meant anything, he could look and not touch, he was capable of that, "sure, have a seat".

To be continued…