Clay

by Jennifer Blake

  “Maybe, but who knows? That’s Roan’s turf, or rather his friend’s in Baton Rouge. Seems they’d had the center staked out for a while, but hadn’t moved on it for lack of evidence. Speaking of which, I should apologize now for going behind your back with Roan on that setup. It wasn’t because I thought I was right and you were wrong.”

  “What was it then?” she asked, her voice flat. “You thought I would tell Gower he was about to be raided? You thought I was in league with him? Or maybe that I kidnapped you in the first place because I wanted one of your kidneys for Lainey?”

  “It crossed my mind,” he said, his gaze on the lake.

  “It crossed mine, too. Unfortunately I couldn’t seem to go through with it.”

  “I figured that out.”

  “You did?” She looked at him with something close to disbelief.

  “If you’d been willing to turn me over to Gower’s scalpel, you’d have told him who I was that night he came to the camp. I expect the scar I’d be sporting on my back now would be lower down and to the side and shaped like a scimitar. Supposing I was alive at all.”

  “Don’t,” she said on a quick drawn breath as she looked away from him. “Drugging you was so incredibly irrational. I don’t think I was myself when it happened, though that’s no excuse. All I can say is that I’m sorry, so terribly sorry.”

  “I’m not.”

  She turned back to meet his gaze. It was as dark and still as the lake spread out before them, and had the same lavender reflections for the dying light. “Why not? Oh, I see, because of Lainey.”

  His expression didn’t change for long seconds, then a wry smile tugged one corner of his mouth. “She called me Daddy. Did you hear?”

  Janna gave a slow nod. “She was frightened. It didn’t mean anything.”

  “It meant something to me, Janna. I’d like to be a father to her.”

  “Her father is dead.” The words were bald, but she was in too much pain to be able to soften them.

  “I know. And you don’t want a replica. But there has to be another way.”

  “You can’t have her.”

  He stared at her, the light in his eyes so intense they were like black-jet. Finally he said, “I don’t want to take her away from you, Janna.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I just want her to have her rightful place with all the other Benedict kids,” he said with a slow shake of his head. “I want her to know where she comes from and how she got there. I want to give her roots, so she can grow up straight and strong and never worry that she wasn’t wanted or wasn’t loved by her father as much as by her mother.”

  Every word was like a blow to the sore center of her heart. It was so exactly what she’d always wanted for Lainey and never expected to gain, so precisely what her daughter needed. It was also the one thing that she’d never have because time and hope were running out, and soon would be gone entirely.

  “That would be lovely,” she said, her voice like the whisper of the evening breeze in the green lace of the cypress leaves. “If I could be sure Lainey was going to grow up.”

  “If?” A frown gathered between his brows. “Don’t you know—of course you don’t. Oh, God, Janna.”

  “What?”

  “You understand so much, seem to know so nearly how I think and feel, that I thought you’d realize. Doc Watkins gave me the news an hour ago, while he was stitching up my back. He had it directly from Simon Hargrove at the hospital. Testing for antibodies between Lainey’s blood and mine was negative. We’re a match, as near to perfect as a parent and child can ever be, as perfect as if I had been Matt.”

  “You mean, you submitted to the tests?”

  “Hell, I insisted on them, Janna!”

  “And they are all okay, blood, tissue, everything.”

  “I can give her a kidney.”

  The magic in those few words. The sheer, unadulterated joy of them. And yet.

  “But it’s dangerous,” she objected. “You might, that is, you could…die.”

  “It would be worth it.”

  “No, it wouldn’t!”

  She spun away from him and took a few hasty steps. Then she clasped her hands in front of her and bowed her head. She couldn’t believe she’d said those words. Even less could she believe that she meant them. She did, though. God help her, she did.

  Clay stepped close behind her. He put his hand on her shoulders and turned her gently to face him. “You’re saying that you don’t want to exchange my life for Lainey’s?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak for the hard knot in her throat.

  “You’re not? What is it then? You don’t want my help? The Benedicts failed you once, so you don’t want anything to do with them now? It wasn’t Matt’s fault that he wasn’t there for you, Janna. It isn’t mine that I’m not him.”

  “You don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “Make me. Tell me what’s wrong so I can set it right.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that…that I can’t stand to choose between you and Lainey.”

  “There is no choice. I’ve already made it. All you have to do is agree.”

  “But agreeing is a choice, too! Oh, Clay, you aren’t Matt, no, but you’re the one who matters. I hardly remember what your brother was like anymore. When I think of him, it’s your face I see. The two of you have merged in my mind until it’s as if he was only a shadow that looked something like you, that knowing him was a dream I had to live through so I could one day know you. You fill my life along with my Lainey, and I will die if I have to lose either of you.”

  He smiled, a slow, rich curving of his mouth with gladness that rose to burn also in his eyes. “You won’t,” he said, the words a promise. “You will have us both for as long as you can stand us. I love you, Janna.”

  “Oh, Clay,” she whispered.

  “You are my mystery woman as well as Matt’s. I love you because he did, and because you loved him and bore a daughter to remember him by. And I love you for all you are and have tried to be without help, without complaints, without apologies. I love you for your strength and your talent, and your stubborn, damned independence, and for so much more that I think it will take fifty long years or more of keeping you with me here at Grand Point to tell you.”

  “Maybe,” she said with tears rising in her eyes, “but that will do for a starting place.”

  He caught her close then, and tasted the salty wetness of her eyes before he set his mouth to hers. She pressed into him, held tightly to him as she gave him her life and her breath. Until, suddenly, she stiffened.

  “What is it?” His voice was thick as he spoke against her lips.

  “Your back,” she said. “Your stitches.”

  “You’d better get used to them,” he said. “And to the scars.”

  “Maybe I’ll kiss them and make them better.”

  “It’s a starting place,” he said, the words gentle, wickedly mocking. Then he kissed her again.

  Epilogue

  The wedding was beautiful, with an understated elegance designed to allay any possible resentment from those who had come expecting to see a show that would put the more modest weddings of Turn-Coupe residents to shame. It succeeded, too, at least among the guests who had no idea of the cost of such simplicity. Janna heard one woman telling another that she’d only come because she’d heard Roan was marrying a princess. “But if this is the best she can throw in the way of a wedding, I have to say I ain’t impressed. Why Mary Lou Singer had eight bridesmaids, three flower girls and more flowers than was at the mayor’s funeral, for Pete’s sake, besides hiring white limos for the entire wedding party. This Victoria Molina-Vandergraff has only two matrons of honor to stand up with her, nothing but a few ferns and lilies to decorate the church and she and the sheriff are going away in that old purple Super Bird he’s had since back in the seventies.”

  Every word the woman said was true, there was no denying it. But to Janna, the little Victorian
chapel beside the lake was perfect. The bride was lovely in cream silk and baroque pearls, her groom stalwart and handsome in his tux, as was his son who acted as best man. The two matrons of honor, April and Regina, appeared cool and gracious in their pale green organza. The congregation, made up of so many extended family members that Janna would never recall them all, was quietly appreciative. The music was uplifting, the vows moving and the officiating reverend both eloquent and mercifully brief. And if Janna spent most of her time looking at Clay as he stood at the altar as a groomsman, she thought no one noticed.

  She had no need to take notes on the proceedings for future reference. She and Clay had been married in a simple ceremony at Grand Point over four weeks before. He’d wanted no possibility of a slipup that would prevent her from belonging to the Benedict Clan all right and proper, he’d said. Janna tried to talk him out of it, mainly by rejecting the idea that anything might happen to him, but he’d insisted. She gave in, finally, since it was too tough arguing against him, much less against her own heart.

  Truth to tell, she didn’t at all regret missing a formal wedding with all its hectic preparation and huge crowd of Benedicts both large and small. The quiet exchange of vows with Clay, with only their closest family members present, had been moving beyond words and all that she required.

  She did have one small pang of envy, however, and this concerned the honeymoon. Roan and Tory were leaving for Jackson Hole and two weeks of mountain coolness and privacy. Janna and Clay, on the other hand, had barely had two days of wedded bliss together. On the Monday morning after their Saturday wedding, both her groom and their junior maid of honor had checked into a New Orleans medical center for surgery.

  It was over. The transplant had been uneventful, the recovery textbook perfect. Everyone who came and went in the hospital room shared by Clay and Lainey had been amazed at how fast the two of them healed. They had assumed it was a family trait passed from father to daughter and no one contradicted them—certainly not Lainey who glowed every time it was mentioned.

  For her daughter, Janna thought, the secret of her fast recovery was sheer happiness. That and, just possibly, a newly developed Benedict sense of competition.

  Clay and Lainey had raced each other to see which of them would sit up first, produce fluid from their single kidney first, get rid of their assorted tubes and catheters first, or be ready to go home first. They also got a huge kick out of showing off their matching scimitar-shaped scars, and had entertained the whole hospital with the sight, not to mention every visitor to darken the doors of Grand Point since their return.

  Janna’s main fear about the wedding today, in fact, was that Lainey and Clay might provide a special display at the reception. So far, they’d been good but she put no reliance whatever in their staying that way. Lainey was growing daily more lively and audacious, and Clay aided and abetted her recklessly since he was certain that she was too quiet. Judging from the crowd of laughing, squealing Benedict offspring that skirted the edge of rowdiness as they flowed in and out among the guests like a school of baby barracuda, it seemed he might be right.

  Lainey was running with the pack even now. It had taken some doing for Janna to convince herself it was okay. The main reason she was able to manage it was the realization that every adult Benedict kept a watchful eye on the kids, so they were not quite as unsupervised as it appeared. The rest of it was that Clay had directed Stephen, Regina’s young son, to look after Lainey. The solemn responsibility with which the boy had accepted his assignment was clear indication of how Benedict men became engrained with their protective attitude toward women.

  “So you’re my new sister-in-law.”

  Janna turned so quickly at the deep-voiced comment that she sloshed a few drops of champagne from the glass she held. The spilled wine was forgotten as she looked at the man in front of her. Tall and broad, undeniably attractive in the classic Benedict mold she had come to recognize, he had the hard, sun-burnished look of a man who spent his days under a desert sun and his nights exactly as he pleased. He was dressed in chinos and an open-necked dress shirt, with a jacket of tropical-weight linen as his only concession to the formality of the occasion. His dark brown hair had sun-bleached streaks and his eyes shaded from brown to green like the dark, rich, mint tea of the East.

  “And you must be Wade,” she said, putting out her hand.

  He ignored the offer of a handshake. With a quick step forward, he slid his arm around her waist then bent his head and kissed her.

  Janna stiffened and clutched a handful of his jacket, pushing at him as she dragged her lips free. In a furious undertone, she demanded, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Testing to see if you’re the right one for my baby brother.”

  “Do it again,” Clay said from behind Janna, “and your baby brother will knock you flat on your rear.”

  Wade Benedict lifted a brow as he met his brother’s gaze. “You and what star fleet force, little brother?”

  “I’ll help him,” Janna said, her voice cool as she pushed out of Wade’s grasp. “If he needs backup, which I doubt.”

  Clay’s brother looked from one of them to the other, then a slow smile crinkled the corners of his eyes and shifted the planes of his face into breath-stealing handsomeness. With a slow nod of his head, he said, “Yep. She’s the one all right.”

  “I’m glad you approve,” Clay said with irony. “From now on, you can do it from a safe distance.”

  Wade retreated a step. “Hands off, promise. But you can’t blame me for wondering what you’ve got yourself into with a woman who hog-tied you, carted you off to the altar, then snatched a kidney for her daughter, all in less time than it takes for me to say it.”

  “Matt’s daughter.”

  “Right. Speaking of which?” He nodded, inquiringly, toward something he saw behind them.

  Lainey, flushed and grinning, came to a skidding halt at Clay’s side. She caught his hand, tugging at it, as she said, “Come on. They want to see our scars.”

  “Oh, honey, I don’t think so,” Janna began.

  “I’d like to see, too,” Wade said. “Later, when we’re all back at Grand Point. Do you know you look just like your mother?”

  “Everybody says that,” Lainey said in disgust as she gave him her attention. “Who are you?”

  Wade went to one knee in front of her. “I’m your daddy’s brother.”

  Lainey stared at him in appraisal and total disregard for his obvious sex appeal. “Which daddy?”

  Ready amusement made emerald glints in Wade’s eyes though his face remained serious. “Both of them.”

  “Oh. You weren’t at the other wedding.”

  “I was a bit busy. Sorry.”

  Her smile was sunny. “That’s okay. Everybody else was there, Arty, Denise who let us stay at her camp, my new grandma, Uncle Adam, everybody. But I guess you’re my uncle, too.”

  “Right.”

  “Good,” she said with a decided nod. “I like uncles. Mama says I have two of those, besides Clay who’s an uncle and a daddy at the same time. And I’ve got lots of cousins.”

  “Lots,” Wade agreed dryly.

  “And Stephen, who isn’t a cousin, quite, though his little sister Courtney is, which is very weird. Jake is a cousin, too. He’s Uncle Roan’s son, and older than Stephen, but I like him anyway.”

  “Right. But Roan isn’t an uncle, just a cousin.”

  “I know. It’s just pretend, and that’s why I don’t count him. But he’s older and the sheriff, and it isn’t polite to call him Roan because I’m just a kid. So Mama says it’s okay to call him Uncle Roan until I grow up. She says it’s the…the…”

  “The custom,” Wade supplied in grave tones. “The old Southern way.”

  “We’ve been talking about kinship,” Janna said quickly by way of explanation.

  “Something she’ll need a lot of lessons in if she’s going to be a part of this clan,” he answered.

  It
was another validation, one of many over the past few days and weeks. Still, Janna could never hear enough of them. She felt her heart swell and the ache of tears in her throat. Reaching out, she took her husband’s hand. He smiled, and there in front of God and everybody, especially his older brother, he kissed her.

  It seemed that the reception would go on forever, that Roan and Tory were having too much fun to leave. Toward the end, the bride threw her bouquet for the cluster of unmarried females, and the groom snapped the garter so it flew back over his shoulder toward the gathered single guys. That bit of elasticized white satin, lace and ribbon went over their heads, however, and Wade, talking to the preacher nearby, put out a hand by reflex action and snatched it from the air. Laughter erupted immediately, however, as he looked with mock horror at what he’d caught and immediately let it fall to the ground.

  Finally the couple hugged everyone then rattled away from the church dragging tin cans and old shoes behind their classic car. The crowd began to disperse. The last child was rounded up and buckled into a seat belt, the last “Y’all come!” shouted across the parking lot. Janna offered to stay behind and help the ladies of the church clear away the debris, but was shooed out the door.

  She and Clay returned to Grand Point in one vehicle while Lainey rode with Wade who, by this time, had begun to figure high on her list of favorite people. It wasn’t that surprising, perhaps; Janna was sure there were few females of any age who could resist Clay’s brother once he’d made up his mind to charm them.

  Wade would be at Grand Point for a while, or so it seemed. At least the pile of luggage that she stumbled over in the parlor as she entered the house ahead of Clay seemed to indicate it. While Clay carried the bags into the section of the big house that Wade claimed, Janna began to put on the automatic coffeemaker, that inevitable requirement for Benedict hospitality. She was still spooning grounds into the filter when she heard Wade and Lainey drive up.

  “Mama, guess what?” her daughter called out as she came running into the house. “Uncle Wade says I might like to drink beer now.”