Carolina Girl

by Patricia Rice

  He abruptly returned to watching the road. “It has me thinking that maybe some of my hobbies are a little unsociable.”

  Laughter did bubble out at that, but Aurora was always laughing. That was one of the things he liked about her. She didn’t nag and complain and make life miserable for everyone around her when things didn’t go right. She blew up, she cried; then she got over it and took matters into her own hands, smiling or cooking her way through it.

  “You could always find partners to play your video games if you want to be sociable,” she suggested. “There are probably kids out there just as good at them as you are.”

  “Most of them want the action games. I grew up on the Dungeons and Dragons things, and I like role-playing. Not too many people are interested.” Truth was, he wasn’t as interested as he used to be. As a kid, imaginary games had given his overactive brain an escape when he’d needed it, but he’d rather find a real-life role that suited him better. Beach bum and biker had just been more role-playing on a different level.

  “They have sorcerers in those games, don’t they? You probably make a great sorcerer, knowing things way beyond the knowledge of most people.”

  A sorcerer. He liked that. Sending her another sideways look, deciding she wasn’t laughing at him, he began to relax and enjoy the evening even more. “Men like the mystique of appearing omniscient. Gives the girls a thrill,” he teased.

  She laughed again. “Just fixing our toasters gives us a thrill. The strong, silent types are highly overrated. Where are we going?”

  “With you looking as hot as that? Probably Las Vegas. But if you want to get home tonight, maybe we ought to settle for the Monkey.” She hadn’t hit him yet, so he assumed he hadn’t gone too far wrong. “Have you eaten?”

  “Las Vegas is more tempting than the Monkey, but I’m hungry and willing to settle for food. Did you have a reason for this evening out?”

  He squirmed a little and didn’t answer as he maneuvered the narrow town streets. She waited expectantly while he found an opening and parked. “I don’t know how to do relationships,” he finally said flat out. He slammed out of the car and walked around to assist her from the low-slung seat.

  “It’s not something you learn in books or find in Help files,” she agreed sympathetically.

  The open wrap side of Aurora’s skirt flashed a tantalizing glimpse of shapely leg as she took his hand and climbed out. Clay almost lost track of the conversation until she spoke again.

  “I figure relationships must be something you learn by doing,” she continued.

  “And failing,” he said dryly, leading her into the Saturday-night bedlam of the bar. “That failing part is kind of rough.”

  “You’re a sorcerer, make the magic work for you,” she murmured beneath the chorus of greetings as they entered.

  “I have a feeling you’re not talking about my magic shirt,” he whispered back, slapping palms with one of the other patrons while maneuvering Rory toward the booths and away from the slavering crowd at the bar.

  “If you can keep Ed from bearing down on us with more tales of the mayor’s daddy and German subs, I might believe in magic shirts.”

  “These days Ed’s into believing the German spies left their treasure buried on the beach. TJ’s been avoiding the bar, afraid Ed will ask him to dig up the beach again.”

  “Hey, Rora!” Terry Talbert called from the bar, his gaze darting from her to Clay. “Didn’t know the two of you were hooking up.”

  “You belong to the wrong crowd then.” Although he was getting a kick out of the winks and thumbs-ups he was receiving from his bar cronies, Clay disliked the way the head of the tourist commission eyed Rora in her revealing, non-banker attire. He was inclined to do something Neanderthal like kiss her cheek, wrap his arm around her, and stake his claim.

  “Clay and I have mutual interests,” Aurora replied coolly. “Right now our interest is in dancing. See you around, Terry.”

  She walked away from the man who had fired her as if Talbert were no more than a gnat in her tea. Grinning, Clay followed, admiring the view.

  “Can you dance?” she asked abruptly, hesitating between the booths and the tables near the dance floor, where a couple was two-stepping across the floor out of time with the music.

  “Never tried,” he conceded, eyeing the dance floor with wary interest.

  Rory wound her way through the booth crowd to the tables. “You listen to oldies but you’ve never danced?” she asked, intrigued.

  He held out a chair for her, and she was entirely too aware of Clay’s height, of the way he stood too close, of the seductive scent of his shaving lotion. She’d always been aware of the real man behind his many disguises, but she liked that he’d chosen his sophisticated persona for her.

  “Dancing lessons are required education in our family,” he admitted. “TJ dutifully took them as told. Jared got thrown out after he used the CDs as Frisbees, then decorated the dance hall with the teacher’s favorite tapes in an impromptu game of Keep-away. After that, the teacher was more than willing to accept my deal of cashing my parents’ check, giving me half, and letting me spend the time at the arcade next door.”

  “Afraid of girl cooties?” she taunted.

  “I could apply myself to computers or to girls, not both. I lost Jared’s help on the script for ‘Mysterious’ when he got mushy over some female. Since I was skinny, with a nose that covered my entire face, the girls I knew wouldn’t give me the time of day. After Jared’s defection, I worked on the program alone. The sale of ‘Mysterious’ gave me my own IPO by the time I left college. By then I was working on 3-D animation and several business programs. I didn’t have time for a life.”

  “I think you grew into your nose,” she said dryly. It was a unique nose that kept him from prettiness, giving his face the character that reflected the depths she had yet to explore.

  She was amazed at the amount of information spilling out of him tonight. Sitting on the courthouse roof must have primed his speech pump. She was torn between learning more and getting up on the dance floor to work off some of the sexual tension smoldering between them. Although Clay didn’t overtly stare at her cleavage, she recognized his awareness in the way he tried to stay focused on her face when she toyed with the pendant at her throat. Perversely, she wanted him to stare.

  She wanted a whole lot more than that. If she was to survive the evening without jumping his bones, she needed to dance. “What they’re doing looks easy.” She nodded at the dance floor, where couples were rocking to some golden moldie she vaguely recognized. “Let’s just imitate them.”

  She bit back a smile as Clay studiously observed the limited action on the dance floor while they ordered drinks and chose from the menu. His fingers were unconsciously tapping to the rhythm of the music, but he really did seem to think he could study the dancers and discover a pattern to their movement, as if they were parts of a ticking clock.

  “How did you get into listening to classic rock?” she asked. She knew she was in serious trouble when she really wanted to know the answer.

  Clay switched his intense focus from the dance floor to her, and she nearly went up in smoke from the heat of it. “Good beat and it went in one ear and out the other while I was working. It just kind of wormed its way into my head, and then into the program. Before I knew what was happening, I started looking for more music my game characters could dance to. The classic stuff worked best. Paying for sub-rights on the songs made the game expensive, but fun.”

  The beat was ringing her chimes right now. She could feel the music in her bones. She could feel him. She squirmed restlessly.

  He turned back to watch the dancers. “They aren’t all doing the same steps.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” she murmured, taking his hand and standing up. “This is the kind of dancing you feel.”

  “What I feel has nothing to do with dance floors.” With that enigmatic remark, he stood and drew her into the growing crowd of
dancing couples.

  As luck would have it, the deejay played a slow song the instant they stepped onto the dance floor. Despite his protests, Clay knew the basics of slow dancing. He’d left his jacket on his seat back. His strong arm wrapped around her waist. His calloused hand held hers. He studied her face as he shuffled his feet in time to the music.

  And they danced as if they’d done this a thousand times together, instinctively following the rhythm of each other’s bodies.

  Clay’s angular features lifted in a study of delight upon discovering how the beat poured from the music, through him, to her.

  Giddy with happiness, Aurora flowed with the man and the music and the movement. She didn’t want to worry about anything while she surrendered to this moment of perfection. Clay towered over her just enough to make her feel feminine. His hands were confident as he guided her through the crowd, his fingers doing a subtle dance of their own at her waist. His body lingered every time his hips and thighs brushed hers. Had she really thought dancing would release some of the tension between them? She’d obviously not danced with the right man before.

  Clay’s steady hand rode her waist. The linen of his trousers brushed the silk of her skirt, and their gazes met and sparked with awareness. His palm at the small of her back guided her in a rhythmic sway as breast met chest, and their bodies pulsed to a beat that had more to do with their night together than it did to music. Had he asked it of her, she would have left the floor right then and looked for the nearest bed.

  The song changed to a fast beat, and Clay hesitated, watching the other dancers. Caught in the spell of his embrace, Rory no longer cared about dancing, but her partner had a look of determination in his eye that fascinated her nearly as much as what the night promised.

  She understood now that Clay could do anything he put his mind to, and that his mind was on dancing with her tonight. She had no words to express the thrill of that knowledge.

  Other couples deserted the floor with the first pounding chords of the faster beat. Clay simply set his eagle eye on the remaining dancers, chose the pattern he preferred, and, holding Rory’s hand and waist, loosened his grip and matched the rhythm of the music.

  She laughed when he swung her beneath his arm and bent her backward as if he’d been doing this since childhood. As if she were made of fluff. She’d waited all her life for this—freedom to let go and be herself.

  She began to see her smile reflected on Clay’s face. His sharp jaw relaxed, and his eyes glittered with delight at her laughter. By the time their meal arrived, he was inventing steps of his own, and she feared other women would start swarming over him as if he were John Travolta.

  “Food.” She pointed at the table.

  He studied the table, listened to the next song, and, apparently deciding food was preferable, returned her to her chair. She loved the way his mind constantly ticked, taking in everything, sorting through his observations, and working out solutions without a word being said.

  She was in serious trouble here, thinking thoughts like that about a man who didn’t think in terms of futures or careers—when she could never forget that her family depended on her career for their future.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he announced after satisfying his first urgent hunger pangs, pushing back in his chair, stretching his legs out, and watching her sip her wine.

  “About what?” She wasn’t certain she wanted to go wherever he was headed. But she did her best to appear together and calm. A man who actually wanted to talk wasn’t a man to be taken lightly. She practiced his habit of listening.

  He crumpled up his linen napkin and tossed it on the table. “About us. About sex. About relationships.”

  “Oh, that.” Her heart kicked hard enough to hurt, and she tried not to wince. What had she said? Something stupid, probably—like not wanting casual sex when all she could think about right this minute was how soon they could find a bed not surrounded by family.

  “I don’t know how to date like a teenager,” he warned.

  He looked so serious. No, he looked like a Hollywood star being serious. Or a computer mogul who desperately wanted sex but was willing to negotiate a contract first. Aurora smiled at that.

  “That’s okay. I’m not a teenager.” She wished she knew what she wanted well enough to tell him, but her life was too stressed-out and confused right now. “I haven’t had a lot of experience at relationships. I just know the sex between us is good, but I need more than that.”

  It was hard to tell when a handsome man sprawled in a chair in a nightclub was tense, but Aurora calculated that the dent Clay’s fingers were leaving in his trousers right now might be some indication. He didn’t go up in smoke at her reply, though, so that was promising.

  “Do people still go steady?” he asked warily.

  “If that means agreeing not to see others, I suppose.” She tried not to look too eager, but her heart was racing like a teenager’s. She wanted him to figure out how they could have sex without the commitment they both obviously feared. She wanted it right now.

  “If I tell you I’m not interested in any other woman but you, does that count as going steady?”

  “That works for me. I can guarantee you’re the only man on my agenda.” Be cool, Aurora. Businesslike. Don’t send the guy screaming into the streets.

  “I hope you warned your family not to expect you home tonight,” he said abruptly, standing and holding out his hand. “I’m willing to try this steady-dating thing, but I don’t think I’ll survive the night if I have to take you home afterward.”

  “You’re such a hopeless romantic!” Accepting his hand, Rory smiled at the wary expression springing to his eyes at her teasing. “And I bet you don’t even want to go over to the pavilion later and learn to shag.”

  “I’d say I already know how to shag, but something tells me we’re not talking about the same thing.” He still looked wary but interested. “If this is something you want to do, I’m willing. I’m opening myself to new experiences.”

  “Renaissance man, I like that. I like that so much I don’t think I want to corrupt the innocent shaggers with the kind of shagging you have on your mind.” Eagerly, she let him draw her close. The heat between them escalated to the temperature of a South Carolina August noon.

  Clay threw a handful of money on the table. “Let’s go.”

  “If I said I changed my mind and wanted to go to the pavilion, would you take me?” she jested, running to keep up with his pace outside the Monkey. Events were happening too fast. She needed to slow down. Or maybe she needed to know he was thinking about her and not just sex.

  He halted. “Where’s the pavilion?”

  She’d experienced power trips before. She thrived on walking through a megabank with documents she’d put together to seal a multimillion-dollar deal.

  That didn’t begin to compare with having this much power over a man who flipped all her switches. Whatever this was between them, it was a two-way street. “What if I tell you I want to go home after the pavilion?”

  “I’d tell you that you’re insane and try to persuade you otherwise.” Intelligently catching on to her little ego trip, Clay took her elbow and guided her toward the car. “Don’t tease. I’m still working on that negativity thing. I want to see more of you. I’m working toward something positive, see?”

  Since all her hormones were frolicking like little rabbits in an open field, she probably wasn’t seeing anything clearly, but she liked the sound of this. She climbed into the Jag without further argument. Maybe they could figure out their emotions once they got this sexual frustration out of the way.

  “And that’s what you decided while pounding holes in the courthouse roof today?”

  “I’m taking it slowly.” He started the ignition and pulled into the unlit street. “Baby steps first. Dancing, wining, dining, flowers—that’s all a form of lovemaking, isn’t it?”

  He sounded so sincere, Rory laughed. “You’re a quick s
tudy, I give you that, though I don’t know that I’d call it lovemaking.”

  His brow creased as if he were analyzing her comment for hidden meaning. “Will it pass for foreplay?” he asked with such studied gravity that Rory laughed.

  “Very likely. So does the Jag. Want to try for sweet words next?”

  “I think that’s a little more advanced than I’m ready for yet. How about if I just try keeping my floor clean because I want my steady woman to make it up the stairs alive?”

  Relaxing into the mood he created instead of fretting over this next step in their relationship, Rory admired the moon rising over the harbor as they crossed the bridge to the island. So maybe she was setting herself up for heartbreak. How many times in her life would she ever come across a man she enjoyed as much? How many men had she ever discussed sex with and still felt comfortable without being pressured?

  None. No man had ever met her on her own terms, then challenged her with his, stretching her viewpoint to encompass whole new horizons.

  She didn’t want to analyze what was happening to her, not when anticipation hummed inside her. The night was perfect, with a nearly full moon and a sensual warmth like silk against her skin. She would simply relish the moment and live with a broken heart later.

  She darted a glance at him and smiled at the way he studied the road ahead, then the road behind in the rear-view mirror. Another man might have been looking at her or toying with the radio. Clay had a knack for applying seriousness to just the right things.

  He abruptly swung down a road leading to the shopping center.

  She blinked in surprise at the abrupt change in course. “Do we need something at the grocery?”

  “See the headlights behind us?” He adjusted the rear-view mirror. “Watch and see if it’s a black Lincoln when I turn off here.”

  He pulled the Jag into the parking lot and stopped under a streetlight. A black Lincoln slowed, rolled past, and turned into the entrance of a lot down the road.

  “He’s going into the office park.” Rory eyed Clay with curiosity as he gunned the engine, hit the highway, and headed back toward town. “The town is full of black cars. If you think that’s the one Cissy—”