Carolina Girl

by Patricia Rice

  “Why would you go if you didn’t want the damned job?” he asked, to cover his otherwise senseless reaction to her approach.

  “Because it’s the intelligent thing to do,” she shouted back, even though they were only a few feet apart. “You can hire a dozen people I could name right offhand to run your business. You don’t need me.”

  Was it his imagination, or did a question mark dangle at the end of her statement? You don’t need me...do you?

  Clay was aware of people wandering out of adjoining businesses to see what the shouting was about, but he had his focus now, and he wasn’t letting anything distract him from Aurora.

  Standing toe-to-toe with her, he stared down into her upturned face with that glorious, kissable mouth. “Who the hell said I don’t need you? Do you think for one damned minute that I’d have stayed here and fought fires and worked for nothing and listened to arguments about swamp development if I didn’t need you?”

  “The swamp’s important,” a voice argued from the crowd—Jake. Hell, that figured. He was probably charging admission for ringside seats to the fight. Mandy’s voice cheered Rora on. She’d probably arrived home just in time to haul the whole family in to watch the circus. If he weren’t so pissed off, he’d laugh at the absurdity his life had become.

  He’d had some idiot idea he could learn to handle involvement and people a little at a time. She was heaving him into the middle of the pond without a life jacket, showing him what to expect if he stayed here.

  Paddling hard to keep his head above water, Clay concentrated on the fury gesturing beneath his nose and not their growing audience.

  “You needed sex,” Rora shouted. “You can have that anywhere.” A few female cheers rose from the crowd, but she wasn’t diverted. “We’re talking about me here. You don’t need me. You can fight your own battles, make your own millions, write your own future. Don’t you think I ought to be able to do the same? Or do you think I ought to sit here and wait for you to do it?”

  “I want what you want,” he heard himself saying. He didn’t even think about it. He simply knew the answer.

  “I want to stay here,” she said defiantly. “Or maybe Charleston. I want to work. I like my career. I want to save the swamp. I want people to have jobs and decent housing. I want ten thousand things!”

  She was shouting again. So was the expanding crowd.

  Clay processed all her demands silently while a catcaller jeered and women hurled insults. Jake and Mandy shouted encouragement. He had to learn how to handle this kind of confusion if he wanted to do more than sit in front of a computer screen for the rest of his life. Aurora would never be a restful, complacent partner.

  “I don’t want ten thousand things,” he said carefully, hoping he’d understood, that she would understand. “I’ve had ten thousand things. I can have them all again tomorrow. But I don’t have any interest in things. My only interest is in you, and you’re one of a kind.”

  Clay’s declaration jammed any reply back down Rory’s throat. She devoured his determined expression, seeking any sign of insincerity. There was no room in his irregular features for insincerity.

  When the catcaller started defending himself with shouts of, “She’s just a swamp rat from the island, what the hell are you gettin’ on me for?” she jumped on the distraction. Maybe she wasn’t prepared for Clay’s unexpected candor, but she was wound up right for a rip-roaring fight.

  And if she were to come back here to live, she needed to straighten out a few misconceptions. The whole county was going to know that she’d stand up for her family. Her days of running away from her origins had ended.

  Swinging to face their audience, she planted her hands on her hips and sought the loudmouth. “I’m a Jenkins. I live in a double wide. I’m meaner than a junkyard dog, more ornery than a gator, and I have more brains in my little finger than an air bag like you has in his whole inflated head.”

  “Only island trash causes a scene on the courthouse lawn,” the voice from the crowd shouted back.

  Might as well administer her first lesson. “If you didn’t have your nose up your ass—”

  She gasped as Clay caught her waist, moved her behind him, and blocked her access to one of her old high school foes. With one hand, Clay jerked the clod from his feet by his shirt collar.

  “You’re causing a public scene,” Clay pointed out reasonably, although swinging his captive back and forth until he gagged on his own collar wasn’t precisely an act of rationality. “Apologize to the lady.”

  A thrill shot straight to Aurora’s toes at Clay’s instant defense. If he was showing her how it would be if he stayed here, he was doing a fine job of it. The idea of not having to fight alone anymore excited her more than if he’d given her diamonds and gold.

  “That’s no lady...” the heckler started to argue.

  Aurora sighed as Jake pushed his way through the crowd to aim a punch at her tormentor. “Pops, no! That’s just Walter. He hates his own mama. Clay, let him down. I don’t need to be bailing both of you out.”

  Clay released Walter before Jake could take a swing. Walking away from the pair as they tumbled into the dust, he occupied Aurora’s space by placing his lovely flat nose next to hers. “We don’t have to live here and put up with this crap. I’ll go where you go. You just say the word.”

  He was much better at recklessly jumping off high cliffs without a parachute than she was. Her heart skipped erratically at his wild assertion. She needed detailed promises written in stone. Or concrete. He made brash declarations without saying the words she longed to hear.

  “Just what exactly are you proposing?” she asked to hide her nervousness.

  Oops. She hadn’t meant to phrase it quite that way. But she had Clay’s full attention now. As deputies spilled out of the courthouse to settle the battle on the lawn, he let down his defensive shields, and his gaze flared so hotly he could have scorched her.

  “Marriage, if that’s what you want,” he shouted. Then, obviously studying her reaction for a better response, he amended, “Or if that’s too fast for you, I can try old-fashioned courtship.”

  Grappling with his unpredictable reply, Rory watched his eyes dance in reaction to her stunned silence. “You haven’t taught me how to shag yet,” he reminded her.

  Laughter tinted his voice now—not the cynical bitterness she’d heard when they first met, but the joyful noise that reflected hope and confidence and awoke warm butterflies in her belly.

  She ought to swat him for being so certain of her answer, for standing there like a shirtless sex god who commanded all he surveyed. He hadn’t said the magic words yet. They hadn’t known each other long enough....

  She saw the challenge rising in his eyes and realized she was fully back in her old non-risk-taking mode. She could follow her head, or take the chance her heart begged for.

  “She started it,” Walter yelled in the background. “Arrest her! And him. He assaulted me!”

  With a slow smile, Rory lifted her arms and wrapped them around Clay’s neck. “Love is going to jail together,” she murmured foolishly as he grabbed her and held her tight.

  “I know a good lawyer.” Capturing her mouth with his, he ignored the apologetic deputy walking up behind them.

  “Sir, you’ve been charged with assault....”

  Aurora giggled against his mouth. “Magic Man forgot the magic words.”

  “Will the words make buzzing gnats go away?” Continuing to ignore the young deputy, Clay rearranged her more firmly against him and began nibbling her ear between murmurs. “Abracadabra.” Nibble. “Alakazam.” Two nibbles. “Love, marriage, hearts, and flowers,” he continued as the deputy read him his rights.

  She’d have to chew his ear off for being so perverse in not saying the three little words she wanted to hear until she’d said it first, but the love spilling from her heart included the whole world right now, and she could afford to be gracious. Sort of.

  Leaning back so Clay could no
longer nibble on her, she smiled at the deputy. “Tell Wally if he presses charges, I’ll tell his mama who egged her house on graduation night.”

  The deputy looked startled. Clay laughed out loud. Rory was so tickled to hear his laughter that she stepped back to admire the sight. Shirtless, with his jeans riding halfway down his hips under the weight of the tool belt, Clay was a bronzed magician who had every woman in the crowd sighing with lust...

  And he was hers.

  This was no risk. This was heaven. Clay had the single-minded focus of a hound on the hunt, and he wanted her. A man with the patience and steadiness of this one would never change his mind when waters got murky. And he loved her. She had no doubt that a man of Clay’s strength of character would ever say words he didn’t mean. Or sort of say them.

  But she wasn’t about to celebrate her joy out here where everyone could watch. When he reached for her again, she took another step backward and tripped over an object on the grass. Clay grabbed her arm, but the unexpected brunt of her weight as she went down caught him off balance. Together they tumbled onto the lawn.

  He broke her fall, yelping as he rolled over the object that had caused her to trip. Shifting, Clay lay her safely back on the ground again, then leaned over her, grinning. He smelled of masculine sweat and a musk that stirred fantasies of what they ought to be doing right now instead of making spectacles of themselves.

  “I love you,” he murmured as the deputy hovered over them. “I want you, I need you, and if you want to hear the lyrics to a lot of corny love songs, I can summon them in a second. Just give my addled brain time to translate what I’m feeling.”

  Turning red, the deputy wandered off to pass Aurora’s message on to Walter.

  “Until the mountains crumble and the rivers dry,” she agreed, her heady joy summoning more old lyrics. “I love you so much it’s scaring me half to death.” She hated admitting that, but he had to know what he was doing to her.

  “I’ll take care of that,” he said reassuringly. “If we stand together, you’ll never have to be afraid again. We’ll grow old together, sharing whatever life has in store for us.”

  He ran his fingers into her hair and looked at her with such joy and wonder that Rory believed him. Clay McCloud was one scary man, but love was a powerful emotion, one she’d avoided because she’d been afraid of losing control, of sharing her heart. She thought she was strong enough to live with love now, trusting Clay to cherish and protect it.

  “Maybe I’d better hold out for old-fashioned courtship,” she murmured, shaken by the depth of her emotion. “Shagging sounds like a good start.”

  At Clay’s burst of laughter, she regained some of her senses. Deciding they’d better take this out of the public eye, Rory started to edge away, then noticed the object she’d fallen over.

  “Is that the thing you took out of the clock?” she asked in wonder, not certain she was seeing what she thought she was seeing.

  Reluctantly releasing her hair, Clay pushed up on one hand to look over her. His silence said he saw what she did.

  “The sorcerer found the key to the treasure?” she whispered in incredulity at the glitter in the grass.

  “Or the late mayor’s hidden assets,” Clay said with his normal cynicism, reaching over to dump a treasure of diamonds from the clock’s old counterweight.

  Rory erupted in laughter and delight. The ex-millionaire had just discovered millions when he no longer needed it. She thought it even funnier when Clay’s brothers wandered up with their wives to see if they’d lost their minds.

  “Well, guess that solves the mystery of where the old mayor hid the rest of the spy hoard,” TJ said with a degree of satisfaction.

  “Man, you’re millionaires,” Cleo whispered in awe.

  Which sent both Rory and Clay into further paroxysms of laughter.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Courtship,” Clay insisted, leading Aurora up the inside stairs of his beach cottage. “You need to know exactly what you’re getting. I’m no million-dollar prize.”

  “You’re better,” she asserted.

  They’d spent a hectic day surrounded by crowds of the curious. It was heaven to finally be alone, listening to the surf outside the windows, feeling her pulse beat as Clay clasped her hand in his gifted fingers. She hadn’t had time to fully appreciate the words they’d exchanged, much less absorb how she felt about them.

  He didn’t smile at her, but on the landing he tugged her into his arms and rested his head on hers. “I’m better than a million dollars?”

  Another woman might have thought he was teasing. Rory knew he asked for reassurance. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she reveled in the way his embrace tightened. “Better than all the diamonds in the world.”

  He chuckled and relaxed as he snuggled her against him. “You could have kept at least one. Then I wouldn’t need to buy one for you.”

  “For a smart man, you have a lot to learn, mister.” She brushed her lips along the strong column of his throat to show she didn’t mind teaching him. “With those diamonds the town can afford new schools without needing condo developments or golf courses. I don’t like diamonds. They’re cold and hard.”

  “They’re not for a soft, warm woman like you,” he agreed, pulling the pins out of her hair so it cascaded over her shoulders. “A gold ring, then, to show you’re taken. Otherwise I’m likely to make a habit of defending my territory. I don’t seem to be entirely civilized around you.”

  She heard the smile in his voice as he led her toward his bedroom. She shivered as Clay stroked her nape and his hand strayed down her spine. She liked this gentle, smiling side of him. She liked Clay’s magic fingers even more. Standing beside his bed, he pushed her silk shell up and over her head and skimmed his hands over her breasts. She was instantly aroused and ready for him. “Who needs civilization in the bedroom?”

  “A lady after my own heart.” He kissed her then, a slow, seductive, mind-melting, knee-jellifying kiss that toppled her into his bed without care for anything but the flood of need rushing through her.

  “Sometime we have to discuss babies,” he murmured between kisses.

  He said that as he was tugging off her panties, so Rory didn’t completely register his suggestion until they lay naked together, kissing and touching and causing enough friction to light fires.

  “Later,” she murmured, her mind more on muscled male and the freedom to fully express the urges his love unleashed.

  When he didn’t act fast enough to suit her, she pushed him onto his back and climbed on top to show him how she felt.

  She loved it that Clay accepted her aggression by turning it to his advantage, fondling and stroking in new and different ways. But when she was ready for more, he caught her hips and prevented what they both wanted. “The drawer in the nightstand,” he said with a gasp, “unless you want to start talking babies right now.”

  She didn’t want to talk at all. She wanted him inside her. She needed him now, and he was preventing her from it. “I like babies,” she said, rubbing at him with her hips.

  “Good.” He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her down to slant his mouth across hers.

  With joy Rory sank into his kiss, letting his tongue and hands plunder as they would. She surged against him when he filled his hands with her breasts. Love offered a freedom she’d never known in this act, a safety net that allowed her to be who she was without second-guessing every move. There were so many things she hadn’t done and wanted to try, and with utter happiness she knew Clay would gladly offer her all of them and invent more of his own.

  When she couldn’t tolerate being separated from him by even this degree, she rose up on her knees and took him inside her.

  Clay shouted with delight, caught her hips, and flipped her back to the mattress, pinning her beneath him.

  Laughing, Rory wrapped her legs around his hips and surged upward. “There’s no risk in forever,” she murmured.

  “Together fore
ver. I love the way you think. I love everything about you.” In approval, he bent to suckle her breast.

  Rory’s hips surged off the bed, driving him deeper, driving them both to frenzy, as if this were the only outlet for the powerful emotions penned up inside them. After weeks of denying themselves, they climaxed quickly and together, already one, with only one driving need.

  Once satisfied, physical urgency ebbed to a quieter place, resting while they caught their breaths and rediscovered their surroundings.

  Sprawling his long body next to hers, Clay rubbed his fingers over the moisture he’d left on her thigh. “A small ceremony in Vegas, tomorrow.”

  Unprotected sex...babies...marriage. Following the unspoken path of his thoughts, Rory smiled at the mosquito netting over their heads. Inside that complex brain of his, Clay carried old-fashioned morals and courtesy to their limits. She liked that in a man. That didn’t mean she had to be an old-fashioned girl. “A huge ceremony, here, when I have time to pull it together.”

  She liked the way he stroked her with familiarity, as if they already knew each other so well they could read each other’s thoughts. They could, she realized. She knew exactly what was going through Clay’s head right now, as he did hers. The thrill of knowing someone else understood was even headier than sex.

  His fingers squeezed her thigh. “I’ve waited too long to find you. I don’t want to wait any longer to have you in my life on a permanent basis. I want to wake up with your head on my pillow in the morning, and I want it properly, so you won’t be ashamed in front of your family.”

  She wanted that, too. She liked turning her head and meeting Clay’s serious stare, or his amused smile, and knowing he was thinking about her. She liked lying here, talking about the future with a man who understood her ambitions. “Mandy will just have to be corrupted. I don’t think I can leave this bed anytime soon.”

  When Clay smiled, the sun rose in the sky and the birds broke into song. Aurora sighed in thanksgiving. Life had been kind to give her a man with the intelligence to look and listen and think for himself.