by Hope Ramsay
“Oh, man, I don’t think I…”
Clay grinned. “Not to worry, I’m prepared.”
He rolled half off the sofa-bed and reached for his pants. He pulled out his wallet and found a little foil packet in one of the inside pockets.
“Just like the Boy Scout you are,” she said.
Clay turned back toward her with a little frown, and Jane had this horrible feeling she had ruined the moment. “Is that how you see me?” he asked.
“I meant it as a compliment,” she said.
His gaze narrowed. “You did?”
Oh, yeah, she did. It occurred to her that a Boy Scout was probably the best thing a woman could ask the Universe for. A Boy Scout was better by far than Sir Galahad. White knights had a tendency to go thrashing about the countryside for long periods of time, crusading and bashing people, or jousting with one another to see who was the top guy on the block.
Boy Scouts were much handier. Not only were they always prepared, honest, thoughtful, and patriotic, the average Boy Scout could rescue people, perform first aid, and forage for food in the wilderness.
And Boy Scouts could build fires. Big, big fires.
“Yes,” she said. “I meant it as a compliment. I have a thing for Boy Scouts. Especially the ones who have mastered the art of fire building.”
His eyes flashed. “Fire building, huh?”
“Yeah. Fire building.”
Clay tore open the foil packet and covered himself. “Yeah, well, the thing about building a fire is that you always have to take a few safety precautions.”
“Uh-huh. I know. And I’m sure glad you were prepared.”
He lay down beside her and pulled her back into his arms. “Me, too,” he whispered into her ear.
And then he was pushing his way inside her, and it felt so right. Like some balance had been restored to the Cosmos.
Clay rocked against her and took her up, and up, and up, and up, and up. And then she shouted his name out loud, and she unfolded like one of those pyrotechnic starbursts that filled the sky on the Fourth of July. And oh, how she burned like fireworks, until she was nothing but ash, buoyed up by a midsummer breeze that floated her along for miles before depositing her, ever so gently, back on solid ground.
It was much later that it occurred to her that the windows were open and that anyone walking on Palmetto Avenue would have heard her scream his full name, including the middle initial, P. And that made her smile, and it made her hot, and she wondered if it might be possible for him to make that happen a second time.
CHAPTER 17
Ray lay in a hard single bed in a dark room in a strange house. He tried not to feel panicky. He had figured pi to the seven hundredth decimal, but this trick for lulling himself to sleep hadn’t worked.
He was scared. He wanted to go home.
What had he done? It had never occurred to him when he had staged the robbery at the store that they would put him in a place like this and treat him like a dummy. He wasn’t stupid. He was just a little mixed up. He had expected to go to live in Stone’s jail. So that Stone could watch out for him when Alex decided to fire him. And then Betty and Clay could get on with their lives.
But things had gotten really confused, and they put him here in this strange place instead of Stony’s jail. And he hadn’t counted on that. He hadn’t counted on missing the hardware store, or Dot’s Spot… or Betty, either.
His chest burned with the thought. He was going to hell. He had had a thing for Betty Wilkins since he was twelve and she was fourteen and started growing those incredible tits.
Betty had been seventeen and he had been fifteen when she finally let him touch one. She’d let him go all the way with her that same year—a secret he’d kept even from Clay. And man oh man, Betty had always made him feel like his head was scrambled, even before he bumped it on the windshield of Clay’s Dodge.
Ray had kept his thing for Betty secret back then, for a lot of reasons. Betty was older than he was, and she was… well… not the smartest girl he’d ever met. But she was as sweet and hot as one of his momma’s homemade blueberry pies. She could play pool and poker and loved baseball and could bake like nobody’s business. Betty had turned him on and embarrassed him at the same time.
Now the tables were turned. He was much dumber than she was, even though he could do math in his head. They had put him in a home for stupid people.
And that bothered Ray.
But it didn’t bother him as much as knowing that he would miss her. He was going to miss the way she would sneak over to his house with her basket of fried chicken and squash casserole. He was going to miss having sex with her. He was going to miss the little notes she left in the morning with the little heart-shaped circles over her i’s.
Ray was going to miss holding on to her at night and listening to her tell him that it was okay for them to be together. And he didn’t have to worry about Lillian Bray or the holier-than-thou members of the Ladies Auxiliary saying that he was too dumb to be in love. And he was going to miss the way Betty made him feel—like he was whole and complete and worthy of something more than what he was.
Ray curled in on himself, feeling miserable and alone. This is what he deserved for the way he had treated Betty when he was seventeen and had won the scholarship to Rice University.
He had to let her go. He had to get out of her way, and Clay’s way, too, because his friend was on the point of making some big mistakes all on account of the fact that Clay still felt guilty about that car accident.
Ray would endure. He would keep thinking about pi.
Which he did for a long while, until he heard a noise that wasn’t just the settling of the strange house. Someone was tapping on his window.
Ray sat up in bed and looked at the window that dominated one wall of his little cell of a room. He squinted in the dark.
Betty Wilkins was on the other side looking in. How she managed this remained a mystery until he opened the window and realized she was standing on an extension ladder that didn’t look too steady.
“How did you know this was my window?” he asked.
She smiled that sweet smile of hers. “I snuck in earlier, disguised as a cleaning lady. I saw your name on the door, but you weren’t in the room. So I told a big lie about needing the key to the window lock so I could clean the outside of it. It’s amazing how people look right past a person wearing a uniform sometimes. It’s hard to get good help, these days, you know?”
“Sure, Betty, but—”
“C’mon, let’s go. I’m springing you.”
“But Betty, that’s not—”
“Hush, now, I’m not going to take no for an answer. I’ve got my car, and my life savings, and a bunch of maps that will get us to Vegas. C’mon, now, you’re going to make an honest woman of me if I have to drag you kicking and screaming to the altar. And I’m making it clear right now, I want a preacher dressed like Elvis.”
“But Betty, I stole that money from Clay and I—”
“Ray Betts, you get your butt out of that room, you hear? That had to be the stupidest thing you have ever done. I’m only glad you left that money where folks could find it. And don’t you think I don’t know why you stole that money and then allowed yourself to get caught. You thought you were a burden to me and Clay. Well, I’m telling you right now, Ray Betts, you are not a burden to me. I can’t speak for Clay, of course, but as far as I’m concerned, Clay needs to move on with his life.”
“But Betty, I—”
She stepped up one more wobbly step and stopped his protest by giving him a kiss that rearranged his gray matter once again. “Don’t you like me, Ray?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah, Betty, I like you a whole lot.”
“So are you saying you would rather be in jail than with me?” Her voice wavered a little, and he hated the idea of smiley-faced Betty crying over anything, especially him.
“Don’t cry,” Ray said. “I thought if folks like Lillian Bray ever found out abo
ut us they would send me away to a bad place, especially since Pete is sick. Everyone says he’s going to die. And Alex aims to fire me from my job when that happens.”
“Oh, so taking the money and getting put in jail or being sent to a place like this is the answer?”
He thought about that for a minute. “I guess I screwed up.”
“Yes, you did. But it’s okay, darlin’, because you did it for the right reasons. Now, you better come on. Because if we get caught, I’m going to jail. And you don’t want that to happen to me, now, do you?”
“No, Betty.”
She backed down the ladder, and he watched her in the pale light of a full moon. It shone bright on the swells of her breasts, and the sight of them made him feel a little dizzy.
Big-breasted Betty had just rescued him from a bad place. And that was pretty cool, because Betty Ann Wilkins had the best tits in all of South Carolina—maybe even the Universe—and she had a higher Desirability Index than any other woman in Last Chance, South Carolina.
Clay watched Jane sleep. The light in the little room faded from black to gray with every breath she took. Dawn was breaking outside the windows, and he ought to be getting up and heading home to take a shower and do battle with Tricia, Ricki, and the entire legal system of South Carolina.
He checked his watch. It was after six.
Clay curled a lock of Jane’s hair around his index finger. Suddenly, evicting the ex-girlfriends and rescuing Ray didn’t seem all that important. He looked down at this remarkable woman and felt the change inside him, right there in the center of his chest.
Jane had captured his heart. There were no two ways about that. Still, on some level, his brain was screaming that things were happening too fast. There were still lots of things he didn’t know about her.
But he didn’t care right now. Right now, she made him feel like a real man. A man in every possible way. And he didn’t want to give that up.
Clay leaned forward and pressed a little kiss to her forehead and watched her sleepy eyes flutter open. She’d been through hell, and somehow it hadn’t touched the goodness in her soul. He watched her come to full consciousness, knowing that he was the first thing she would see today.
Miriam Randall was so right. She wasn’t at all what he had been looking for, or even what he had expected. She was so much more. And it was amazing, really, how close he’d come to missing out.
Now, looking down at her, he found himself mentally filling in the cells in Ray’s stupid spreadsheet. On the plus side, Jane had a voice like an angel and a body made for sin. She saw the positive in every situation, and she was great with kids.
On the negative side, there was that little matter of why she had turned up in Last Chance with only the clothes on her back and five dollars in her pocket. But aside from that, Clay was hard-pressed to find anything wrong with Jane Coblentz. He had a pretty good idea of some of the things she probably had done in the last seven years—just to survive. He was pretty sure he could forgive her for just about anything.
He was a forgiving man, at least when it came to Jane. He wasn’t feeling magnanimous toward his ex-girlfriends. But the difference was that Tricia and Ricki had hurt him. Jane hadn’t hurt anyone.
Jane Coblentz had to be the first woman who had ever called him a Boy Scout at the beginning, as opposed to throwing that label at him like an epithet on the way out the door. And that made him feel so good he could hardly contain his joy.
“By that canary-eating grin on your face, I guess you had a good time last night,” Jane said in a sleepy voice.
“Yes, ma’am.” He placed a kiss on her forehead.
“I guess it’s time to come back down to earth, huh?”
“I’ve got a better idea.”
“A better idea?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“Marry me.”
“What?” The smile on her face disappeared. It occurred to him that, perhaps, the disappearing smile was a danger sign. But he was committed now, so he forged ahead.
“Yeah. I thought we could throw some clothes in my Windstar and head for Vegas. Find ourselves one of those chapels where the judge dresses up like Elvis. I figure if we drive straight through, we could be husband and wife in a matter of days.”
“You want to get married by an Elvis impersonator?” Jane rolled away from him and sat up. The blanket fell to her waist and gave him a killer view of her breasts. His body responded in a completely adolescent and predictable manner.
“Yeah, well, if you prefer we could get Reverend Ellis down at Christ Church to do the job.”
“You’re teasing me, right?”
Clay sat up beside her and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t come willingly. “No,” he said to the top of her head. “I’m not teasing. I want you to be my wife, Jane. And besides, if we’re going to sleep together in this town, being married is practically a requirement.”
She pushed away. “For heaven’s sake. Please don’t.”
“What?”
Jane stood up, turning her back to him. By the set of her shoulders, he got the impression that she wasn’t too pleased with him. This was not going the way he thought it would. Maybe he’d missed something. Maybe he’d been thinking with his pecker and not his head.
Jane headed off in the direction of the bathroom. “You’re insane. You don’t even know me. I met you less than a week ago. Getting married right now is not going to happen.”
Clay followed her, but he wasn’t fast enough. The bathroom door slammed, and he heard the snick of the snap lock. Shoot, she’d managed to lock herself in the bathroom after all.
He got up and leaned into the door frame. “Jane, let me in.”
She didn’t say anything, but a few moments later, the toilet flushed. He waited until the water quit running.
“Jane?” he said.
“Yeah,” she said through the door. He wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling he’d made her cry.
“Open the door.”
“No.”
“I really do want to marry you.”
“Yeah,” she said in a voice that sounded lost and unhappy. “So I guess I got myself on your list, after all.”
He stood there blinking at the door and realized his mistake. He’d forgotten to tell her he loved her. Instead he’d started with the marriage part, and then he’d justified it in a pretty stupid way, too. “Uh, Jane, open the door, would you please?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to leave until you open the door.”
“Guess you’ll be stuck here for a while, then.”
“Jane, please, I have something important to tell you, but I’m not going to say it to a locked door.”
Silence beat like a ticking clock for several moments. But then the door opened, and she stood there wearing a pale yellow dressing gown. She had her arms folded across her chest, and a mutinous look on her face.
“Jane, I—”
“What about Ray?” she asked, interrupting his big pronouncement, bringing him back down to earth. “Are you just going to run off to Vegas and leave him high and dry? And weren’t you the one who said on Saturday that you can’t run away from your life? Because, excuse me, this proposal of marriage sounds a whole lot like a not-very-nice proposal from some guy who’s almost middle-aged and is terrified that his not-very-successful life is at a dead end.”
Wow. Low blow. Serious low blow. And it hurt because it was dead-on.
Clay stood there naked as the day he was born, looking at her, wanting her, needing her, and terrified that he was never going to actually get her.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I guess I got things kind of out of order. Because in case you missed it, the main reason I want to marry you is because I—”
At that moment, trouble came knocking on the door, like it usually did. And in this case, it took the form of his older brother. And Stony didn’t exactly knock.
“Clay, are you in
there?” Stony bellowed as he banged his fist on the door.
Crap. Stone’s timing couldn’t have been worse.
Clay held up one finger. “Hold that thought one moment, honey, while I dispense with this interruption.” He turned his back toward her and snagged his boxers from the floor. He stepped into them and opened the door.
His brother stood out there on the landing with the glow of dawn over his shoulder. His nose was less swollen than it had been night before last, but it was never going to be as straight as it had been. His shiners had started to fade to green and yellow. Clay felt sorry about what he’d done. He was going to have to make it up to Stone one of these days.
But maybe not today. Because Stone was looking pretty serious out there. No doubt his big brother was not happy about finding him shacked up with a woman he thought was some kind of criminal.
Stony’s icy gaze missed nothing—not Jane standing at the bathroom door, or the tumbled sheets, or the condom wrappers on the carpet, or even the Oscar the Grouch boxers Clay had thrown on yesterday morning because he’d been at the absolute limit of clean laundry.
The boxers got a hint of a smile. Maybe because Stone remembered that the underwear had been stuffed in the toe of Clay’s stocking last Christmas. Or maybe it was because Momma had stuffed a pair of Grinch boxers in the toe of Stone’s stocking last Christmas, too. Momma had a way of getting her point across that was sometimes irritating as hell.
Stone’s smile vanished. “You’re in big trouble, boy, you know that, don’t you? And if you think for one minute I’m going to save your sorry butt, you better think again.” He leaned into the door frame and his utility belt creaked. Stony was not fooling around.
“Uh, what trouble would that be?”
“Shoot, Clay, did you think the authorities wouldn’t figure it out? My God, you left your ladder there for the forensics team to dust. I’d say the chance of finding your prints on that ladder are about one hundred percent.”
“Uh, you want to rewind that, Stony, ’cause I’m trying to figure out which ladder you are talking about and why the forensics team would be dusting it for my fingerprints. If this is your idea of a joke, or some lame attempt to save me from Jane, then you can think again.”