Secrets in the Sand

by Carolyn Brown

  “Are you saying I’m nothing?” Clancy asked.

  “I’m explaining her actions,” Angela answered. “Melissa’s scared to face life alone. At one time, she could control you, and it might have worked again if I hadn’t been there beside you. Her story didn’t make sense. You won’t even have a full glass of wine with me, but you’d get drunk with the woman who left you for another man? Come on, even you have a bit more class than that.”

  “Thanks, and I do mean it.” He sighed. “I really did not have sex with her. I had drunk several beers and I was a little tipsy, but I did not touch her, and that’s a promise. If she’s pregnant, I’ll go for DNA testing, I promise.”

  “That’s up to you, but it would be a smart thing to do if she insists on spreading rumors about you,” Angela said. “For now, I think I’d like to call it a day. I need a long, hot shower to wash all this sand out of my underwear, and you, sir, probably do too. You can walk me to my door. But I was only kidding about you coming into my room for a cold soda. I learned my lesson about sex many years ago. I don’t fall into bed with a man just because he has lots of sex appeal and a nice smile.”

  “Thanks for the compliments.” Clancy extended a hand to help her up.

  They walked across the sandbar still holding hands. Angel had no doubt that the head of all the guardian angels in heaven had been working on her side that night. She felt a crazy need to drop down on her knees and give thanks even if she never knew exactly what had caused her to turn around in the middle of that triangular argument.

  Thank God for hunches, she thought.

  Angel hadn’t realized how much Clancy meant to her until she thought of Melissa snaring him with a lie. She might not be ready for a relationship with him, but she’d be damned if she stood by and lost the best golfing partner she’d ever found. And, besides, she got the whole bottle of wine when they were celebrating!

  When they reached the top of the stairs, he unlocked her door for her, handed back the key, and turned around to go across the breezeway to the second building. “Thanks. I mean it, Angel.”

  “Is that all? I didn’t say I wouldn’t appreciate a nice warm kiss to finish off a wonderful day.” Angel smiled up at him.

  He wrapped his arms around her and drew her close to his body. He cupped her cheeks in his hands, and she’d barely had time to moisten her lips when his eyes fluttered shut and his mouth closed over hers. Her knees turned to jelly, and she leaned in to him for support.

  “Is that warm enough?” he whispered seductively when the kiss ended.

  She took a step back and said, “No, that wasn’t warm. It was downright hot! I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll bring the doughnuts for breakfast if you’ll make a pot of coffee,” he said. “About nine?”

  “Make it ten,” she answered. “We are on vacation.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He grinned.

  She opened her door, stepped inside, and kicked off her shoes as she crossed the room and fell onto the bed. When she touched her lips, she was surprised to find that they were cool. She could have sworn that they would be burning like fire.

  Chapter 11

  She lay there for several minutes, then got up and took a long, cool shower. She crawled between the crisp, white sheets and stared at the ceiling for a minute or two before she drifted off to a dream about Clancy. When the alarm went off, it jolted her out of a deep sleep. She slapped at the clock to turn it off, but it rang again and she realized that it was the telephone.

  She glanced at the time and realized it was only four o’clock in the morning. “Damn it, Clancy.” She grabbed the phone from the nightstand and closed her eyes before she answered.

  “Hello. This had better be a matter of life and death,” she said.

  “Miss Conrad, this is the front desk. We’re sorry to inform you that you’ll have to leave within the next hour. We are evacuating the motel, and the whole area for that matter. The tropical storm has made a turnaround and will be making landfall by tomorrow afternoon as a hurricane. We don’t usually get this type of storm during this time of year. We’re going to be boarding up windows and doors all day. Can I assist you in any way?”

  “Good grief!” Angel jumped out of bed and onto her feet.

  “We’ve been tracking her path all night. The Weather Channel had predicted she’d go to the other side of the state, but she made an abrupt about-face and is coming this way with a full head of steam.”

  “Thank you,” Angel managed to say before she hung up and threw a suitcase on the bed. She tossed clothing in it and rushed to the bathroom for her toiletries. Then she made herself calm down and fished her phone out of her purse, found the number of the airline, and called. “I need a flight out of here to Dallas or Oklahoma City.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. The flights that haven’t been canceled are already full,” the reservations clerk said, and Angela swore under her breath at the same time she heard an incessant pounding on her door. She jerked it open to find Clancy standing outside with his bags sitting beside him.

  “I’ve called the car rental where I got the Cadillac. My truck is at the Oklahoma City airport. We can leave this rental there and drive my truck back to Tishomingo, or I’ll take you home. Get in touch with your rental place and tell them to pick up your car here at the hotel.” He pushed past her, zipped her two suitcases, and started out the door with them.

  “Wait a minute!” she called desperately. “What if I don’t want to ride all the way home with you?”

  He groaned and threw up his palms. “You can go with me, drive yourself, or we can ride out the storm on the beach. The motel is evacuating. I’ll be back in two minutes, Angela. You don’t have to get dressed. You look pretty cute in that nightshirt, and I’ll drive, so you can sleep.”

  “Oh, hush!” She slammed the door, shucked her Betty Boop nightshirt and threw on the shorts and T-shirt she had left out to wear home, then dialed the rental company number on the key chain she’d pitched on the night table yesterday.

  Was it really just yesterday that she had arrived at the hotel? A whole month’s worth of staggering events had happened in a scant twenty-four hours, and now a freak tropical storm had decided to pay a visit. Did she have her girlfriends to thank for that too? She tapped her fingers on the table and willed someone to answer the phone.

  Maybe the rental agency had been evacuated too!

  “Thank you for calling Hertz,” the rental clerk said. “How can I help you?”

  Was Florida full of crazy people who had no respect for storms? And what did they do with tourists who needed a place to stay when the beach motels were evacuated?

  “This is Angela Conrad. I need to return a rental,” she said. “Could you please pick it up here at the hotel?”

  “We’re here twenty-four hours a day,” the clerk said. “Leave the keys under the vehicle’s floor mat. We’ll bring a set of keys and drive it home. Angela Conrad, red Ford Taurus. Do you want us to credit the refund back to your credit card? Do you need the address of a shelter where you can stay for the next couple of days until the hurricane blows over?”

  “Thank you. And, yes, please do credit it back to my card.” Angela hopped on one foot while she put on a sneaker.

  “Better hurry if you’re planning on making a run for the border,” the woman said. “Most hotels north of us will be filling up fast. Be careful of floodwaters over streets.”

  “Will do.” Angela crammed everything from the vanity in the bathroom in her last bag, quickly scanned the room, and was on the landing by the time Clancy came back up.

  They were thirty minutes inland, headed due north, when the wind and rain surrounded the car on all sides. Clancy eased up on the gas pedal and inched along the highway behind dozens of other people trying to get away from the hurricane. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. Angel had nev
er seen such rain in her life. Visibility was two inches at most. Wind beat the powerful, driving sheet of water against the car in great waves.

  “Maybe we should’ve built an ark last night,” Angel whispered, awed by the force of the storm. “If this is just the forerunner of the hurricane, I don’t want to be around when the real storm arrives.”

  “Maybe we should have found a shelter and not tried to outrun this,” Clancy said. “The hotel manager said the hurricane wouldn’t actually make landfall until tomorrow.”

  “Shh,” she yelled above the noise of the wind. “I don’t want to spend time in a shelter full of strangers. We’ll outrun the storm soon enough. Too bad we can’t take part of this rain home, only without the wind. You know how much my gardener would like this amount of water in the middle of July?” she said nervously as she watched a tree on the side of the road bend and sway, then disappear in the grayness.

  They could easily die in this stupid Cadillac out here in the middle of gray rain, and no one would know for days. When rescue workers came to clean up the rubble, there would be an overturned car, looking like a casket, with two bodies in it. What in the hell would the Tishomingo newspaper do with that story? Angel could just imagine the lead: Well-known local resident dies in crash with rich oil company president, formerly a local member of the white-trash sector, and his former wife says she barely got out of the state before the storm hit!

  I bet the wrath of Melissa caused the hurricane to take an abrupt turn toward us, Angel thought. After all, the woman had been a first-class witch for years. Maybe she had taken a correspondence course and expanded her powers. Angel visualized her in a long, flowing black robe, stirring a boiling pot full of liquid somewhere down the beach. In the vision, Melissa would chant a while and then add a pile of frog toes and the powdered brain cells of a sea gull, along with a sprinkle of lizard liver, evoking the dark powers to bury Clancy and Angel together in a big automobile.

  Angel giggled softly at the crazy notion, but hey, it had kept her from worrying for a few minutes.

  By what should have been daylight, they had crossed the state line into Alabama and had only traveled sixty miles in three hours. The rain slacked up enough to make it possible to see the road signs and the yellow line down the middle of the highway. Angel’s stomach grumbled loudly enough that Clancy turned to look at her.

  “Hungry?” he asked. “I’m starving. Want to stop at the next exit? I caught a glimpse of an advertisement a few miles back that said there was a McDonald’s up ahead. I’d do anything for a cup of coffee.”

  Angel sighed. “Yes. I want mine black and strong. And one of those biscuits with eggs and ham and cheese, and a hash brown. Do you think it’s going to rain on us all the way home?”

  Clancy nodded. “Probably.” He eased the car off the exit ramp, noticed a McDonald’s sign to the left, and after a quarter of a mile saw the familiar arches. “We’re going to get soaked.” He parked the car, turned off the engine, and just sat there.

  “Are you all right?” Angel asked.

  “My hands hurt from gripping this steering wheel so hard, and my shoulders feel like someone beat me,” he admitted.

  She reached across the console and patted him on the back. “Thank you for getting us out of there. I’m strong, but I’m sure glad I didn’t have to drive in all this rain.”

  “You are welcome. Do you want to go to the drive-through window and eat in the car?” he asked.

  She unbuckled her seat belt. “I’m going in. I’ve got to go to the restroom. Better to be wet with rainwater than with what would happen if I don’t find the ladies’ room. Besides, I’m not sugar or salt, and I won’t melt. All that will happen is my curly hair will frizz up and I’ll look like a string mop left out in the sun.”

  “Then let’s make a run for it. Betcha I can beat you,” he teased.

  “Oh yeah?” She took the challenge. “On your mark, open the door, go!” Angel splashed through the water, ignored all the mud puddles, and laughed all the way. When Clancy reached the door, she was holding it open for him like a butler. “Come right in, Clancy Morgan. You just lost the race. So, you can buy breakfast. Besides, I left my purse in the car. I’ll be sitting at that booth after I dry off with paper towels in the restroom.” She pointed to the back and left him standing in a puddle.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He grinned.

  When she returned, he motioned to her from a booth where their breakfast was sitting in the middle of the table. Her shirt clung to every curve, and there wasn’t a dry patch of cloth on her body. She took off her shoes and set them on the seat beside her.

  “Breakfast is served, ma’am.” Clancy pointed at the tray between them. “Chow down. The lady at the register said it’s a hundred miles to Montgomery and there’s not a dry inch of ground between here and there. We might make it by lunchtime if we’re lucky.”

  “Umm.” She tasted the coffee first, holding it in her mouth, enjoying the warmth and the flavor. “Thanks for this. Want me to drive a while? How far is it by car to Dallas from Alabama, anyway?”

  “Depends on where you start from, but we’ve got two weeks to get there, don’t we?” he said.

  “No.” She bit into the biscuit. “I might keep company with you for two weeks in a resort, but not in a car. We can drive straight through until we get there. You can sleep while I drive, and I’ll sleep while you drive. A day, two days?”

  “Two if the rain stops. One night in a motel on the way,” he answered. “You’re off work for two weeks, though. Let’s take our time.”

  “I’m goin’ home, Clancy,” Angel declared as if that would make it final. “You can drop me in Denison on your way.”

  “Is your car at the airport?” he asked.

  “Patty drove me to DFW,” she said between bites. “I should call her. She’ll think we both got blown away by this storm.”

  “When we drop this car off at the airport and get my truck, I’d love it if you’d come home with me for the rest of the vacation. Mama would love to see you,” he asked.

  Angel practically choked on the hash-brown patty. “Are you seriously inviting me to go home with you? To Tishomingo—as a house guest in your mother’s home?”

  “Yes, I am.” He nodded. “Or I’ll get you a room at the only motel in town for the rest of your vacation if you’d be more comfortable there. Better yet, we’ve got a guesthouse out by the pool. It’s got two separate rooms with two outside entrances. You can stay in one, and I’ll stay in the other. That way Mom and Tom can have a little bit of privacy in the house. It is their honeymoon, remember?”

  “Can I think about it for a while?” Angel wasn’t going to make a big decision like that on the spur of the moment.

  “Sure. I figure we might get in by tomorrow evening if the rain lets up,” he said.

  Angel called Patty about the time that the office opened. She got voicemail and left a message telling her friend that she was in a world of trouble, that the storm hadn’t blown her and Clancy away, and she’d call again in a couple of days. Then she ran back to the car in the driving rain and hopped into the backseat. By the time Clancy opened the door to his side of the car, she was opening a suitcase, taking out clean underwear, a dry shirt, and pair of shorts, and jerking her wet shirt over her head.

  “Keep your eyes on the front window,” she told him when he dove for the front seat. “I’m changing clothes back here, and then I’m crawling over the seat. You can do the same when I’m finished. Unless you’re too damned tall and old to crawl over the seat. Lord, it feels wonderful to wear dry clothes. I’m glad I brought these old sweatpants and this shirt. They’re soft and warm. I may sleep all the way to Oklahoma City in them.”

  “Why do I have to keep my eyes front and center? There are windows all around you in this vehicle,” he reminded her. “Anyone can see inside.”

  She dried her hair with
a beach towel and then threw it over the seat. “Want to use this to get the water out of your hair? Anyone would have to press his nose to the window to see inside in all this rain. Then he’d break his neck to cop a peek because I can dress faster than the speed of lightning.” She wiggled into her dry things. “Now”—she shimmied over the seat—“your turn.”

  “You don’t have to keep your eyes on the front.” Clancy opened the door and quickly went from the front to the backseat where he opened his suitcase. “I don’t mind one bit if you turn around and stare at me.”

  “I’ll just look forward,” she declared, but she didn’t tell him she could see him from the chest up in the corner of the rearview mirror.

  He finished dressing, then crawled over the seat with as much agility as she had. “I haven’t been wet like that—”

  “Since early last night, but it didn’t feel the same then, did it?” She finished the sentence for him. “That was voluntary.”

  She curled up in the seat, leaned her head against the window, and fell asleep by the time he had started the car and pulled out into the traffic. When she awoke, she rubbed her eyes and yawned. “What time is it?”

  “After two,” he answered.

  “Look!” She pointed out his window, just missing his nose by an inch in her excitement to show him. “That’s the most beautiful rainbow I’ve ever seen. The colors are so bright. Look at that purple, Clancy!”

  “I can see it, Angel, honest. Want me to stop the car so it won’t get away before you’ve looked your fill?” he asked.

  “Look at the blue. And I can see the whole arch. Do you think there’s a pot of gold at the bottom?” She was so excited that her words came out in a tumble.