“You’re the one with the hunch power, Angel. What do you think is at the bottom of the arch? A pot of gold or an oil well?” he asked.
“A motel with hot water and big, fluffy towels,” she answered.
“Your wish is my command,” he said as he pulled under the awning of the Holiday Inn. “One room or two?” he asked before he got out of the car.
Her heart screamed one, but her mind knew better. “It doesn’t matter. One if it’s got two beds. Two if they’ve only got a bed in each. I’m not afraid of you, Clancy, but we’re sleeping in separate beds tonight, and that’s a fact.” She crawled out of the car and headed into the motel lobby with him.
“Whatever you want,” he told her.
“We need a couple of rooms,” Clancy said.
“Got one left,” the clerk said. “And it’s close to the restaurant and club too. They serve a pretty mean surf-and-turf supper there, and a band plays on Friday and Saturday, but not tonight.”
“We’ll take it,” Angel said.
The clerk filled in all the paperwork, took Clancy’s ID and credit card, then handed him a door key.
“We can have dinner without going outside.” Clancy got a cart for their luggage and loaded it up. “But I guess there’ll be no dancing, since it’s only Thursday night. However, if you’d like to stay over through tomorrow night, we can rest up all day, and I’ll dance the soles right off your shoes.”
“Oh sure, and take until Saturday night to get to Tishomingo.” She shook her head. “No, thank you! Cooling my heels in a motel is not exactly what I had in mind for a vacation after all these years. But then a danged old hurricane, a twenty-four-hour drive, and kinky hair wasn’t either. Show me to the room and let me have a shower before I turn into a raving lunatic.”
“Then you are coming to Tishomingo with me?” Clancy asked as he pushed the cart into the elevator and pushed the button to the third floor.
“I think I just might do that,” she said as the elevator doors opened. “I figure in less than a week, you’ll be glad to give me a ride back to Denison. You might even get a bottle of wine to celebrate your good fortune in getting rid of me!”
He tapped the room key against the lock and opened the door.
Angel went into the room and pointed to the bed farthest from the door and closest to the bathroom. “I’d like to have that bed, and can I have the first shower?”
“Of course.” He smiled. “Go enjoy a nice long shower or bath. I’ll take a nap while you do that.”
“I’d love a nap after my shower,” Angel said.
“I’ll wake you at suppertime.” He yawned as he unloaded the cart and then pushed it out into the hallway.
Angel unzipped one of her cases, took out her toiletry kit and a white terry bathrobe, and disappeared into the bathroom.
She ran a tub of full of hot water and dropped her clothing on the floor. She sighed when she stepped into the tub and slid down into the warm water. Poor Clancy must be even more sore and tired than she was. She had slept through part of the trip, but he had driven for hours and hours. When the water went lukewarm, she washed her hair and got out of the tub. She wrapped a white hotel towel around her hair, dried her body off, and then slipped into her white terry robe.
“Good grief!” she exclaimed when she saw her reflection in the vanity mirror and realized what she had agreed to do. “I’ve agreed to spend time with him in Tishomingo. What was I thinking?”
***
Clancy was too tense to fall asleep when he lay down. His mind went over and over what had happened in the past twenty-four hours. He had been sure Angel would walk away from him last night at the beach when Melissa announced she was pregnant. Then he figured she’d throw a fit at even the mention of spending the rest of her long-deferred vacation in Tishomingo. Their hometown was so small there wasn’t anything to do but a little golfing and fishing, unless Blake Shelton had country artists coming to town for a show. Still, the thought of going there seemed to brighten her eyes and perk her up more than anything he’d mentioned since the alumni reunion. Then it dawned on him why it was so important to her. He would be taking her around town like a girlfriend—like he should have done years ago.
Chapter 12
Wearing nothing but a robe and a towel around her head, Angel slipped out into the hotel room to find Clancy sleeping. She quietly opened her suitcase, found a pair of pajama pants and an oversize T-shirt and went back to the bathroom to get dressed. When she came out the second time, she pulled back the covers in the second bed and bit back a moan of pure pleasure when she crawled between the sheets.
She rolled over and propped up on an elbow so she could stare her fill of Clancy. Even in sleep he looked tired. His dark beard put a shadow on his face, and his thick lashes fanned out over his chiseled cheeks. He’d been a handsome teenager, but he had grown into a sexy man—and she still felt the same about him as she did when they were younger.
Finally, her eyes grew heavy and she lay down, still facing him, and stared at him until she fell asleep. Darkness had filled the room when she awoke a few hours later. The bed next to Angel was empty, but she could hear water running in the bathroom shower. She groaned when she realized she had drifted off with the towel around her head. Taming her wild, curly hair would take hours.
Clancy came out of the bathroom wearing a towel and a smile. “Good morning, or is it evening?”
A wave of the same cologne he wore back in high school wafted across the room toward her and set her senses to reeling. He picked out a pair of pajama bottoms and a shirt from his suitcase and started back to the bathroom.
“I believe it’s evening, or maybe even midnight,” she answered.
“I’m starving.” Clancy poked his head out around the bathroom door. “What are you hungry for? Want to get something delivered to our room or go out?”
“Pizza in our room,” she answered, thinking that she could just pile her hair up in a messy bun and not worry with straightening it and getting dressed.
Clancy dressed and then came back into the room, sat down at the desk located at the end of his bed, and picked up a hotel directory. He flipped through it, stopped on a full-page ad for a pizza place, and looked up at Angel. “What kind do you like?”
“Meat lover’s with black olives,” she answered.
And there you go! Susan’s voice popped into her head. He doesn’t even know what kind of pizza you like, or ice cream either, for that matter, because he was too ashamed of you to take you out on a real date.
Clancy ordered what she wanted and then ordered a Hawaiian pizza for himself, plus an order of breadsticks and extra marinara sauce.
See, I was right! Y’all don’t even have the same taste in pizza. Patty continued to give her the con side of letting Clancy back into her life.
That’s a minor detail, Angel argued. The bunch of you sent me on this trip to get closure. I can do it without your help.
Clancy finished the call by asking for an order of cinnamon sticks and a two-liter bottle of root beer before he laid the phone on the desk, rolled the chair around, and propped his feet on the end of his bed.
“Supper will arrive in twenty minutes,” he said.
“Clancy, we can’t go back in time.” Angel propped two pillows up on the head of the bed and rested her back against them.
“The last thing I want to do is go back in time,” he drawled. “I wouldn’t relive the past ten years for all the oil in Texas and half the tea in China. Not unless I could go back with the full knowledge I have today and redo most of it. I want to forget the past and enjoy the present, thanks to you”—Clancy caught her eye, and it seemed like he was looking right into her soul—“and have warm, fuzzy thoughts of the future. We’ve both got heartaches we need to get over. And I truly believe the place to do it is in Tishomingo. That’s where it all started, so let’s go ba
ck there and finish it, one way or the other.”
“You’re right,” she agreed.
Angel wondered if it had just been a dream that she’d lolled in the calm waters in her sundress and drunk wine from a crystal goblet with Clancy. Maybe after a while someone would pinch her and she’d awaken in her bedroom at the farm and smell the aroma of bacon coming from the kitchen where Hilda rattled pots and pans, and Jimmy puttered around in the garden.
Clancy flipped his chair around and picked up the remote. “Want to watch a movie? We can pretend we’re on a date.”
Not until you take me to the Dairy Queen in Tishomingo, she thought.
“All right,” she said as she watched him surf through the channels until he found the one that gave him the schedule for the evening. “Something to Talk About is coming on in ten minutes. It’s a comedy with Julia Roberts,” he said.
“I haven’t had much time for movies,” she said. “But I do like Julia Roberts.”
“You could sit next to me for the movie.” Clancy moved to his bed and propped up the pillows like she had done. “If we were on a real date at the movie theater in Tishomingo, you would be sitting next to me.”
“Nope, this is fine.” Angel readjusted her pillows and got comfortable. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched a movie or had two whole hours to do nothing. If Conrad Oil Enterprises didn’t claim her hours, then the farm did.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, remembering a promise she’d made to herself. “I’ve got to call Patty before the movie starts and tell her that the guillotine that’s going to chop off her head is only held up by a skinny hair.” She dialed the familiar number and got voicemail, which she talked to in a tone she hated but always used when talking to a silly machine.
“Patty, pick up the phone if you’re there.” She smiled when she thought again of the power of the tropical storm and her previous thoughts of Melissa doing a witchy version of the “Git Up” dance around a boiling cauldron. “We’ve survived another day and I’m going to Tishomingo for a while, but I’ll be home soon. Remember, all of you…are…in…trouble,” Angel singsonged.
“Movie time,” Clancy announced.
Thank goodness the movie started with the credits, so they didn’t miss anything when the delivery guy knocked on the hotel door. Clancy handed him some bills and set the boxes on the end of Angel’s bed, then grabbed the ice bucket and hurried out into the hallway. In seconds, he was back and filled two plastic hotel cups with ice. He poured root beer into each of them and handed one to her.
“How do you want to do this?” he asked.
“You can sit beside me, and we’ll have supper while we watch the movie.” She took a sip of the root beer. “We’re adults. We can sit on the same bed while we eat without…” She blushed and wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince—him or herself.
Clancy tossed the pillows from his bed over to hers and made himself comfortable. He opened all the boxes and nodded toward her. “Dig in. I’ll share my Hawaiian if I can have a slice of your meat lover’s.”
Aha, she thought. We aren’t as different as you thought, Miz Susan.
They laughed all through the movie, and at one point, she sighed when the couple finally overcame all their problems, and it looked like they would get back together. Clancy declared he would never eat Angel’s cooking, since Julia Roberts, who played the wife, had made the unfaithful husband sick by putting ipecac in his food.
“You don’t have to worry about it, Clancy. I don’t cook,” she said.
“But—but—” he stammered. “You are so good at everything. I figured you’d be a gourmet cook. I mean, you play golf. You run an oil company, and even Red stands in awe of you.”
“I don’t cook. Really and truly. I do not cook,” she answered. “Granny did the cooking when she was alive. And she did a fine job, so I didn’t need to know how. Then when she died, I learned I could live on cans of pork and beans and wieners from the grocery store. By the time I got tired of that menu, I was in the oil business. Hilda cooks for me, and she does a fine job. I suppose you won’t ever call me for a second date now, will you?”
“That’s where you are wrong.” He picked up a breadstick and dipped it in marinara sauce. “I can cook. There are restaurants on every corner no matter where you go. Cooks can be hired.”
Angel yawned. “That’s pretty much what I think.”
“Sleepy?” Clancy asked.
“A little,” Angel answered. “Watch whatever you want. Just wake me early enough so I can get dressed and do something with my hair before it’s time to leave,” she said as she closed her eyes.
“Good night, Angel,” he said as he slid off the side of the bed, put all the leftovers on the desk, and got into his own bed.
“Night, Clance,” she mumbled.
***
That she called him Clance, as she’d done when they were meeting at the sandbar in Tishomingo, didn’t merely go over the top of his head. Sure, she was sleepy and tired, and it could have been just a slip of the tongue, but it meant something to Clancy.
He watched a couple of reruns of NCIS, but he didn’t remember much of it. All he could think about was Angel, sleeping soundly beside him in the next bed. He wondered what it would be like to see her face the first thing every morning. He made a trip to the bathroom and stopped by her bed. He bent and brushed a sweet kiss across her lips.
“Clance,” she mumbled.
“Good night, Angel,” he whispered softly in her ear.
Before he could straighten up, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled his mouth down to hers for a searing kiss.
“I told you…” She sat straight up in bed, eyes wide open.
“Hey…” He backed up and put up his hands like the victim in an Old West bank robbery. “You started it. I just stole one little kiss and said good night.”
“Oh, I must have been dreaming,” she remembered. “We were…” she stammered. “Never mind.” She looked bewildered.
“Never mind what?” he pressed.
“This is crazy, Clancy.” She sat and patted the bed beside her.
He sat down and took her hand in his. She reached out to touch the soft hair on his chest where the silk bathrobe parted, and the thrill of it inched up and down his spine.
“Kiss me again. This time for real,” she said.
“Are you sure about this?” Clancy asked.
She pulled his mouth down to hers in a passionate kiss.
“Angel…” His low voice was almost a growl.
***
“Crawl in here with me.” She pulled the covers back and invited him into her bed. Tomorrow she might be sorry. But tonight, she was going to make love with Clancy Morgan, and the devil could have tomorrow. The future was a blur, the past was a mistake, but the present was theirs. Angel wanted to feel his body next to hers like she had on those hot summer nights a decade ago.
There was no hurry. Neither of them was eighteen years old nor did they have to be home by midnight. They enjoyed long, exploring kisses until they were breathless. Clancy undressed her slowly, and the whole world stood still while they rediscovered each other’s bodies.
Afterward, she curled up to sleep in his arms and he drew her close to his side. Was that closure? she asked herself as she drifted off to sleep. Or was it another heartache waiting to happen?
Angel awoke with a start when the alarm on her phone buzzed at seven o’clock. She was still in the crook of Clancy’s arm, snuggled up beside him. Lord, what had she done? This was all her own doing. She’d made the first overture so she couldn’t blame what happened on him. Before she could get anything sorted out, he opened his eyes, smiled, and kept staring at her, making little ripples travel up and down her spine.
“Good morning,” he finally said when she didn’t blink her green eyes. “Regrets?”
&
nbsp; She shook her head. “Not a single one.” But you might have some when we get to Tishomingo, she thought. A fling out here on the road is one thing. But Tishomingo is home, and nothing much changes there, except who’s on the hot seat when it comes to the rumors.
“Me either,” he said and changed the subject. “This is Friday. We could give ourselves plenty of time and get home on Saturday night. Want to stop off in Shreveport and play on a gambling boat tonight, or go dancing?”
“Let’s go as far as Shreveport and rent a motel room with one bed,” she said seriously.
Clancy eyed her closely. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am,” she answered. “But first, I’m having cold pizza for breakfast.”
She threw the sheets back, picked up her clothes, and headed to the bathroom. “Save me a piece of that Hawaiian. It’s better than I thought it would be.”
“I’ll make a couple of cups of coffee. Decaf?” he asked.
“Nope, high octane and nothing in it. I’ll be out as soon as I tame this hair. How far is it to Shreveport?” she asked.
“Too far.” He chuckled.
Chapter 13
“Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” Angel felt like she had dozens of butterflies the size of buzzards flapping their wings in her stomach. She hadn’t been this nervous since the day she signed the final papers to purchase the building for Conrad Oil.
“Hey, it’s all right, I promise.” Clancy shut the door of his Bronco and went around to open her door and gather up a load of luggage. “My mother doesn’t bite, you know. And besides, she and Tom are still honeymooners so they won’t even know we’re around most of the time.”
“You should have called first. She can’t say no now.” Angel nervously tugged her red shorts down and smoothed the front of a matching sleeveless shirt.
“Clancy!” Meredith Morgan, immaculately groomed as always, met them at the front door. “And Angela? Is that really you all grown up? Come in. Tom and I just got home this morning. We’ve been watching for you since you called yesterday morning.”
Secrets in the Sand Page 11