Clay

by Jennifer Blake

  “He won’t do anything except eat, will you, Mr. Clay?” Her small features mirrored earnest concern as she searched his face.

  “No,” he answered with grave deliberation. “I don’t think I will.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die?”

  The pledge was an extremely serious one to Lainey, Janna knew. She thought that Clay realized it as well for a crooked smile came and went at one corner of his mouth as he held the child’s gaze. Still, he sketched a quick cross over the proper spot on his T-shirt-clad chest before he repeated with a slightly dryer note in his voice, “Promise.”

  Lainey looked at Janna again. “See?”

  Janna thought she must really be losing it, because she did think the arrangement seemed reasonable. Denise had said Clay would not resort to violence, and he had offered none so far, in spite of several opportunities. He’d failed, in fact, to take advantage of the most blatant intimacy. The look in his eyes as he’d given his word left little doubt that he meant to keep it. The only question that remained was what else he might have in mind?

  If he meant to exercise his charm on her as suggested, well, what of it? It was unlikely to get him anywhere. And if he had a little more freedom to pursue his aim, there should be even less need for violence.

  “All right,” she said.

  “You’ll do it?” Lainey’s face shone as if lit from within, and she clapped her hands as she jumped up and down.

  “While you go wash your hands,” Janna told her then ushered her toward the bathroom as she went to find the key to his wrist padlock.

  When she returned with it, she seated herself on the bed beside Clay. She held a hand out toward him, and he laid his bound wrists across her palm.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, his voice low and deep.

  “I know I’m taking a chance, if that’s what you mean.” She removed the lock, then plucked at the knotted ropes, finally going to her desk and returning with a slender paintbrush to use as a prying tool. As the ropes loosened and she began to unwind them, she saw that Lainey was right; his fingers did have a purplish cast.

  Watching her, Clay drawled, “You like living dangerously, is that it?”

  “I don’t know that I’d put it that way.” She risked a quick glance at him, and was caught by the heat in the dark blue depths of his eyes. For long seconds, neither of them spoke, then he seemed to notice that his hands were free. Clasping one wrist, he rubbed at the marks.

  “So what do I say now?” he asked. “Thanks?”

  She lifted a shoulder by way of an answer, her gaze still on his hands. They were well made, strong, brown from the sun, and with long, aristocratic fingers. Watching them gave her a taut feeling in her lower abdomen that was a vivid reminder of the night before. It was difficult not to reach out to help him soothe the rope indentations as she’d seen her daughter do once before. As her gaze focused on his wrists, however, she noticed that they were marked not only by redness, but by the raw scrapes of new injuries.

  “You’ve hurt yourself,” she said, shocked into inanity.

  “It’s what happens when you’re trying to escape,” he answered, the words tinged with irony. “Of course, you can always kiss it and make it better if it really bothers you.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said at once, though she had to wonder if his arch suggestion hadn’t been designed as a distraction. The only reason for it that came to mind was male reluctance to talk about his failure.

  “So what made you decide to take this chance?”

  “Misplaced concern, no doubt.” She got to her feet without obvious haste, stepping to where she’d left the lunch tray on her worktable.

  “The point being?”

  “Maybe I feel sorry for you?”

  “Or maybe you’re sorry you started the whole thing?” He swung his feet off the bed and rose to his full height.

  “Could be.” Janna’s throat tightened. Funny that she hadn’t realized just how tall and broad he was before, or quite how knee-knocking powerful was the aura of charisma that surrounded him. She wouldn’t let him know how nervous he made her, however, not if it killed her.

  “Let me know when you’re sure,” he advised in quiet irony, “and I’ll tell you how I feel about it.” He didn’t wait for her comment, but moved from the room and across the hall. A moment later, Janna heard him talking to Lainey above the sound of running water.

  She felt as if she’d lit a firecracker and there had been no explosion. Could Clay have just hinted that he had no objection to being at the camp? What reason could he possibly have for such a thing? She stared at the food on her plate as she tried to work it out in her mind, but finally shook her head in defeat.

  The raccoon, deserted by both its playmates, shimmied down the folds of the bedspread that was pushed to the foot of the bed and waddled over to Janna. She took a piece of lettuce from one of the salad bowls and bent to offer it. Ringo accepted it in his handlike paws, but didn’t seem too impressed with it. While she watched, he took it to his water dish at the foot of the bed and proceeded to give it a good dunking.

  Even as Janna smiled at the raccoon’s antics, doubt about her release of Clay grew in her mind. She had thought before that what she’d done to him was all wrong. Now she was forced to wonder if she had compounded the error by allowing him the use of his hands.

  Clay returned with Lainey and the meal progressed. The two staged a race to see who could finish their salad first. It was a ploy by Clay to encourage her daughter to take in healthy calories, she thought. She’d like to believe that he had some ulterior motive, but it seemed too natural and spontaneous, as if he was used to kids, used to taking an interest in their welfare. It was that Benedict clan thing again more than likely, where all children were looked on as part of one big family, therefore tended, protected and cherished by all.

  Clay’s sudden attack came in the form of a question, one that caught her off guard. “Did you mention me to your visitor last night?”

  She pushed away her salad bowl and sipped her tea to give herself time to gather her scattered thoughts, but there was really only one answer. “I didn’t, not that it makes any difference. He saw you.”

  “How was that?”

  “How do you think?” Janna glanced at Lainey who was taking advantage of their distraction to sneak an extra roll from the plate.

  “I doubt he was happy. Did he have any suggestion for what to do about me?”

  “It didn’t come up, since he seemed to think you had some right to be here.”

  “But you set him straight?”

  “It was none of his business.”

  “No?”

  Clay’s gaze was so intent that it rattled her. “Anyway, there wasn’t time. His main reason for coming was to tell me that he’d need…”

  “What?” he asked as her voice trailed away.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it does.” Clay tilted his head, his gaze penetrating. “Let’s see. Could it be he needs—money?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Call it a guess,” he said with irony.

  Was it really, or did he know more than he was admitting? “It’s my problem and I’ll solve it.” To change the subject, she went on, “Speaking of finances, I’ve been thinking about the dye plant you mentioned. Are you sure you know where to find it?”

  “Positive.” He transferred his attention to his plate as he forked a bite of chicken.

  “You’re bluffing. Aphrodite’s Cup and its couleur de l’amour doesn’t exist, hasn’t for a hundred years.”

  “Wrong.” He handed the raccoon that had climbed up to his knee a tidbit of meat, a treat that seemed much more to Ringo’s taste than lettuce.

  “What would it take to get you to show me where it grows?” Janna wanted that color and the dye plant that made it. She could feel her creative energy rising at the mere thought but there was more to it than that. An idea had come to her as s
he made lunch, her subconscious generating visions of designs even as she arranged chicken and lettuce. It seemed that this special shade of blue, and the fabric series that she could develop for it, would be enough to gain a new contract from the company with which she worked. The promise of it might be enough to persuade her banker to increase her outstanding loan to cover Dr. Gower’s new demand. That would at least return to her the choice between the two unpalatable options facing her for Lainey’s surgery: using Dr. Gower’s cadaver kidney or coercing Clay.

  Then there was Lainey herself. She loved blue in all its shades and hues, and it seemed that helping with the dye might serve to wean her away from her growing dependence on Clay’s company. That would ease the niggling worry Janna was beginning to feel about how Lainey was going to react when he vanished from her life. In short, it seemed that if she could just find the Aphrodite’s Cup, everything might be all right.

  Clay watched her, his gaze unreadable. Finally he countered, “How much do you need? That is, how many plants, approximately? It takes whole fields of indigo, I think, to produce a pound of dye. I’m assuming it would be the same with Aphrodite’s Cup.”

  “I’m not sure, since I don’t know how the dye is extracted. Making indigo is a long drawn-out process that includes fermentation in outdoor vats, but it might be possible to boil the stems or roots of Aphrodite’s Cup. I’d need only a few plants at first, for a test.”

  “But maybe a lot more afterward,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t want to harvest it to extinction, if that’s what you’re thinking. Should the plants turn out to have commercial application, then cultivation would have to be arranged.”

  He searched her face, his gaze straight. At last he said, “I’ll think about it.”

  “But you said you could get it!”

  “I never said I would,” he replied, unrepentant.

  In other words, he meant to keep his swamp secrets to himself, or else use them as some kind of bargaining chip, Janna thought. She should have known. “Fine,” she said, her voice hard. “I’ll find the damn plant myself if I have to search the swamp inch by inch.”

  What he might have answered, she didn’t know. They were interrupted by the sound of a boat, a sizable craft from the roar of its motor. It was traveling at a steady pace, but with the caution of a driver who knew the lake and had sense enough to be wary of underwater obstacles. It seemed to be heading straight for the camp.

  Janna left the bedroom, closing the door behind her. In the kitchen, she moved to the front windows and lifted a slat of the blinds that covered them. The boat was almost at the dock. It was white and shining, a fast cruiser with a spotlight and antennas decorating the front, and a man in uniform and wearing dark shades behind the console. On its side was an insignia. She couldn’t make it out at first; then the boat turned broadside to her as it eased to a stop.

  Janna’s breath caught in her throat as the letters jumped into focus: Tunica Parish Sheriff’s Department.

  8

  Clay had a passion for boats, had lived with them all his life, since his family home, Grand Point, was on the lake. They were to him what hot rods were to some men, and he had owned more than a few. He’d also helped work on the bass rigs, pontoon boats, houseboats and other assorted craft belonging to his cousins, Kane, Luke and Roan. It was no task at all, then, for him to recognize the sound of the cruiser maintained by the Parish Sheriff’s Office because the lake and its swamp or the river bordered so much of its jurisdiction. Roan’s controlled style of piloting was easy to distinguish as well. It appeared that his cousin was paying an official visit.

  As the motor rumbled into silence, and then Janna’s footsteps left the porch on her way down to the dock, he said to Lainey, “Look’s like your mom’s got company. Wonder who it can be?”

  The girl wrinkled her nose in a grimace. “Probably that red-haired nurse. I hope she doesn’t stay long.”

  “Nurse?”

  “She comes to take my blood, but she was here not long ago.”

  “Not time for more sticks, then?” he asked with as much sympathy as curiosity.

  The girl shook her head so quickly that her hair fell into her face. “Not yet.”

  “That why you don’t like her, because she always sticks you?”

  “Sort of,” Lainey agreed, though she kept her gaze on Ringo. “But mostly, she’s not very nice. She doesn’t smile in her eyes. And she gives me orders like she’s my boss, and doesn’t always tell me before there’s going to be a stick. I don’t like the way she talks to Mama, either.”

  Clay reached to push the shiny blond hair, so like her mother’s, behind the girl’s ear and away from her face. “She talks mean to your mom?”

  Lainey hunched a shoulder. “She just sounds like she’s mad all the time, like maybe she doesn’t like coming here.”

  “You’re a bright girl,” Clay said, his voice dry.

  Lainey flashed a smile then that told him she had the potential to become an accomplished flirt in a few years.

  “But it might not be the nurse coming to see you,” he said. “Don’t you want to find out for sure?”

  Her face turned serious as she glanced at the cable that held him then returned her gaze to his face. “You want to know, huh?”

  “Could be,” he answered carefully.

  “Okay.” Gathering up Ringo, her rag doll and the handful of film canisters that had become her favorite toys, she headed out the door. “Be right back.”

  As soon as the screen door slammed shut, Clay, giving thanks for the free use of his hands, performed a little magic on the padlock that fastened his waist ropes with the folding tool from his pocket. Sliding off the bed, then, he padded barefoot from the room and down the hall. In the kitchen, he stepped behind the table to the window that looked out onto the screened porch and the lake beyond. With care, he lifted a louver of its blind just enough to see out.

  The visitor was Roan, all right, standing at ease with his Stetson under one arm and both the star of his badge and his sandy hair glinting in the hot sunlight. A scowl drew his brows together so his forehead pleated into grooves.

  Janna’s back was to Clay, but he saw her make the age-old gesture with arms open and palms upturned that signified lack of knowledge for whatever query Roan had put to her. A tight grin curled one corner of Clay’s mouth as he noted his cousin’s ambivalence, as if the sheriff didn’t know whether to believe her or call her a liar to her face. At least he was undecided enough that he made no move toward barging into the camp, which had been Clay’s first concern.

  Lainey, he saw, had taken up a position on the concrete steps that led up to the porch. She was setting out a tea party in front of her doll and her raccoon, using the film canisters. Ringo, bored with the proceedings, batted a canister around until it tumbled down the steps and rolled along the dirt walkway to stop just inches from the toe of Roan’s boot.

  The sheriff bent and picked up the plastic cylinder. He stared at it for a second, then glanced toward Lainey’s sizable collection. Putting a finger inside the film container, he stood twirling it around in idle preoccupation, dividing his gaze between the facade of the camp and Janna as he talked to her. She shook her head again, a movement that somehow managed to convey regret. Roan slipped the cylinder off his finger in a show of one-handed dexterity, then tossed it back onto the porch step beside Lainey. Seconds later, he replaced his hat, tugged it down over his eyes in a polite gesture of farewell, then turned away.

  Clay didn’t know whether to laugh or curse. He wasn’t ready to give up the cozy nest he’d made for himself, but it was just a little sobering to see how easily an attractive female could hoodwink the law.

  The sheriff backed his boat away from the dock at idling speed, then pushed the cruiser into a takeoff that churned up a wide wave as he swooped into the turn. Seconds later, he straightened on a course that would take him back to Turn-Coupe. When Clay saw Janna turn toward the house, he made tracks back to his room
. By the time she returned with Lainey, he was reclining like a sultan on his couch while properly restrained once more.

  “So,” he said, pretending to stifle a yawn. “What was the excitement all about?”

  “Someone looking for you.”

  Strain sounded in her voice. The visit from the law worried her, Clay thought. “Anyone I know?”

  “All right, it was your cousin, the sheriff.” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but began to pick up the plates and glasses they’d been using, stacking them together.

  “Nice of him to be concerned,” Clay commented in dry tones.

  “It wasn’t just that. It seems you had an appointment to be fitted for a tux as a groomsman in his wedding, one you missed. He doesn’t consider your nonappearance to be like you. So when does this wedding take place?”

  “A month and three days from now.” He waited to see how that time limit affected her. Her lips tightened but nothing more, which led him to think that she could have a shorter time frame of her own. That bothered him. It bothered him a lot.

  “A big event, is it?” she asked finally.

  “Wedding of the year for Tunica Parish. That’s saying something, since my cousin Luke caused a fair splash earlier in the summer. He married romance author April Halstead, you know.”

  “What’s so important about it?”

  “It involves the sheriff, for one thing, but the woman he’s marrying is East Coast high society.”

  “Funny you didn’t mention this little arrangement before.”

  “You didn’t ask. I thought my agenda made no difference to you. Or is it just that it never occurred to you that I might have a life?”

  The look on her face told him that she’d thought that exactly, or else that she’d considered photography his life in the way that work often consumed men. If the latter, then she wouldn’t have been that far from the truth.