“He never talks to anyone, so I guess it’s not attention he’s after.” She tucked a pencil into the bun of hair at her nape and grabbed a shrilly ringing phone, waving Rory on.
Clasping the key in her fist, Rory wended her way past desks and cabinets and assorted equipment to pry open the squeaking door. She wrinkled her nose at the musty stench emanating from the wooden structure. If the town ever hired a real live fire marshal who actually inspected buildings, he’d probably condemn this stairway. Until then, she needed a broom to clear out the cobwebs.
Checking a nearby janitor’s closet and finding a worn broom, Rory thanked the good Lord for people who never changed their habits. She could swear this was the same broom she’d used the first time she’d sneaked up the stairs. Wielding the handle, she brushed aside cobwebs and cleared a path.
The old staircase seemed safe enough. With her sensible heels slapping the wooden treads so he could hear her coming, Rory climbed to the third story landing and located the vent overlooking the roof.
“McCloud!” she called, rattling the louver until it opened enough for her to see out. “I need to talk with you. You want to do it here or somewhere more appropriate?”
The clock tower was actually overhead, perched on the peak of the roof, so she had to look up as well as out to see the mechanic. Mostly, she could see his long, jeans-clad legs. Apparently amused by her call, he peered over his sunglasses at the open louvers, but she figured he couldn’t see her.
“There’s a ladder in here,” she shouted. “I can climb up there if I have to.”
“I like a woman with perseverance. Give me a minute to screw down this frame. I’ll meet you down at the Monkey.”
He didn’t possess the honeyed drawl of a local man, but he had a deep, sexy voice that crawled right down inside her and made itself at home. Rory shivered in appreciation, then rolled her eyes.
He hadn’t even asked why she wanted to talk with him. Men! He probably thought his body was all she was after. Rory watched to be certain he was fastening the frame, then trudged down the way she’d come.
The Blue Monkey was her father’s favorite hangout, but it also served short-order meals and didn’t mind serving sailors who dragged in from the harbor covered in grease. It would be air-conditioned and not too busy at this hour, so she couldn’t argue with his choice of meeting places.
Rory didn’t recognize the young bartender, so she was safe in ordering a soft drink without a recitation of where she’d been and what she’d been doing since high school. She sighed at the ever-present contest slogan on the label of the bottle he slid across the bar to her, but she checked under the cap, just in case. Her father’s penchant for playing contests had started rubbing off on her since she’d returned home. Something about placing her hopes in the hands of fate appealed when she had no other options.
Flinging the Sorry, try again cap to the bar, she turned to study the jukebox. The playlist hadn’t changed since Elvis had checked out. She punched in a Simon and Garfunkel song from the seventies and took her glass and bottle to the first booth.
“Bridge over Troubled Water” hit its last wailing note as Thomas Clayton McCloud sauntered in. He’d apparently taken time to scrub off in a rest room, wetting his long, sun-streaked hair. He wore the ash brown length tied back with a leather thong against his bronzed nape. He’d donned a plaid cotton shirt to cover his bare chest, but with the sleeves ripped off, it didn’t do much to disguise his sculpted biceps.
Rory had to bite her tongue to prevent drooling as he slid into the booth across from her, exuding male pheromones. Brains won over brawn any day in her book, but that didn’t stop her from appreciating the view when he crossed his sinewy arms on the table. This was the town’s computer expert?
He lifted his sunglasses, sliding them into his overlong hair. Up close, Rory could see that it had an unruly curl to the ends. The sunglasses had partially concealed a broad nose with a slight downward slope instead of the classically handsome one she’d expected. He wasn’t Hollywood pretty, but his long-lashed gray eyes could ring her chimes any day.
“There’d better be a good reason for dragging me down here this early in the day.” With a gesture at the bartender, he ordered a beer. The boy knew his brand of choice without asking and carried the bottle over still sweating from the cooler.
Sipping the beer, Clay admired the glory of the fullfigured redhead across from him—his fantasy Viking princess sprung to life in Technicolor. She’d twisted strands of her strawberry-blond mane into a knot at the back of her head, but it was too heavy to stay in the pins. One escaped lock curved in a delicate line along her throat, just brushing her red silk shirt. The stiff-collared, no-nonsense shirt didn’t bother him, but the gray business suit she wore with it warned he really didn’t want to hear what she had to say. He didn’t listen to suits these days.
Leaning back against the wooden bench, he took a good chug of beer and waited for her to get past his rudeness. No sense in encouraging whatever maggot had stuck in her craw. Instead, he engaged his mind in admiring the way her luscious lips tightened into a disapproving line.
“I’m Aurora Jenkins,” she said with only a hint of the soft drawl of the island inhabitants. “Terry Talbert has put me in charge of developing a budget for the park grant. I have an MBA in finance and grew up here, so I volunteered to help him out for a while.”
Raising an eyebrow, Clay continued sipping his beer, waiting for her to come around to what she really wanted.
In the dim light of the bar, her eyes appeared almost violet. They narrowed at his nonresponse.
“I’m developing a budget for the land-planning grant,” she continued without voicing an iota of frustration at his stonewalling. “I understand you’re overseeing the software development of a program capable of identifying and locating the Bingham heirs. If you haven’t pulled your cost figures together yet, I can help you with them.”
Clay nearly snorted beer out of his nose. Wiping the smirk off his face with the back of his hand, he leaned forward, bringing them face-to-face across the narrow table. “I do software. I don’t do numbers.”
“The state requires numbers, Mr. McCloud.”
“The state can go screw itself. I’m working for next to nothing and nothing is what they’ll get if they don’t leave me alone.”
“With that attitude, maybe nothing is all you have and all you ever will have, Mr. McCloud. Perhaps I should suggest that the state find a different person to locate the heirs?”
“In my experience, you may suggest to them that the moon is blue, and they’ll appoint a committee to study the matter and make a decision sometime in the next century. Don’t let me stop you.” Flinging a bill on the table, Clay slid out of the booth.
It was a damned shame that great body was wasted on a narrow-minded number cruncher, but he was sticking to simple minds and simple tastes these days—even if Aurora Jenkins’ curves could tempt Satan.
“The park is imperative to our future, Mr. McCloud. We need a budget to get the state grant. I’ll present you with a suggested budget for your division next week,” she called after him.
He almost laughed out loud at that. He should have known any woman willing to tackle that spider-infested tower wouldn’t give up easily. Turning, he winked at her in his best obnoxious manner. “You’d be better off hunting for the late mayor’s missing fortune than to trust the state.”
He walked out, letting the door slam behind him.
Missing fortune, her foot and eye. If she could find a fortune, she’d be out of here so fast, his head would spin.
Cursing, Rory fumbled in her purse for some change so she could pay up and leave.
Where the hell did he get that my-way-or-the-highway attitude? Was he born with it? Did someone teach it to him?
Could she hit him over the head with a two-by-four and bash it out of him? There was a reason she preferred the pinstripe-suit crowd these days. She could control her temper better in the sec
ure environment of intelligent people who shared rational goals.
“Clay took care of it,” the bartender said, sweeping the bill off the table before she found her change purse.
“Put the money against his tab.” Refusing to take anything from the bastard, Rory threw a couple of ones on the table.
She’d have to investigate Thomas Clayton McCloud more thoroughly before she approached him next time. Did he have any business background at all? Did he even have an education? How much did he actually know about programming? It was a real stretch to believe he could find the on switch of a PC.
She bet he found the on switch of every woman who crossed his path. Fanning herself with a file folder as she left the bar, Rory tried to ignore all the hormones exploding like little bombshells in less noble parts of her.
McCloud exuded sex appeal like bees secreted honey. She didn’t have the time or the patience to play little boy games. He could go exude on some other hapless female.
McCloud's Woman Page 34
