Carolina Girl

by Patricia Rice

  Twenty-four hours had passed since her meeting with Thomas Clayton McCloud, and she was no closer to figuring out how to deal with him than before. She was generally good with people, but McCloud...

  She had better things to do than fret over living testimonies to the dangers of testosterone poisoning.

  Her sister stirred in discomfort, and Rory cast her an anxious glance. Cissy had inherited their bear of a father’s sandy-brown hair and their mother’s slight stature. Rory had inherited their mother’s strawberry-blond mane and her father’s sturdy size. She had spent many an adolescent evening envying her sister’s delicate figure. But right now Cissy simply looked worn thin.

  “One of Daddy’s bar buddies probably picked him up.” With a grimace of discomfort, Cissy pushed the seat back as far as it would go so she could straighten her leg. “Did he tell you about the California freak he’s taken up with now? He has Daddy convinced the island is sinking, the fish are poisoned, and the wells will dry up.”

  Rory shrugged. “He’s probably right, not that we can do anything about it except move to the city, where the exhaust fumes give people asthma, the reservoirs are drying up, and the ground is poisoned with lawn chemicals.”

  Cissy chuckled, winced, and leaned her head back against the high seat. “Sounds like you and Daddy’s buddy have a lot in common. Maybe we should all learn to get around on bikes.”

  “Oh, yeah, I can see that happening.” Rory gave her sister’s injured leg a look of disbelief. “Rollerblades, too. Then we can put you in the hospital and keep you there.”

  Without a hint of hesitation, she changed the subject. “I’m thinking of selling the BMW.”

  She already knew her sister’s answer to that, but she had to put forth the suggestion. Rory loved her baby-blue convertible, but it was highly impractical out here on the sandy roads of the island. If she sold it for just half its worth, she could buy two used pickups with the proceeds. She’d spent her savings and severance allowance on their medical bills. The car was about all she had left.

  Cissy turned her head to glare at her through narrowed eyes. “No charity,” she said firmly. “I have no way of paying you back, and I’m not gonna owe you into eternity. We’ll manage. We always do.”

  Cissy managed because their father called Rory when unexpected expenses cropped up. Her education and her career had kept the family afloat for years. But she couldn’t tell her sister that their father’s “good sales weeks” came from her. He might sell more concrete birdbaths and lawn ornaments during the summer, but those sales barely held him through the winter. And now the accident that had totaled the truck had also slowed her father’s production.

  The pink slip in her last paycheck had ended the family’s income cushion. Ostensibly, she had been part of a larger layoff, but she knew the true score. She really needed to quit rocking the boat. Proposing that the bank give as much to literacy as they were giving to the new basketball arena had not been one of her better-thought-out tirades. Especially in these tough economic times.

  “Cissy, let’s be real here,” Rory argued. “I need this thirty-grand showpiece like I need a hole in my head. Public transportation is more environmentally sound. I’m thinking of taking a job in Chicago. I can find a place on the train line and buy one of those electric cars.”

  “Thirty grand? Damn, Rora, spending so much on a car is stupid. You could buy a house with thirty grand.”

  “Well, I won’t get that much if I sell or trade it. And you won’t find a house as nice as Mom’s with thirty grand, I promise you. We should put flowers on her grave every day for having credit life insurance on the mortgage.”

  It was just a double-wide, but it was the only home her sister and niece had ever known. Situated on thirty acres of swamp and sandy soil that had been handed down through generations of their mother’s family, the trailer had been their salvation after their mother’s death when Rory was only twelve.

  It wasn’t as if their father had ever owned anything of his own— until their mother died, and he’d built the concrete factory behind the house. Rory had to give Jake credit for ending his footloose life the instant his daughters had needed him.

  “You must have got your smarts from Mom,” Cissy said. “She sure knew how to pinch a penny and make Abe squeal.”

  That their father didn’t went unspoken. Rory loved her free-spirited father, but she sometimes wondered how he and their mother had ever stayed together long enough to make two babies. It seemed they’d had nothing in common on any other level but bed.

  She’d learned her lesson at an early age. Opposites might attract, but they were damned bad for each other. Her father had spent his life hoping to make his fortune by winning a million dollars. Rory had followed her mother’s example, preferring the certainty of education and hard work.

  Not that work had paid off in the way she had hoped. She’d zip her big mouth once she found a new job. She’d learned the hard way that working within the establishment paid off far better than fighting it. She’d just temporarily forgotten that maxim in a surge of overconfidence.

  “You have smarts, too,” Rory assured her sister. “You just didn’t have the opportunities you gave me. And kids cost a lot. Since I’ll probably never have any, I want to help with Mandy. She’s already wanting a car so she can work.”

  “Over my dead body.” Arms crossed, Cissy glared at the road.

  “Well, that’s my thought, too,” Rory admitted. “But the time will come. We’d better present a united front, or she’ll be weaseling it out of Pops one of these days.” Once she had her career back on track, she would personally see that Cissy’s fifteen-year-old daughter had the education she deserved. Cissy had provided the home and security Rory had needed while growing up. Rory could do no less for Mandy.

  “Or he’ll teach her to ride the Harley,” Cissy agreed glumly, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “I don’t want to think about it. You need to start looking for a job. Now that the weather’s warmer, the tourists will be back, and Daddy can look after us.”

  If she hadn’t known just how badly her family was in debt, Rory would jump on this invitation to escape. But the minute she left, Cissy would attempt to return to work and ruin her health, and her father... Rory would rather not even consider what her Harley-riding father would do with a broken leg and no truck.

  She might occasionally resent the narrow world she’d been brought up in, but she loved her family and would do everything in her power to support their decision to live in this backwater town, where opportunities were few but life was familiar.

  “What if I decide I like it here and don’t want to leave?” she teased.

  Cissy didn’t bother opening her eyes to answer that one. “You never belonged here, kid. You’ll be gone before the summer is over.”

  Rory smiled happily. Oh, yes, she would. She wanted a condo with great big windows overlooking the skyline this time—once she’d molded the proposed park into a certainty.

  Turning their swampy land into a profitable tourist attraction would solve all their financial problems.

  She intended to make it happen with or without the help of Greek gods.

  o0o

  “What we need is your video game’s Viking heroine and Karate Turtle to rise out of the swamp and drive off the barbarian park builders.” Jared McCloud stroked the laptop keyboard, testing Clay’s latest program.

  Sitting on the porch of his brother’s beach cottage, Clay crumpled his empty beer can and pitched it at a seagull trying to steal his fries. He checked over the top of his Oakley sunglasses to see if Jared had baked his brain. The redheaded MBA from yesterday had reinforced his conviction that materialistic princesses made lousy heroine material. “Slipped a little deeper into fantasyland, have we? Does married life do that?”

  Actually, Clay envied the contentment his restless brother had found in marriage, but he’d embarrass the hell out of both of them if he said that.

  The sun sett
ing behind the cottage caught water droplets in the surf, illuminating them like tumbling silver coins as a wave lifted and crashed against the shore beyond the porch. Jared gestured at the wooded marsh past the beach and rocky promontory on the horizon. “If the state intends to build a park over there, it’s only a matter of time before someone buys the swamp and condos shoot up like mushrooms. Cleo wants to plant a minefield between here and there to hold back the tourists.”

  “Cleo has the right idea.” Sitting back in his canvas deck chair, Clay tried not to care. Life was much simpler if he didn’t waste energy standing in the way of progress—that was what he’d told himself when the state had offered him a tidy sum to develop the genealogy software they needed to track the descendants and pinpoint the property owners.

  He’d figured the easy cash would tide him over while he decided what to do next with himself. He was counting on the state giving up on buying the swamp once he’d unraveled the names of the innumerable descendants of slaves who’d inherited it. Persuading that many strangers to agree on selling would be impractical, at the very least.

  Or so he’d thought until Aurora Jenkins had arrived on the scene.

  He fought a surge of discontent with nonchalance. “I think I like being a beach bum.”

  “Yeah, right.” Jared snorted in disbelief and tapped the keyboard. “You’ve changed the edit mode,” he exclaimed. “I can point and drag and the sketch goes just where I want. Freaking fantastic! I can finish a drawing in the morning and spend the afternoon kicking back if this works out. You’re a pure wizard, bro.”

  Clay shifted to a more comfortable position in the deck chair and popped open another beer can. “Sure. Now all I need is a good fairy to wave her wand and fill my pockets with gold, and we’re set.”

  In the absence of any good fairy, Clay leaned over to poke his large finger into the cross-eyed view of his infant niece. “Hey, Midge, how ya doin’, drooler?”

  Jared chuckled and with a few strokes of the keyboard and trackball, created a plump baby fairy struggling to stay upright on tiny wings. “There she is, your good fairy. Pin her up over your bed at night.”

  Clay glanced at the screen, grunted, and returned to munching the fries that constituted his evening meal. “Cute, real cute. You’ve got it right. Midge is the only magic fairy I’m letting near me.”

  “Her name is Megan,” Jared corrected. “Meg for short. Why don’t you update ‘Mysterious’? Use magic fairies instead of Viking princesses this time. Gaming is still a huge deal these days. You don’t have to create and sell business programs anymore.”

  Now that your dot-com failed remained politely unsaid. Clay snorted at this second mention of the sophomoric script that had generated the popular computer game over ten years ago. “I prefer writing about dripping dungeons and slime pits these days. Maybe I could drop a Viking princess or two into them.”

  “One woman who returns your ring doesn’t justify writing off the rest of the gender. Besides, you’re good at gaming. I’ll help you write a new script. We could use Cleo’s menagerie as a starting point.”

  His sister-in-law’s human menagerie would be far more entertaining than her animal one, Clay reflected, but his brother wouldn’t appreciate his cynicism. Jared’s wife befriended everyone from homeless derelicts to rich cartoonists like Jared. Or beach bums like himself—jilted beach bums whose ex-fiancées didn’t return the ring. Diane had liked that expensive hunk of rock too well.

  “You write it, I’ll program it,” Clay offered laconically, “and we can be the only two people in the world who ever play it.” Peddling backward to adolescence wasn’t on his agenda. He’d meet the world on his terms or none at all. The anonymity of this island hideaway suited his new choice of lifestyle: ex-millionaire hermit. He’d never played well with others anyway.

  “You don’t have to keep the rights to every damned thing you create,” Jared protested. “There are trustworthy distribution companies out there.”

  “Yeah, like the one that’s ripping off ‘Mysterious’ as we speak. Or the MBAs who let my company go down the hole.” Or the redheaded one determined to turn paradise into parking lots.

  He suspected he would have some difficulty keeping that one from hunting down property owners even if he found a million Binghams. He knew the type. Aurora Jenkins was on a mission from Mammon.

  “No, thanks. I’m keeping my fantasies to myself these days.” Brushing off his brother’s suggestion, Clay hunkered down and chugged his beer.

  He might be skeptical about the benefits of corporate life, but he occasionally fantasized about having a real life like the ones his brothers had found in marriage. He was dead tired of living inside his head. He’d even gone so far as to find a woman and make a commitment, until the engagement had fallen apart with his company.

  He should have known better than to think he could lead a normal life. He didn’t possess a normal mind, as he’d been reminded once too often. He offered diamonds and companionship, and women wanted companies. Who knew?

  Clay eyed the infant in the cradle just to be certain Midge hadn’t gone anywhere. Cleo had dressed her daughter in a tie-dyed nightshirt, and curled-up pink toes stuck out from beneath the hem. He thought Midge was pretty incredible and probably the most real thing he knew, but he kept his opinion to himself.

  “I don’t know why you’re so down on women.” Jared added a few touches to the drawing, stuck a wand in the baby fairy’s hand, and saved the finished product to the hard drive. “They’re one of life’s joys and wonders. Abstinence makes you cranky as well as cynical.”

  “Yup, that’s me, disbeliever in life’s little mysteries. Women have only one purpose, to mess with a man’s mind.” Clay withdrew his finger from Midge’s determined grip.

  Jared hooted. “Maybe that’s your problem—you think your brains are in your jeans.” He handed the laptop back to Clay, then bent over to adjust the blanket shading his daughter from the sun. “When are you going to release that 3-D program?”

  “I haven’t found the right backing yet.” Hadn’t looked for it, actually. Rather than turn years of hard work over to another thief, he’d let the program rot.

  Like him. Over the past few years he’d owned Jags and Malibu property. Women wearing diamond rings and designer bodies had adorned his life and bed. Where did a man go after that?

  Finishing off his bottle of water, Jared stood up and stretched. “I know the program works. So what’s wrong?”

  “I’m keeping risks to myself these days.” Clay sipped his beer and glared at the laptop screen Jared had returned to him.

  “Cleo’s designed a tin devil with a scowl just like yours. If you’re not careful, she’ll have it popping up in the driveway as a warning sign.”

  “Tell Cleo I’ll pose for her devil if she thinks it will keep intruders out.”

  “If they build that park next door, we’ll not know privacy again,” Jared said gloomily. “I’m thinking we’ll have to sell.”

  Clay clenched his teeth and didn’t immediately reply. Despite his doubts about halting progress, he had been doing what little he could to discourage the state from buying the beach adjoining Cleo’s property. For a while he’d almost convinced them that the genealogy of ownership was too complex to be unraveled—until the lawyers had stepped in and insisted he continue the search. He didn’t trust lawyers any more than MBAs.

  He was a big boy now. If the park forced Cleo and Jared to sell, it shouldn’t matter to him. There was a whole wide world out there. Except that without family or career or home, he had no anchor and no destination.

  Men weren’t allowed to admit weakness, so he maintained his insouciance. “You’re set back from the road. I don’t think park traffic will be a problem.” Clay opened the document listing the owners that he’d located so far. There had to be some weakness he could use to derail the state’s plans. “You’ve got years to think about moving.”

  Shrugging, Jared lifted the infant carrier. �
�I hope so. Cleo will freak if she has to leave that house she’s worked on so hard.”

  Whistling, swinging Midge, he walked off down the sandy path and boardwalk to the island farmhouse where his wife and kids waited. Clay grimaced and studied the waves rather than watch him go. It was all well and fine for his older brother to live in a nest of childish laughter and uproar. His older brother was a cartoonist and had never needed to grow up.

  Despite the difference in their ages, Clay had been older than Jared since birth.

  There for a while, maybe he’d forgotten himself and indulged in adolescent fantasies of fortune, fame, and everlasting love. After all, he’d achieved two out of three before he was thirty. But he’d learned the fallacy of thinking he could have all three.

  Sipping his beer with his feet propped on the porch rail, Clay figured this was as good as it got. It didn’t take half a wit to earn enough to keep him in beer and fries for the rest of his life. He had a roof over his head and a Harley in the drive. Maybe he’d find a new career in fixing old clocks like the one on the courthouse. He liked tinkering.

  Maybe a little later he’d wander down to the Monkey and see what kind of hell he could raise.

  For now, he switched his computer program to “Mysterious” and began battling villains for the life of the Viking princess.

  On a whim, he changed her hair color from blond to red.

  Chapter Three

  “Yes, I know it’s five years old, but it has only sixty thousand miles on it. BMWs are good for three hundred.” Rory rolled her eyes at the inquisition of the car buyer on the other end of the telephone line.

  Sitting on the dinette table, Mandy swung her long legs, giggled, and unscrewed the top on the last of the soft drinks her grandfather had purchased because the label said they could be winners. She automatically checked under the cap, then flung it into the trash with a shrug. Like her Aunt Rory, she had fiery sunset hair. Unlike her aunt, she wore it cropped short, tousled, and bleached. Three studs adorned one ear, and her navel-revealing T-shirt rode high over a slim, tanned belly.