Carolina Girl

by Patricia Rice

  “Look, it’s not as if I need the money,” Rory lied arrogantly into the telephone. “If you want to steal a car, go steal someone else’s.”

  Even if she wasn’t impressing the guy on the phone with her negotiating skills, she was impressing the hell out of Mandy, who watched her through eyes widened in fascination.

  “Well, call me back if you change your mind.” She hung up and put a kettle on to boil for iced tea.

  “Guess you’re stuck keeping the Beamer a little longer. Pity.” Mandy leaned over to reach the peanut butter jar on the kitchen counter.

  “Smart-ass.” Rory handed her the jar before she fell off the table.

  The screen door slammed open and Jake limped in, using his crutch more to manipulate objects in his way than as a means of locomotion. Her father was a big man with a full head of sandy hair that had faded over time. He maneuvered his bulk through the crowded laundry room, hooked a chair leg, and pulled the chair out so he could lower his weight without bending his injured leg. “I’m hungry.”

  “Want some of that lasagna I made last night?” Rory opened the refrigerator without waiting for an answer. “Have you thought about that bookkeeping program I told you about? If you open a checking account, you could control your money better.” Probably not enough to buy the insurance he needed, though. One more accident like the last, and bankruptcy, here they came.

  “Now, Rora, don’t get off on that kick again. I ain’t makin’ enough for the IRS to mess with, and the people ’round here like cash. No fancy books are gonna make us any richer.”

  She could argue with that. Writing checks would force her father to see where his money went. If he realized how much he handed out to his drinking buddies and sometime workers, he might be a little more careful. He wasn’t twenty anymore. He needed to think about his health and retirement.

  Right, that was like telling Peter Pan he had to grow up.

  Giving up on the topic, she asked, “How’s the leg, Pops?”

  “I’ll be fishing in no time, providin’ there’s anywheres left to fish. How you doin’ with the town council? Found any way of keeping the state out yet?”

  “I’m learning,” she answered noncommittally, cutting a slice of lasagna to heat. The state park could generate enough tourism to keep her father’s company in cash for years. A service station and minimart would be even better, if she could find funds to build one. She had no intention of keeping out the state just because her father thought fishing should be free. He thought she was sabotaging the park with her volunteer work. What Pops didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

  “Well, you’d better learn faster,” he grumbled. “McCloud told me the state’s talking of docks and cabins and parking lots down there. We’ll have to pay for the privilege of boating in our own damned waters.”

  McCloud told him that? Whose side was McCloud on? The state was paying him to work for them, wasn’t it? “McCloud needs to stick to locating Binghams,” she muttered.

  “That’s just it!” Jake shouted, waving his fork at her. “Talk to your friends on that connivin’ tourist commission. I heard them and the bankers. Soon as they’ve got some Binghams in their pocket, the frigging vampires got it fixed so all they have to do is talk one Bingham into selling, and the whole swamp goes on the block, not just the beach.”

  “All of it?” Mandy stared at her grandfather in horror. “Even Grandma Iris’s?”

  “All of it,” Jake agreed in a voice of doom, “Even Luke’s dock and the Watkinses’ shack.”

  A pinprick of uncertainty perforated the fabric of Rory’s confidence. She knew enough about development to hear a kernel of truth in her father’s wild accusation. The back of their property ran up against the Bingham swamp. She didn’t know if Iris and the others living back there had any claim on the land, but they’d lived there undisturbed all their lives. They were neighbors and friends. They would have nowhere else to go if the state was talking major development.

  “The state doesn’t have any use for the swamp,” Rory said with more assurance than she felt. “They’re just buying the waterfront areas to protect the sea turtles and improve the beach. There isn’t any reason for them to even know Grandma Iris is out there.”

  Thomas Clayton McCloud and his anarchic propaganda were a bigger danger to their future. McCloud’s outrageous theories would have the whole island in an uproar, endangering the chances of the park being built. State legislators didn’t pay for anything that didn’t buy them votes.

  She wouldn’t let an outsider destroy the first opportunity her family had of digging their way out of poverty.

  First, though, she’d call Terry to sort rumor from reality. The state park plan she’d seen had called for only much-needed beach improvement.

  She didn’t mind developing the nearly inaccessible beach down the road, but Disney World in her backyard really would sink the island.

  o0o

  Rubbing his eyes, Clay shoved back from the desk he’d rigged up in the cottage’s front room. Finding misplaced Binghams was akin to searching the Internet for passwords. They were everywhere. And they took forever to uncover.

  Locating the appropriate stack of data, he added another pile of printouts to it, looked around at the scattered piles of notes, file folders, and program changes he’d made, and decided he ought to invest in a good filing cabinet.

  But that would require admitting he was staying here, and he wasn’t ready for commitment yet. Commitment required some sort of goal, and he had none. More accurately, he wanted none. Been there, done that.

  Who knew it was such hard work to be a hermit?

  He kicked aside an empty beer bottle, scooped up a sweaty T-shirt, and cleared a space for the next stack of papers. If he really wanted to commit, he’d buy a laundry hamper and a trash can.

  Among the attic rejects and litter of the room, his flat screen monitor and high-powered laptop were the only indication of the high-tech life he’d once lived. Childish sketches drawn by Cleo’s eight-year-old son, Matty, adorned one wall. Shells and sea oat bouquets left over from previous occupants replaced the expensive artwork he’d once collected. He couldn’t say that one lifestyle was any less empty than the other. This one was just cheaper.

  Returning to his seat, he switched the computer to his test version of “Mysterious II”, took out a couple of rocket ships with a barrage of blue mushrooms, found the missing princess and her lost laser arrows, and jotted notes on two dozen ways he could improve the script.

  His stomach rumbled, and he rubbed his bare belly. Cleo had extended an open invitation to dinner, but the kids ate early, and he’d worked through the meal. He glanced around, looking for a clean shirt amid the debris.

  The Monkey offered good company and decent food. He could go into town and let his brain cool off.

  Of course, thinking about the bar brought back thoughts of Aurora Jenkins, and other parts of him heated up in response to his mental image of sunset hair and a stunning figure that might take a lifetime to explore.

  All right, now he needed a good run on the beach. Forgetting the shirt, Clay picked his way across the piles of paper to the doorway. It would stay light for another hour or so. The Monkey didn’t get lively until nine anyway.

  Stepping onto the porch and checking the lights at Jared’s place, he noted a tall figure striding down the wooden walkway over the dune. Had he sunk so low that he conjured up his fantasies now?

  With the sun sliding behind the trees in the west, he couldn’t make out the face, but he recognized the shape.

  Aurora.

  Her parents sure knew how to pick a name. Her hair caught and mirrored the reddish glow of the sunset in the same way the aurora borealis lit the winter sky.

  He mentally stripped her of her tailored jacket and knee-length skirt, and redressed her in a flowered sarong and bikini top with her hair flowing around her shoulders.

  “Mr. McCloud.” Arriving on his doorstep, she managed to sound both curt and agit
ated at the same time.

  “Clay,” he corrected. “What can I do for you, Miss Jenkins?”

  “Call me Rory,” she answered with an impatient wave, before reaching into her shoulder bag.

  She wore no rings, he duly noted. He had a ring fixation these days.

  “I’ve brought some proposed budget figures for software development for your approval.” She pulled a file folder from the bag. “They should adequately cover R & D and any equipment. I need to talk with you.”

  He propped his shoulder against the porch post and crossed his arms over his bare chest, blocking her progress. He didn’t do business these days. And he definitely didn’t do MBAs. “So talk.”

  Already disturbed by what she’d learned from Terry, Rory didn’t have time for McCloud’s schoolboy tactics, even if all that bronzed, muscled torso belonged on a wall poster. He wasn’t built like a fireplug, like so many men who worked out. Instead he possessed the lean, sleek lines and powerful sinews of a thoroughbred.

  She’d learned to curb her desires years ago. To make herself heard in a male world, she’d learned how to handle ego.

  With mockery, she looked McCloud over as if he were a side of beef. Instead of backing off, he countered her tactic by flexing his muscles, and watched her with amusement.

  Heat rose to her cheeks, and she spoke sharply to cover her blush. “There isn’t enough light out here to go over these figures, Mr. McCloud. And I really don’t think what I have to say should be broadcast to the neighbors.” Maybe she ought to rethink her reason for being here. She was used to handling men in business suits, not half-naked statues of male virility.

  Proving he wasn’t made of stone, he lifted an eyebrow in a provocative leer. “Why, by all means, Miss Aurora. Let’s you and me make ourselves comfortable in my office.”

  He gestured toward the screen door so she could enter first. Not one to back away from a challenge, she brushed past him to step up on the porch. Her skin reacted as if he’d stroked it when her shoulder grazed his chest, and she was pleasantly aware that he topped her by almost a head. Not many men could match her height, especially when she wore heels.

  The trash heap he called an office distracted her from her physical response. Books filled the rattan sofa and chair. Papers covered the worn wooden floor. Only the slatted rocker remained empty, largely because everything he stacked on it had slid off and lay between its rockers.

  “Shall I get you a beer?”

  In classic bad-boy attitude, he invaded her space by leaning a little too close. She could feel his breath blowing the loose tendrils on her nape, smell the beer he’d been drinking, and wanted to turn around and shove him away for the principle of it. But touching this man would mean physical confrontation, and she didn’t think she could handle that. Not when all her hormones begged for it.

  She swung around, nearly clipping his nose with the folder. “No, thank you. Is that the Mac with the new processor?” Crossing the room, she hit the space bar, and a warrior leaped out of bloodred shrubbery to scream pun-laden epithets at the player.

  “I trust you’re paid well to play games, McCloud.” Glancing down, she discovered the printouts beside the monitor and lifted a stack. “This is programming language. Are you developing the park program yourself?”

  Grabbing the papers from her, Clay crossed his arms and stashed the stack in his armpit. “What can I do for you?” He changed his sexy leer to an irritated male glare and adopted an intimidating stance.

  Which Rory ignored. She had more immediate problems than this Macho Man, and she clung to the hope that those printouts proved he actually had brains behind the attitude.

  Much as she hated to admit it, she needed his expertise. “Would you stop acting like a jackass and listen? How close are you to finding the Bingham heirs?”

  Clay studied her stonily. “I’m generating names first. Then I’ll have to hunt down and verify addresses. Why?”

  Without asking permission, his uninvited guest removed books from the sofa and took a seat. “Would you put a shirt on, please? We need to talk.”

  “You keep telling me that.” Clay resisted the impulse to strut for her benefit and grabbed a Rams T-shirt. It had ketchup on one ram horn, but it didn’t stink. Of course, he’d shrunk the shirt trying to do his own laundry, so he might as well have just painted his chest black for all the good wearing it did.

  Her pained expression showed she’d noticed. Feeling decidedly better about that, Clay located his nearly empty beer bottle, finished it off, then took a seat in the rocker, dangling the empty in his fingers. “If you’re not after my body, what exactly are you after?”

  “Your head, probably, if you don’t quit telling tales in the bar.” She didn’t look ticked, just disturbed as she opened her file and laid it out for him. He suspected her insults might be her first line of defense against jerks like him.

  Clay propped his sandals on an assortment of computer magazines on the driftwood coffee table rather than read the file. “Tales?”

  “About the state’s intention for the Bingham property. We need that park, McCloud,” she said with an intensity that illuminated the violet of her eyes. “Our unemployment rate is among the highest in the country. The park will preserve the fragile ecology while providing jobs. Small-business development along the roadway is essential. Free fishing doesn’t factor into the process.”

  “Never does, does it?” he asked noncommittally.

  “I don’t want the locals up in arms and stopping progress,” she said with firmness.

  Clay figured she was wound up enough to kick him if he asked how this concerned him. She wore sturdy pumps and probably packed a wallop in those lovely long legs. He waited silently, since she seemed intent on doing all the talking anyway. He enjoyed watching the animated way the Viking princess gestured with her hands as she built up steam. Could he add that to the gaming script?

  “What concerns me is how the state will use those names you’re providing them,” she finally admitted, as if unwilling to impart dangerous information until she’d gauged her degree of control over it.

  Clay waited her out.

  Apparently winning some internal battle, she continued: “I just verified that once the state locates a few Binghams willing to sell, their attorneys can force an auction of the entire swamp rather than buying just the land along the beach.”

  Shit. Clay maintained his careless pose, idly swinging his bottle back and forth. Mentally he calculated means of checking out that bombshell for himself. He’d hoped to divert the beach sale and hadn’t seriously considered his brother’s concern that the whole parcel would go on the market. Cleo and Jared might live with a park, but if the entire swamp went up for sale...

  Appalling images of high-rise hotels adorned with plastic lawn chairs and beach towels dripping from balconies rose in his mind’s eye. Good-bye herons gleaming in the morning sun and owls hooting in the dark. Hello blaring rap music and raucous pool parties. For the first time in a long time, the nausea of anger gripped his gut—proof that he hadn’t entirely succeeded in separating himself from the real world.

  Lacking any reaction from him, Aurora clarified: “The Bingham property is a huge acreage. The state needs only a small portion of it.”

  “I don’t believe it’s possible to tell the state which part of the property belongs to which Bingham,” he finally answered, hoping to pry her out of here so he could make a few calls. “If you’re so concerned, then you’re better off telling the state to take a hike.” That was his preference, anyway. Leave the island the way it was, the way it belonged.

  His careless words finally lit her wick. If she were a firecracker, Clay figured she’d explode all over him right now. Amazingly, he enjoyed the way ire flared behind her uptight facade. He hadn’t been so entertained since he’d written “Mysterious.”

  “We can’t afford to lose that park,” she insisted—contradictorily, in his opinion. “What I want to see is the state keeping all the Bi
ngham land, much of it in its natural state, and limiting development to small businesses.”

  “Oh, right, like that’s gonna happen.” He snorted at the idea of any government spending money to preserve swampland.

  “If the state doesn’t limit access to the Bingham land,” she continued with determination, “then they can sell the remaining acreage to developers who could turn the island into condo strips and malls. How do you think that will affect you, your brother, and his family?”

  She sure had his number. He’d seen what overdevelopment had done to southern California and knew exactly how it would affect this paradise.

  Not that he meant to admit it to one Aurora Jenkins. He worked alone these days.

  “I don’t see how I can help you.” He flung the bottle aside, since she wasn’t buying into his biker attitude. He should have known she wasn’t stupid. “The state is paying me to do a job. Once I do it, they have the right to do what they will with the results.”

  Her wide, voluptuous mouth stirred a man’s desire even when it tightened in a grim line. Clay studied her tempting lips rather than pay attention to the wealth of emotions flashing across her expressive features.

  “You can help me persuade the state to preserve the acreage,” she insisted.

  “What’s in it for me?” he asked, just to see how she would react.

  “I should have known that was your attitude.” Rising, she stepped over his stacks of junk in her haste to escape his deliberate boorishness. “People who have no concern for others are lower than slugs.”

  “A man can manage only so many concerns at once,” he threw back at her, but she didn’t turn around. Clay winced at the slamming screen door.

  Well, that should safely remove one tantalizing female from his horizon. Once he shut out temptation, maybe he could get some work done.

  Would a game throwing self-righteous Amazon warriors into dungeons work?

  It was either that, or develop an erotic new game involving beds and hot babes.