The magnificent mahogany circular staircase had robbed her of temper. The crystal chandelier lighting the way suspended all thought. She’d always wondered what the inside of one of these homes looked like. She wouldn’t ruin her chance to find out by pushing her domineering partner over the banister.
The turret room overlooking the harbor melted her into a puddle of love and lust and...
Refusing to be reduced to emotional tears, Rory touched the eyelet curtains of the antique poster bed and watched a sailboat outside the window reflect the sun in its billowing canvas.
She knew the instant they were alone even though she had her back to the door. She was aware of Clay’s height as he stood at her elbow, watching the sailboat with her. She knew how his arms would feel around her, how his kisses would taste, and every cell of her body hummed in anticipation. She resented the reaction, but she couldn’t fight it.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“Know what?” With typical male cluelessness, he began releasing her sophisticated upswept coiffeur from its pins.
“The house. It’s like a dream. You knew where to go. You had reservations. You planned this all along.” She tried to hang on to the defensive shield of her anger.
“How many times in this life are you going to win a million dollars?” He filled his hands with her long hair, smoothed it around to her front, and began massaging her back and shoulders with strong fingers. “How many times do we have a chance to celebrate the formation of a company that will support us for life and potentially make a lot of people happy?”
“I just want to take care of my family,” she murmured as the spell of his hands removed any lingering argument. “I need security, and I need to make my family’s life easier. Gambling our lives on empire building is not my style. If I can help my neighbors along with my family, that’s a good thing, but—”
“Quit trying to manage the future, and enjoy the present. The future is a series of moments like this, mixed with bad ones like the fire. Some you can prevent, some you can’t.”
His mellow mood and the beauty of this place won out over the stress of the past few days. She couldn’t even remember why they were arguing. She’d never wanted to be with a man as much as she did this one. Clay offered emotional stability when her world spun into chaos. He balanced her flights of temper with logic, then countered her caution with recklessness. She needed his down-to-earth solidity to buffer her fears even as his creative impulses spun her head.
She needed his hands somewhere other than her shoulders.
“So now you’re a philosophical cynic?” There was no rancor in her question.
“I’ve played in deep waters,” he said with a certain amount of gruffness. “Give me credit for experience.” He threw her words back at her.
“Can I credit one of your girlfriends for the massage experience?” She hated herself for asking. He was a striking man. Women would have flocked around him. She knew that. She shouldn’t compare herself to the California beauties he must have known. But she was having difficulty believing this was real.
“Nope. Took a course in college.” His hands slid forward, finding the top button of her blouse. “I can surf and play poker, too. Didn’t learn them from women either.”
She leaned back against his broad chest as his fingers skillfully unfastened her blouse. “For a man’s man, you know a lot about women.”
“Studied them for years. Read books. Read news-groups on-line. Didn’t have much time to practice when I was starting out. I learned pretty quick, though, after they found out I had money.”
He pulled her open blouse from her skirt, slid it off her arms, and located the back fastening of her bra without a hitch.
“Given the way you live, that must have taken a while for them to deduce,” she said with as much equanimity as she could muster while his knuckles brushed her skin beneath the lacy elastic.
Clay chuckled. “Yeah, well, there is that, until the last one refused to enter my cubbyhole apartment, and I had to buy something respectable that she could decorate.”
She heard the dryness in his tone and thought she understood another of the roots of his cynicism. “Did you lose the money?” she asked.
“Not exactly, but the woman I thought I was going to marry disappeared when she found out where it went. Same thing. So, yeah, I have some experience. Not any of it real good.”
The bra fell away, and he leaned over to kiss the soft place behind her ear before he filled his hands with her breasts. Her arousal was instantaneous, and so strong she nearly cried out with it.
She didn’t want to talk anymore, didn’t want to empathize with a man who’d had all the material things but had never been offered the emotional ones that mattered.
Turning, she fumbled at Clay’s shirt buttons. He hadn’t bothered with a tie or jacket to impress the attorney, hadn’t needed to. His knowledgeable questions and intelligent suggestions had won the man over within minutes. They’d impressed her, too, but right now she wanted to be impressed by something a little more physical. It had been three long, lonely nights.
Clay helped her discard his shirt. Before she could make further inroads into their attire, he caught her bare waist and lowered his head for a kiss.
It was as if they had never parted from the last one, except this time they were naked, chest-to-chest, and he warmed his hands around the curves of her breasts.
“My God, Aurora, you’re like holding lightning and rainbows. I don’t think it’s possible to get enough.”
His words melted her as much as his hands.
They had the bedcovers thrown back and were sprawled across cool sheets before she realized it. She aroused from her giddy daze when Clay peeled off her skirt and panty hose, and she had to lift her hips to accommodate the gesture. But only when the pleasure stopped while he pried off his shoes and stood to remove his trousers did she fully grasp what she was doing. Again.
The eyelet bed curtains were billowing slightly with the breeze from the open window, just as in her daydream. Clay stood tall and strong against the lacy background, the feminine surroundings only emphasizing his masculinity. For just this moment, he could be the warrior sea captain returned to his home after a long voyage at sea. And she could be the well-loved and pampered wife. Just for now.
She welcomed him with open arms, thrilled to his heavy weight sinking her into the feather bed, and wrapped her thighs around his hips when he returned to kissing her.
“Later we’ll go slow,” he promised huskily, accepting her invitation without hesitation.
Aurora cried out as he slid into her. The warbling of a mockingbird covered the lovers’ sounds that followed.
Lost in the world Clay created, she followed his lead, releasing all control in exchange for the soaring pleasure of his body melded to hers.
Chapter Twenty
“May I take the turret with me, please?” The next morning, Rory took one last, lingering look around the tower of enchantment before she picked up the manila envelope and walked out. Even with the breeze off the river, the room held a lingering scent of her perfume and sex.
“You like living in ivory towers?” Holding open the door, looking more like a pirate than a CEO since he hadn’t shaved or changed, Clay waited patiently, wearing an appreciative expression while he watched her foolish farewell to the tower.
With the freedom granted by the intimacy of a night of lovemaking, Rory stroked his chest as she passed by him. “Towers are hard and round and very useful,” she purred.
“I can give you that.” Cocking an eyebrow in a leer, he placed a hand at the small of her back and provided impetus to get her moving.
Rummaging in his trouser pocket once he’d closed the bedroom door, he produced a palm-sized purple figure. “I can’t do jewelry anymore, but how about something soft and squishy instead of hard and round as a commemorative?”
Rora laughed, and her foolish heart did a backflip as she took the purple turtle
eraser from his hand. That he carried it at all told her it meant something to him. She thought maybe Clay related to turtles because they were loners, but she didn’t think he really wanted to be one. He just hadn’t learned to be anything different.
“Such a smooth talker,” she teased. “I prefer erasers to jewels. They’re far more useful.” So maybe she didn’t need romantic references to starry nights. She was very much afraid she couldn’t learn to live without Clay if he continued causing this senseless quiver of her easily broken heartstrings.
“I make up in action for what I lack in words.” Clay held on to her arm all the way down the circular stairs as if to shelter her from any fall. Or because he didn’t want to break the contact any more than she did.
“So, then, what is our first action?” Determined to avoid the dangerous pit of sentimentality, Rory stepped into the humid morning air and breathed in the scent of magnolias.
She refused to worry about anything until forced. She had a gorgeous man at her side, seven hundred thousand dollars in the bank—on paper anyway—a mountain of debts that could wipe out half of it, and the signatures to begin a spanking-new corporation designed to distribute a video game with bubbling clowns and pink elephants. What more could she ask for?
A good psychiatrist, maybe? She was investing her entire future in pink elephants! As a banker, she was the one who persuaded investors to take risks. She supposed it was poetic justice that she now walked in their shoes. Rory squeezed her turtle talisman for good luck.
“First we pay your bills.” Clay held open the truck door for her. “Next we contact venture capitalists so we spread production risks around. Whatever you have left after paying bills will barely buy back my game rights.”
Seeing the truck woke her up, and ignoring his pragmatic list, she demanded, “First we buy a truck! An F150. Candy-apple-red extended cab, with pinstriping.”
Clay caught her elbow and almost lifted her into the seat. “Used, in whatever color we find. The company needs to look good on a balance sheet, and F150s don’t make an impression.”
“Spoilsport.” She crossed her arms and pretended to glare at him as he climbed in, but he was right. She just dearly wanted to make her sister as happy as she was. Rory opened the envelope in her lap. “Find a car dealer, Shylock. Then we need to go home and start making calls.”
Clay roared Cleo’s pickup into gear, and they trundled toward the highway, leaving the ivy-covered turret behind.
o0o
“It’s red!” Cissy ran a loving hand over the shiny exterior of the miniature extended cab Aurora had parked in the drive.
“It’s not an F150,” Rory said diffidently, stomach churning as she waited for her sister’s approval. “Clay said this one had the best engine and would last longer.”
“There’s room for groceries in the backseat.” Even with her bad hip, Cissy was able to climb up and admire the like-new interior. “It even smells good.” She sighed. “I’m afraid to drive it. Maybe we should teach Mandy.”
Aurora held out the keys. “For now it’s a company truck, but you’re the driver. And the secretary. And the bookkeeper. And errand girl.”
From the backseat, Cissy blinked and looked up into Aurora’s face as Clay came to stand beside her. “What have the two of you done?” she demanded.
Aurora heard the sisterly admonition behind the question, but Clay chose to take out the personal and insert business.
“We’re investing in the future. You are now part owner of Mysterious Productions, studio for “Mysterious” video games.”
“And cofounder of Turtles Unlimited, a nonprofit ecology-based group dedicated to saving the wetlands and promoting local industry,” Aurora added proudly.
“This is going to give me a headache, isn’t it?” Diverted from any further personal inquisition, Cissy stepped out of the backseat and took the front with Clay’s assistance. She stuck the keys into the ignition and let the engine roar. “What about the mortgage?” She glanced up from examining the instrument panel.
“I’m ignoring Jeff until the end of the week, when I’ll go in and either renegotiate the loan, or take it elsewhere.” Rory would really like to take it elsewhere, but Clay had convinced her to let business rule and not spite. “We kept enough out of the corporation to pay the hospital bill. We’ll start looking for health insurance for employees shortly.”
“What about me?” Cissy asked, letting the engine idle, her gaze darting back and forth between them. “What do I do?”
“I have a list of Binghams back at my place,” Clay said. “You’ll start with writing letters to all the people on the list and keeping a file of their responses. We want to organize a counterproposal.”
Before Clay could outline the discussion they’d pursued since their visit to the lawyer, Jake limped down the drive. His skeptical expression gave his opinion of the candy-apple-red truck, but Aurora had bought this one for her sister. Jake was his own boss and could find his own transportation. She loved her father enough to know he’d prefer it that way.
“This is what a million dollars buys?” he asked with a chuckle, sticking his head in the passenger-door window to check out the interior. “Price has gone up some since I bought one.”
“We want to buy the Bingham land, Pops.” Even as she said it, Rory knew it sounded insane, but Clay had convinced her it was feasible. She’d always dreamed of justice for all, but she would never have dreamed this big on her own. It took someone with a brain—and a soul—as big as Clay’s.
“Do you now?” Jake leaned his arm against the truck hood and looked them both over. “I don’t have no fancy college degree, but even I can see a million dollars don’t buy that.” He looked Clay straight in the eye. “I didn’t figure you the type to mess with my girls. You walk out with their money, and I’ll come after you and skin you alive.”
Aurora blushed and huffed at the same time, but Clay intervened before she could let off steam.
“The lawyer has it all tied up tight. Either one of us can pull out with everything we put in and nothing more. But we’ll need your help to make this wetlands thing work.”
“You want a concrete monument to stupidity?”
“No, we want you to get together everyone you know out here who might have an interest in the property or in selling their wares to tourists,” Clay explained. “If we buy the land, and that’s a big ‘if,’ we need some way of making it self-supporting.”
He actually made it sound feasible. To Rory’s ears, he spoke with knowledge and authority, as if he really were CEO of a multimillion-dollar company. Maybe this was one way actions spoke louder than words—he accomplished what she only dreamed.
Jake’s expression brightened. “Grandma Iris could sell her baskets here instead of paying someone in Charleston? And Garnet could sell his whistles?” He began to look enthusiastic as the idea gripped him. “Erly could supply concessions. There’s some others who do real good paintings. And that church the girls go to, they sell recipe books.”
“We have to own the land, first, Pops. And to do any of this, we have to raise more money. Don’t get too excited until we work a few more things out. We both have to start making calls. It could still all go down the drain.”
“This is where I leave you to work it out,” Cissy declared. “I have to buy groceries. Fetch that Bingham list, and when I come back, someone can teach me how to type letters on that fancy computer. I can learn and earn my keep at the same time.”
She backed around Cleo’s pickup and drove off in her red truck.
Leaning on a crutch as if his leg ached, Jake shook his finger under Clay’s nose. “Remember what I said. You don’t mess with my girls. I’ll go talk to Iris and the others.”
He limped off to the shed where he kept his motorcycle, leaving Aurora standing alone with the baffling man who had turned her view of the world around. She’d never deliberately stood on a cliff’s edge before. She’d been pushed there more than once and had resolved
never to come that close again. But here she was, on the edge, looking down, and the crevasse below looked paralyzingly rocky.
“Tell me again how this is going to work,” she whispered.
“You have to risk something to win something,” Clay answered prosaically. “We’re gambling that the majority of the Binghams will side with us and accept our offer rather than let it go to the court and developers.”
She knew that. She just needed to hear him say it. Clay made it sound more like a possibility than a fantasy, but they were gambling his future profits on his software as well. She had to trust him.
“Come on, let’s retrieve that list from my silverware drawer. It’s making me itchy just thinking about it.”
A lot of things made her itchy just thinking about them. The Bingham heirs were way down on the bottom of the list, long after wondering what Clay expected of her after last night.
“I don’t do things like this,” she muttered a while later as the truck rolled down the road to his place. “I encourage other people to risk their money.”
“You’re a wimp,” he scoffed. “You like the safety net of employment with benefits and retirement and corner offices. This will be a lot more fun.”
“This is insane.” She stared out the windshield rather than look at him. Everything seemed feasible when she looked at Clay McCloud. “I’m gambling against the bank and rich developers. I ought to take their money and run instead.”
He slowed when they turned into the lane to the cottage and saw Cleo standing in her yard, waving them down. “You’re gambling justice will prevail and the Viking princess wins,” he said, turning up Cleo’s drive.
“Yeah, like life is a video game.” Seeing Midge in her stroller, Rory was more than willing to climb out of the truck and do something sensible, like coo at a baby, rather than start contacting an ephemeral list of Binghams to offer them pipe dreams.
Carolina Girl Page 21
