by Hope Ramsay
Her voice petered out, and tears leaked from her eyes. Clay reached for her, and she ducked. “I’ve always believed Joey robbed that store to get money for a doctor.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Clay said, feeling a sudden connection with her that went so deep he could feel it in his bones. He understood what it was like to feel guilty about something that wasn’t really his fault.
“No?”
“Honey, it wasn’t your fault that this Joey guy shot someone instead of being smart and dialing 911.”
“I should have told him the truth before we ran away. He freaked out when I started bleeding.”
“So he dumps you at a sleazy hotel and runs off and knocks over a convenience store? Nice guy.”
“I drove him to it.”
“You did no such thing. The cops in Kentucky think this Joey guy killed you, don’t they?”
Jane nodded.
“I seem to recall Stone saying that this jerk was some kind of junkie.”
“For the record, I had no idea Joey was into any drugs. I’m not sure your brother has all the facts right.”
“Look, honey, Joey dumped you in that hotel room and never intended to come back. When he found out you were pregnant, he got the hell out of Dodge and stopped off at the convenience store on the way out of town.”
Jane closed her eyes. “Okay, so he was a weasel. But don’t you see? Bad things like this happen to me all the time.”
Clay shook his head. “This has nothing to do with bad karma, Jane. Listen to me. Seventeen-year-olds can do some real bone-headed things—like not calling 911 when it’s the smart thing to do, or running off with losers instead of going home and telling their parents they made a mistake. I’m pretty certain your folks would have understood. Why didn’t you go back home?”
“There was no reason to. I was done watching Pa beat on Ma, and I changed my name so the law couldn’t find me. I felt responsible for what Joey had done.”
Jane stood there looking pitiful, and Clay hauled her back to his chest where she belonged. She didn’t resist. It felt good to have her there, warm and alive against him, her curvy body under his hands.
And it felt good to have this Lexington mystery solved. Jane hadn’t done anything wrong. She was just torn up with guilt over her baby and things that were beyond her control.
“Faith would be about Haley’s age,” Jane said in a shaky voice. “I just don’t understand why the Universe didn’t want her to be born.” Her voice petered out, and he hoped she would break soon. He had a feeling that she had given that baby a name but had never cried for her.
“When I left that hotel room, I promised the Universe I would give something up if I could just get away from the past and start over. So I gave up the idea of going to Nashville. Instead I skipped out on the hotel bill and used almost all of my money to buy a ticket to Miami because it’s warm there and I’d never seen the ocean.”
Clay brushed his hand across her cheek, and she leaned into his touch. He wished he could take away her pain. He promised to hold her hard, and steady, and true when she let go. “Why did you give up the idea of going to Nashville? Honey, you have a pretty remarkable singing voice.”
Jane shrugged. “I guess I figured everyone in Seth, West Virginia, knew I wanted to go to Nashville. I just figured I could disappear in Miami. I wanted so desperately to disappear.”
The words came out as a sob. And that’s when Jane finally broke down, and Clay pulled her hard against him.
Then it hit him. Jane didn’t need to be taken care of. She had been managing on her own for a long time. What she needed most was forgiveness. And time to grieve for the children she had lost: the baby named Faith and the young girl named Wanda Jane.
CHAPTER 16
Jane opened her eyes and knew that the world was a different place than when she had fallen asleep. Time had moved on. Long afternoon shadows hung in the corners of her room, and the little slice of sky framed by her windows had gone from bright blue to magenta.
She wasn’t alone anymore, either. Clay had curled himself around her, and they lay together, fully clothed but nested like spoons. His left arm wrapped around her middle, and the rise and fall of his breathing was steady and regular against her backbone. They had been sleeping together like this for hours.
For a moment, before she woke up—before she thought too deeply about what had happened this morning—it seemed as if the world had moved on without her. As if she were in a warm, safe place where the bad stuff couldn’t ever get in.
Jane closed her eyes and tried to evade consciousness. But the burn behind her lids reminded her of her breakdown earlier in the day. And, imperceptibly, the safe feeling began to ebb away.
She sucked in a deep breath, filled with the scents of the autumn afternoon and Clay Rhodes. The man smelled like a Boy Scout—one part Downy, two parts Ivory Soap. Clean and basic.
She wanted him on every level a woman could want a man. But she couldn’t have him on all those levels.
Not without telling him everything about how she left Lexington on a bus to Miami. About how she had been homeless for a while, and about how she pulled herself up. He needed to know about the pictures she’d posed for, too—the ones that had paid for her cosmetology classes. He also needed to learn about how she had finally moved to Fort Myers, where she had gotten things together for a while until Woody the weasel had walked into the Shrimp Shack throwing around his money and reminding her about her lost dream of singing country music.
Once Clay heard about those naked photos, and her poor choice of a boyfriend in Woody, he would politely excuse himself and take this safe feeling with him when he left. Jane needed to remember that her time with Clay was not going to be forever. No matter how much she wanted it to be.
She snuggled deeper into his arms, impressing a memory of how it felt, banking that feeling as a hedge against the future when she would be alone again and on her own.
Clay responded to her movement by tightening his hold on her waist and by a small, but unmistakable, upward flex of his hips.
Sweet, hot, liquid desire trickled through her. They were fully clothed, of course, but there was no mistaking the fact that Clay was not entirely asleep. Part of him was waking up. Fast. And the rest of him was coming along for the ride.
With returning consciousness, his sturdy deadweight transformed itself into coiled muscles and male energy. He flexed his hips again, much harder this time and with much clearer intent. At the same time, his left hand, which had been resting against her abdomen, dipped under the hem of her T-shirt and made a slow but steady slide up her rib cage to the underside of her breast.
He was putting on a move. And, hoo boy, it was a good move. It made her kind of breathless with anticipation, because he didn’t grope her breast or anything like that. He kind of teased her with a touch that was almost there but not quite. The man had fire coming from his fingertips.
Her nipples hardened, and Jane settled herself more firmly against his pelvis. He made a little gruff noise that sounded halfway between a purr and a growl.
He lifted his head from the pillow and drew her hair to one side. He leaned back down and pressed a small, moist kiss on the nape of her neck that produced gooseflesh all over her body.
Not satisfied with this, the man made a wet trail from her nape to the hollow of her neck, while Jane forgot how to breathe and concentrated, instead, on cocking her head to give him better access to her skin.
Clay moved in until he found that spot right at the base of her neck that he’d bruised last Wednesday. He hit that same spot, and she went haywire, like he had already figured out that was her main erogenous zone. She squirmed against him and he pressed himself harder against her.
Jane had to start breathing again, but when she exhaled she made a little, unladylike noise. This elicited a chuckle from him. A cocky male sound that made her think that maybe this particular Boy Scout had earned the sex merit badge.
That thou
ght pulled her out of the safe feeling. She needed to see his face. So she twisted in his arms and looked up at him, hoping that her puffy eyes wouldn’t turn him off. She wondered if maybe she’d made a big mistake making eye contact with him. Maybe his brain would take over, and he would reconsider what he was doing.
But he wasn’t turned off. In fact, his eyes were on fire, dancing with hot silver flickers of amusement and desire.
The Boy Scout wasn’t interested in asking her any more questions about her past. At least not right at the moment. He seemed happy to let things progress down this road without having any kind of long-winded conversation with her.
Clay also didn’t seem in any hurry to get to the end of the road, either. He seemed content with the current state of play, and focused on the journey and not the destination.
She ought to let him take her on down that road. It looked like it might be fun.
But she couldn’t do it. Maybe with some other guy she didn’t care about. But not with Clay.
She had fallen for Clay, and she didn’t want to do this kind of thing with someone who hadn’t fallen, too. Jane wanted more than his kindness and his friendship and his desire. She wanted the real thing. It was time for the Universe to make it happen for her. She must have telegraphed her sudden change of heart in some way, because she saw it mirrored in his face.
The little smile left his lips, and he exhaled deeply. But then he surprised the hell out of her by pushing himself up and reversing their positions, so that she was lying with her back to the mattress and he was above her, his big body blocking every path of escape. He looked down at her, and the spark in his eyes had not diminished one bit. His gaze made her skin burn hot all over.
That look was an affirmation.
Hoo boy, the guy was doing the same thing that he’d done this morning. Pushing back and pushing back until she gave in. He was so good at that. He was so stubborn and bullheaded and so…
“Baby,” Clay said in this deep, husky voice, “I want to make love to you.”
It was one of those duh statements. Like the size of the erection he kept rubbing against her hadn’t already told her what he wanted to do.
Only wait, the guy hadn’t said he wanted to have sex with her, or screw her, or do her, or any of those words he’d used before.
He’d said he wanted to make love to her.
Her heart twisted in her chest. Maybe she needed to listen. Words mattered.
Clay tucked the hair behind her ear and continued to stroke her face, his fingertips generating an incredible heat.
She should push him away. She should get on the next bus. She should run, run, run before she got hurt. Before he learned all her secrets and found out she wasn’t the woman he was looking for.
“I am so sorry for the stupid things I said last night. I want you to know that I’m here because I want to be,” he said.
He kissed her then, so softly. Just a brush of his mouth on hers. Jane reveled in the feel of his lips, the male texture of his goatee against her cheek and chin. Desire bubbled through her. She was losing this battle. She wanted him so bad.
He lifted his head. “Look at me, Jane,” he said.
She opened her eyes and got lost in his gaze. It was sultry and hot and full of a yearning that she’d never seen before in any man’s eyes.
“You are not a symptom of my midlife crisis. I want to make that clear. I was being a jerk last night. I was trying to talk myself out of what I was feeling,” he said.
“And what were you feeling?” Jane asked.
His sudden smile revealed a dimple and a few dozen crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. “It wasn’t just what I was feeling. It was the way you make me feel every time I get near you.”
“Oh?” Her heart squeezed in her chest. “How’s that?” Her voice sounded strained.
He ran the back of his finger across her cheek. It felt so nice the way he was petting her. Not groping her or forcing her or anything like that. His touch was so amazing. No one had touched her that way—ever.
“Like a man.”
“What?”
“Like a man. Like a man’s supposed to feel, I guess. I can’t explain it. I just know it’s sexual. It’s incredibly sexual. And yet it’s not sexual at all. It’s confusing as hell, to tell you the truth. It’s like getting caught up in a hurricane or some other force of nature. It’s hard to fight this feeling, because it’s kind of addicting. It feels incredibly good when I go with it.”
“Oh.”
Clay leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. “I’m doing a piss-poor job of explaining this, aren’t I?”
Jane said nothing because there was this knot in her throat and she wasn’t sure she could make her voice work. He thought she was like a hurricane? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Didn’t hurricanes usually create major disasters?
On the other hand, being a force of nature was sort of an affirmation. Wasn’t it?
Maybe she should stop fighting it and go with the flow. Didn’t Dr. Goodbody always say that it was better sometimes to make a bad decision than to make no decision at all? He said that drifting through life would never help anyone realize their deepest dreams.
Jane suddenly realized the Universe and Clay Rhodes were going to let her decide. The decision might be a disaster, or it might be the smartest thing she ever did in her life.
Either way, it was fish-or-cut-bait time.
“Make love to me,” Jane said. “I want you to make good on the promise you made last night.”
Clay’s lips pressed against her forehead. “And what promise was that?”
“That you’re going to make me scream your name out loud.”
He smiled against her skin. “Oh, yeah, that promise. Okay.”
“Okay?” Her voice kind of squeaked.
“Yeah. Okay. It would be my absolute pleasure to make that happen.”
Clay raised his head and looked down at her. Jane could see the little tic of his pulse right at the nape of his neck. He was turned on. And they hadn’t even gotten naked yet.
Wow.
Double wow. Because every female place in her body was aching with a deep-down need for him. Like he was some kind of force of nature himself. And together they were like the yin and the yang. Male and female. Positive and negative.
And the Universe had laws about opposites like that. Nobody could fight the laws of the Universe. They were built right into the nature of things. They were immutable.
So she quit fighting it and let go. Clay’s mouth came down on hers, and it was like Wednesday all over again, only ten times better.
Clay knew by the wild feeling down in his chest that he had gotten through some kind of barrier Jane kept around her heart. That wild feeling was so intoxicating that he felt like he might lose it before even losing his pants. He’d forgotten what it was like to make out with a girl and feel out of control.
Her mouth was perfect. Jane was soft and hard in all the right places, and he was certain he had fallen right into Nirvana. But then she took his tongue in her mouth and sucked on it kind of hard. Suddenly, kissing her wasn’t enough. He wanted her mouth on every other part of his body. He wanted to get his mouth on every square inch of hers. But for that, they were going to have to lose the clothes.
He looked down at her and lost the ability to breathe for a moment. “I want to get naked,” he said on a tight breath. It was a pretty inarticulate thing to say. But at least the words were brief and honest.
Jane blinked once, and her mouth curved up in an eloquent smile. “Me, too,” she whispered.
Well, that was all it took. They were out of their clothes inside of thirty seconds.
Dusk had just about fallen, and the light in the room was kind of hazy and soft and purple, and Jane’s body looked like it had been crafted out of Tuscan marble by Michelangelo himself. She was perfect.
She came back into his arms, against him skin to skin as they lay down together. He reached for
her breast, and it fit perfectly in his hand. It felt heavy and soft and the nipple pebbled up against his palm. Just touching it took him back to that crazy place where he didn’t have to think about anything.
And then Jane sabotaged all his plans for going slow when she trailed her fingers down his chest and over his hip and took him into her hand and touched him like she knew the way he liked to be touched.
His brain kind of narrowed down, and all he was capable of comprehending was the tension she created inside his body with the slide of her hand. This went on for some time until he had to pull her hand away.
“Uh, you need to quit that now,” he said in a rusty voice.
“Oh?” She looked up into his face with a devilish spark in her eyes.
“Yeah,” he said, pushing her onto her back. “It’s my turn.”
He went back to the spot at the nape of her neck, because he knew that turned her on, and he wanted to give her pleasure. So he went after it, and she squirmed against him, and he felt himself tumbling down into desire so deep he was pretty sure he would drown in it. But what a hell of a way to go.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Clayton P. Rhodes had talented fingers. It probably came from playing piano and violin all those years. Jane opened her eyes and looked up at him. The smirk on his face was so damn cocky and so masculine, and so sultry, and so…
Clay stopped teasing her with his finger, which was probably a good thing, because otherwise she just might have lost it before they got to the main event.
He moved in and kissed her again. And his kiss made her feel like she was the center of his universe—like the young girl she’d once been. It felt like a first kiss. Like a never-before-been-kissed. It swept her away.
She wanted him, now. “I want you, bad,” she said. The words were not eloquent, but Clay understood her meaning.
He held up one finger. “Hold that thought, darlin’, I need to find a condom,” he said.
