Carolina Girl (15 page)

“All right. I thought maybe I could come back here
this afternoon, and after I work with your sister, you and I could go someplace
for dinner and talk about this zoning thing.” He brushed a strand of hair
from her face and tucked it behind her ear.

She recognized the expectant look in his eyes. He wanted
more than talk. She probably did, too, but she wouldn’t give in to
hormones. She’d learned how to diet at an early age. Food and sex
weren’t all that different—stick to the kind that was good for you
and avoid the tempting but worthless sorts.

“If you come over around four,” she heard
herself saying, and hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as she feared,
“I can fix dinner while you and Cissy work. Pops likes to eat early. We
can feed both of you. Maybe Cissy will feel more charitable if she thinks
we’re contributing something.”

He looked as if he’d like to argue, but Rory held her
ground, doing her best to appear complacent and beyond argument. It apparently
worked. A corner of his mouth crooked up in a half smile, and though he
didn’t kiss her, he made her feel as if he had.

Her heart picked up speed—she
wanted
him to
kiss her, even if they were being watched from the windows.

“I’ll bring steaks. I don’t know how to
grocery shop, so if you need anything else, tell me.”

“We don’t need steaks. I have a garden full of
greens and a freezer full of fish.” They’d learned to can and
freeze as kids or they’d have starved.

“Steaks,” Clay insisted. “And maybe some
big fat potatoes.”

“The new potatoes are ready to dig,” she
protested.

“Big fat potatoes,” he replied, as if she
hadn’t said anything. “With sour cream and butter. And all those
other little things they throw on. I’m not in L.A. anymore and
don’t have to eat nouveau cuisine.”

She wasn’t entirely certain of the relevance, but the
pleased look on his face was that of a child in a candy store, and she quit
arguing. Hadn’t he said he usually never tasted food?

Maybe he’d regained his appetite.

As he walked away with that long, jaunty stride of his, Rory
tried to ignore her own newly aroused appetite, but by the time Clay McCloud
had mounted his Harley and rode off, she was planning the evening meal and
praying she wasn’t on the menu.

With Kismet’s lesson done for the day and time on his
hands before he could reasonably visit Aurora again, Clay settled down to
finish the task of locating Bingham heirs. He didn’t know what he would
do with the information once he was finished, but the state had paid him a nice
chunk of change. He couldn’t completely disregard his job, although the
temptation was there.

While the printer spewed a long list of names and addresses,
Clay opened up his e-mail program and typed in Aurora’s screen name. To
balance out the evil emerging from his printer, he typed,
You remind me of
starry, starry nights. Come play on my planet anytime
. He hesitated before
sending off that nonsense, but she didn’t know his screen name and
couldn’t prove it came from him.

Opening the door to involvement was akin to opening
Pandora’s box. Sexual involvement he could handle, especially with
Aurora. But he wasn’t so self-absorbed as to not realize women like her
wanted more than sex.

So sending anonymous romantic e-mail was akin to pulling
petals off daisies. If she understood the message and knew it was from him, she
was a winner and worth the effort of whatever complications ensued. If she
thought the e-mail was spam and tossed it, she wasn’t his kind.
Daisy-petal picking made as much sense as anything else in his life these days.

He’d gambled on less before. This time he just
wasn’t certain which alternative was the prize.

Catching the last piece of paper spitting from the machine,
he switched off the printer, glanced over the list of names, and shuddered. If
just one person on this list knew he was an heir, he could sell out all the
others. He might as well be holding a two-ton bomb that could explode the whole
island into a developer’s paradise.

He could still sell the information. Get a check from the
state, another from some developer, sell the genealogy program to the Mormons
or libraries, and head back home to New York or L.A. Or set off for Tahiti.
Cleo and Jared could live anywhere. Aurora didn’t have a hope in hell of
saving the island from development. She and her sister ought to take the money
and run.

But they wouldn’t, so he wouldn’t. Stupid of
him, but there it was. He didn’t need the money. He didn’t need New
York or L.A. Tahiti now—

The phone rang, dousing his fantasy of setting up shop in
the South Pacific. Tripping over a stack of file folders, he glowered at the
organized chaos that was his front room. If he was staying, he’d have to
do something about the mess.

If he wanted to bring Aurora here, away from the prying eyes
of her family, he’d better do a hell of a lot of somethings.

Stepping over a box of reference material, he grabbed the
phone before it leaped off the wall and came after him. “Clay
here.” Gazing around, he looked for somewhere to stash his potentially
explosive printouts.

“Thank goodness!” Urgency rushed Cleo’s
usual clipped tones. “Can you come sit with Meg for a while? Matty fell
off some playground equipment at a friend’s house, and I don’t
think it’s serious but—”

Clay cut in before Cleo passed out from lack of breath.
“I’ll be there in a minute. Hop in the car and go.”

“Thanks!” She slammed down the phone before he
could realize the ludicrousness of his offer. He wasn’t his brother. He
didn’t know a damn thing about babies.

How long could it take for Cleo to hie into town, pick up
Matt, and run back here? One little baby shouldn’t be that hard. Glancing
down at the valuable papers in his hand, he shrugged and shoved them into the
first open drawer he found.

That done, he jogged over the sand and boardwalk and up the
hill to his brother’s home. Heaven only knew where Jared had gone. His
brother could arrive home before Cleo had time to reach town.

Cleo was looking frantic as she paced the porch, torn
between her daughter sleeping inside and her son, hurt, in town. At
Clay’s approach, she dashed down the stairs, truck keys in hand.
“She should sleep another hour. There’s a bottle in the refrigerator,
but she just ate a couple of hours ago. Jared’s in Charleston on a video
call with some movie producer. I don’t know when he’ll be
back.”

Clay grabbed the door of her truck and held it open so she
could climb in. “They’ll both be fine. Just be careful and give me
a call to let me know how Matt is.” He hadn’t the heart to worry
her with his incompetence. Cleo never panicked except when it came to the kids.

“I hate doing this to you....”

He shut the door while she fastened her seat belt. “I
know how to call for help if I’m in over my head. Midge is in good
hands.”

“Meg. Megan.” She threw the truck in gear and
roared down the drive.

“Midge,” Clay insisted to the cloud of dust she
left behind.

If Jared could handle a baby, surely he could. She was a cute
little thing.

The cute little thing was wailing her heart out as he
entered the house.

Okay, don’t panic. How hard could it be?

The nursery was whimsically decorated in bright blue walls,
with a cloud-painted ceiling dangling swinging butterflies and dragons.
Entering, Clay prayed Midge would quiet down before he reached the crib.

She didn’t. In fact, her little face wrinkled into
lines of rage and turned red as she reached a particularly demanding note.

He needed a checklist. When machines froze up, he worked
through a series of corrections until he had them working again. He simply
needed to figure out what made Midge tick.

He offered his finger. She batted it blindly and squalled
louder.
Strike one.
Seeing the key in the carousel thing hanging over
the crib, he turned it until the musical notes of “Pop Goes the
Weasel” wrecked his eardrums. She didn’t buy that either. He
didn’t blame her. He’d try her on a little Billy Joel next time.

Babies liked movement, like cradles and cars. Tightening his
jaw, Clay studied the situation. She was down in that crib pretty far, and she
was wriggling and flailing like a beached turtle, but she was a bitty thing.
All he had to do was slip his hands under her and lift and hope she
didn’t wriggle so hard she tumbled out of his grip.

He worked one hand under her padded bottom, got a good
whiff, and winced. “Midge, don’t do this to me!”

At the sound of his voice, she quieted and stared up at him.

Excellent
. Talking worked. Pity he couldn’t
talk her into changing her own diaper. Or find Kismet and Mandy to help, but
they’d taken off for the beach hours ago.

Well, if he could clean and change an oily engine, surely he
could figure out Midge’s chassis.

For the first minute or two, Midge was apparently so bemused
by his awkwardness that she forgot to cry. But he apparently took too long
figuring out the best means of removing the soggy mess around her bottom, and
her wails returned with renewed vigor.

“Give me a break here, Midge,” he muttered,
ripping at tapes and trying to hold on to her while she kicked furiously.
“I’ve never needed an instruction manual, but I sure could use a
Help file right now.”

She wailed louder.

“I only like bikes that roar,” he warned as she
continued caterwauling after he’d rigged a dry diaper around her, leaving
the messy one for Cleo to clean up.

Cleo had said she’d just eaten. Did that mean she
couldn’t eat again? Until when? Hell, he hadn’t thought to ask.

Midge’s wails were too pitiful to tolerate. Feeding
usually shut kids up. It wouldn’t hurt for her to eat early.

o0o

“All right, I think I’ve got this now, kid. Hang
on.” Burped milk down his front and a wide awake Midge waiting to see
what he would do next, Clay slipped the straps of the baby carrier over his
head and let her hang down his back like a backpack. “Let’s go for
a walk. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll take you out on the Harley
and teach you to ride.”

He’d almost dropped her when Cleo had called to report
she had to take Matty into Charleston to have his swollen finger X-rayed.
She’d given him a hurried list of instructions he couldn’t write
down because Midge was pulling his hair, and he couldn’t disentangle her
fingers or find a pen. Most of the instructions had made sense at the time. He
wished he could remember what they were now.

Figuring Jared easily owed him a month’s free
rent—had he been paying rent—Clay jogged out the front door, hoping
the fresh air would relieve the stench of baby puke.

He prayed Jared would arrive before four. He hated to call
Cissy and tell her he couldn’t make it. She’d not looked happy with
him this morning.

He wished he had more experience in seducing women, but the
challenge of persuading Aurora Jenkins into bed could be just what he needed to
shake him out of the doldrums.

The idea of waking up to a firecracker like Aurora captured
his imagination. Did she wake up waving a gavel of justice? Would she wear
frilly nightgowns like her underwear or practical nightshirts like her suits?
She presented a challenge so unique that he hungered to explore far more than
the physical.

That realization rocked his world. Usually, once he released
a little pent-up sexual energy, women bored him, so he didn’t expend much
time or effort in learning about them. Maybe settling for easy women had been
his mistake.

Midge bounced on his back as he jogged along the shady edge
of the beach where gnarled oaks and pines grew, reminding him that he was
supposed to be taking care of her, not indulging in sexual fantasies.

Ahead of him was the rock jetty that marked the edge of
Cleo’s property. He knew from the maps that the state park would start
beyond the jetty. Jogging past the rocky outcropping, he ran along part of the
Bingham estate, but this acreage had no road access—which was why he
stopped short at the sight of a surveyor’s stake.

He ran the beach every morning and knew the stake
hadn’t been there yesterday.

At the sound of voices deeper in the thicket of woods, he
jogged inland. Kismet’s family lived back here somewhere. Maybe he just
heard the kids.

Humidity and mosquitoes were a deterrent. Blackberry
thickets abounded. Halting, worried about the infant on his back, Clay scanned
the wooded area ahead, searching for some sign of human life forms.

He located the yellow hard hats of the surveyors walking
toward him just as he was about to leave.

“You working for the state?” he called,
unwilling to take Midge any deeper into the marshy area.

Tucking a pencil into his shirt pocket, one of the men
glanced around until he saw Clay. Shrugging, he picked up a piece of his
equipment and folded it. “Nah. Just some builder.” He squinted
closer at the carrier on Clay’s back. “You know you got that thing
on backward?”

Clay didn’t much care how he had the carrier on so
long as it kept Midge burbling happily. “I didn’t know this land
had been sold.”

“Doesn’t have to be sold, far as I know. Just
needs to be under contract.” Losing interest in the conversation, the
surveyor returned to packing up his instruments.

Under contract.
With a sinking feeling, Clay jogged
back down the path to the beach. Aurora wasn’t going to like this at all.
Neither was Cleo. And what about Kismet’s family? If some developer had
found one of the Bingham family to sign a contract, what would happen to the
Watkinses? As he understood it, the kid’s family lived a precarious existence.
They’d never survive if they were thrown out of their home.

Falling back on his usual motto, he decided he had his
problems; they had theirs. Since he didn’t know how to solve either, he
would simply let Aurora know what he’d seen. She would know where to
scout around and find out about a pending contract.