Carolina Girl (12 page)

“Don’t you see?” Aurora demanded, her
graceful fingers flying in forceful gestures, her face lit with animation.
“Someone is already running scared if they’re trying these tactics.
They don’t need our lot if they can have the Bingham acreage.
They’re doing this in hopes the money will shut me up.”

“But if they turn the Bingham land into condos, it
won’t be worth living out here. Why shouldn’t we take the
money?” Cissy was practically pleading, although she didn’t lift
her gaze from the plate.

“Mama, I’ll get scholarships. I don’t need
the money for college. We can’t let them sell out Grandma Iris. And what
about Grandpop? Where would he put all his stuff?” Mandy reluctantly came
down on Aurora’s side.

Clay watched the frailer sister struggle with her conscience
and her hopes and her needs, and couldn’t bear the pain in Aurora’s
eyes as she watched it, too. Even Jake kept his mouth shut, but his face looked
ashen and old for the first time since Clay had known him.

Before he could bite his tongue, Clay pointed out the
obvious. “Once the state park is built, the value of this land will
skyrocket. It could be worth a few million in a few years, or you could develop
a profitable commercial business here with the right zoning.” He
couldn’t believe he was saying this. The state park was an extremely bad
idea, in his opinion. Commercial businesses were worse. But he hated seeing
anyone looking so downtrodden.

Damn Aurora, but she was twisting his head around to see her
side. Her face lit with surprise and pleasure at his new position on their
argument. It was almost worth the trouble he was getting himself into just to
see her look at him with admiration and approval. He usually got that from
women only when he handed them jewelry.

Cissy looked hopeful for a moment, then shook her head.
“That’s years away. We’ll starve before that happens. And it
takes money to make money. We don’t have it.”

Aurora started to speak, but Clay plowed ahead before she
could offer to pay her sister again. For whatever reason, he was willing to
dismiss her MBA and her hidden agenda and believe that she worked for what was
right. He
needed
to do this. He wasn’t much on examining
motivation, but he figured doing something because it was right might clear
some of the bad taste from his mouth left by the greedy tactics of his
corporate experts. This was a simple problem, one he could handle.

“I can teach you how to use the computer,” he
told Cissy. “There are all sorts of jobs you could do with a little
training. You won’t have to rely on anyone else or wait for windfalls if
you have a little knowledge to sell.”

The way they all looked at him, Clay thought maybe the roof
had come off and God had entered on a sun-beam. Uncomfortably, he reached for
his beer. He’d only made a suggestion. It wasn’t as if he’d
achieved world peace. But Cissy looked as if he’d offered her gold, and
Aurora...

Ah, hell
. Aurora’s approval would have him
walking on coals if he didn’t watch out. You’d think he’d
learn to quit jumping into things feet first. It was always a mistake to get
involved. She’d have expectations, and he didn’t have any way of
satisfying them.

“Could you really?” Cissy whispered, as if not
trusting she’d heard him right.

His tight T-shirt bound his shoulders, and he twitched
uncomfortably. “Computers aren’t all that difficult. Some basic
word processing would give you a foot in the door anywhere. Add graphics and
you’ll be hot property once people learn what can be done with them.
I’ve been doing some work for several area businesses that you could
easily take over. There’s not much computer expertise out here.”

The silence stretched thin, and Clay thought maybe he ought
to leave. He wished he had Jared’s gift of gab, or his brother
Tim’s obliviousness, but he didn’t. He could feel the power of all
the emotions bursting around the room, and he itched to escape. He didn’t
feel competent enough to be all they expected of him. Anyone could learn a
damned computer, after all.

“You think you could teach her how to do one of them
bookkeeping things?” Jake asked unexpectedly, breaking the silence.

Clay enjoyed the astonishment lighting Aurora’s face.
He could watch her light up like that for the rest of his life and never cease
to admire it.

The oddly buoyant feeling in his chest at her reaction
caught him by surprise. It was as if all the emotions in the room had coalesced
in his middle. He didn’t recognize the feeling at first, but he thought
it might be happiness. He was feeling
happy
because an old man had
agreed to do what his daughter wanted?

The laughter and chatter that erupted would have normally
shut him out. His usual mode of operation would be to pull back into his shell,
finish his food, and mosey on to his empty house and his computer screen.

But Aurora’s family wouldn’t let him retreat.
Aurora leaped up and kissed her father’s cheek, then for good measure
kissed Clay’s. He wanted a hell of a lot more than a kiss on the cheek
from her, but Mandy was jumping up to hug his neck, and Cissy sat there looking
worshipful, and all the questions bouncing around had to be answered somehow.

“Are you sure this is what you want to do,
Ciss?” Aurora asked as the excitement wore itself out. “It’s
not the same thing as having all that money in hand. It’s kind of like
gambling on the lottery.”

“No, it’s not.” Excitement still burned
bright in Cissy’s eyes. “They can rob me of money, but they
can’t rob me of knowledge. Clay’s right. There’s no limit to
what I can do once I have some salable skill. I can buy my own house and lot.
Will you let me use your computer to learn until I can buy one of my
own?”

“You can have the thing if it will help you get Pops
organized. I can always buy another when I’m working again.” Aurora
swung around and pinned her father with a stare. “You did mean it,
didn’t you? You’ll let Cissy put your stuff on paper? You’ll
get a bank account?”

Clay watched with interest as the older man squirmed, but
they had him firmly nailed. Jake grunted and nodded.

“Reckon it’s time. If you’re giving up
that kind of money cause of me, then I guess I’d better get my act in
order. But I ain’t gonna like it,” he added for good measure.

“We’re not giving it up for you, Pops.
We’re giving it up because the whole island will be better off if we do.
It will take some time to see the benefit.” Aurora leaped up again,
cleared her plate off the table, and asked, “Anyone ready for strawberry
shortcake? I think we should celebrate.”

Clay figured he would eat anything stuck in front of him if
it brought him closer to spending a few minutes alone with Aurora. She looked
positively radiant right now. She could switch from tears and anger to joy and
laughter as simply as flipping a light switch.

Sailing around the kitchen with confidence, she produced
strawberries and an enormous cake and miraculously created fluffy whipped cream
out of a frozen bowl and beaters and what looked like the stuff he poured in
his coffee. It was like watching a marvelous new video game unfold. He was
dying to push her buttons to see what happened next.

Instead, she pushed his.

The homemade cake Aurora set in front of him melted in his
mouth and tasted like heaven. He’d eaten in L.A.’s hottest
restaurants and hadn’t tasted a thing while negotiating investments and
talking software. He didn’t think he’d ever tasted anything that
could compare with this dessert prepared in a two-bit trailer in the backwoods
of nowhere. The people around him didn’t seem to think it an unusual
event. They chattered on while spooning up strawberries as if this were an
everyday occurrence instead of a religious experience.

He never wanted to go back to his diet of beer and french
fries again.

Clay knew he was in trouble, but surrounded by all this
feminine energy, he simply didn’t care. It was akin to living inside a
Christmas tree. Aurora sparkled, Cissy shined, and Mandy chimed. Lights
glittered off red hair and blond. Floral fragrances mixed with the
mouthwatering scents of food. Clay figured Jake would start hoho-hoing any
moment now, develop a red nose, and climb up the chimney. He hadn’t felt
this included even when he’d joined Jared and his family at Christmas.

The women showered him with questions, handed him a towel to
dry dishes, unself-consciously brushed by him to reach for cabinets in the
narrow kitchen, and teased him with their perfumes and laughter. Aurora wrapped
a towel around his waist so he wouldn’t get his cutoffs wet. Jake handed
him another beer. Mandy showed him the graphs she’d created on the school’s
computer.

By the time everything was put away and he knew it had to be
time for him to go home, he didn’t know if he wanted to leave. The beach
cottage would be dark and lonely and silent. He’d never noticed that
before. A computer had always offered him music, companionship, and
intellectual challenges, and that had been enough.

With Aurora slipping her hand around his elbow and
accompanying him into the night, Clay thought a computer would never be enough
again. He wanted to hold the warmth of her against him, feel the brush of her
breasts against his side, listen to her laughter. Take her home with him.

“A miracle happened here tonight,” she murmured,
echoing thoughts he hadn’t put into words. “I don’t think I
can thank you enough. You meant it, didn’t you? That you could teach
Cissy?”

“I’m probably not much of a teacher,” he
warned. “I expect people to know what I know, and I get impatient when it
doesn’t come naturally. I hope you’re not setting your hopes too
high.” He felt a little better spitting that out. He wasn’t God.
He’d favored the Clay part of his name for good reason. He was all too
human and earthbound.

What if he opened the door to step into her world, and she
slammed the door in his face? Was it worth the pain and hassle? He didn’t
have enough experience with real relationships to calculate the risk factor.

“It can’t be as bad as me trying to teach
her,” Aurora asserted. “We fight, and she won’t listen to me.
I’m not that great at it, anyway.”

“She’ll still need a car to find a job,”
he reminded her, treading cautiously. “And she’s probably right
when she says the bank will do what they want. This place won’t be the
same if they turn the island into a sea of crackerboxes.”

“It’s okay. Once I go off to Chicago knowing
they don’t need me any longer, I can pay her back. You are a
saint.”

Chicago. She was going to Chicago. Of course she was. She
didn’t belong here. Oddly enough, that relieved some of the pressure.
Whatever was happening between them wouldn’t be long-term. They’d
let it play out and both would go back to their own worlds when the time came.
Kind of like the summer vacations he’d never really taken as a kid.

Relaxing, Clay caught a fist of sunset hair that had fallen
from its pins. He couldn’t hold Aurora still. It was like trying to trap
a rainbow. Her eyes flashed, her mouth curled upward, her soft curves moved
closer, and his lips were on hers before he knew what he was doing.

She tasted of strawberries and cream, and he died and went
to heaven all over again.

With a sigh of relief and gratitude, Clay hauled her into
his arms and kissed her as if he’d never let her go.

“Is he for real?” Cissy whispered as soon as
Mandy disappeared into her bedroom with the phone.

Stunned and spinning from a kiss that had revealed the
mysteries of life, Aurora sipped her bottled water and didn’t answer
immediately. She thought that kiss might have melted the iceberg around her
heart to Popsicle-sized chunks, and now she was sailing into uncharted waters.

Only the slowly rising defeat in her sister’s eyes dragged
her back from her daze.

“I figure McCloud’s for real,” she hastily
reassured Cissy. “I’m just not sure what he’s expecting to
get out of this.” She added this more for herself than Cissy, but her
sister grabbed it and ran.

“You can handle him,” she said with confidence.
“It will be like handling Dad.”

Aurora threw her a scathing look. “Like Mama handling
Pops, you mean. You know how well that worked out.”

Regaining confidence, Cissy shrugged. “If you can
handle the big-city fellas, you can handle a biker.”

Rory wasn’t at all certain it worked that way. The
“big-city fellas” wore suits and talked finance and operated on a
safe turf she understood. They didn’t tilt her hormones into overdrive by
wearing denim vests over naked chests and kissing her as if she possessed the
key to their universe. It was mighty hard to resist the kind of power he
offered her.

She had to resist. She had goals here, and they didn’t
include dallying with itinerant beach bums, even ones who could spin a computer
faster than a motorcycle. “I think it’s more a matter of
you
handling him. He will make a lousy teacher unless you bop him over the head
with a keyboard a few times.”

Cissy looked blissfully radiant. “I can do that. Do
you have any idea how much it
costs
to learn what he’s willing to
teach me?”

“Not a hundred fifty thousand dollars.”
Gloomily, Rory sat down beside Cissy, picked up the TV remote, and switched on
the news. “What if I’m wrong? What if I can’t get the zoning
changed?”

“It will still be better than before.” Undemonstrative
by nature, Cissy gave her an awkward hug. “It’s not the money that
counts, but what we do with it. If I can send Mandy to school on money I earn,
it’s far better than selling out our neighbors for a pretty subdivision
lot.”

Tears prickled behind Rory’s eyes as she hugged her
sister and prayed she’d chosen the right course.

Clay’s heated kiss and the excited clamor in the
vicinity of her heart made it impossible to tell whether she was thinking with
her head or with her hopes.