Carolina Girl (2 page)

He lifted his sunglasses, sliding them into his overlong
hair. Up close, Rory could see that it had an unruly curl to the ends. The
sunglasses had partially concealed a broad nose with a slight downward slope
instead of the classically handsome one she’d expected. He wasn’t
Hollywood pretty, but his long-lashed gray eyes could ring her chimes any day.

“There’d better be a good reason for dragging me
down here this early in the day.” With a gesture at the bartender, he
ordered a beer. The boy knew his brand of choice without asking and carried the
bottle over still sweating from the cooler.

Sipping the beer, Clay admired the glory of the fullfigured
redhead across from him—his fantasy Viking princess sprung to life in
Technicolor. She’d twisted strands of her strawberry-blond mane into a
knot at the back of her head, but it was too heavy to stay in the pins. One
escaped lock curved in a delicate line along her throat, just brushing her red
silk shirt. The stiff-collared, no-nonsense shirt didn’t bother him, but
the gray business suit she wore with it warned he really didn’t want to
hear what she had to say. He didn’t listen to suits these days.

Leaning back against the wooden bench, he took a good chug
of beer and waited for her to get past his rudeness. No sense in encouraging
whatever maggot had stuck in her craw. Instead, he engaged his mind in admiring
the way her luscious lips tightened into a disapproving line.

“I’m Aurora Jenkins,” she said with only a
hint of the soft drawl of the island inhabitants. “Terry Talbert has put
me in charge of developing a budget for the park grant. I have an MBA in
finance and grew up here, so I volunteered to help him out for a while.”

Raising an eyebrow, Clay continued sipping his beer, waiting
for her to come around to what she really wanted.

In the dim light of the bar, her eyes appeared almost
violet. They narrowed at his nonresponse.

“I’m developing a budget for the land-planning
grant,” she continued without voicing an iota of frustration at his
stonewalling. “I understand you’re overseeing the software
development of a program capable of identifying and locating the Bingham heirs.
If you haven’t pulled your cost figures together yet, I can help you with
them.”

Clay nearly snorted beer out of his nose. Wiping the smirk
off his face with the back of his hand, he leaned forward, bringing them
face-to-face across the narrow table. “I do software. I don’t do
numbers.”

“The state requires numbers, Mr. McCloud.”

“The state can go screw itself. I’m working for
next to nothing and nothing is what they’ll get if they don’t leave
me alone.”

“With that attitude, maybe
nothing
is all you
have and all you ever will have, Mr. McCloud. Perhaps I should suggest that the
state find a different person to locate the heirs?”

“In my experience, you may suggest to them that the
moon is blue, and they’ll appoint a committee to study the matter and
make a decision sometime in the next century. Don’t let me stop
you.” Flinging a bill on the table, Clay slid out of the booth.

It was a damned shame that great body was wasted on a
narrow-minded number cruncher, but he was sticking to simple minds and simple
tastes these days—even if Aurora Jenkins’ curves could tempt Satan.

“The park is imperative to our future, Mr. McCloud. We
need a budget to get the state grant. I’ll present you with a suggested
budget for your division next week,” she called after him.

He almost laughed out loud at that. He should have known any
woman willing to tackle that spider-infested tower wouldn’t give up
easily. Turning, he winked at her in his best obnoxious manner.
“You’d be better off hunting for the late mayor’s missing
fortune than to trust the state.”

He walked out, letting the door slam behind him.

Missing fortune, her foot and eye. If she could find a
fortune, she’d be out of here so fast, his head would spin.

Cursing, Rory fumbled in her purse for some change so she
could pay up and leave.

Where the hell did he get that my-way-or-the-highway attitude?
Was he born with it? Did someone teach it to him?

Could she hit him over the head with a two-by-four and bash
it out of him? There was a reason she preferred the pinstripe-suit crowd these
days. She could control her temper better in the secure environment of
intelligent people who shared rational goals.

“Clay took care of it,” the bartender said,
sweeping the bill off the table before she found her change purse.

“Put the money against his tab.” Refusing to
take anything from the bastard, Rory threw a couple of ones on the table.

She’d have to investigate Thomas Clayton McCloud more
thoroughly before she approached him next time. Did he have any business
background at all? Did he even have an education? How much did he actually know
about programming? It was a real stretch to believe he could find the on switch
of a PC.

She bet he found the on switch of every woman who crossed
his path. Fanning herself with a file folder as she left the bar, Rory tried to
ignore all the hormones exploding like little bombshells in less noble parts of
her.

McCloud exuded sex appeal like bees secreted honey. She
didn’t have the time or the patience to play little boy games. He could
go exude on some other hapless female.

“What will we do without Daddy’s pickup?”
Cissy fretted for the ninety-nine millionth time since Rory had returned home
after the accident that had temporarily crippled Cissy and their father.
“I can’t get to the grocery store, much less take Mandy to
after-school classes. No one’s going to loan me any money to buy one
while I’m not working. And Daddy can’t produce any papers proving
he has an income, so no bank will loan him any either.”

“Pops was down at the bar Friday, so someone’s
helping him get around. Just be grateful he can’t ride the Harley with
his leg in a cast.” Rory steered her small BMW convertible into the
interstate traffic leaving Charleston after Cissy’s medical appointment.
Until her family was—literally—on their feet again, she
wasn’t going anywhere. They needed her time as much as her money right
now. Which meant she had no excuse to go job-hunting and wiggle out of an
unpleasant task with the potential to provide her family’s future.

Twenty-four hours had passed since her meeting with Thomas
Clayton McCloud, and she was no closer to figuring out how to deal with him
than before. She was generally good with people, but McCloud...

She had better things to do than fret over living
testimonies to the dangers of testosterone poisoning.

Her sister stirred in discomfort, and Rory cast her an
anxious glance. Cissy had inherited their bear of a father’s sandy-brown
hair and their mother’s slight stature. Rory had inherited their
mother’s strawberry-blond mane and her father’s sturdy size. She
had spent many an adolescent evening envying her sister’s delicate
figure. But right now Cissy simply looked worn thin.

“One of Daddy’s bar buddies probably picked him
up.” With a grimace of discomfort, Cissy pushed the seat back as far as
it would go so she could straighten her leg. “Did he tell you about the
California freak he’s taken up with now? He has Daddy convinced the
island is sinking, the fish are poisoned, and the wells will dry up.”

Rory shrugged. “He’s probably right, not that we
can do anything about it except move to the city, where the exhaust fumes give
people asthma, the reservoirs are drying up, and the ground is poisoned with
lawn chemicals.”

Cissy chuckled, winced, and leaned her head back against the
high seat. “Sounds like you and Daddy’s buddy have a lot in common.
Maybe we should all learn to get around on bikes.”

“Oh, yeah, I can see that happening.” Rory gave
her sister’s injured leg a look of disbelief. “Rollerblades, too.
Then we can put you in the hospital and keep you there.”

Without a hint of hesitation, she changed the subject.
“I’m thinking of selling the BMW.”

She already knew her sister’s answer to that, but she
had to put forth the suggestion. Rory loved her baby-blue convertible, but it
was highly impractical out here on the sandy roads of the island. If she sold it
for just half its worth, she could buy two used pickups with the proceeds.
She’d spent her savings and severance allowance on their medical bills.
The car was about all she had left.

Cissy turned her head to glare at her through narrowed eyes.
“No charity,” she said firmly. “I have no way of paying you
back, and I’m not gonna owe you into eternity. We’ll manage. We
always do.”

Cissy managed because their father called Rory when
unexpected expenses cropped up. Her education and her career had kept the family
afloat for years. But she couldn’t tell her sister that their
father’s “good sales weeks” came from her. He might sell more
concrete birdbaths and lawn ornaments during the summer, but those sales barely
held him through the winter. And now the accident that had totaled the truck
had also slowed her father’s production.

The pink slip in her last paycheck had ended the
family’s income cushion. Ostensibly, she had been part of a larger
layoff, but she knew the true score. She really needed to quit rocking the
boat. Proposing that the bank give as much to literacy as they were giving to
the new basketball arena had not been one of her better-thought-out tirades.
Especially in these tough economic times.

“Cissy, let’s be real here,” Rory argued.
“I need this thirty-grand showpiece like I need a hole in my head. Public
transportation is more environmentally sound. I’m thinking of taking a
job in Chicago. I can find a place on the train line and buy one of those
electric cars.”

“Thirty grand? Damn, Rora, spending so much on a car
is stupid. You could buy a house with thirty grand.”

“Well, I won’t get that much if I sell or trade
it. And you won’t find a house as nice as Mom’s with thirty grand,
I promise you. We should put flowers on her grave every day for having credit
life insurance on the mortgage.”

It was just a double-wide, but it was the only home her
sister and niece had ever known. Situated on thirty acres of swamp and sandy
soil that had been handed down through generations of their mother’s
family, the trailer had been their salvation after their mother’s death
when Rory was only twelve.

It wasn’t as if their father had ever owned anything
of his own— until their mother died, and he’d built the concrete
factory behind the house. Rory had to give Jake credit for ending his footloose
life the instant his daughters had needed him.

“You must have got your smarts from Mom,” Cissy
said. “She sure knew how to pinch a penny and make Abe squeal.”

That their father didn’t went unspoken. Rory loved her
free-spirited father, but she sometimes wondered how he and their mother had
ever stayed together long enough to make two babies. It seemed they’d had
nothing in common on any other level but bed.

She’d learned her lesson at an early age. Opposites
might attract, but they were damned bad for each other. Her father had spent
his life hoping to make his fortune by winning a million dollars. Rory had
followed her mother’s example, preferring the certainty of education and
hard work.

Not that work had paid off in the way she had hoped.
She’d zip her big mouth once she found a new job. She’d learned the
hard way that working within the establishment paid off far better than
fighting it. She’d just temporarily forgotten that maxim in a surge of
overconfidence.

“You have smarts, too,” Rory assured her sister.
“You just didn’t have the opportunities you gave me. And kids cost
a lot. Since I’ll probably never have any, I want to help with Mandy.
She’s already wanting a car so she can work.”

“Over my dead body.” Arms crossed, Cissy glared
at the road.

“Well, that’s my thought, too,” Rory
admitted. “But the time will come. We’d better present a united
front, or she’ll be weaseling it out of Pops one of these days.”
Once she had her career back on track, she would personally see that
Cissy’s fifteen-year-old daughter had the education she deserved. Cissy
had provided the home and security Rory had needed while growing up. Rory could
do no less for Mandy.

“Or he’ll teach her to ride the Harley,”
Cissy agreed glumly, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “I
don’t want to think about it. You need to start looking for a job. Now
that the weather’s warmer, the tourists will be back, and Daddy can look
after us.”

If she hadn’t known just how badly her family was in
debt, Rory would jump on this invitation to escape. But the minute she left,
Cissy would attempt to return to work and ruin her health, and her father...
Rory would rather not even consider what her Harley-riding father would do with
a broken leg and no truck.

She might occasionally resent the narrow world she’d
been brought up in, but she loved her family and would do everything in her
power to support their decision to live in this backwater town, where
opportunities were few but life was familiar.

“What if I decide I like it here and don’t want
to leave?” she teased.

Cissy didn’t bother opening her eyes to answer that
one. “You never belonged here, kid. You’ll be gone before the
summer is over.”

Rory smiled happily. Oh, yes, she would. She wanted a condo
with great big windows overlooking the skyline this time—once she’d
molded the proposed park into a certainty.

Turning their swampy land into a profitable tourist
attraction would solve all their financial problems.

She intended to make it happen with or without the help of Greek
gods.

o0o

“What we need is your video game’s Viking
heroine and Karate Turtle to rise out of the swamp and drive off the barbarian
park builders.” Jared McCloud stroked the laptop keyboard, testing
Clay’s latest program.