Carolina Girl (22 page)

Maybe he just had smoke in his eyes.

“If the water’s working, would you mind if I
took a shower?” Clay set the glass down on the counter. If he was staying
here all night, he wanted her to be comfortable with him, but he wasn’t
certain this was the time or the place to ask for anything more.

She nibbled her luscious lip. He hoped he wasn’t imagining
the look of fascination in her eyes. If she would simply let loose of her
iron-clad control, maybe he could see stars and soft violet nights, and they
could wipe out this night of horror. His heart set up a jungle beat, and his
palms were moist from something other than his glass of water.

“Not at all. You know where it is,” she
answered, her gaze dropping to his mouth.

“We could always shower together.” He lifted one
eyebrow in a leer, only half joking. The adrenaline high had hit both of them.
He knew now wasn’t the time to act on it. He just wanted the attraction
between them out front and acknowledged. Maybe he needed to confirm that it was
mutual.

She looked slightly shocked, then thoughtful. At least she
hadn’t socked him one.

“Yeah, but I won’t.” Crossing her arms
over bounteous breasts outlined by her damp T-shirt, tilting her chin up, she
backed away. “I’ll use Cissy’s shower.”

Uncertain how to follow up on such a conflicting
declaration, Clay held his ground. He didn’t want a woman in his bed if
she didn’t want to be there. He simply wanted to understand. He waited,
saying nothing.

She glared at him and rubbed a nervous hand over her
disheveled hair. “It’s just adrenaline and hormones. I’m not
a kid anymore. I don’t have to explore every urge that comes
along.”

The feeling was mutual. He could settle for that. For now.

“Neither do I.” His voice sounded gravelly, even
to him. Too much smoke, he supposed. “Just because a woman makes herself
available doesn’t mean I hop into bed with her. I prefer waiting for
someone special.”

Without trying to explain the inexplicable, Clay turned and
walked away. He needed a shower, but he couldn’t decide if cold or hot
would work best in his current physical state.

o0o

After sudsing her hair a half dozen times in Cissy’s
herbal shampoo, and dawdling until the hot water ran out, Rory emerged from the
shower and donned an ankle-length denim dress she’d grabbed from her
closet.

She felt clean on the outside, but smoke still seemed to
whirl and obscure the inside of her skull.

She fretted over Cissy. She worried the fire would return.
She didn’t know where to put her bottle cap. And Clay was wandering out
there somewhere, wanting something she wasn’t prepared to give him.

Just because a woman makes herself available doesn’t
mean I hop into bed with her
.
Did that mean he wanted her because
she wasn’t available?

She had to take her lust-stricken mind elsewhere.

Now that she’d stopped shaking, her thoughts tumbled
back to the bottle cap in her dress pocket. It could have burned in the fire. A
million dollars, gone, because she’d been too stupid to take it to a bank
in Charleston.

Although, with her luck, the bank would probably have burned
down.

But if she concentrated on her family and the bottle cap,
she had less time to fret about the virile male pacing her front room. The way
she felt right now, he could roar the mating call of a hungry tiger, and she
would respond in kind.

Dallying, she twisted her damp hair into a braid and stuck a
few pins in loose ends. She searched Cissy’s drawers for cosmetics but
couldn’t find any suitable. When she ran out of excuses she returned to
the main room. She could start a to-do list while watching the smoldering yard.
Surely she had enough crowding her mind to shut out the needs Clay’s devastating
kiss had awakened.

Instead of pacing the room as she’d expected, her
guest had moved her computer in front of the TV. She could practically feel his
vibrations across the room, but he was tamely sitting on the couch, shooting
purple mushrooms drifting across the screen while keeping an eye on the big
picture window behind him to be certain the yard wasn’t engulfed in
flames.

Weren’t those games supposed to have guns and blood
and other appalling visuals to relieve male testosterone poisoning? She’d
almost feel better if he were noisily blowing up trucks on screen instead of
smoldering quietly. And where had the game come from? She didn’t keep
games on her computer. Had Mandy been playing with it?

How could he appear so in control when she felt as if she
might jump out of her skin at any moment?

He glanced up at her appearance, and the glow in his eyes
leaped into flame, shaking her even more. She’d never known a man like
Clay McCloud before. She couldn’t call him a biker or a beach bum
anymore. Without labels, she didn’t know how to handle him. Just exactly
who was he, anyway?

His damp hair curled against his strong brown neck.
She’d given him an old work shirt of her father’s that she’d
borrowed years ago. Jake was a burly man, but Clay wore the shirt unbuttoned
and still filled out the shoulders, although the rest of it billowed around
him.

She’d not had any substitute for his damp and dirty
khakis. He’d wrapped one of her big shower towels around his middle, so
he must have dropped them in the wash. She could hear the dryer running—a
man who knew how to do laundry! Much better to think about that than what the
towel concealed.

She cast a discreet glance to his lap but caught only a
glimpse of muscled thigh covered in golden hair.

Shivering at the level of arousal one glimpse could
generate, she ignored the inviting lift of his eyebrow and began setting out
fans to clear the air of the stench of smoke.

Shrugging, Clay returned to his game. She was too nervous to
disturb him, so she raided the refrigerator. An all-nighter called for food.

Keeping an eye out the kitchen window for any reigniting
embers in the backyard while Clay watched the front, she boiled shrimp and cut
up cheese and strawberries. She threw them on a platter with some grapes and
crackers, added a dip and leftover shrimp sauce, and carried the tray to the
coffee table. “Wouldn’t the lounge chair be more
comfortable?”

Clay didn’t glance up. “Can’t be
comfortable and think straight at the same time.”

He had long, arched feet and sinewy legs from running.
Distracted, Rory turned to the TV screen to cover her nervousness.

“Playing games requires thinking?” She watched a
dancing pink elephant walk over a smirking clown and fill the screen with
exploding bubbles. She didn’t see much thought behind that.

“This game does. Ever played?”

“Never had time to learn video games,” she
admitted. “I don’t know where Mandy found that one.”

“I loaned it to her the other day when she came over
with Kiz.”

Figures
. “What would you like to drink?”
She hadn’t meant to sound curt, but Clay stopped what he was doing to
turn his unfathomable gaze on her, so he must have caught the tone. The man
might not communicate in normal fashion, but he listened—even when she
didn’t want him to. She didn’t like being nervous. It made her even
more defensive.

“Don’t suppose you have wine, do you?” He
checked out the tray and scarfed up a handful of shrimp.

“Nope. With teenagers in and out, we don’t keep
more than Pops’s six-pack of beer. Will that do?”

“Even better. Thanks.” He set the controller
aside and strode off to check the dryer, holding the towel in place.

Rory felt somewhat better that she wasn’t the only one
suffering with this awareness. She’d probably self-destruct if she had to
sit here much longer, waiting for the towel to shift.

When Clay returned, he was wearing a still slightly damp but
much cleaner pair of trousers. She wasn’t certain the damp trousers were
an improvement over the towel. She politely kept her gaze on his face rather
than the way the cloth clung to him when she handed him a cold beer. They were
dancing around each other as if they were teenagers.

He dropped down on the couch beside her and helped himself
to more shrimp.

She thought he’d focused all his energy on the game
until he asked, “Why did you never have time to play games?”

That was when she figured out the game was just a diversion,
like the food, and she was his main topic of interest. Having all that
intelligence aimed in her direction was almost scary.

She tried to shrug it off. “Pops never earned enough
to buy more than groceries and pay the utilities. Cissy and I worked to buy our
clothes and things. Games were way down on my list of necessities.”

He sampled a dipped strawberry and, apparently approving,
began making huge inroads through the fruit. He didn’t notice what he was
eating, though. Instead his full attention fell on her. “I’ll teach
you to play. It helps to unwind.”

Admittedly she was curious about the colorful images still
bouncing across the screen, but she was wary of his intentions, given the level
of hormones buzzing around the room. “We probably ought to patrol the
grounds every so often. Dry kudzu could go up in a minute.”

“It’s starting to rain. I don’t think you
have to worry.”

She’d been concentrating so hard on him, she
hadn’t noticed. Surprised, she listened. The gentle patter against the
roof was too rhythmic for tree branches. Still on edge, she rose on her knees
to check out the picture window. It was hard to see anything in the meager
porch light, but a dark puddle on the front walk glittered and reflected
spreading drops.

Not realizing how terrified she’d been that the
trailer would go up in flames, Rory pressed her forehead against the steamy
window and expelled a huge sigh of relief. As a kid she’d hated her embarrassing
home, but now that she’d almost lost it, she realized how much it meant
to her. She’d grown up here. Her memories of her mother and laughing
Christmases and birthday parties were all tied to this place. It was a
home
,
not a trailer. Her modern condo in the city could never compare.

Turning away from the window, she was hit with the impact of
the large man occupying the couch, his sun-burnished hair gleaming in a pool of
lamplight, his regard so intent on her that he forgot to drink from the can he was
holding halfway to his mouth.

Her stomach did weird little twists as she sat back down.
“We should get some sleep.”

“Ain’t gonna happen.” Finally remembering
the beer in his hand, he took a deep gulp, then set the can neatly on a
coaster. When she didn’t say anything, he reached for the game
controller. “You can go to bed if you like. Unless you have a machine you
want fixed, I guess I’ll just play this.”

“I’ll be okay by myself,” she said
tentatively, “Maybe you could find the keys to Pops’s bike.”

The glare he turned on her positively bristled with male
outrage. “The cops are patrolling the road for looters. Your sister is in
the hospital, and you have no transportation. You think I ought to walk
away?”

Every other male of her acquaintance would have. Especially
after she’d refused his advances.

Clay didn’t operate like normal people—probably
because he lived on a vast plane above the common, giving him a broader scope
than most. She had no right to believe that, but she did. Maybe she needed to
right now.

Nervously Rory clasped her elbows and let the first whisper
of fear into her universe. “Cissy is cautious to the max. I don’t
see how she could have gone off the road like that.”

The look Clay gave her said he didn’t want to talk
about this, but she couldn’t help it. She’d almost lost everything
tonight. She needed to understand why.

“Maybe a deer jumped in front of the car. Save it
until you can ask her.” He stared at the computer screen in seeming
fascination, but she was beginning to understand the game was a reflexive
action to cover up his rapidly spinning mental wheels.

“I thought cars only started fires in movies.”
She couldn’t let it go. She didn’t dare relax. She needed some
control
of the situation.

“It’s dry enough out there for a spark from the
bumper hitting a stone to ignite spilled gas,” he insisted.
“We’ll know more in the morning. Find something else to do besides
ask questions we can’t answer.”

Watching the pink elephant dance across the screen under
Clay’s manipulation, Rory surrendered. She wasn’t ever going to
sleep tonight. Rather than contemplate the alternative, she gave in.
“Teach me to play.”

She thought the devil looked back from Clay’s
deceptively clear eyes, but she took the hand he offered, and slid down beside
him on the plush green couch.

A man smelling of lemon soap couldn’t be too
dangerous.

o0o

“If the princess picks up the sword, she loses, but if
she chooses a
fishing pole
, she defeats the monster?” Aurora asked
in disbelief as her character strode triumphantly through the Gates of Gold.
“Who the dickens comes up with these things?”

“Idealistic teenagers?” Clay suggested dryly.
He’d finally convinced her to sit in front of him so he could show her
how to use the controller, but she perched on the edge of the couch rather than
make herself comfortable against his crotch. He liked an independent woman, but
this one carried a good thing too far. His arms literally ached to hold her. Or
maybe they ached from trying too hard not to brush her breasts.

“I’m in awe. I thought these things were all
bloody battles. This is
fun
. What is she supposed to be doing in this
cave?” She steered her character toward a dusty book on a shelf.

Clay brought his blue Karate Turtle character out of the
rocks to poke around a conspicuous chest on the cave floor. “
Most
people look for treasure.”