Carolina Girl (25 page)

She snorted. “Pops never carries insurance, and
we’d have to find an attorney willing to sue the guy who crashed into
them. Since it was a drunk in a fifteen-year old pickup, what are the chances
we’d win anything?”

“So you were lying.” That shouldn’t bother
him. He probably would have done the same if cornered. But she’d done it
with such delight, he had to think she had experience. Somehow the knowledge
that his Amazon warrior against social injustice had her human side
disappointed him. Apparently he wanted to believe in angels. Stupid of him.

She flipped over her eggs and lifted his onto a plate
sporting a colorful rooster. “Put some toast in, will you?” She
pointed out the bread cabinet.

Thinking his accusation had flown right over her head, Clay
considered rewording it. Before he could, Aurora threw her gorgeous hair over
her shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.

“I don’t lie. I simply thought the amount was
considerably smaller. I have an...unexpected windfall. I’d just about
worked out how to best utilize it. Two hundred thousand will whack that plan to
pieces.”

The sound of a car door slamming interrupted any further
questioning. Sniffing the beautifully fried egg with regret, Clay ambled to the
front door, prepared to beat the wolves from the door if necessary. Not that it
would be necessary if Aurora had her way. Fool woman thought she could hold off
packs of wild animals with a spatula and a frown.

He had experience with wild animals, the money-hungry sort.
Once they smelled cash, they went for the jugular. Nothing short of AK-47s or a
few billion dollars would stop them. The banker’s call proved the wolves
were circling.

Mandy burst through the door as he opened it. Behind him,
Aurora shouted with joy and caught her niece up in a hug. Wishing she’d
hug him like that when he entered the house, Clay turned back to watch his
brother assisting Cissy up the walk. Behind them trailed Jake, his expression a
black cloud as he surveyed the damage.

Even the smiling gnomes had blistered with the heat. Instead
of a colorful fairy-tale haven, the front yard had been transformed overnight
into a blackened corner of hell, complete with demons.

Clay reached out to help Cissy up the stairs. She
didn’t look him in the eyes but limped toward the couch, defeat written
in the curve of her spine.

She’d wrecked Aurora’s pride and joy, apparently
mortgaged their joint property to the hilt, and still Aurora raced up to hug
her sister before she sat down. Clay had expected fireworks. Instead the water
faucet turned on again. Both women clung to each other and wept.

He looked to Jared and Jake for some explanation of this
curious phenomenon, but both men seemed to shrug it off.

“Is that eggs I smell?” Jake lumbered on his
cast to the table where their meal sat untouched. “Nothing beats
Rora’s fried eggs. I’ll eat these cold ones, and she’ll fix
you up some hot ones.”

“I’ll fry some bacon. Jared, can I fix you
some?” Mandy danced into the kitchen, all long teenage legs and energy.
“I played that new version of “Mysterious” some more last
night, Clay. It’s awesome.”

Clay winced at his brother’s inquiring look. The
game’s distinctive mushrooms still floated across the computer screen.
Jared helped himself to an apple from the fruit bowl, took a bite, and, leaning
against the counter, crossed his arms and ankles in obvious expectation of a
long reply.

Maybe test-driving the new model on a couple of teenagers
hadn’t been a wise idea, but Kismet and Mandy had enjoyed the game far
more than the graphics software. Clay shrugged and pushed the bread into the
four-slice toaster. “Find any kinks?” he asked Mandy.

“I didn’t get far. I’m still trapped by
Bubbles the Clown.”

“Bubbles? The clown’s name is Bubbles?”
Having helped her sister to the couch, Aurora returned to break more eggs into
the skillet. “That’s why pink bubbles pop up when the elephant
walks over him?”

Clay grinned. “Yeah. Obnoxious, isn’t it?”
Just being close to her made him feel better. He wanted the right to wrap his
arm around Aurora’s waist, but with family looking on, he figured that
was a no-no. He didn’t think Aurora would appreciate the proprietary
gesture either.

“Tell us more,” Jared prompted, chewing a bite
of apple.

“Don’t you have to get back to Cleo and the
kids?” Smelling the toast burning, Clay popped the bread to inspect it.
Deciding it wasn’t too dark, he opened the jar of honey Aurora had set
out earlier and proceeded to slather a slice. The rest he set in front of Jake.

“Nah. Kiz is looking after Meg and Matt. Cleo filled
up the Jeep with buzz saws and stuff and is out with a crew down the road. Some
of the places really took a hit. She’ll have me whacking trees if I join
her.”

Shivering at the idea of his creative but not very
mechanical brother aiming a chain saw at anything, Clay turned the toaster over
the kitchen sink to examine its innards rather than say more.

“It’s all my fault,” Cissy said from the
front room. “Rory, I’m so sorry.” She started to weep again.

Momentarily giving up on the toaster, Clay leaned over to
take the skillet handle out of Aurora’s hands. With a grateful look, she
surrendered the pan and raced to her sister.

“I was trying so hard to be careful,” Cissy
wailed. “I drove slow and had the lights on and braked every time I
thought I saw something in the road. And then that car pulled out of nowhere!
I’m a jinx, a total jinx. I should never get in a car again.”

“Accidents happen,” Aurora murmured. “You
can’t be blamed for what other idiots do. Did the other driver help you
out? Who was it?”

Clay listened with interest. If the other driver was a
neighbor with a good insurance policy, maybe Cissy could recover some of her
losses.

“He didn’t stop.” Cissy lifted her head from
her hands, and every face in the room turned to her at the tone of wonder in
her voice. As if she were talking directly to him, she met Clay’s eyes.
“He sped away when I hit the brakes and lost control. It was a fancy
black car. No one in this neighborhood can afford anything like it.”

Aurora turned to stare at him as well. Clay knew they wanted
him to confirm their suspicions. He wanted to argue just to provide balance,
but he could think of only one good reason for a fancy black car to pull out in
front of Aurora’s very conspicuous BMW and speed away after it
crashed—unless Cissy was lying. Aurora would cut his throat if he
mentioned that.

No slowtop, Jake muttered an expletive that pithily
expressed what everyone was thinking, and reached for the phone.

Cissy duly made her report to the sheriff’s
department. The young deputy seemed fascinated at the idea of investigating a
deliberate hit-and-run, and even more so at the possibility that Aurora may
have been the target rather than her sister. But in the end, Cissy
couldn’t provide enough information for anything more than a shake of his
head and a dubious promise to do the best he could. There might not be many
fancy black cars in this neighborhood, but the rest of the county was littered
with them.

Mandy ran off to check on her friends. Jared drove off with
Cleo in the Jeep, leaving the pickup behind so Clay would have transportation.
The rest of them remained inside, an air of gloom blanketing their collective
mood.

In unspoken agreement, they didn’t discuss the
accident once they’d reported what they knew to the authorities. Cissy
was still too rattled.

Rory didn’t want to believe their speculation that it
hadn’t been an accident, or she’d start shaking all over again. Why
would anyone think getting rid of her would resolve anything?

She finished cleaning up the breakfast dishes rather than
fret. Clay spread the inner workings of a broken chain saw across the table
while Jake looked on, offering useless advice. Cissy appeared to be napping on
the couch, but Rory figured she was just closing out their problems and
escaping inside her head, as they all were.

Cissy still hadn’t called the real estate man and
declined his offer.

Even Rory was starting to think twice about accepting it. It
was a good offer, and they had Mandy’s future to consider. But if they
sold the land to pay the mortgage, how would she invest her prize so Cissy and
their father could earn a living? What if she hadn’t won? Monday
couldn’t come soon enough. She had to live through today and the weekend.

Mandy had turned off the video game and taken the CD with
her, so Rory assumed she’d borrowed it from a friend. She kind of missed
the purple mushrooms. Last night had been...elevating. Instead of the usual
stiff dating conversation about careers and the latest Panthers game, followed
by awkward kisses and rejection, they’d tussled like children over a
silly game, and had sex with the passion and tenderness of lovers.

She still couldn’t believe how good Clay had made her
feel—not just in sex, but about herself. Her size had always made her
self-conscious, but he didn’t even seem to notice she was...more woman
than most. But then, he was more man than most, in more ways than in size. That
enormous brain of his never stopped ticking, and it seemed to operate from a
fascinatingly broad perspective.

She glanced in curiosity to the table, where he
painstakingly cleaned and put together each indistinguishable part of a saw
that hadn’t worked in years. Patience like that was a gift that provided
many advantages for the receiver as well as the giver. When combined with
intelligence, it created a formidable talent. Clay McCloud was no ordinary man.

She wanted him to make love to her again, to prove last
night hadn’t been a fluke.

Craving his touch, or even a glance from him, was a sure
sign of imminent disaster. Neither of them had anything permanent in mind, so
she’d better find some other outlet for her thoughts.

Remembering words exchanged earlier, Rory dried the last pan
and put it away, poured a glass of lemonade, and set it on the table near
Clay’s hand. “Tell me more about Bubbles the Clown.”

He glanced up in surprise. Just the sight of his clear-eyed
gaze gave her goose bumps, but she had her shield safely in place again.

Apparently uncomfortable with the question, Clay shifted his
attention to the glass of lemonade, sipping it while composing an answer.
She’d noticed that about him. The things he said off the cuff tended to
be irrelevant, aggravating, or humorous, and sometimes all three at once. But
when he applied his mind to a question, she got straight answers, and not
necessarily the ones she wanted to hear.

“Jared made him up,” he confessed.

Rory waited, and when he didn’t explain, she took the
lemonade away from him. “Jared has connections with computer game
makers?”

Laughter danced in his eyes as he reached up and snatched
the glass back. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Her father watched the byplay with more interest than
anything else he’d done that morning, and even Cissy sat up. Rory
didn’t mind distracting her family, but her focus now was on getting to
the bottom of the puzzle that was Clay McCloud. A man with his patience and
genius wasn’t the party-hearty bad boy he pretended to be.

“I don’t know anything about gaming,” she
said. “But I’m assuming the games are computer programs?”

“Someone writes a script first,” he corrected.
“Then there are visuals to put together and voices to plug in, and then
the whole thing is processed into a program and film. It’s kind of
complicated.” He returned to piecing the saw together.
“Shouldn’t you be replanting flower gardens or something? Can the
statues be repainted?”

“Paint remover might take care of the worst
blistering,” Jake mused. “But tourist season has started. We
ain’t got time to repaint. We’ll have to sell them cheap and
bare.”

“Rory,” Cissy called from the couch, diverting
Aurora’s attention from the aggravating man who wouldn’t tell her
anything, “did your car have insurance?”

She asked it so tremulously that Rory knew she’d been
worrying over it since the accident and had just now gained the courage to ask.
Guilt tweaked Rory’s conscience. She’d been wrapped up in herself
again. That was what living alone did to her. “Yeah, it’s covered.
We’ll get our cash out of it, sooner or later. But I want to hang whoever
drove you off the road. You could have been killed.”

Damn, so she’d been the one to say it aloud.

“You’re going to need a car,” Clay
interjected, apparently as anxious as she to evade discussion of hit-and-run
drivers. “Want me to take you into town to look for something?”

Accepting the more practical topic, Rory thought about it.
They’d need ready cash to buy a car. She had no idea how long it would
take for the insurance company to send a check. She had to get to the lawyer’s
office before she could cash in the cap, and she didn’t have any
transportation.

She took a deep breath and tried to pin all her whirling
thoughts into place. First things first. While she had Cissy’s attention,
she gave up on Clay and faced her sister. “I had a call from the bank
this morning.”

Cissy turned even paler, if that was possible. “Why?
I’m only a little behind.”

“They say the fire destroyed the value of the land,
and they’re calling in the loan. I offered to pay them off—until
Jeff gave me the balance.”

Closing her eyes, Cissy dropped her head back against the
high cushion of the couch. Rory tried not to think about what she and Clay had
done on that piece of furniture not too many hours ago. She couldn’t
imagine it ever happening again, so it was better not to dwell on it.

“Your prize will cover it, won’t it?”
Cissy whispered.

That caught everyone’s attention. Maybe there were a
few too many unspoken topics clouding the air.