Carolina Girl (39 page)

When he first started this project, he’d had some
fantasy of finding the mayor’s lost German gold in the clock and using it
to rebuild his software company. Fantasizing had been better than sitting on
the beach, feeling sorry for himself.

It wasn’t gold he sought now.

His brain was thudding louder than the clock.
Tick-tock,
tick-tock.
He zapped a screw with the electric screwdriver, adding a roar
to the thud. Rora was returning to Chicago. He needed a hammer. Reaching into
his tool belt, he pulled one out, hit the stubborn screw with a satisfying
wham,
wham
, and didn’t feel any better for the act of frustration.

Chicago!
How could she go to Chicago? She had it all
here—family, home, sun, sea—and him.

She had him.
Ex-millionaire CEOs ought to know
better, but he thought he’d finally found a place where he belonged, and
a woman who could keep him there. Aurora didn’t mind when he didn’t
want to talk. Maybe others placed more importance on his computer genius than
his mechanical abilities, but Aurora understood his need to do both.

He’d thought he’d found a woman who
wouldn’t care if he sat on his porch for days on end while grappling with
a new idea, one who wouldn’t waste time looking over his shoulder,
nagging him to do something useful. He’d thought she
understood
.

Since coming here, he’d learned a lot about living
with others. He had been willing to expand his horizons so he could spend more
time with Aurora. He’d learned how to cope with Jared’s teasing,
Cleo’s panics, and the tumultuous emotions of the Jenkins family. Even
baby Midge had taught him to hope.

He’d gotten
involved
and done his damnedest to
rebuild Aurora’s fairy-tale world so she’d want to stay. Because
he
wanted to stay. And he wanted her to stay here with him. He’d thought
that if he built his company here, she’d be happier staying with her
family and running it, fighting social injustice without fear of being fired.
Had he asked her what she wanted?

For a boy genius, he sure had his head on backward.
He’d known all along she wanted to return to the city. He should have
just waited until she chose a city, then showed up on her doorstep.

Snorting at his incredible stupidity, he turned on the
battery-operated screwdriver, bored another screw out of its hole, and propped
up the internal mechanism of the clock so it wouldn’t fly off the roof
onto the lawn below. The roar of the motor continued well after he turned the
power tool off.

He had to drag his thoughts back from Chicago—and
women who didn’t understand what a man was trying to tell
them—before he recognized the roar of a Harley.

He glanced down, hoping no one had decided to steal his
bike. He needed to sell the thing to pay for the expense of shipping out the
Jag.

A golden-red flag of hair waved from beneath the Harley
driver’s helmet as the bike thundered down the tree-lined street to the
courthouse. Clay’s gut flipped like a pancake.

Aurora!

She knew how to drive a Harley!

She looked like an Amazon warrior roaring to a halt on the
sidewalk and glancing up in his direction.

She was wearing one of those prim black banker’s
skirts hiked nearly to her hips. She’d probably left a slew of fender
benders in her wake as heads swiveled to follow those wicked thighs. If he had
to guess, he’d say she’d traded her suit jacket for her
father’s leathers.

His gut tightened in anticipation of the battle to come.
He’d never been much at interacting with others, but he loved sparring
with Aurora. Her brainpower matched his. They just ran at things from different
directions. He had to admit that opened whole new worlds of exploration.

Separate worlds—hers in Chicago and his here on the
island.

The wind carried the sound of his name, but Clay saw no
reason to listen. If she was willing to walk out on all their hopes and dreams...
What hopes and dreams? His? It wasn’t as if he’d mentioned them to
her. He shoved down a surge of guilt.

He’d trusted her with his software. He thought that
meant something. It had, to him. Those programs were his life, and he’d
committed himself to a future of working with her when he’d handed them
over. He’d
trusted
her. Obviously she hadn’t understood the
gesture. Maybe he was too slow at these relationship things. He should have
given her a diamond instead.

She would have thrown it at him, he was pretty sure. So what
the hell did she want of him?

He tried to argue that if she was willing to walk out just
because of some damned job offer, she wasn’t the woman he’d thought
she was. But she had come uncomfortably close to being the woman he’d
always wanted. Damn close. So close she’d walked around inside his heart
and made a home there.

Ignoring her shouts, he diligently removed the ancient
weight mechanism and looked for a place to put it. He decided the windowsill of
the louvered attic window was safest and leaned over to lay it there.

He couldn’t hear Aurora anymore. Good. She’d
have the whole damned town staring at them if she kept it up. He liked his
privacy. Or he thought he had.

He didn’t mind everyone staring when Aurora walked
beside him. He’d felt like a movie star, a conquering hero, and the Magic
Man she’d called him when he’d walked into the Monkey with her on
his arm.

She made him feel as if he might be human after all. That he
could love and be loved. He’d tried to show her that he could build a
life outside his computer screen. In his head, everything he’d done had
shouted commitment. He just hadn’t said it out loud. He’d talked
about sex and going steady
when she’d wanted to hear kids and
marriage. A fine time to learn caution.

“Thomas Clayton McCloud, I’m talking to
you!”

She’d climbed the stairs again. He tried to scowl at
the sound of her voice through the louvered window, but he loved the flaming
orange tone of it. He’d never realized sound had color until Aurora
walked into his life.

“Talk away,” he shot back. So he’d never
been much at snappy repartee.

“I’ll be damned if I’ll shout it from the
rooftops. If you intend to hide up here every time we need to talk, I’ll
install a telephone.”

“I’m not hiding. I’m right out here where
you can find me.” Where he’d hoped she’d find him, he had to
admit.

He supposed it was about time he admitted to something.

“If you’re mad because I wouldn’t have sex
with you, then I don’t want to talk with you anyway. If it’s the job,
then we need to talk. Want me to climb out there with you?”

The image of Aurora tumbling off the roof scared him so much
Clay nearly dropped his favorite screwdriver. “Don’t you
dare!” he yelled back.

“Why?
You’re
out there. Why can’t I
risk my neck if you’re risking yours? Isn’t that what this is all
about? Who takes the first risk?”

Maybe. Probably. But the minute she rattled the louvers to
climb through that window, he had heart failure. “Get down out of there
this instant,” he ordered.

“You’re not my boss, McCloud. If I want to climb
out there, I will. Or you can come down and talk to me.”

He heard her banging on the warped shutters, trying to pry
them open. His heart in his throat, Clay gathered up his tools and started for
the rope ladder he’d secured to the clock tower. “Aurora,
don’t! I’m coming down. Meet me—”

The shutter slammed open. The clock’s old
counterweight flew off the ledge where he’d left it, bounced against the
roof with a firecracker bang, and rattled over the tiles to the ground two
stories below.

Stricken, they both gazed down.

“I don’t think anyone’s down there,”
she murmured guiltily.

“If they are, you planted time in their brain,”
he muttered, confirming her observation while trying not to stare at the
wondrous dawn that was his Aurora.

His.
Every cell of his body screamed it. The prim
banker he’d first seen had metamorphosed into a blazing sun goddess. The
ride here had blown her hair into a halo of red-gold. She’d doffed her
father’s leathers in the attic heat, revealing a flimsy silken gold thing
that sparkled like sun drops over her magnificent curves, revealing more
cleavage from this vantage point than she probably realized. He liked that she
didn’t flaunt her curves for all to see, but he also liked seeing them.
In broad daylight, he could see the scattering of freckles between her breasts.
He suffered a sudden throbbing in his groin that nearly crippled him.

In his eyes she was the dawn of his future. She offered
fireworks to light his life, surprises and laughter to provoke him,
understanding and trust to keep him moving forward. She offered the love he
craved more than the food she cooked or the air he breathed. He wanted Aurora
lighting his nights and challenging his days. He wanted to give her sunshine
and rainbows in return. And maybe someday, if things worked out between them,
kids.

Without her, he would have no life at all. How in hell did
he tell her that?

“Get out of there, Aurora,” he growled.
“Now.”

She shot him a look that ought to kill, but he was in too
much pain to notice. His entire future rested on these next few moments, and he
was suffering heatstroke and couldn’t think.

Bystanders had already begun to gather on the courthouse
lawn as Clay climbed down. He wasn’t a public person and disliked making
a spectacle of himself.

He was a private person who loved a woman so striking her
very presence lit up the whole damned lawn when she emerged from the
courthouse.

They met in the middle of the grassy yard.

“I didn’t say I’d taken the job!”
she shouted at him without regard to their audience.

“Why would you go if you didn’t
want
the
damned job?” he asked, to cover his otherwise senseless reaction to her
approach.

“Because it’s the intelligent thing to
do,” she shouted back, even though they were only a few feet apart.
“You can hire a dozen people I could name right offhand to run your
business. You don’t need me.”

Was it his imagination, or did a question mark dangle at the
end of her statement?
You don’t need me...do you?

Clay was aware of people wandering out of adjoining
businesses to see what the shouting was about, but he had his focus now, and he
wasn’t letting anything distract him from Aurora.

Standing toe-to-toe with her, he stared down into her
upturned face with that glorious, kissable mouth. “Who the hell said I
don’t need you? Do you think for one damned minute that I’d have
stayed here and fought fires and worked for nothing and listened to arguments
about
swamp
development if I didn’t need you?”

“The swamp’s important,” a voice argued
from the crowd—Jake. Hell, that figured. He was probably charging
admission for ringside seats to the fight. Mandy’s voice cheered Rora on.
She’d probably arrived home just in time to haul the whole family in to
watch the circus. If he weren’t so pissed off, he’d laugh at the absurdity
his life had become.

He’d had some idiot idea he could learn to handle
involvement and people a little at a time. She was heaving him into the middle
of the pond without a life jacket, showing him what to expect if he stayed
here.

Paddling hard to keep his head above water, Clay
concentrated on the fury gesturing beneath his nose and not their growing
audience.

“You needed
sex,
” Rora shouted.
“You can have that anywhere.” A few female cheers rose from the
crowd, but she wasn’t diverted. “We’re talking about
me
here. You don’t need
me
. You can fight your own battles, make your
own millions, write your own future. Don’t you think I ought to be able
to do the same? Or do you think I ought to sit here and wait for you to do
it?”

“I want what you want,” he heard himself saying.
He didn’t even think about it. He simply knew the answer.

“I want to stay here,” she said defiantly.
“Or maybe Charleston. I want to work. I like my career. I want to save
the swamp. I want people to have jobs and decent housing. I want ten thousand
things!”

She was shouting again. So was the expanding crowd.

Clay processed all her demands silently while a catcaller
jeered and women hurled insults. Jake and Mandy shouted encouragement. He had
to learn how to handle this kind of confusion if he wanted to do more than sit
in front of a computer screen for the rest of his life. Aurora would never be a
restful, complacent partner.

“I don’t want ten thousand things,” he
said carefully, hoping he’d understood, that she would understand.
“I’ve
had
ten thousand things. I can have them all again
tomorrow. But I don’t have any interest in things. My only interest is in
you, and you’re one of a kind.”

Clay’s declaration jammed any reply back down
Rory’s throat. She devoured his determined expression, seeking any sign
of insincerity. There was no room in his irregular features for insincerity.

When the catcaller started defending himself with shouts of,
“She’s just a swamp rat from the island, what the hell are you
gettin’ on me for?” she jumped on the distraction. Maybe she
wasn’t prepared for Clay’s unexpected candor, but she was wound up
right for a rip-roaring fight.

And if she were to come back here to live, she needed to
straighten out a few misconceptions. The whole
county
was going to know
that she’d stand up for her family. Her days of running away from her
origins had ended.

Swinging to face their audience, she planted her hands on
her hips and sought the loudmouth. “I’m a Jenkins. I live in a
double wide. I’m meaner than a junkyard dog, more ornery than a gator,
and I have more brains in my little finger than an air bag like you has in his
whole inflated head.”