Carolina Girl (40 page)

“Only island trash causes a scene on the courthouse
lawn,” the voice from the crowd shouted back.

Might as well administer her first lesson. “If you
didn’t have your nose up your ass—”

She gasped as Clay caught her waist, moved her behind him,
and blocked her access to one of her old high school foes. With one hand, Clay
jerked the clod from his feet by his shirt collar.

“You’re causing a public scene,” Clay
pointed out reasonably, although swinging his captive back and forth until he
gagged on his own collar wasn’t precisely an act of rationality.
“Apologize to the lady.”

A thrill shot straight to Aurora’s toes at
Clay’s instant defense. If he was showing her how it would be if he
stayed here, he was doing a fine job of it. The idea of not having to fight
alone anymore excited her more than if he’d given her diamonds and gold.

“That’s no lady...” the heckler started to
argue.

Aurora sighed as Jake pushed his way through the crowd to
aim a punch at her tormentor. “Pops, no! That’s just Walter. He
hates his own mama. Clay, let him down. I don’t need to be bailing both
of you out.”

Clay released Walter before Jake could take a swing. Walking
away from the pair as they tumbled into the dust, he occupied Aurora’s
space by placing his lovely flat nose next to hers. “We don’t have
to live here and put up with this crap. I’ll go where you go. You just
say the word.”

He was much better at recklessly jumping off high cliffs
without a parachute than she was. Her heart skipped erratically at his wild
assertion. She needed detailed promises written in stone. Or concrete. He made
brash declarations without saying the words she longed to hear.

“Just what exactly are you proposing?” she asked
to hide her nervousness.

Oops
. She hadn’t meant to phrase it quite that
way. But she had Clay’s full attention now. As deputies spilled out of
the courthouse to settle the battle on the lawn, he let down his defensive
shields, and his gaze flared so hotly he could have scorched her.

“Marriage, if that’s what you want,” he
shouted. Then, obviously studying her reaction for a better response, he
amended, “Or if that’s too fast for you, I can try old-fashioned
courtship.”

Grappling with his unpredictable reply, Rory watched his
eyes dance in reaction to her stunned silence. “You haven’t taught
me how to shag yet,” he reminded her.

Laughter tinted his voice now—not the cynical
bitterness she’d heard when they first met, but the joyful noise that
reflected hope and confidence and awoke warm butterflies in her belly.

She ought to swat him for being so certain of her answer,
for standing there like a shirtless sex god who commanded all he surveyed. He
hadn’t said the magic words yet. They hadn’t known each other long
enough....

She saw the challenge rising in his eyes and realized she
was fully back in her old non-risk-taking mode. She could follow her head, or
take the chance her heart begged for.

“She started it,” Walter yelled in the
background. “Arrest her! And him. He assaulted me!”

With a slow smile, Rory lifted her arms and wrapped them
around Clay’s neck. “Love is going to jail together,” she
murmured foolishly as he grabbed her and held her tight.

“I know a good lawyer.” Capturing her mouth with
his, he ignored the apologetic deputy walking up behind them.

“Sir, you’ve been charged with assault....”

Aurora giggled against his mouth. “Magic Man forgot
the magic words.”

“Will the words make buzzing gnats go away?”
Continuing to ignore the young deputy, Clay rearranged her more firmly against
him and began nibbling her ear between murmurs. “Abracadabra.”
Nibble. “Alakazam.” Two nibbles. “Love, marriage, hearts, and
flowers,” he continued as the deputy read him his rights.

She’d have to chew his ear off for being so perverse
in not saying the three little words she wanted to hear until she’d said
it first, but the love spilling from her heart included the whole world right
now, and she could afford to be gracious. Sort of.

Leaning back so Clay could no longer nibble on her, she
smiled at the deputy. “Tell Wally if he presses charges, I’ll tell
his mama who egged her house on graduation night.”

The deputy looked startled. Clay laughed out loud. Rory was
so tickled to hear his laughter that she stepped back to admire the sight.
Shirtless, with his jeans riding halfway down his hips under the weight of the
tool belt, Clay was a bronzed magician who had every woman in the crowd sighing
with lust...

And he was
hers
.

This was no risk. This was heaven. Clay had the
single-minded focus of a hound on the hunt, and he wanted
her
. A man
with the patience and steadiness of this one would never change his mind when
waters got murky. And he loved her. She had no doubt that a man of Clay’s
strength of character would ever say words he didn’t mean. Or sort of say
them.

But she wasn’t about to celebrate her joy out here
where everyone could watch. When he reached for her again, she took another
step backward and tripped over an object on the grass. Clay grabbed her arm,
but the unexpected brunt of her weight as she went down caught him off balance.
Together they tumbled onto the lawn.

He broke her fall, yelping as he rolled over the object that
had caused her to trip. Shifting, Clay lay her safely back on the ground again,
then leaned over her, grinning. He smelled of masculine sweat and a musk that
stirred fantasies of what they ought to be doing right now instead of making
spectacles of themselves.

“I love you,” he murmured as the deputy hovered
over them. “I want you, I need you, and if you want to hear the lyrics to
a lot of corny love songs, I can summon them in a second. Just give my addled
brain time to translate what I’m feeling.”

Turning red, the deputy wandered off to pass Aurora’s
message on to Walter.

“Until the mountains crumble and the rivers
dry,” she agreed, her heady joy summoning more old lyrics. “I love
you so much it’s scaring me half to death.” She hated admitting
that, but he had to know what he was doing to her.

“I’ll take care of that,” he said
reassuringly. “If we stand together, you’ll never have to be afraid
again. We’ll grow old together, sharing whatever life has in store for
us.”

He ran his fingers into her hair and looked at her with such
joy and wonder that Rory believed him. Clay McCloud was one scary man, but love
was a powerful emotion, one she’d avoided because she’d been afraid
of losing control, of sharing her heart. She thought she was strong enough to
live with love now, trusting Clay to cherish and protect it.

“Maybe I’d better hold out for old-fashioned
courtship,” she murmured, shaken by the depth of her emotion.
“Shagging sounds like a good start.”

At Clay’s burst of laughter, she regained some of her
senses. Deciding they’d better take this out of the public eye, Rory
started to edge away, then noticed the object she’d fallen over.

“Is that the thing you took out of the clock?”
she asked in wonder, not certain she was seeing what she thought she was
seeing.

Reluctantly releasing her hair, Clay pushed up on one hand
to look over her. His silence said he saw what she did.

“The sorcerer found the key to the treasure?”
she whispered in incredulity at the glitter in the grass.

“Or the late mayor’s hidden assets,” Clay
said with his normal cynicism, reaching over to dump a treasure of diamonds
from the clock’s old counterweight.

Rory erupted in laughter and delight. The ex-millionaire had
just discovered millions when he no longer needed it. She thought it even
funnier when Clay’s brothers wandered up with their wives to see if
they’d lost their minds.

“Well, guess that solves the mystery of where the old
mayor hid the rest of the spy hoard,” TJ said with a degree of
satisfaction.

“Man, you’re millionaires,” Cleo whispered
in awe.

Which sent both Rory and Clay into further paroxysms of
laughter.

“Courtship,” Clay insisted, leading Aurora up
the inside stairs of his beach cottage. “You need to know exactly what
you’re getting. I’m no million-dollar prize.”

“You’re better,” she asserted.

They’d spent a hectic day surrounded by crowds of the
curious. It was heaven to finally be alone, listening to the surf outside the
windows, feeling her pulse beat as Clay clasped her hand in his gifted fingers.
She hadn’t had time to fully appreciate the words they’d exchanged,
much less absorb how she felt about them.

He didn’t smile at her, but on the landing he tugged
her into his arms and rested his head on hers. “I’m better than a
million dollars?”

Another woman might have thought he was teasing. Rory knew
he asked for reassurance. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she reveled in
the way his embrace tightened. “Better than all the diamonds in the
world.”

He chuckled and relaxed as he snuggled her against him.
“You could have kept at least one. Then I wouldn’t need to buy one
for you.”

“For a smart man, you have a lot to learn,
mister.” She brushed her lips along the strong column of his throat to
show she didn’t mind teaching him. “With those diamonds the town
can afford new schools without needing condo developments or golf courses. I
don’t like diamonds. They’re cold and hard.”

“They’re not for a soft, warm woman like
you,” he agreed, pulling the pins out of her hair so it cascaded over her
shoulders. “A gold ring, then, to show you’re taken. Otherwise
I’m likely to make a habit of defending my territory. I don’t seem
to be entirely civilized around you.”

She heard the smile in his voice as he led her toward his
bedroom. She shivered as Clay stroked her nape and his hand strayed down her
spine. She liked this gentle, smiling side of him. She liked Clay’s magic
fingers even more. Standing beside his bed, he pushed her silk shell up and
over her head and skimmed his hands over her breasts. She was instantly aroused
and ready for him. “Who needs civilization in the bedroom?”

“A lady after my own heart.” He kissed her then,
a slow, seductive, mind-melting, knee-jellifying kiss that toppled her into his
bed without care for anything but the flood of need rushing through her.

“Sometime we have to discuss babies,” he murmured
between kisses.

He said that as he was tugging off her panties, so Rory
didn’t completely register his suggestion until they lay naked together,
kissing and touching and causing enough friction to light fires.

“Later,” she murmured, her mind more on muscled
male and the freedom to fully express the urges his love unleashed.

When he didn’t act fast enough to suit her, she pushed
him onto his back and climbed on top to show him how she felt.

She loved it that Clay accepted her aggression by turning it
to his advantage, fondling and stroking in new and different ways. But when she
was ready for more, he caught her hips and prevented what they both wanted.
“The drawer in the nightstand,” he said with a gasp, “unless
you want to start talking babies right now.”

She didn’t want to talk at all. She wanted him inside
her. She needed him now, and he was preventing her from it. “I like
babies,” she said, rubbing at him with her hips.

“Good.” He grabbed the back of her head and
pulled her down to slant his mouth across hers.

With joy Rory sank into his kiss, letting his tongue and
hands plunder as they would. She surged against him when he filled his hands
with her breasts. Love offered a freedom she’d never known in this act, a
safety net that allowed her to be who she was without second-guessing every
move. There were so many things she hadn’t done and wanted to try, and
with utter happiness she knew Clay would gladly offer her all of them and
invent more of his own.

When she couldn’t tolerate being separated from him by
even this degree, she rose up on her knees and took him inside her.

Clay shouted with delight, caught her hips, and flipped her
back to the mattress, pinning her beneath him.

Laughing, Rory wrapped her legs around his hips and surged
upward. “There’s no risk in forever,” she murmured.

“Together forever. I love the way you think. I love
everything about you.” In approval, he bent to suckle her breast.

Rory’s hips surged off the bed, driving him deeper,
driving them both to frenzy, as if this were the only outlet for the powerful
emotions penned up inside them. After weeks of denying themselves, they
climaxed quickly and together, already one, with only one driving need.

Once satisfied, physical urgency ebbed to a quieter place,
resting while they caught their breaths and rediscovered their surroundings.

Sprawling his long body next to hers, Clay rubbed his
fingers over the moisture he’d left on her thigh. “A small ceremony
in Vegas, tomorrow.”

Unprotected sex...babies...marriage. Following the unspoken path
of his thoughts, Rory smiled at the mosquito netting over their heads. Inside
that complex brain of his, Clay carried old-fashioned morals and courtesy to
their limits. She liked that in a man. That didn’t mean she had to be an
old-fashioned girl. “A huge ceremony, here, when I have time to pull it
together.”

She liked the way he stroked her with familiarity, as if
they already knew each other so well they could read each other’s
thoughts. They could, she realized. She knew exactly what was going through
Clay’s head right now, as he did hers. The thrill of knowing someone else
understood was even headier than sex.

His fingers squeezed her thigh. “I’ve waited too
long to find you. I don’t want to wait any longer to have you in my life
on a permanent basis. I want to wake up with your head on my pillow in the
morning, and I want it properly, so you won’t be ashamed in front of your
family.”