Carolina Girl (6 page)

Antagonizing Aurora would be far more entertaining than
rotting on the porch.

He really didn’t think they were working from the same
page. He didn’t see any reason to change the island one iota. She was
talking in terms of finding
ethical
development, as if such a creature
existed. She’d be better off looking for a dodo bird.

The phone rang, and, aiming for the shower, Clay was tempted
to ignore it. But he had a few feelers out on his software business, and he
didn’t want to write off any opportunity.

Grabbing the cordless receiver, he started up the stairs.
“McCloud here.”

“This is Ben Little in the State Parks Department. Our
attorneys are prepared to move on the purchase of the Bingham property. How is
the program developing?”

Clay halted and leaned against the stair wall.
“I’m getting there,” he answered cautiously, crossing his
fingers as he pictured a gray-haired old lady rocking on her front porch,
creating works of art out of weeds.

“Do you have names? Can you fax me what you’ve
found?”

The sun-baked memory of giant turtle paths and rippling sea
grasses and reclusive old ladies cracked open a door he didn’t want to
shut just yet. “Program doesn’t work that way,” Clay answered
tersely. “It starts with names and birth certificates. We won’t get
to the verification and current address stage until the genealogy is lined
up.”

“Can’t you speed up the process somehow, find
addresses on the names you have?” Little asked impatiently. “All I
need is one of them to agree to sell. We can have the whole parcel on the
auction block in weeks.”

Whammo. The lawyers were in full wolf mode.

Ticked that Aurora’s wild theory had been confirmed,
Clay set his mouth in a grim line and thought furiously. If he refused to turn
over the names, the state would simply seek another source—it
wouldn’t take them long to learn about Iris and Billy. He had to stall.

“I can’t guarantee the accuracy,” he
answered slowly. “I’ll have to buy another computer and second
phone line to work the current findings while this one is on-line processing
the genealogy.” As if that had anything to do with the price of eggs, but
Little didn’t know that.

“Check your budget to see if an extra computer can be
funded. We’re going nowhere until this is done. I’ll get back to
you next week.” As if he’d just checked off one more item from his
agenda, Little hung up with a click.

Well, shit.

Clay clicked off his receiver. With resignation, he realized
his little odyssey into obscurity was about to end.

When actually faced with the Slugs from Slime, he simply
couldn’t hang up his sword and let them destroy the world. Too much time
in the gaming world apparently had warped his thinking into believing justice
ought to prevail.

Maybe if he confronted the prim MBA first, she’d rid
him of his hero complex, and he could return to munching fries on the porch and
pretending the rest of the planet didn’t matter.

After taking a quick shower and donning a clean black
T-shirt and jeans, Clay hit the Harley in search of Jake’s daughter.
Roaring down the island highway, letting the hot wind pump up his warrior mode,
he drove past the peach stand marking the road to Iris’s. A half mile
past the swamp road, he located the wooden cross scrawled in fading red paint
with JESUS SAVES that Jake had described in his directions. Sweat dripped down
Clay’s forehead from beneath his helmet as he navigated the left turn and
chugged down a blacktopped lane of aging cottages.

Peeling white paint on clapboards and mildewed siding on
trailers depicted rural poverty, but every yard cheerfully sprouted bouquets of
color. Tires painted white brimmed over with red petunias and begonias.
Trellises loaded with roses and morning glories and jasmine climbed up to porch
roofs. Mailboxes propped by old plows, adorned with painted pictures of
daisies, sprang up all along the roadside.

Clay slowed as he spotted three deer crossing one yard.
Realizing they were some kind of lawn ornament, he roared on, discovering more
anomalies the farther he drove. Brightly colored glass balls atop preposterous
concrete structures reflected the blinding Carolina sun. Blue concrete
birdbaths decorated with red concrete cardinals stood tall in the midst of
flower gardens, and nestled among the flowers he began to notice colorful
gnomes, or were they elves? He didn’t know the difference.

A concrete Madonna held out her hands in supplication inside
a cast- iron bathtub cut in two and turned on edge to form a shrine. Concrete
rabbits and squirrels posed beside vegetable gardens. He almost fell off his
bike swiveling to stare at a tree dangling colored bottles and Easter eggs.

He’d lived in L.A., cruised the beaches of southern
California, and had seen eccentricities of every shape and color. He’d
just never seen an entire neighborhood dedicated to cheerful bad taste.

He finally spotted a mailbox painted with a row of purple
pansies and JENKINS neatly printed above them in red. The mailbox post grew out
of the middle of an enormous vine sporting a riot of yellow flowers. He turned
his bike up the narrow drive hedged by sprawling shoulder-high azaleas. A tunnel
of moss-draped oaks overhung the azaleas, blocking all view of the house. He
felt as if he had exited the real world into a fantasy one.

Rounding the bend past the oaks, he knew he’d fallen
through a space warp into another universe. An entire yard—more like
several acres—of concrete lawn ornaments stretched out as far as his eyes
could see. Unpainted statues and birdbaths marched in neat rows toward a long
aluminum-sided building in the distance. Along the drive, beneath the bushes,
painted gnomes beamed playfully at him. Or in some cases, scowled.

A neat double-wide trailer with white siding, black
shutters, and rampant azaleas at its base sat in the midst of a yard full of
painted concrete figures. A towering robed statue of a pagan goddess dominated
a vegetable garden on one side. Gnomes, elves, and fairies frolicked between
gardenias and camellias. Glittering witch balls rested in concrete hands or on
pedestals wrapped in concrete vines. Birds splashed in fountains taller than he
was.

Stunned, appalled, and fascinated all at the same time, Clay
parked his Harley in a gravel parking space and started down the shell path
toward the front door. Once the bike’s roar died out of his ears, he
could hear the melodious tinkle of a symphony of wind chimes. A soft hum wove
through the music of the chimes.

Following the path behind a towering camellia, he located a
woman sitting on a bench, painting a Disney-esque dwarf. She seemed oblivious
to his approach, although the Harley could probably be heard for half a mile.

The artist wore a crinkly gauze lavender shirt that blew in
the breeze, revealing a clingy purple knit top with spaghetti straps and
generous cleavage. A skirt in the same crinkly fabric of the shirt blew about
shapely bare ankles. She was barefoot, although he could see her sandals lying
on the path where she’d kicked them off. Her toenails were painted a pale
shade of frosty pink.

Banded in a purple scarf, her straw hat shadowed her face,
but all Clay’s hormones and pheromones had already kicked into life to
scream in unison,
This one! We want this one! Puhleeeze!

Nearly crippled by the impact of the unexpected assault on
his senses, Clay halted to steady himself. He wasn’t the kind of man
easily bowled over by lust, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from the
roundness of freckled breasts exposed by the artist bending over to paint a red
circle on the dwarf’s cheeks. He was in trouble here. He felt as if
he’d just taken a right jab to the belly and had the breath knocked out
of him. In silence, he watched her graceful fingers expertly add the final
touch of color.

An artist! Why had he never thought to look for an artist as
a lover? Who needed sharp-minded, sharp-tongued career women when soft,
creative females could stir all his senses? He’d been looking in the
wrong places.

To his relief and dismay, once satisfied with her effort,
the vision in purple finally glanced up. Despite the shadow of her hat brim, he
could detect a smear of red paint adorning her straight nose. Wide eyes blinked
with lashes so long they swept her cheeks. And the mouth…

Oh, damn
. He’d salivated over that voluptuous
mouth just the other night. Even before she swept off the hat with a graceful
gesture, he knew he was in trouble.

Aurora
.

Leaving her hat on the bench, she stood up, a quizzical look
on her face as he stood there gaping like a starstruck teenager. The lavender
fabric of her skirt drifted in the breeze, clinging to her curves, outlining
her stunningly long legs. She reminded him of tall, frothy drinks laced with
strawberries and raspberries, refreshingly tart and cool on the tongue.

While he stood here dripping in sweat in his bad-boy black.

Damned good thing he didn’t intend to make a good
impression.

o0o

Amusement rippled through Rory at the cynical
McCloud’s stare of disbelief. He tore his gaze away to examine the
concrete monstrosities that had haunted her since she was a kid. As a teenager,
she’d been humiliated by her father’s trite creations and had hated
to bring friends home.

She’d developed the confidence to appreciate folk art
since then. With a little wider view of the world, she’d learned that her
father’s creations far surpassed most manufactured molds. Not that she
expected city-bred McCloud to appreciate the difference.

Standing there with his perspiration-soaked T-shirt defining
broad shoulders, his helmet tucked under his arm, and the sun beating down on
the rumpled waves of his hair, Thomas Clayton McCloud was a sight for the gods.
For once he didn’t appear to be adopting a pose, although he stood like
James Dean with booted feet akimbo while he took in his surroundings through
the mask of his aviator glasses.

Since those surroundings included her, Rory suffered a
moment’s unease. She didn’t have the time or patience to deal with
sexy misanthropes who didn’t care what happened to the people on the
island—no matter how much her libido screamed otherwise.

“I thought it was my father coming up the drive. May I
help you?” She kept her tone neutral.

McCloud returned to awareness in a blink of an eye. Shoving
his glasses into his hair so she could see his slanted cheekbones, he frowned
and looked past her shoulder like a child refusing to admit guilt. “You
might be right about the state’s intentions. I didn’t think
they’d move this fast.”

Sitting down on the bench, she whacked the lid onto her
paint can with a little more force than necessary. “You think I lied? For
what reason?”

“Hell if I understand a woman’s reasons.”

Startled, she glanced back up. He was amazingly tall. His
lean frame decked all in black nearly blocked sight of the loblolly behind him.
She refused to admire the way his sun-streaked hair curled damply against his
neck. “Women protect family first. That generally defines their reason
for anything.”

Maybe she should invite him in for a drink? He looked as if
he could use one, but life was complicated enough, and she was wary of his
intentions.

“In my experience, women protect their own asses
first.” He shrugged and studied the dwarf she’d been working on.
“Did you paint all these?”

She wiped her hands on a rag. “Hardly. I’ve only
been back here a few weeks. My sister and niece do a lot of them. Pops hires
people occasionally. Would you like a glass of water? Tea?”

“Water would be fine.”

He looked ill at ease. Not understanding why, Rory led the
way into the house. “How did you meet my father?”

He followed her through the shabby sea of green that was
their front room, taking it all in without comment. “He’s at the
Monkey a lot. We talk. Or he does.”

Rory figured that at least the trailer was neat, if quaint,
which was far more than he could claim about his shack. “That’s my
father, all right. Since you’re the whiz kid who’s been telling him
he’ll lose his fishing if the park gets built, sounds as if you get some
talking in.”

Apropos of nothing, he replied, “He took me out to see
the turtles.”

Occupying half the space in the tiny breakfast room
adjoining the galley kitchen, Clay McCloud filled it with masculine vitality.
Awareness of his presence crawled across her skin, and Rory felt almost trapped
as she opened the refrigerator to rummage for bottled water. “The turtles
come out only at night, and it’s early in the season to see them.”
She had no idea why they were discussing turtles, but she could be patient.

She handed him a bottle and opened one for herself. He
apparently didn’t feel the same heat as she did, since he continued to
invade her personal space. She inched backward to the other counter of the
small galley, tugging her shirt closed over her clingy knit top.

Clay threw his head back and swigged heavily of the water.
Fascinated, Rory watched the gulps course down his long throat. When he
returned the bottle to the counter, he watched her through wary eyes, and she
wondered if perhaps he might be as physically aware as she and just covering it
with attitude.

“They’re arriving. I think I saw a nest,”
he admitted, a note of interest behind his reluctant words.

“You aren’t likely to ever see one again if the
state sells the swamp to developers. House lights confuse the hatchlings, so
they wander inland instead of heading for the ocean, giving land predators more
time to eat them. One more species down the drain.”

“It’s going to happen whether you like it or
not,” he asserted defiantly, taking another swig from the bottle.
“Money talks louder than nature. If the beach park happens, so will swamp
development.”