Forbidden (Southern Comfort) (13 page)

Tate knew he was trying to make her relax, but this was one time humor wasn’t going to work.  “It’s not that simple for me, Clay.  I’m not the type of woman who thinks purely in terms of the physical.”

Clay cupped his hand under her chin.  “Is that what you think this is?”

Tate shrugged, a gesture of futility.  “How can it be anything else?”

She had him there, but Clay didn’t like it.  “It can be whatever we make it.”

Tate hesitated a moment, wanting desperately to believe, but it didn’t change the fact that he was leaving.  She already cared enough that she would feel his loss when he was gone.

How much more significant that loss if she made love with him? 

She cupped her own hand over his, which had moved to stroke her cheek.  “I’m sorry.” And she was, truly.  “I can’t.  Even if I understand why you have to leave, I’m not sure that Max would, and I don’t want to set us both up for disappointment.”

THAT
statement hit Clay like a blow.  He hadn’t even considered Max.  And it both pleased and horrified him to realize he could have that kind of impact on the child’s feelings. 

And Tate was a conscientious mother to keep that at the forefront of her mind, because he had absolutely no doubt that she wanted him.

And God, he wanted her.

So he purposely stepped back, allowing her some distance.  “It’s okay.”  Although it wasn’t.  “In the grand scheme of things, I respect your decision.  I might not like it.” His smile was wry. “But I respect it.”

Because there was nothing left to say, because if he didn’t get out of there he’d forget his good intentions, he leaned forward, dropping a regretful kiss on her cheek.  “Good night, Tate Hennessy.  Tell Max that I said goodbye.”

Clay cursed himself on the way to Justin’s for making a royal mess of his vacation.  How the hell, in two days, mind you, had he managed to form – what the hell was this?  An attachment? An obsession?  God help him, an actual
relationship?
– with a woman he met on the beach?  And not just any woman, either.

A woman with a kid.

A really super-terrific kid, whose smile was almost as appealing as his mother’s.

I
t was one hell of a package deal.

Whoa, Nellie.
  He put a rein on those horses before he found himself flattened by the pitter-patter of little hooves.  There were absolutely, positively no deals to be made here, because he had nothing to bring to the table.  He lived in another state. And his job kept him on the road nearly four days out of seven.

Not to mention the fact that he was a confirme
d… well, womanizer wasn’t exactly the word.  That indicated that he lacked respect for women, which he didn’t.  He genuinely admired and liked women.  He liked
a lot
of women. And in general the feeling was reciprocal. 

There was absolutely no room in his life for any type of commitment.

“Shit!”  Clay almost drove his truck off the Cooper River Bridge when that traitorous thought entered his head. Not that he was afraid of commitment.  Exactly.  Hell, he’d had relationships before, hadn’t he?   

But not after a few days’ acquaintance. And not with a woman who came as part of a set.

Cringing, he vividly recalled busting Justin’s brother Jordan’s chops quite recently for pretty much the same thing. 

“
Christ, Copeland.”  Clay scrubbed his hand over his face and tried to think.  What had he consumed today that had turned his mind to mush?  It must have been that last, high-intensity spin on the Tilt-O-Whirl, combined with a boatload of sugar and saturated fat that had managed to pickle his brain.

Of course, it hadn’t impaired his
second
most highly functioning organ, which even now was protesting the fact that he’d done the decent thing and tried to make love to Tate
inside.
  If he’d kept his big mouth shut, he probably could have opened his fly, adjusted her position by a couple inches, and had this whole little dilemma taken care of. 

Right now he’d be driving home physically sated, thinking clearly, and… feeling like a total jerk.

Tate was simply too special to be treated like a piece of… hell, he couldn’t even think it.  Putting her name and
ass
in the same sentence made him want to punch his own face.

There was an edge here, and he was walking dangerously close to it.  And whatever lay on the other side was scary as hell. 

Deciding that he really,
really
needed to get some sleep, he pulled his vehicle in beside Justin’s, a little cheered that his friend was home.  If he didn’t have to work tomorrow night, they’d go out and paint the town red. 

Clay opened the back door, which Justin had thoughtfully left unlatched, and wandered in to find his friend sprawled on the leather sofa.  He was stripped down to his underwear again – boxer shorts, this time, at least – and watching the evening news.  He looked dazed and a little groggy.

Justin looked him over skeptically.  “What the hell happened to you? You look like you came out on the losing end of a food fight.”

Until then, Clay honestly hadn’t noticed how much crap his clothes had accumulated.  He was smeared with ketchup, chocolate,
dust, grease and God knew what else. Plus he had the strange and sudden certainty that there was something lodged between his front teeth.

Shit.  Had that been there when he’d been kissing Tate?  No wonder she’d told him to get out.

“Carnival food,” Clay explained, as he crashed into the recliner.  He noticed there was gum stuck to the toe of his left shoe. 

Justin raised
one dark brow.  “Was it worth it?”

If you called a bad case of indigestion, a fortune spent to win a stupid purple bear, a nice foray into the complexities of trying to seduce a woman while in the presence of her young son, not to mention a brief stopover into everyone’s favorite nightmare – child abduction –
worthwhile, he guessed he hadn’t come away empty handed. 

Then he thought about the feel of Tate’s soft lips as they raced over his, and the look on Max’s face when he’d called him his deputy.

And the way his stupid frickin’ heart had swelled all out of proportion when he’d walked – just walked – holding both of their hands.

He’d gotten more out of the day then he’d bargained.

“It was fun,” he told Justin with a shrug.

Being a guy, Justin considered the subject dropped and pushed the volume button up on the remote. 

Just before the sports could be recapped, an aggressively groomed brunette with a microphone filled the screen.  A large Ferris wheel dominated the background, spinning gaily amidst a blinking array of lights.  Clay sat mesmerized, a sinking feeling beginning to pull at his already abused stomach.  He did a little mental cataloguing, filing this under Things That Did Not Bode Well.

He just
knew
that woman was going to find a way to drag him into this.

He sat rigidly as the reporter began talking.

“Traveling carnivals are as ubiquitous to the American landscape as baseball and apple pie.  But tonight, this slice of Americana set the stage for tragedy, as thirteen-year-old Casey Rodriguez disappeared from the area surrounding this Ferris wheel right behind me, where she’d been waiting for a family member to finish the ride.  Law enforcement officials on the scene – which included local sheriff’s deputies and an FBI agent – have declined comment, explaining that their investigation into the girl’s disappearance is still pending.  However, sources close to the investigation have indicated that there is suspicion of foul play. Volunteer search teams have fanned out tonight in the woods and fields surrounding the fairgrounds, hoping to find some clue that might lead to the discovery of the lost teen’s whereabouts.”

Here, the camera panned to show several policemen and volunteers on the scene, and then cut to some earlier footage that included Casey Rodriguez’s mother.  The reporter kept babbling, but Clay focused in – as did the camera – on an interesting tableau in the background.  Clay, with his arm around Max and Tate, was deep in discussion with one of the deputies who’d been among the first responders. The cameraman had the perfect angle to all but zoom in on th
e badge on Clay’s hip.

Shit,
Clay thought again.  Wasn’t that just dandy?  They’d made it seem like he was a participant in the investigation.  So when that little girl’s body turned up in a ditch they could point fingers at the feds.

Then Justin finally woke up to what was happening and cranked up the volume even more.

“Hey man.  You’re on TV.”  His tired voice was mystified.   

As Justin – and the rest of the Channel Five viewing audience – watched with interest, Clay dropped a kiss on the little boy’s head before turning his mouth toward the child’s mother.  Then he put his
arm around her and squeezed.  Possessively.

Justin’s brow raised as the camera panned back to the reporter, who wrapped up the segment with a grim smile.  “This is Paige Lowell reporting for Action Five News.”

He turned around and smirked at Clay.

“Fun.  Yeah.”

Clay sat there, numb, not because he’d been pretty much name-dropped – those three little initials were like fairy dust sprinkled magically to increase the case’s sensationalism and thus the channel’s ratings – but because he’d just watched his behavior with his own eyes.

And the verdict wasn’t pretty.

He could circle around, backtrack and bluster all he wanted, but he’d just seen the irrefutable evidence.

“Shit.” 

It had become his favorite word.

With the sound of Justin’s laughter as an exit score, Clay heaved himself out of the chair and hauled his commitment-phobic, way-too-busy-for-a-relationship, down-for-the-count ass off to bed.

CHA
PTER NINE

“
WHAT
the hell were you thinking?”

Billy Wayne popped the second contact from his gritty eyes, blinking several times before sliding his gaze toward JR.  The smaller man was standing across the room, clutching the remote in his fist.  If Billy Wayne hadn’t already shaved his hair, the heat of his cousin’s glare would have singed it.

JR rarely lost his temper – he was colder than an Eskimo’s tit – and to see him so close to boiling was something of a novelty. 

Billy Wayne tossed the disposable lens into the trash can next to the sofa, crossing his booted feet on the cheap oak coffee table.  The place they were using was a dump, and he missed the luxury of his condo in Atlanta.  It had been a long time since he’d lived out in the boondocks like this, and the memories the dingy little house brought back set his teeth on edge.

He didn’t need JR’s attitude to send his own temper simmering.

“I got the girl – a virgin, I might add – and no one made me or followed.  Even if some people saw me talking to her, they’re going to describe me as a dark-skinned, brown-eyed man with a full head of hair.”  He pointed to his bald head, from which he’d recently removed his wig.  “
It’s not like they had hidden cameras and facial recognition technology at that damn carnival. Who’s going to recognize me like this?”

Despite the fact that he had an extremely distinct appearance, Billy Wayne was decent with disguises – not as good as JR, who could be old, young, dark, fair  and everything in between – but decent.  The only thing that really tripped him up was his overabundance of muscles, which he stubbornly refused to do anything about.

It was the one legacy from his piece-of-shit father that he didn’t actually hate the man for.  Norman Sparks had beaten and ridiculed him as often as not, but the steroids and weightlifting he’d pushed Billy Wayne into had given him the means to get even.

In fact, he’d taken the first body building trophy he’d won and beat his old man half to death.

Vaguely aware that JR was still glowering, he glanced at the TV.  The news anchor had just titillated the audience by dropping hints about the girl’s disappearance, with the full story coming up at eleven.

True, having their newest piece of merchandise bandied about on the evening news wasn’t exactly standard operating procedure, but all in all Billy Wayne thought that JR was overreacting.  They already had a buyer lined up to take her off their hands, so it wasn’t like they even had to advertise the girl
in their usual circles.  They’d simply complete the transaction, the case would grow cold, and that would be the end of the sordid little story.

He said as much, and amused himself by watching steam practically rise from his cousin’s blond head.

Man, he’d charmed a sweet little girl and pushed JR over the edge, while he himself maintained a firm hold on his temper. 

Was this a banner night or what?

JR
pinched the bridge of his nose and brought himself under control.  This was the second inexcusable miscalculation Billy Wayne had made – the first being beating one of the girls to death because he couldn’t get it up for the camera, then selling the footage as a snuff film behind JR’s back.