A New Forever (3 page)

Clay threw his reading glasses down onto the top of his solid mahogany desk, pinching the bridge of his nose hard, when that was just why he'd removed the damned glasses. His eyes settled where they always did when he gave them free rein—which wasn't often in the past five years—on the picture of April he loved the most.

They'd taken a vacation in the middle of the winter one year, since they both adored the snow, and spent their time snowmobiling, skiing and snowboarding. But they'd taken a couple of days and gone down to the Cape, thoroughly enjoying the fact that they practically had the place to themselves. He'd taken his thirty-five millimeter on their walk and had gotten some great shots of the sea, and even better candid photos of his bride, Nanook of the North.

He'd been teasing her unmercifully about how bundled up she was, so she'd knocked down the hood of her jacket, and he'd caught her at a moment he always thought of as most herself—turned back towards him, away from the sea, her hair streaming out behind her, a big as life grin on her face that made him ache to smile back at her, even seven years later.

The tears were there, in the back of his eyes, but he refused to give in to them. He would have sworn, at several different intervals since he'd lost the love of his life, that he was all cried out. But like mother's milk, there always seemed to be a drop or two more when the need was there. Clay was sick of crying, sick of feeling the way he had before he'd met April—cold and empty and lonely. It was even getting to the point where he was sick of work, which was absolutely unheard of in him. His land and his ranch were everything to him, especially now that he had lost his other love.

He'd always been a loner. His father died while Clay was young, and his mom had been a single parent at a time when single parenting was definitely not all the rage, and he'd ended up having to spend an inordinate amount of time by himself, trying to keep up the ranch for the sake of his father's memory. He was quiet and serious even from toddlerhood, his mother maintained, and it wasn't until he began to grow up and fill out that he began to get much in the way of attention from anyone else. Once those shoulders began to broaden and his voice dropped sexily, nearly every girl in school ran after him.

But he was having none of it. He'd seen his mother struggle, working herself to the bone to run a sprawling ranch with only the help of her young son, trying to make a decent life for him and get the things he wanted. Clay had made up his mind early on that that he was going to make enough money that his mother wasn't going to have to work anymore, and he'd run and grow the ranch to its full potential. He would be the man that his father, and his father's father, would be proud of. The ranch would not be lost, and he would keep their memory alive.

His dreams had been realized to an incredible extent, due to some lucky investments before the bubble in the market burst, and some wise choices in what direction the ranch should focus on, and he had been able to keep his mother comfortable until the day she peacefully passed. He had made her proud.

The only thing that had been missing in his life for a while was a special woman. Despite his father's early death, he always remembered the healthy dynamic and love his parents shared. He also knew it was the same dynamic his grandparents had—old-fashioned and traditional. The man was the head of the household and had a duty to lead, protect, and love the woman of his life unconditionally. It wasn't a hard concept for Clay to grasp. He liked to be in charge, there was no doubt about that. He took the lead in nearly anything he did, and he would want a woman who could be comfortable with that arrangement. He fully intended to be the head of his household, although that didn't mean that he would ever discount his wife in any way. Clay wanted an equal partner. He wanted a strong woman—strong enough to submit and allow him to have the final say on major decisions. To fully trust that her man would do what was right and always have his wife's best interest at heart. Clay had seen enough from his father, and the way he doted on his mother, to know that he wanted the same in a marriage.

He would also take his wife over his knee if he felt she needed it, although this wasn't something he revealed to every woman he dated, and there were definitely some who could have used a good session over his knee. He let those ladies go with absolutely no regrets. He didn't want a bratty woman. He would spank, and he believed that the man being the head of the household and disciplining his wife when he saw fit was the natural and normal way of things. But it wasn't something he wanted to have to do every five seconds. He took the ideal of domestic discipline very seriously, and he knew his potential partner was going to have to feel the same way.

That was not to say that he didn't have a lot of dates. He did. Ever since he'd gotten smacked upside the head with the load of testosterone that was puberty, he'd had almost more women hanging around him than he could deal with. In high school, the young girls would practically stalk him. And the older they got, the subtler they got, but there were no fewer of them.

However, none of them had really clicked with him. Until he met April at the local rodeo. She was dating one of the bull riders and had just come to cheer him on, but as soon as Clay saw her, he knew that she was the one for him. He was hanging in the background, as usual, watching things, not participating much. In fact, despite his success, he was starting to dislike the rodeo scene. Clay didn't have a problem lasting the eight seconds needed to win, and he didn't mind the bull—he just didn't do well with the bullshit.

He'd asked April out later that day and she'd laughed at him, that tinkling, waterfall laugh of hers as her face lit up, and she leaned forward to pat his hand. "Why, I'm flattered, Clay, but I'm seeing Jake, and I don't think he'd appreciate that much."

He hadn't taken no for an answer, biding his time, and when they broke up—and he'd known they would; Jake was a bounder—Clay was right there, asking her again and making a pest of himself until she said yes.

April was still in school, but Clay wasn't about to wait to marry her, so he proposed only about two months later, with the caveat that she had to finish her education.

It had amazed him how well they clicked. She was a little hesitant about getting spanked, but her father had always been the undisputed head of the family she'd grown up in, so it wasn't something that was completely foreign to her.

And Clay understood her hesitation about incorporating discipline into their lives. He knew that his spankings were going to hurt. But they'd discussed it, and implemented it before they married. Clay had to snort softly in his reverie. It wasn't as if the threat of a spanking had ever really deterred his little dynamo from doing anything she wanted—including taking his baby of a truck without permission and dinging it in a fender bender.

Clay closed his eyes at the memories—her mischievous grin, the unmistakable sounds of her pleasure as their bodies connected on the most intimate of levels; sounds that always threw him into his own spiral of pure, mind blowing ecstasy. They were opposites that attracted and created a wondrous place for themselves. April was as outgoing as he was quiet, and sometimes he'd just sit back and watch her circulate at one of the country barn dances the town often held. His beautiful wife April knew everyone's name, and their kids' names, and when she asked about their health and their families' health, everyone knew that she cared about their answer.

She cared. About them and about him. She loved him even after he'd roasted her bottom for doing something stupid. It had always amazed him that, despite the fact that her bottom was a ruby red, and obviously throbbing like the dickens, April always turned to him, came into his arms like he hadn't just set fire to those lovely hillocks. She was never afraid of him, not even after the strictest of punishments. In fact, the wetness between her legs told a different story.

She was everything. Everything he'd ever wanted. Everything he'd needed. She was his reason, the flower who blossomed under his touch, and now she was gone.

He would never again be that happy, never find her dancing in her stockinged feet in their oak-wood foyer while Patsy Cline blasted in the distance, never turn to pull her into his arms in the middle of the night, fitting her every soft curve and valley just perfectly into his hard planes and angles, reaching around to capture a pert breast, unselfconsciously enjoying the feel of it nestled in his palm like a contented bird...

Sometimes he didn't think he could take the pain. Work helped—the length of his work weeks were getting to be ridiculous. They were the things of which legends were made. But the solace was empty. Beyond the pain, there was miles and miles of nothingness, and of the two, he preferred the pain.

The one bright spot in his life was the only social engagement he cared to keep; his once a month lunches with Elodie.

She was a strange, timid little creature. Smaller than April—and that was saying something—even though she was the older sister, and much, much quieter. She'd been a rock for him when April died, and he wasn't about to forget that. He'd always liked Elodie, even though he could see that she was entirely overshadowed by her sister and her boisterous family, there didn't seem to be any resentment of the fact that April was so obviously the apple of everyone's eye.

Since he didn't like to chat much himself, he understood that the fact that she didn't participate much at gatherings didn't mean she was stupid or mean, both monikers that had been applied to him on different occasions. April had adored her, and wanted to spend more time with her, but for some reason, Elodie had resisted coming over as often as April wanted her to. She never out and out said that Clay was the reason she declined April's invitations, but it was fairly obvious that she didn't like him. She couldn't have been any more uncomfortable around him if she'd tried—fidgeting, stuttering and never meeting his eyes the entire time she was around him. She'd only gotten a little better about it since they'd been lunching.

He probably should have let her off the hook about the lunches, but he wanted to stay as close to April's family as he could, and being with Elodie reminded him, in a sad sort of way, what it was like to be with April. And he enjoyed the lunches, once he pulled her out of her shell. Elodie was smart and, when she was comfortable, had a biting wit that he enjoyed. She was pretty but not blatantly so—but she got that lovely, naturally curly hair directly from her mother. If she was talking about something she was interested in—like her art—her face lit up from within.

Lately he'd started to worry about her, though. Elodie wasn't looking good, and she was thin as a rail. She certainly did inherit more than her share of the family stubbornness, though, and adamantly refused to let him take her to lunch, or to go to dinner with him. She was such a shy little thing that he hesitated for a long time to put his foot down about that, but this afternoon he just decided that he wasn't going to let her have her way.

Clay had been surprised and pleased when she'd acquiesced without too much of a fuss. If he'd known it was going to be that easy, he would have done it months ago… hell, years ago. In fact, he wished he hadn't held her to a month from then, but maybe it would help her get her head around it. She'd also gotten a huge helping of the family pride, too. She wouldn't even let him pick up her lunch tab—she'd practically gotten into a physical fight with him the first time they went out because of it.

Apparently, his "look", as April had called it, didn't work on older sisters—at least not this one. She hadn't so much as batted an eyelash at him. Either that, or it had lost its power since it hadn't been used in quite some time.

There was something about Elodie... something unsettling. She made Clay want to shake her out of her calm, quiet demeanor. It was like she had something to say, but not the courage to do so.

She made him want to kiss her out of it, too, and that impulse sent him reeling out of his chair, his back to the picture of April, as if he couldn't bear for her to see his shame. He hadn't had the impulse to kiss someone for so long, it physically hurt him to consider it. To say nothing of how guilty it made him feel—not only was he contemplating kissing someone other than his wife, but he was contemplating kissing his wife's sister.

Once the idea formed in his mind, however, he found that he couldn't let it go. It haunted him, sneaking into his consciousness when he least expected it over the next few weeks—visions of taking that staunch, starched little body and tugging it against his, letting his hands sweep up into all that hair, bending her head back for his deep, passionate kiss, letting his lips slide slowly over hers…

Clay shook his head.

"Mr. Carver? Are you all right?" His ranch hand, George, was peering at him as if he thought he'd gone off his rocker because he hadn't taken the pile of receipts he'd been holding out to him for the past several minutes.

Clay cleared his throat and sent him on his way, more bothered than he wanted to be about how Miss Elodie kept popping into his daydreams. It was disquieting in the extreme. Not even April had been able to disrupt him at work.

This was not good.

The phone call came in the evening, the night before they were supposed to go out. Clay generally screened calls in the evenings once he got home. If any of his men needed to get hold of him, they'd call his cell. Pretty much anyone else could leave a message.

"Hello?"

"Hey. How have you been?"

That was usually what she asked him. Immediately after April's death, Elodie had stayed with him for over a week. She took over every mundane duty she could for him, picking out the dress to bury her sister in, handling the funeral home, and helping to write the obituary. Clay had felt more lost than he'd ever felt in his life, and his usual ability to get things done and handle details had vacated the premises. For a few days, he let Elodie take care of him more than he'd let anyone do since his mother. Usually, he was the one who did the caretaking in any situation.

But Elodie didn't seem to think any less of him for it; he was sure he would have seen it in her eyes if she had.

He couldn't stifle a yawn. "I'm okay, how are you?"

"Stop that! It's contagious!" She yawned back, barely intelligible.

"Sorry, long day. One of the cattle had a breeched calf I had to assist with. Took hours, but all worked out in the end."

"That's good…"

Clay had a bad feeling about why she was calling, and he decided to pre-empt her. "Is this the call where you beg off tomorrow night?" Bullseye. Complete silence from the other end. He leaned back in his big leather chair, crossing his ankle over his knee, his eyes narrowing as if he had her called onto the carpet in front of him. "Are you hurt?"

A pointed pause before she answered, very reluctantly. "No."

"Are you sick?"

Elodie sighed in exasperation. "No."

It was his turn to pause. "Are you planning to be either of those things tomorrow, so that you can cancel out on me?"

He had her pegged perfectly. Elodie prevaricated just a bit, and sounding quite indignant, said, "I am not!"

"Uh huh." He didn't believe her one bit.

"I—uh—I called because I didn't remember what time you had said, and I wanted to be sure to be ready."

Not a bad bluff, but a bluff nonetheless.

"Seven."

"Seven," she repeated.

"Short of contracting malaria or dying, you aren't going to get out of this."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

He almost chuckled at the outright despair in her voice. You would have thought he was asking her to tramp through the sewers instead of accompany him to one of the nicest restaurants in the county.

Harden, Texas was a consciously small town. Its carefully cultivated cowboy-rustic aura attracted tourists by the droves in the summer, even though the beach was fifteen miles away. The small town council refused to allow their McDonald's to have its usual golden arches out front, and even prevented them from having a drive through, all to maintain an old, rustic charm. One of the few things it did have, besides tons of small, expensive boutiques quaintly dotting Main Street, was a plethora of good restaurants—Back Home Diner not withstanding—and Red Creek was one of them. It was nowhere near as pretentious as some of them; the meals were items that anyone could recognize and you didn't need a degree in French to read the menu. The portions were pretty big, and that was something Clay, being the size that he was, looked for in a good restaurant. There was nothing he hated more than paying thirty dollars for a meal and still walking away hungry.

"Yes, and you'd better be ready."

April had always made him wait—it had been one of the few bones of contention between them. But, as he recalled, Elodie had never been late to one of their lunches. In fact, she'd beaten him there sometimes.

*****

"Uh huh." How was she going to survive a dinner alone with him without giving herself away? At night? It was like... it was too close to a date for comfort. Lunches were just that—a meal in the middle of the day. But dinner—that was a date.

"Are you all right?" His deep voice rumbled across the phone.

"Yeah, why?"

"You just don't sound like yourself."

It was out of her mouth before she thought about it. "You don't really know me very well, so how would you know?"

"Intriguing. Makes me want to discover what I've been missing."

Elodie was sitting there with her mouth hanging open, her heart battering itself against her ribcage. Her mind was screaming at her about how bizarre a conversation this was to be having with her ex brother-in-law. Her fingertips were blue, and she had a dry mouth. If she got any more nervous, he'd be visiting her in the hospital tomorrow instead of going out to dinner. She was starting to feel light headed.

And, apparently, she was hyperventilating into the phone. "Hey, hey, slow down," he coaxed as gently as he could. "Take deep breaths. Slow and deep," he began to repeat hypnotically until her breathing slowed. "Elodie, honey, what's wrong? Are you not feeling well?"

It was her out. If she said yes, he would probably let her out of it altogether. But part of her craved another opportunity to see him, in any way, shape or form, and that was the part that was complaining the loudest. She missed him. She wanted to see him every day, just to drink him in, just to be in his presence. Most of her would have preferred to do that merely as a fly on the wall, invisible to him, but able to be physically close to him, hear his voice, smell his spicy aftershave.

Another part of herself, one that had only recently begun to find its voice, was a ticking clock. Not her biological clock—that one was thankfully silent for now. This was the clock that had begun ticking when April had died so suddenly, in the prime of her life. How long was Elodie going to hang back from life, being a spectator rather than a participant, watching friends and family meeting and getting married and having babies, living the life that she was barely present in, alone and lonely as she was?

Nothing could ever come of her relationship—whatever that was, there really wasn't a name for it—with Clay, but she could glean from it what she could. She could have dinner with him and have a good time, and do something other than sitting around her apartment when she wasn't working, completely absorbed in her paintings, living through them where it was comfortable and safe, instead of in the real world, closer to the man she wanted to lie down next to for the rest of her life.

Elodie sighed, hating the war that raged within her about Clay, desperately wishing that things had been different between them from the start, then feeling the familiar pangs of guilt about wishing away her sister's happiness when she'd had such a short time of it as it was. "No, I'm fine, really."

"Are you sure? I can be over there in a second..."

She knew that was no threat, it was a promise, but the last thing she needed was for him to see her apartment. He knew that she lived in the low rent district of town and had always campaigned for her to move somewhere—almost anywhere—else. But the finances weren't there right now—never had been—for her to be able to afford a move, and she absolutely refused to take any money from anyone.

So there she sat. "No! No, you don't need to come over. I'm fine."

He didn't sound as if he believed her, not one bit. "I think I'm going to arrive on your doorstep in a few minutes unless you convince me otherwise..."

"No! Do not come over here! I'm fine! Really."

The line was silent for a moment, then he asked in the gentlest voice she'd ever heard him use, "Is the idea of having dinner with me so terrifying? You have known me for years, Elodie. Am I such an ogre?"

"No, no. I don't think you're an ogre at all."

"Yeah, but I can make you hyperventilate with just the thought of having to have dinner with me."

"I'm-I'm just scattered, is all. I've been painting and my mind sort of gets lost. A bit spacey, I guess. That's all," she said.

"I know. I know how important art is to you, but that is the only thing you do, and being holed up in your apartment by yourself can't be healthy. But maybe I can help you change that. Maybe we can get you out and about some… have some fun. God knows, after the past couple of years we've had, you and I deserve some."

Elodie was just about to faint; what he was suggesting was just about as close to Heaven as she'd ever be able to imagine achieving in this lifetime. And it did sound like fun. Especially with him.

Before the rest of her had a chance to squelch the impulse, she answered, "Yes, that sounds like a good idea."

"Who are you and what have you done with my sister-in-law?" he asked with a chuckle. "I thought I was going to have to spank you to get you to agree to come out with me on occasion."

Elodie's throbbing heart stopped at the word "spank". He was kidding, obviously, but still the power that single word had almost knocked the wind out of her. It was something she didn't dwell on... except very late at night, when she was nearly asleep, when thoughts of being spanked by Clay would creep into her mind. Thoughts of being taken over his lap and swatted, her bottom becoming cherry red while she kicked and cried, then being turned over onto her back so that he could love the hurt away...

"I don't think so," she replied, in what she hoped was a righteously indignant tone.

"Well, you'd best mind your p's and q's around me, Elodie. Your sister got her seat warmed more than once while we were married." He chuckled after he said the words so casually, as if what he'd said was so ordinary and an everyday occurrence. Like it was normal he spanked his wife.

"I know," she blurted without thinking. Had she just admitted to that? What was coming over her? She needed to get off this phone, or she was going to end up spilling all the beans!

"You know? What do you mean, you know?"

"I know," she parroted back at him.

"April told you?"

Elodie nodded, saying, "Yeah, I found out that she got—about that when she nicked your truck."

"Ahhh. Yeah. Well, she deserved it." He paused for longer than Elodie liked. "And I never abused her—"

"I know you didn't. If I'd seen any traces of abuse, I would have called the cops in an instant. She told me it was an agreement you had. It was part of your marriage."

"It was a big part… an important part. Domestic Discipline was… is… very important to me."

Domestic Discipline
? Was that what it was called?

"Well she told me all about it," Elodie said.

"And?"

"And what?" She couldn't quite figure out where he was going with this.

"What do you feel about it?"

"Well, I-I don't know that much about Domestic Discipline, but April was happy, so whatever you guys were doing, clearly worked. I don't think badly about it, if that is what you are worried about."

"Good. Is that why you're so shy of me?"

She was glad he couldn't see how she was shifting nervously in her chair. He was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. "No, I'm shy of everyone and everything. Haven't you noticed?"

"I have. I had hoped you'd come to feel safer around me, but that never happened." There was a long pause on the other end. "Is it because you were worried I would spank
you
?"

Okay. That was enough of that. "So," she said abruptly, "you're going to pick me up at seven, right?"

He growled, and Elodie thought it was one of the sexiest things she'd ever heard. "I'll let you go this time—but I intend to get back to this discussion, Elodie West. And next time I won't let you off the hook so easily."

Elodie shivered. The impulse to say "Yes, sir," was so strong in her, she had to bite her tongue. "Okay. Well, then, I'll see you tomorrow night."

"I'll be there. And if you're not, Elodie, I'll find you," he warned, with another growl.

"I'll be here, I'll be here."

Elodie hung up the phone and sat in her chair for the longest while, replaying what had just happened over and over in her mind, turning it this way and that, trying to see if there was any way to erase what she'd already said, and what he'd said back to her.

The truth about her feelings for Clay needed to be even more buried than they had been for the past decade plus. He could not find out anything about how much she desired him, how she'd wanted to mow over her own little sister to get to him the moment she'd first seen him. She needed to just continue to be Mousy Elodie—her nickname from high school. She didn't know how she was going to accomplish it; he seemed determined to drag her out of her safe, cozy little shell, and Elodie was going to have to resist with everything she had.

Unfortunately, part of everything she had was a bunch of mutinying body parts who wanted to spend as much time with Clay as they could, saving up memories for future fantasies.

She padded off to bed, huddling under the down-filled comforter that had been a Christmas present from April and Clay, letting her mind wander into the comfortable fantasy she'd lived on for so long, of being together with Clay—even in her fantasy she couldn't call herself his wife, because that was what April had been—in their house, painting in her own studio and greeting him when he came home after a hard day on the ranch, being swept up into those big arms. He had on occasion hugged her, and Elodie had filed each of those times away, remembering every nuance of it as she was held against his big body as he held her tightly. Clay had always treated her as someone special, just because of who she was to April. His normal guard was down around the family, and he never hesitated to hug her hello or good bye.