Carolina Girl (37 page)

“Lizards,” Clay suggested helpfully. “Now
shut up and let’s figure out how we can make these slimy lizards pay for
the harm they’ve done.”

“I haven’t done anything,” Jeff protested.
“I was just along for the ride.”

“You didn’t call in Cissy’s loan?”
Aurora demanded. “You didn’t sic your real estate vulture on her?
And I bet anything that even if I refused to sell after she signed, it never
occurred to you that you could auction off my mama’s property through the
court, just like the state threatened to do with the Binghams.”

“Rora, you are being unreasonable. This is
business,” Jeff argued. “You’re standing in the way of the
entire town’s future. You would have been fairly paid for your property,
just as the Binghams will be.”

Clay was tired of this. He’d planned a much better end
to this evening, and it would be dawn before this bunch stopped yammering. It
seemed to him the script required a little action.

Catching Aurora’s arms from behind, he gently set her
aside. “I wager there is a major divide between the bank’s idea of
fairness and everyone else’s. TJ, call the sheriff. We’ll need a
police report to file with the insurance company to cover the damages to
Aurora’s car, Cissy’s injuries, and the results of the fire. And if
I hear another word, I’ll have them dust my office for fingerprints and
press charges for grand theft. For all I know, they walked away with my
copyrighted software.”

Panic finally wrinkled the banker’s brow.
“That’s ridiculous! You can’t prove anything against Terry,
and I’m just a bystander in all this. There’s no law against doing
business.”

“Add theft, TJ,” Clay warned.

“Clay, that’s ridiculous,” Aurora
whispered beside him. “You can’t ruin a man’s career because
he’s a jerk.”

He wanted to. A primitive urge for revenge had surfaced
somewhere during this episode, and he wanted to wring the necks of both men for
being the same kind of crass assholes who had stripped his company and his
investors without thought to any larger principle than selfish greed.

Blind protective instinct wanted him to shield Aurora from
their kind of menace. Or maybe it was a stupid possessive instinct, the
“Me Tarzan, you Jane, lay your mitts off my woman” kind of thing
that rose out of the primeval pools lurking in a man’s soul.

Except with a woman like Aurora around, the big gorillas
he’d have to fight off would be conniving powermongers like these. He
could handle that with both thumbs tied together.

He stepped in front of Aurora, crossed his arms again, and
watched in satisfaction as Jeff backed off. “The Binghams would like to
present an alternative development plan to the zoning commission, but they need
more time. You’ll arrange it so that they get that time, won’t
you?”

“The sheriff’s line is busy,” TJ called
from the other side of the car. “Want me to keep trying?”

Clay bit back the urge to laugh as Talbert’s face grew
whiter. He was beginning to like this role, especially since Aurora had wrapped
her fingers around his biceps and was hanging on with both hands while he was
practicing the communication skills he needed for her world.

He had walked away from the corporate life with a bad taste
in his mouth, but now that he knew it was just another jungle, he could learn
the game, for Aurora’s sake. “I haven’t heard anything to
change my mind yet,” he called back to TJ.

“Wait a minute!” Terry shouted.
“Let’s be reasonable here. If we have to go to court, it will be
only your word against mine. Let me talk to the insurance companies, get some
damage estimates, see what I can do. I’m not a rich man, you know. I
might have been,” he added bitterly, “if my construction company
could have built those condos.”

“You don’t have to be a rich man; you just have
to be a reasonable one,” Clay offered, generously, he thought. “You
can work with us, or you can go to jail. Fair enough?”

“I want him to apologize to my sister.” Aurora
stepped out from behind him. “I want him out there helping all those old
people cart off dead timber and fix up their burned yards.”

“Hey, Talbert, you want us to keep trying for the
sheriff?” Jared asked helpfully. “You might be better off with him
than Rora.”

“I’ll bring my crew in,” Terry agreed with
a weary swipe of his hand over his thin hair. “We’ll fix things up.
I didn’t mean to hurt your sister, Aurora. I’ll see if I can find
her a job. I don’t suppose she can do budgets, can she?”

“No, but she can run your office better than you
can,” Clay intruded. “I’m not sure we’re ready to part
with her yet, though.”

Clay let Aurora and his brothers take it from there. His
goal had always been to protect the work he’d spent his life developing.
The unsettling feeling that he wanted far more than that now had him longing
for the courthouse roof so he could sort things out.

He wanted to protect Aurora and her family from corporate
gorillas. Aurora’s admiration had made him prouder than working the kinks
out of an inoperable program. What he felt right now was a real thrill and not
the virtual one provided by his computer.

He recognized the kick of anticipation zinging through him.
He was ready to take a risk again, step outside his isolation and into Aurora’s
life, if she’d let him.

Only, now that Talbert and his cronies were out of her way,
did Aurora need him anymore? The company was in production. Her investment was
secure. She had her career, and she had made it plain that she couldn’t
wait to kick the dust of this town off her heels and move on.

So where did that leave him? Like the turtle, swimming back
to sea, alone?

As the various cars departed, taking with them Clay’s
brothers and two angry ex-friends, Aurora opened the door to the Jag.
“Take me home, please.”

Clay was already beside her, reaching for the door, offering
his hand, performing all those little courtesies with which he betrayed his
bad-boy image to make her feel as if she mattered to him. Clay might want to
pretend he was an island, but she didn’t think he wanted to be. She loved
both sides of him, the tough one and the loner who wanted acceptance.

She loved him. She ached with the bittersweetness of the
knowledge. He’d stood up for her, protected her as if she were precious
to him, and her heart had nearly burst at the seams with joy and love.

It hurt her more than him when she asked to go home. She
didn’t want to go back to her childhood bedroom. She longed to go forward
to the man of her dreams, physically ached with the need of it.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t offered the future of her
dreams, and her job here was done.

He’d talked about going steady, but given their
disparate personalities, that moment of magic couldn’t last any longer
than the arc of a perfect moon on a perfect night.

She not only knew better than to rely on a man to provide
her happiness; she knew better than to stand in the way of someone
else’s. Clay could have any woman he wanted once he decided where he
wanted to go next. He hadn’t made that step yet, and she wasn’t
languishing out here, waiting until he did, endangering her fragile heart any
more than she had.

He touched her arm, almost a placating touch that made her
want to weep, but she climbed in the car before she could fall victim to her
hormones again. Sure, she could do the easy thing, go to bed with him now and
walk away later. But she wasn’t a risk taker at heart. Clay thrived on
taking giant leaps into unknown waters. He could splash happily here today and
be gone tomorrow.

Going to bed with Clay the way she felt now would be to risk
never wanting to get out of his bed again. She would crumble into nothing and
lose herself when he walked away. Going steady was for teenagers. She wanted a
grown-up relationship involving family and kids and vows never to part. Or none
at all.

Just admitting that she wanted family and kids scared her
enough.

“We could go back to my place for a cup of coffee,
talk about how this changes things,” he suggested, climbing into the
driver’s seat. “I’ve even bought a filing cabinet.”

It took her tired mind a minute to make the connection.
Filing cabinet... papers... he’d cleaned up the cottage in anticipation
of bringing her home.

Even though she was shattering inside, she smiled.
“That was thoughtful of you. Thank you, but I need to go home.”

“It’s that controlling thing I do making you
mad, isn’t it?” He turned on the ignition and carefully backed up
in the driveway. “I got in the way of letting you flatten Jeff into
roadkill.”

“No, believe it or not, I was glad you stepped in. I
wasn’t running on rational. I have control issues of my own, so I can
relate.”

The silence thickened inside the dark car. Rory loved the
hum of the powerful engine, the sleek feel of the luxurious seats. She wanted
to sit here beside Clay and take off for some unseen future.

But he hadn’t offered to share his future, just his
bed. And she had a family who needed her support. She didn’t believe in
placing all her eggs in one basket, especially a basket as unpredictable as
Clay.

“I’m not any good at analyzing
motivations,” he warned. “If I did something wrong, you have to
tell me.”

“No, you did everything right. Sort of. It’s me
who has problems. Let’s just sleep on it, okay?”

He said nothing but turned down the fire-blackened road to
her house.

In the moonlight, all the colorful flowers, painted
mailboxes, and cheerful gnomes were scorched and sad against the charred leaves
of trees and shrubs. Aurora thought the scene more than reflected her mood.
She’d brought their destruction by stirring up trouble—again.
She’d make it go away if she did what she was supposed to do—build
a career.

She’d invested her prize money wisely. She trusted
Clay to take care of it. “Mysterious” would sell a billion copies
and generate tons of franchise licenses for toys and games. Even if he
didn’t keep his studio here, her investment should show a profit. It was
time to move on.

o0o

“What do you mean she’s in Chicago?” Clay
paced with the telephone glued to his ear, afraid that if he didn’t pry
every detail out of Cissy, he would lose something vital. “She said
nothing about it last night.”

He stared down at the newly uncluttered boards underfoot.
He’d never realized the cottage floor was yellow pine.

“She had a call last night after you went out, some
bank up there confirming an appointment. I thought it had to do with your
investors. I haven’t learned that much about big business yet,”
Cissy explained through the receiver. “We took her to the airport this
morning.”

“We don’t have any investors in Chicago.”
That was the whole point of not going public this time around. Between
Aurora’s money and her banker friend’s money, they had enough to
put the game in production. Soon the corporation would generate stacks of cash.
Aurora needed to hang around to help him make some decisions. He’d
trusted
her to do that.

They needed to talk to the Binghams, tell them no one would
fight whatever zoning they chose, that they were free to do as they pleased now
that Jeff and Terry had backed off.

Cissy and her father could do that.

She had no reason to stay here any longer.

His breath caught in his throat, but he must have managed
something dismissive, because Cissy hung up. He set the phone down and
continued pacing, more rapidly now.

Aurora was leaving. She hadn’t told him. Was their relationship
that unimportant to her?

What relationship? He’d asked her to go
steady
,
for heaven’s sake. What woman would bank her future on that?

Panic set in. His last corporation had failed because
he’d listened to his MBAs. His ignorance had almost lost him
“Mysterious” the first time around. He couldn’t afford any
more failures. He’d trusted Aurora to see this one through. She had the
business acumen he lacked.

So had Diane. She’d seen the collapse coming and
gotten out, taking care of herself and no one else. If Aurora turned out to be
like Diane...

Aurora wasn’t Diane. He’d hidden behind that
excuse too long.

It had been easy buying into the isolationist theory,
thinking turtles had the right idea, swimming around in that whole big ocean
out there, not needing anyone. Why risk hanging around, making homes, raising
kids, and losing the protective shelter of his shell?

Aurora had shown him the fallacy of his theory. He’d
loved shedding the heavy burden of his shell and walking into the bright
kaleidoscope of her world. It hurt like hell thinking he needed to crawl back
into isolation.

Dammit
! Didn’t Aurora understand what
he’d been trying to tell her?

Of course she didn’t. How could she understand when
even he had no idea what he thought—or felt? It wasn’t about the
damned computer—it was about
living.

He’d been holding back in so many ways he
couldn’t begin to count them all. If he wanted Aurora instead of
computers, now was the time to act on it—lay his pride and his future on
the line for real.

Ignoring the siren call of his laptop and the tool belt
hanging over a chair, Clay reached for the telephone. He could climb up on the
roof and think about things until his dying day and never really classify the
way he felt about Aurora. He just knew not having her in his day was akin to
losing sunsets and dawn.

No more hiding. He was about to communicate in a big way.

By the time Aurora returned, she’d have to understand
that he was ready for a real relationship.

o0o

Rory listened to the CEO espousing the benefits of working
with an up-and-coming bank situated in the heart of the city, while she glanced
around the office that could be hers for the asking.