Clay (5 page)

She had far less immunity to distraction than she would have thought. So little, in fact, that she had to leave the room to make lemonade for them all in order to regain focus. Not that it did much good.

She told herself that her snatched glances toward the reclining man were to keep tabs on what he was doing and to make sure Lainey was all right. They had nothing to do with the well-shaped planes of his face, the chiseled line of his lips, the smoldering power of his gaze or the way his hair waved over his ears. Certainly there was no correlation between them and the way her attention wandered from the strong line of his throat as he swallowed his sweet-tart lemon drink to the firm muscles of his long legs outlined by his jeans. And none of these things had any bearing whatever on the fact that she accidentally rinsed her paintbrush in her lemonade glass instead of her water jar.

After a time, Janna was able to persuade Lainey to climb down from the bed and come paint with her. Her daughter dragged her feet as she ambled over,
but was soon engrossed in form and color. With the tip of her tongue protruding from one corner of her mouth in concentration, she managed a credible portrait of Beulah complete with sharp teeth in a grinning snout and bulging stomach. When she presented it to Clay for his approval, he seemed suitably impressed. That sent the girl back to the drawing table to try even harder. While Lainey held the attention of the man on the bed, Janna was actually able to get a little work done.

“I wish I had my camera.”

She glanced up at that comment, realizing in the same moment that it had been almost a half hour since anyone had spoken. “What on earth for?”

“The two of you make a great picture together. Lainey is like a miniature of you, you know.”

Janna gave him a suspicious stare. “We’re almost nothing alike.”

“Same hair, same face shape, same frown of concentration.” He waited, as if daring her to disagree.

“I don’t stick my tongue out when I draw,” she said, her voice cool.

“Mama!”

“No, you bite your bottom lip. Did you know that?”

She did, but only because it sometimes became chapped in the winter. Instead of answering, she said, “What you’re really telling me, I suppose, is that you’re bored.”

His smile was brief. “I’ve had more scintillating days.”

“I can imagine.”

“Can you?” He stretched, making himself more comfortable in the bed. “Now just what do you see me doing. And where?”

That was something he’d never know. “If you’re serious about the camera, you can have it. Arty brought it inside before he took the airboat away.”

“Considerate of him.”

“I think he was afraid the bag with your equipment might be stolen.”

“Theft on top of kidnapping? What is the neighborhood coming to?” The irony faded from his voice as he added, “Where did he take Jenny?”

“I’ve no idea. Somewhere safe.”

“And out of sight?”

She sent him a cool glance.

Lainey piped up then. “Mr. Arty took it to his house, I’ll bet. He has lots of junk there.”

“Good guess, punkin,” Clay said with a wry smile. “First place I’ll look when I get away from here.”

The girl’s eyes widened, then she threw down her brush and ran to climb back up on the bed. “You’re not going yet, are you?”

“Don’t worry, honey,” Janna said in acid-tinged sweetness. “He’ll be with us a little longer.”

The look he sent her held the heat of anger and some other dark, fathomless emotion that kicked her heart into a higher rhythm. She held it as long as she could, then she put down her brush with deliberation and went to retrieve his camera.

“What about the bag?” Clay inquired when she handed it over from a safe distance.

“You didn’t mention it.”

“My extra film, lens, filters and so on, are in it.”

She tipped her head. “And that’s all? No wire cutters or handy dandy file?”

“Maybe a tool kit,” he said with the lift of one shoulder.

“I noticed.”

“You could take it out.”

“Later,” she answered in dry tones, meaning much later, when she’d had a chance to see what other goodies he had stashed away for emergencies. She turned away without waiting for an answer. Her prisoner made no other protest, but she could feel his gaze burning into her back.

Lainey abandoned all thought of art to sit enthralled while Clay took off the lens cap of his camera, checked and cleaned it, then fiddled with its settings. He shot a few frames of the girl with her drawings, making her laugh with his droll comments so she smiled gaily for the lens. It crossed Janna’s mind that Clay was doing his best to beguile her daughter, and was obviously succeeding. A moment later, she dismissed that idea; he had no one else to talk to, after all. Regardless, Janna kept a close watch on the pair. That was until she noticed that her watercolors were beginning to dry in their palette wells. She returned to work with ostentatious dedication then.

Time slipped past. Janna was only marginally
aware of the two on the bed as Clay explained F-stops and exposures and lighting as if Lainey were eighteen instead of eight. After one whispered consultation, Lainey left the room, returning shortly with three or four unopened film canisters held tightly to her chest. Clay reloaded his camera while Lainey bombarded him with questions about what he did with the empty canisters. When they began to discuss their use as doll dishes, Janna tuned out the pair completely.

The next time she looked, Lainey was giggling helplessly as she tried to keep possession of the two empty canisters she’d stolen away from their owner, while Clay tickled her ribs and tummy to make her release them.

“Stop!” Janna cried. She threw down her brush and palette with a splattering clatter, and ran around the end of her worktable. “Don’t do that! She can’t—”

Suddenly Lainey’s laughter became a high scream followed by gulping sobs. She dropped the canisters on the bed as she clapped her arms around her middle.

Consternation sprang into Clay’s face. He caught the girl’s shoulders. “What is it?” he inquired in low urgency. “Where do you hurt?”

Janna hit him like a whirlwind, shoving so hard that he was thrown backward away from her daughter. Reaching for Lainey, she pulled her into her arms and dropped onto the bed, holding her daughter close while searching her abdomen for signs of blood.

“What’s wrong?” Clay demanded as he came upright again with the coiling of hard muscles. “What did I do wrong?”

“Stomach catheter,” Janna snapped. “For dialysis. If you’ve pulled it out—”

“She’ll have to go to a hospital,” he finished for her as he turned white around the mouth. “I should have realized.”

“Exactly.”

“No hospital,” Lainey sobbed. “No sticks. Please, please, no more sticks yet.”

Sticks. It was the word for injections that she’d picked up from the nurses who came at her with syringes in their hands. “Now there’s going to be a little stick,” they’d say, and they were right in their way. But administering little sticks day after day, thousands of little sticks, was considered heinous torture in some societies.

The plastic tubing showed no sign of leakage that Janna could see, no bloodstains coming through the gauze pads that covered the eternally raw incision. The discovery triggered rage instead of relief. She turned it on the man beside her. “Why in hell did you start a roughhouse game? Did you want to kill her?”

“I’m sorry. She seemed so near normal that I forgot.”

“She has renal disease, you know that.”

“Yes, but…”

“End stage renal disease.” The words were bald; still she let them stand.

“End stage…”

His voice trailed to a halt while sick comprehension rose in his eyes. He needed no other explanation, Janna saw. He understood that no simple drug or procedure was ever going to restore Lainey to the health and ordinary kidney function of a normal child. She wasn’t normal, would never be normal again in that respect for as long as she lived.

As long as she lived
. Which might not be long if some chance virus, imbalance of the different chemical reactions in her body or other disaster caused a sudden emergency episode. It had happened before, the infection of the stomach lining, the sudden spike in blood pressure, the excess fluid around the heart. And so it would continue for crisis after crisis, until something went so terribly wrong that Lainey failed to recover. Or until she had a transplant.

“She’s really that sick,” Clay said, the words harsh.

Janna only looked at him as she rocked her daughter in her arms.

“Then why is she way-the-hell out here in the middle of nowhere instead of close to a first-class medical center?”

That was the nightmare question that Janna lived with from one second to the next. It was the one thing she couldn’t change or control, the enormous chance that she was taking for the sake of a better life for her daughter. That Clay had dragged this weakness in her plan ruthlessly into the open brought her anger surging back again. “I’m taking care of my daughter
the best way I know how, just as I’ve taken care of her from the minute she was born,” she told him, her voice shaking. “You’re in no position to know or understand, can’t conceive of everything I’ve been through, everything we’ve been through together. Lainey’s health and what I choose to do about it is none of your business, not now, not ever.”

He watched her for a long moment while cogent thought raced behind his eyes. Then he asked softly, “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” She was proud of the certainty in her tone, though she couldn’t prevent the shiver that ran down her back.

“I’m not. In fact, I have to wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with the reason I’m here.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” She was able, barely, to keep the tremor from her voice. Lainey, perhaps sensing the undercurrents between the two adults, had subsided to only an occasional hiccuping sob as she watched their exchange from the shelter of her mother’s arms.

“Then why am I still at the camp?”

Clay held her gaze, his own so intense it was as if he willed her to tell him the truth. And he almost got it, would have if there hadn’t been so much at stake. Trying for a low laugh, Janna looked away from him. “I thought you had that all figured out.”

“Meaning?”

“You were positive I had designs on your body.”

He eased away from her, putting his shoulders to
the wall beside the bed. “Are you saying I was right?”

Men could always be distracted by sex or the promise of it, couldn’t they? Janna hoped that bit of common knowledge was true. Choosing her words with care because of Lainey, she said, “I’m a single mother who hasn’t had a decent relationship since well before my daughter was born. This camp is isolated and we’re alone here. Would it be such a bad thing?”

“Possibly not, if I believed it.” His words were grim.

“What’s so hard to believe? You’re an amazingly attractive man.”

“But not,” he said with precision, “an idiot.”

“You don’t think I’m attracted to you?”

“I think drugging a man and tying him to a bed for the sake of a so-called relationship is going too far. I think any kind of affair that involves force is no affair at all. I think you’re much too gorgeous to have to coerce a man into doing what you want. I think the only reason you haven’t had a man is that you didn’t want one.”

He wasn’t stupid at all, which was a real shame since it required something more drastic of her. With a tight smile, she said, “Maybe the word relationship was a bit much. Maybe what I want from you is more basic. Involvement is something I don’t need. All I really require is…”

“Intimate bodily contact.”

“Exactly.” She was grateful to him for providing that nongraphic phrase since she’d been stuck for one.

“How about what I require?”

“I thought the big deal with men was that they are able to separate love and lust?”

“Some can, some can’t, and some prefer not to reduce the attraction between the sexes to that kind of self-serving rationale.”

A knot of unreasonable regret formed in her throat as she stared at him. Still she tilted her head, summoning a smile as provocative as she could make it as she tightened her grasp on her daughter. “And just where do you fall in there?”

“Guess,” he said, his gaze straight.

“You said earlier that all I had to do was ask. Suppose I’m asking?”

“I make love to you and then I’m free to go. Is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, you didn’t, did you? So what’s to keep me from using my greater strength to compel my release if I ever take you in my arms.”

The goose bumps that rippled over her skin had little to do with his suggestion and everything to do with the mental image created by his choice of words. Still, it was a reminder of the danger she’d forgotten in her concern for her daughter. There was absolutely nothing to keep him from tackling her now, this instant. What was stopping him? Guilt? Concern for Lainey? Or was it the suggestion she’d just made? Whichever it was, it seemed best to pretend she was
oblivious in the hope that it would continue until she was out of reach again.

On a strained laugh, she quipped, “Starvation, since I’m the cook?”

The answering movement of his lips was grim yet undeniably amused. “It could be worth the chance.”

It could indeed, Janna thought as her gaze caught on the slow curve of his mouth that deepened the smile brackets on either side and she felt the spiraling heat at the center of her being caused by his words. Could she risk it, risk making love to Clay Benedict? Could she bring herself to use sex to distract him from what she really wanted or possibly even to gain it without risking his life?

It seemed that she might have to try.

T
he direction of her thoughts was so uncomfortable that Janna slid Lainey off her lap, getting ready to rise to her feet. Clay put out his bound hands to catch her arm, his grasp warm and firm. She paused, meeting the fathomless dark blue of his gaze. Seconds passed while Lainey stood staring from one to the other with a puzzled frown between her eyes.

Clay glanced at the girl then released Janna with an abrupt movement and settled back until his shoulders touched the wall again. The expression on his face promised that next time he would not be so lenient.

Janna let out the breath she’d been holding. She had her answer, she thought; it was Lainey’s presence that had saved her. Clay Benedict was reluctant to resort to violence in front of a child, perhaps, or was afraid of hurting the girl again if she should be caught between the two of them. Janna appreciated that consideration, but almost wished he’d not shown it. She didn’t want to like him or admire his values, didn’t want to feel the slightest regret for what she was doing to him.

In a pretense at composure, she said, “It’s about
coffee time for me, I think, my answer to the midafternoon slump. Care for a cup?”

“I’m not exactly slumping since this isn’t my normal level of activity,” he answered. “But then, I don’t get up at night to check on…things.”

“You heard.” It was not a question.

“At one this morning, and again at four,” he answered, his gaze level. “I wondered. But not anymore.”

She looked away, moving toward the door. “Yes, well. Is that a no to the coffee then?”

“As much as I love it, ordinarily, I may have to pass on yours.”

She looked back, saw the wary distaste in his face. Comprehension brought the heat of a flush. With a grimace, she said, “No additives this time, I promise.”

“Not even for convenience?”

He meant because it would make it easier to hold him, she thought. “It’s a great temptation, but maybe I can resist.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Would you believe that I prefer you awake?” If he could resort to double meanings, then so could she, in spite of the flush that refused to go away.

He made a sound that might have meant anything, but his gaze didn’t leave hers.

“Well?”

“I take mine black.”

“I remember,” she said, and gave him a grave
look over her shoulder before she moved from the room and down the hall toward the kitchen.

She was still nervous about leaving Lainey with Clay, but not as much as before. She was fast coming to think that Clay Benedict represented a more invidious threat. He was learning everything there was to know about her, would soon know enough to destroy her. The question was whether she could do what she needed before that time came.

Janna put the kettle on and fresh grounds in the coffeepot, then leaned against the cabinet with her arms crossed over her chest as she waited for the water to boil. A minute later, her daughter’s footsteps sounded in the hall, then Lainey appeared in the kitchen.

“Clay’s hungry, Mama,” she announced.

“He had breakfast.”

“I know, but he’s bigger than we are. Can he have one of my special cookies with his coffee?”

Lainey’s diet restrictions made anything sweet a scarce commodity in her life. That she felt inclined to share one of her favorite chocolate-chip cookies with the man in the spare room was a sign of great favor. Janna smiled at her daughter. “I don’t see why not, though I suppose that means you get one, too?”

“Just one,” her daughter agreed, her face solemn.

Janna opened the jar and doled out the two cookies, then watched as Lainey skipped off down the hall. After a moment, she could hear the two in the other room discussing the various merits of chocolate chips, coconut and peanut butter as cookie ingredi
ents. The murmur of their voices continued, barely heard above the boiling of the kettle, but it sounded as if Clay might be using Lainey’s diet as an opening to ask more questions about her condition.

Janna closed her eyes a second then turned to pour the water in the pot, then take down mugs and remove the half-and-half that she used in her coffee from the refrigerator. As she lined them up on the cabinet, she heard Clay make some comment followed by Lainey’s delighted giggle. Clay joined in, his laugh so rich and deep that it seemed to vibrate in the air. Suddenly memory flooded over Janna of another day, another man and another moment of transient pleasure. It sent a wave of wistful nostalgia over her, though she had trouble bringing the man’s face into exact focus.

No. She wouldn’t think about Lainey’s father; it had been years since she’d allowed herself that luxury. For a long time, it had been too painful. Afterward, she’d been too busy, too determined to make a living for herself and her daughter, too dedicated to making certain that nothing ever hurt like that again.

It hadn’t, either, not until Lainey got sick. Then nothing else mattered. Nothing.

As the coffee finished dripping, Janna filled the mugs and added cream to one, then picked both up and started toward the spare room. She was almost to the door when she heard her daughter from inside as she spoke to Clay. Voice serious, she was saying, “Sharing is important. My mama says so.”

“Absolutely,” Clay answered. “Mine always told me that only people with no heart refuse to share.”

“My heart is all right.”

“Yes, I know, punkin. It was nice of you to share your cookies.”

“I was just wondering.”

“What?”

Clay’s voice sounded wary to Janna, which brought a crooked smile to her lips. It showed he was beginning to take the measure of her daughter. But then she stopped breathing as she heard what Lainey said next.

“Would you mind sharing a kidney with me? I mean, I know I’m only little, but a grown-up kidney would be all right because the doctor said so. Mama would do it, but her blood is all wrong. I’d only need one, so you’d be okay and not get sick like me. We would both be fine and stay alive a long time. It wouldn’t hurt so much, really. We could even be in the same hospital room, if you wanted. When it was over, there’d be no more mean nurses and doctors who think they know how you feel but don’t, and no more weird machines.”

Janna gripped the coffee mugs she held until her fingers hurt, but she scarcely felt it for the hard knot of tears in her throat and the squeezing sensation in her chest. She had kept little from Lainey about the progress of her disease, had always answered her questions as truthfully and completely as she was able. Still, she hadn’t realized exactly how much her daughter understood of what she’d been told.

Now she knew.

She also suspected that the plea hidden behind her daughter’s oh-so-reasonable words was destined to go unanswered, just as her own appeal to the Benedicts years ago had received no reply; it could be no other way. But Lainey’s mother would not fail her, not now, not ever. Standing there with her eyes pressed shut, Janna vowed to do whatever it took to save her daughter. And to hell with what it cost or who got hurt.

In the spare room, Clay was quiet. Then he cleared his throat with a rasp. When he spoke, his voice was carefully neutral. “My blood might be all wrong, too.”

“I know,” Lainey agreed, “but I thought it might be right because your eyes are like mine.”

“I’m not sure that matters. And I’m not at all certain your mother would like this idea of yours.”

“Yes, she would. I heard her tell Nona that she was desperate to find a kidney for me because she couldn’t stand to lose me.”

“Nona?”

“My grandma. She lives in Mississippi with my grandpa. She goes to church a lot and prays all the time. But she made Mama mad when she said that God would let me get well if that was what he wanted.”

“What did your mama say to that?”

“That God might expect her to do something to help instead of just sitting around wringing her hands. So Nona said she didn’t want a thing to do with it,
and Mama said that was all right, that she’d handle it by herself.”

“She’s a strong woman, your mama.”

“I know. But sometimes she cries when she thinks I can’t see her.”

It was a second before Clay answered, then he said, “Does she, punkin?”

“She doesn’t have anybody now, and she gets tired. But mostly, she’s afraid.”

“Me, too, sweet thing. I don’t like sticks much more than you do.”

“You don’t?” Lainey was quiet a minute. “It would only be a few. When it was over, there wouldn’t be anymore, or at least not too many.”

“I see.” Clay’s voice sounded husky.

“But that’s not what scares my mama.”

“What does, do you think?” Something more than mere curiosity shaded his tone.

“What’s going to happen. To me, I mean. If you were at the hospital, too, maybe you could hold her hand when they put me under and tell her that I’m going to be all right.”

“I…see what you mean. But I just don’t know if I can be there.”

That sounded like a polite refusal to Janna. It was no great surprise, since Clay barely knew them and, so far as she was aware, had no idea of their connection to his family. Even if she took the risk of telling him, it seemed doubtful the knowledge would weigh against his resentment at being held prisoner. At least she was saved the trouble of putting the question to
him herself, something she’d considered as she lay awake the night before.

The little talk in the spare room had gone on long enough, she thought. Blinking swiftly to remove any trace of tears, she pasted a cheerful smile on her face then pushed inside.

“Here we are,” she said as she handed a mug to Clay, making certain that he could catch the handle with his bound right hand. “I see the cookies are gone. Would you like juice, Lainey?”

The girl frowned as if interrupted in a matter of extreme importance, which it was to her, of course. As she caught sight of her mother’s face, however, she made no protest but folded her arms across her chest and pressed her lips together. When Janna offered the juice again, she only stared at the floor and kicked her feet back and forth where she dangled them off the edge of the bed.

It was impossible to say anything to soothe or reassure Lainey without showing that she’d overheard the discussion with Clay. That was the last thing Janna wanted, since it could bring on questions she had no intention of answering. She’d try later to make her daughter understand that she didn’t have to worry about a transplant or her mother, but all she could do for now was gloss over the situation and hope for the best.

Sighing, she looked away from the child’s small, pinched face. Her gaze met that of the man on the bed almost by accident. She expected to see derision
there, or even censure, but found an unnerving sympathy instead.

It was later that night, after she’d put Lainey to bed with all the usual sterile procedures and medications then made ready for bed herself, that she remembered the camera bag. She’d promised Clay he could have it once she’d checked it. It would help keep him entertained, perhaps, and she might also wind up with some of the shots of Lainey. She had relatively few pictures of her daughter other than a couple of sets done during discount store specials; there had been little money for such things in the early days and no time in the past three years. Flinging a cotton robe around the T-shirt and underpants that she wore for sleeping, she left the bedroom and padded into the kitchen and dining room in her bare feet.

The camera bag, a duffel-like affair of black nylon, was heavy when she picked it up. Setting it on the table, she unzipped it and pulled it open. Inside were two other cameras, along with dozens more rolls of film, an assortment of lenses and filters, a couple of collapsible tripods, a thermos and an insulated food bag holding stale sandwiches, a lightweight rain poncho and the tool kit she’d noticed earlier. Every item was tucked into its own pocket or strap. In his profession, at least, Clay Benedict appeared to be a neat, methodical man. It didn’t quite go with her impression of him as a devil-may-care charmer more interested in zipping around the swamp taking pictures than in actual work, but she supposed that everyone
had different aspects to their personality. Removing the tool kit, she hefted the bag to one shoulder and walked back down the hall to the spare bedroom.

Clay looked up as she entered, then tossed aside the magazine he was reading, one on watercolor that he must have taken from her worktable. With his gaze on his equipment, he said, “Such service. I could get used to it.”

“Don’t,” she recommended briefly as she tossed the bag onto the bed. “It’s not going to last.”

“Does that mean you’re letting me go?”

The look she sent him was caustic as she stepped back well out of reach then turned toward the door again.

“Wait,” he said quickly. “Stay a while.”

“It’s late. I need to get a little sleep.”

“Before Lainey wakes up again?”

Her nod was brief.

“So you’ll just leave me shut up, going out of my mind lying here with nothing to do except talk to myself.”

“Sorry.”

“I’ll bet you are. The least you can do is tell me the point of it. What is it you want? Ransom maybe, so you can afford a kidney transplant?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Logic, also something Lainey said. Though I’d think you could get help from some charitable association or government agency.”

“No such luck,” she said in flippant tones. “So how much do you think you’re worth?”

“Not as much as you may think. Anyway, who’s going to take care of your daughter if you wind up in prison?”

“I’ll worry about that later. For now, I’ve got all that I can handle.”

“Including putting her life in jeopardy for the sake of your career?”

His gaze was hard, and Janna would swear there was real anger in his voice. She said, “We have to live. But how nice of you to be concerned, especially when you know nothing about it.”

“I know enough to understand that you’re risking her life by being out here. What in hell are you thinking?”

Her smile was grim. “Maybe that’s why you’re here, to help take care of her.”

“You’re joking.”