Chapter Twenty-four

Lacey whipped open the bottom cabinet and prayed for a small miracle. And got one. She almost clapped her hands with relief.

“There is a God,” she whispered. “And He has just provided a silver jelly-roll pan without a dent or a nonstick coating. Now if the chocolate in the fridge isn’t ready, I can start a second pan.”

From the living room she heard Clay laugh softly, a sound she’d been listening to and enjoying for almost ten days. And a lot of nights, when she could sneak out.

“Nothing is funny about chocolate ruffle cake,” she called out, pushing herself up to a stand.

“You’re funny when you bake,” he replied. “Do you know how much you talk to yourself?”

“This cake is incredibly important, Clay.” She set the pan on the counter and took a few steps to the left so she could see him in the living room. “The baby shower is being given by Julia Brewer, who is married to Scott Reddick, son of Paula Reddick, who sits on the town council. She’s someone we have to impress.”

She bit her lip to see if he’d reacted to the we, a word that had popped up between them an awful lot in the last ten days.

He didn’t. Instead, he put down a coral-colored pencil and smiled at her, his grin like a bucket of sunshine in the cramped room. “I’m just laughing at how much you talk to yourself when you bake. I probably do the same thing here in my office.”

And when had the rental-unit living room become his office? Again, things had just morphed in the last week and a half. Instead of an empty, badly decorated living area in a standard beachfront rental unit, the room had been transformed into Clay Walker’s architectural studio.

A giant-screen computer design and drafting system and two other laptops stayed lit with bright green lines and angles and mathematical modelings of floor plans and rooflines and buttresses. Photos of Moroccan buildings were tacked to every available wall space, and a huge drafting table took up almost half the room.

“Well, I’m just happy this apartment came equipped with a decent jelly-roll pan because I don’t feel like driving home to get mine and I’ve got to deliver this cake this afternoon.”

He studied her, his head angled, his eyes bright. “C’mere.”

And, just like that, she did. He was perched on his stool in front of the drafting table and she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

He flicked his finger on her cheek, then licked it. “Chocolate on strawberry. My favorite.”

She snuggled closer, a familiar warmth folding through her like the satiny cocoa filling she’d just simmered on the stove. “What are you working on?” she asked, looking at the drawing in front of him. Rather than buildings or floor plans, this was a map of sorts.

“The traffic delivery system.”

“The what?”

“Roads. To, from, and around Casa Blanca. But I really need to hear from my sister about those properties. She said she’d have information today about who bought them, and she’s supposed to call me any minute. Knowing if we can have them really makes a difference in how I design the traffic pattern in and out of the resort.”

“What if we don’t know that, Clay? What do we present? Ideas with or without the other two properties included?”

“Definitely with,” he said. “We’ll find out who bought them and we’ll figure out a way to get them. That’s just an obstacle.”

Which never bothered him. If she’d learned nothing else from Clay Walker, it was how to get over brick walls.

“So we are going to present as if we own the land. And we need to address traffic patterns in that meeting.”

That meeting. The pressure of knowing that it was less than five days away almost made Lacey hustle back to her ruffle cake for some baking stress relief. But she stayed against Clay’s warm body, and the anxiety magically lifted. Another small miracle. Who knew a man could be better than baking?

Not a man. This man.

“You look worried,” he said, scrutinizing her face. “I can do this segment of the presentation, no fears.”

She shook her head. “I’m just worried about everything. Including my ruffles. They can be tricky.”

Nuzzling her, he worked his mouth into her neck for a kiss. “I like your ruffles.” Sliding one hand over her breastbone, then lower, he caressed her nipple. “And your ridges.”

“Very original,” she laughed, arching into his touch because she couldn’t stop herself. That’s what he did to her every time. “And there can be no sex until I finish a second pan of chocolate, then make the ruffles, top the cake and—oh, shit!”

He eased his hand away. “What?”

“I forgot shelf liner to keep the chocolate against the sides. Damn, I shouldn’t have agreed to a cake this complicated. No,” she corrected herself, “I should have made it at home where I have everything. Except…”

“Except what?” he prodded, pulling her closer.

“Except that isn’t home. It’s my mother’s house and she probably doesn’t have shelf liner, either.”

“There’s a hardware store five minutes away.”

Of course, he’d get right over the hurdle. He slid off the stool, wrapping her in both arms just as snugly as she planned to wrap that cake.

“Relax, Strawberry. It’s all going to be okay. You’ll finish the cake and we’ll finish this presentation and we’ll even get to sneak into bed later this afternoon and”—he tipped her chin—“we’ll finish what we started when you walked in here this morning loaded down with bags of baking equipment.”

She tried to swallow but couldn’t, choked by desire and disappointment and happiness and hope and fear all at the same time. How was that particular mix of emotions even possible?

“I’m homesick.” The admission popped out before she gave it a moment’s thought, but the minute it did, all the emotions made sense.

She expected him to scoff, but he didn’t, just looked at her with a very understanding expression.

“I miss having my own house. My own stuff. My own mess and special places to keep things. I want to bring you home, not to my parents’ house where my ex is hovering like a helicopter and I don’t even sleep in a room I can call mine.” Her voice cracked again, and this time she couldn’t fight the tear that spilled. “You can’t imagine how hard it is not having your own place.”

“Of course I can,” he said. “Look around. You think I want to work like this? But you’ll get there.”

“Will I? I’m working so hard to build a business and this resort. But that’s just a place for other people to have a vacation. Is that any kind of home? How will I raise Ashley there? How can I give her a—”

“Shhh.” He put a finger over her lips. “I bet I know how to make you stop crying and start smiling. Come with me.” He started walking toward the hallway, but Lacey stayed put.

“You can’t take this feeling away with sex, Clay.”

“Come on, Lace.” He tugged at her hand. “I want to show you something.”

“Oh, I know what you want to show me, and I’m telling you, that’s not the answer to everything when your heart is breaking. And I need to finish my cake.”

He turned, still holding her hand. “Please come in the bedroom with me.”

“No.”

He closed his eyes, almost fighting a smile. “Okay. Then wait here. This was going to be a surprise after the town council meeting, but I think this is a better time.”

He dropped her hand and walked away, leaving her to stare after him. Then, burning with curiosity, she followed, peeking into the bedroom to see him on his knees, reaching under the bed.

He pulled out a few tubes of paper, folded back a corner to read something, then selected one of the rolls, shoving the others back under the bed.

For a moment she thought he was getting her shelf liner, since the paper looked thick enough to use. But then he unrolled the rubber band and spread a large blueprint over the bed. “This is something I’ve been working on for you.”

The sketch of a building was similar in style to what he’d done for Casa Blanca, but this structure looked a little bigger than the villas yet still within the traditional Morocco-blended-with-old-Paris motif he’d captured for the resort.

But this was different, homey somehow. Intimate and inviting. This was like a…

“A house?”

“A home. For you and Ashley.”

“Oh. Clay.” She brought her hand to her mouth, as if she could contain the feeling welling up inside of her.

“You know that little corner, way at the end of the Tomlinson property line, just off the beach?” he asked. “I think we could build this right there, sort of at an angle facing southwest. You’d see Barefoot Bay and the resort, but be tucked away from the action of the business.”

This was perfect. Too much. Too perfect. “How could I afford this?”

“Some creative financing,” he said. “I’ve been talking to my sister about some mortgage options. In fact, that’s another thing she’s supposed to call me about today.”

She looked up at him, a new waterfall of feeling cascading over her. “You talked to your sister about my house?”

“Of course I did. I’m close to her. She’s the only family I have now.”

“You have—” Me. She stopped herself before the word was out. “You have really blown me away with this,” she finished, turning to the drawing, kneeling just to get closer to it. “This is just incredible.”

“That’s just the front elevation,” he said, coming right down next to her to turn to the next blueprint. “Here’s the back.”

“It’s even prettier. Is that a balcony?”

“I thought that would be Ashley’s room. I gave her the whole upstairs, for, you know, teen privacy. But we could do anything to the floor plan.” He flipped another page, and her heart went with it.

We could do anything. Yes, yes they could. Couldn’t they? Her eyes filled again, making her vision too blurry to make out the clean lines of a kitchen and family room, a dining room and laundry. It was too much. He was too much.

“I thought we could—”

She cut off the suggestion with a kiss, hard and hot and as forceful as she could make it.

Under her lips, he laughed softly. “I take it that means you like it.”

“I like it. I like it. I like you.”

He chuckled again, the words having become a secret message between them. “I thought you said no sex until you do something to that cake.”

“I need to do something to you first.” She pressed herself into him, her fingers already grasping for more of him, dragging down his chest, over the delicious muscles, down to the zipper on his shorts.

Heat and desire pooled between her legs as she pushed him back to the floor and he tugged at her top to slide it up and get to her breasts. The instant his hand slipped under her bra her nipple budded in his hand, fireworks crackling through her, a molten ache building for more.

“Wait a second,” he murmured, breaking their kiss. “I just heard my phone.”

She clutched his hand and pulled him back to her. “Voice mail.”

“It’s Darcie,” he said. “That’s my sister’s ring. She has a ten-minute window free today and this is going to take longer than that.” He kissed her on the nose, pushing himself up. “Hold that thought, Strawberry. I’ll be back in a minute, hopefully knowing who bought the land and how you can get a great mortgage on this house. Then we can celebrate all afternoon.”

She smiled, watching him hurry to the other room, where he’d left his cell phone.

Sighing, she leaned against the bed and stared at the blueprints again. How did he know? How did he know what mattered so much to her? This wasn’t part of the resort he had to build, this wasn’t something she’d asked him for. This was just him getting her.

That was what caused a whirlwind of emotions every time she was with him. He got her. He understood. Overwhelmed, she let herself tumble back to the floor with a sigh of pure happiness. As she turned her head with a little giggle, she spied the other rolls of drawings tucked beneath the edge of the comforter.

Actually, that paper would make good shelf liner.

Reaching for the closest one, she drew it out, aware of Clay’s monosyllabic answers on the phone. Were any of these blank? She uncurled one corner and saw a drawing of—Ashley?

Sitting up, she wiped away any guilt, rolling the rubber band low enough so she could see more of the drawing without actually opening it. Yep, it was a sketch of Ashley, looking up, laughing, a hammer in her hand.

Along the outside edge of the paper, in his square architect’s printing, Clay had written the word Family.

Family? Did he see Ashley as—

No, that could mean anything. Maybe these were more sketches of the house. Should she look?

From the living room she heard Clay’s baritone voice, a question, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She was so, so tempted to open this drawing, but it wasn’t her place. She’d ask him when he came back. He needed to explain why he’d referred to Ashley as family.

And then she’d show him just how happy that made her.