Sunshine, lollipops, and Auroras are a few of my favorite things. Won’t you come make beautiful music with me?
Rory smiled at the silly message on her computer screen. Remembering the song from the Blue Monkey’s jukebox, she typed in, My idea of beautiful music is a bridge over troubled water. Do you wanna dance?
So it made no sense. Neither did his message. She simply wanted to connect with Clay, let him know she was thinking about him as she sat in her lonely bedroom, working up tomorrow’s to-do list while Cissy took Jake into town and Rory stayed with Mandy. If she had a car, she might have given in to her longing and driven over to his place. Good thing temptation had been taken out of her hands.
She no longer had a hard time imagining Clay as the author of silly love notes. After watching him in action, she fully believed he could turn the moon blue and ask which shade she preferred if she requested it.
She was in very grave danger here, and it wasn’t her future finances she was thinking about. Could she survive without a heart if it were stolen by a taciturn, unpredictable computer mogul?
o0o
Clay grinned at the instant message crossing his screen. He hadn’t slept last night while working a marathon session to fine-tune his script. His head ached, his eyes blurred, and he probably hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours. But Aurora’s note had him grinning like a fool.
He’d known she was clever. She’d started the classic- rock theme, so he hoped that meant she was connecting the messages with him and not daydreaming of some anonymous romantic hero.
He respected her insistence on staying in her own place to provide a good role model for her niece. He had to stay here and safeguard his files from any more break-ins. But he really needed Aurora tonight. On his own, he paid no heed to time or basics like food and sleep. He wasn’t a teenager anymore. He needed her here to drag him from the computer, tempt him with good-smelling meals, and seduce him into bed.
He needed a hell of a lot more than that, but he was scared to analyze his expectations.
He sent off an e-mail resigning his position with the state and offering to return their advance or the partially completed program he’d created with their funds. That should give a few people apoplexy and engender a few weeks’ worth of meetings before anyone acted on it.
He didn’t like taking their money when he’d used the list it generated for his own purposes. The program was complete enough to do what the state needed it to do; he just didn’t intend to show them how. Of course, if he and Aurora succeeded in obtaining the Bingham property for the nonprofit trust, they would sell the state the part it wanted for a nominal sum, so the state would come out ahead.
Figuring he’d better go to bed if he wanted to think at all in the morning, he typed, I can dance; love me do, hit send, and turned off the machine.
Stupid to mention love anywhere around a female, but he was tired, and Aurora would know the messages were for fun. He hoped he knew that.
The phone rang and he winced. Surely no one was working in the state department at this hour. Grimacing, he wandered into the kitchen to grab the phone before the answering machine kicked in. If he was really, really good, maybe it would be Aurora willing to whisper sweet nothings in his ear.
“It’s me,” TJ said without preamble. “Mara and I have some time off and we’re coming down. Want us to bring some real coffee?”
“Normal people aren’t up at this hour of the night,” Clay answered wearily, rubbing his forehead. His brother’s casual announcement didn’t fool him. TJ smelled trouble and was following his nose. Growing up in a family like theirs, they’d learned to communicate in cryptic asides rather than directly, as TJ’s response proved.
“Yeah, I know, but you never were normal. We’ll be staying at the B-and-B in town. Mara’s attached to the place. They haven’t built a Starbucks there since we’ve been down, have they?”
“I have no clue.” He never went looking for coffee shops. He drank coffee whenever someone handed it to him. He wished someone would hand him some now. “I’m in the middle of something big here, so I won’t have time to entertain.” He really didn’t think he was involved in anything important enough to drag TJ away from his new job. TJ was a forensic anthropologist and they hadn’t uncovered any dead bodies yet.
Hearing another receiver click, Clay pictured TJ gesturing at his movie-producer wife to grab the line. Babealicious Mara was quiet Cleo’s complete opposite, but then, so were Jared and TJ opposites. That was okay by him, but he really didn’t want his brothers involved right now. He needed to work things out with Aurora without his interfering family breathing down his neck, offering advice and messing with his head.
“Oh, I imagine you’re very entertaining without even trying,” Mara breathed into the line. “Maybe we should fly down so you can work on the plane engine?”
“I’m flying Harleys these days. Look, don’t come down for my sake, all right? Everything’s totally under control.” Or would be once he had the software under his belt and had time to go into town and knock a few heads together. He wanted to be there when Terry Talbert found out he wouldn’t be doing the programming. Maybe he could tell the turkey that a committee that didn’t have the sense to want Aurora didn’t need him.
Or would Aurora have a fit if he said something like that? Probably.
Mara took the conversational ball out of his hands and ran with it. “But interfering is what families do best! Look, if we don’t come down there, we’ll have to visit our mothers, and my inclination is to ship them to you instead. So try being gracious and smile when we show up.”
Clay smiled at the idea of shipping their problematic mothers anywhere. “All right, but you stand forewarned. No one sits around and does nothing here. We have a major project going down.”
“No skeletons,” Mara demanded. “This is a vacation.”
“I like skeletons,” TJ reminded her from the other phone.
“I don’t want any skeletons on our vacation,” Mara warned.
Laughing as he pictured the two of them sending smoldering looks across the room, each with phone in hand while arguing long distance, Clay hung up the receiver. They wouldn’t even notice he’d gone.
He wanted to have a relationship like that when he grew up.
Given his lifestyle and working habits, he had a fat chance of growing up, much less developing a relationship, but at least he knew a woman who liked him. The relationship element was where it fell apart. He’d have all he could do managing anything more than the business one—especially with his brothers and her family peering over their shoulders.
He thought being a turtle might have its advantages.
o0o
Composing herself, pretending she was simply walking into a meeting at her office where she would present loan proposals for a new business for someone else, Rory walked up the marble steps of the bank. She’d scheduled the meeting with Jeff for a Friday afternoon, when he’d be eager to escape for a round of golf. She wanted this short and sweet.
It had been only two days since the letters had gone out to the Binghams. The offer to set up the land in a nonprofit trust the family could control might already be stirring up talk among the local property owners. Soon they would have distant relatives talking to each other for the first time in their lives. Better that it was out in the open so the Binghams knew what was happening, and the bank and development companies couldn’t steal the land out from under them for lack of knowledge.
Now, if only she could talk the bank into leaving her equity loan open, they’d have a few hundred thousand more to invest in Clay’s software and, ultimately, an income for life, if “Mysterious” produced the astonishing profit Clay promised.
“Hello, Aurora! You’re looking fantastic.” Standing beside his secretary’s desk as if he’d been waiting for her, Jeff Spencer greeted her with the enthusiasm he saved for his wealthier customers.
He was as handsome as ever, still single, and rich enough to build his own house in one of the town’s McMansion neighborhoods. Rory figured any house Jeff built would have all blond-wood floors and white walls. Jeff never had possessed much imagination or color. As an insecure teenager, she’d seen that as steadiness. As a more secure adult, she recognized how boring that was—purple knights were much more challenging.
Boring Jeff could very well be behind the Commercial Realty ploy to buy out Cissy. She would have to play this one close.
“Thank you, Jeff,” she said with just the right amount of frost while sweeping past him into his office. She couldn’t believe that less than a month ago she’d stepped out of his way rather than rock the boat, and here she was now, ready to turn the boat over and shoot holes in it.
“I have the payoff calculated, as you requested.” He sat down at his desk and opened a file folder on his otherwise immaculate desk. “But you needn’t be hasty about this, you know. If you can show substantial assets outside of the land—”
“We’ve had an offer of ten thousand an acre, and with thirty acres, that’s more than sufficient to cover the current balance,” she interrupted in the crisp tones she’d learned to use in the banking world. “I’m prepared to write a check for the entire balance.”
No, she wasn’t. The lawyer had collected the prize winnings and deposited them this morning, so the money was technically there. She just needed as much of it as she could hold on to. Experience had taught her that meant she must speak from a position of strength. “I would prefer working with the local bank, of course, since I see no reason to tie up liquid assets, but if you are uncomfortable with the loan, then I have no difficulty taking our interest elsewhere. What is the payoff balance?”
Jeff looked uneasy as she produced her checkbook and a pen and waited expectantly. “Now, Rora, let’s not be so hasty. You know that ten thousand an acre is unlikely, and if you’ve really been offered that, you should grab it. We can come to some compromise—”
“No, I don’t think so. Our land is on prime property along the access road to the new state park. Since you’re so interested in developing a property tax base out there and the zoning commission won’t be interested in anything less, then I see no reason why we shouldn’t benefit from the ecological disaster that will result. That property will be worth ten times as much in ten years. I’m willing to take the risk. The payoff, please.”
He managed to shutter a brief expression of alarm, but his blatant self-interest couldn’t be as easily disguised. “Then you’ll quit fighting the zoning?”
Gifting him with her most dazzling smile and hiding the wolf grin behind it, Aurora put down her checkbook. “Why, Jeffy, if that’s been your concern all along, you should have said so. I’m about to move a multimillion-dollar corporation in there. One-bank shopping makes sense to me. Are you interested?”
He fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Rory decided she should have cut line and fished in deeper waters long ago.
She hadn’t said she’d quit fighting zoning, now, had she?
o0o
Limping down the cracked sidewalk from Cleo’s store, Cissy tingled with pride at the sight of her candy-apple-red pickup. She didn’t care if it wasn’t brand new. Buying vehicles new was a waste of money. But this one was as close to new as she’d ever owned, with hardly a dent or scratch on it. She had a working CD player and room in the narrow backseat to transport Mandy and her friends. She wanted to take it out on the highway and test the acceleration, but she hadn’t had an excuse to do so yet.
Sure, it was registered in the name of the corporation and not her name, and she hadn’t paid for it. But Rora had showed her the corporate papers with her name on them, and part of the million dollars was hers, so if she carried the keys, she figured that truck was bought and paid for.
The idea of being part owner of a corporation was so far beyond her comprehension that she dismissed it. Owner of a truck, now, that she understood.
In the sack from the hardware store was a computer cable. Cleo’s Hardware carried computer parts, since the town was too small for a specialty store. Cissy now knew what cables did and even knew which one to buy to connect Rora’s PC to the scanner Clay had brought over. She even knew what a scanner was and how to operate it. She’d be able to open her own computer store if she kept this up.
The warm fire in her belly at that thought was an unusual sensation. The maxim “With knowledge comes power” had always eluded her. How to find good clothes at the cheapest price and keep a grocery budget was knowledge, but she’d never considered it powerful.
But knowing all about computers could lead to a real future, a secure one, one that would make Mandy proud of her. Clay had been right: It was worth trading the opportunity for easy cash for the knowledge that would build a solid foundation.
A white Cadillac glided to a halt behind her pickup. Cissy glanced at her watch. Rora should be coming out of the bank any minute. They might have time to stop at the school and pick Mandy up so she didn’t have to take that slow school bus. She didn’t want to have to maneuver the truck out of a tight space if someone parked in front of her. She would move the truck and idle in front of the bank until Rora came out.
“Miss Jenkins, how fortuitous that we should run into each other!”
Distracted, Cissy glanced up at the business-suited gentleman climbing out of the Cadillac—Mr. Turner, from Commercial Realty.
Since rich gentlemen driving Cadillacs did not usually acknowledge her existence, Cissy remained on the sidewalk, watching his approach with suspicion. Once upon a time she might have flirted with a man who smiled at her like that. These days she felt older than the hills, but maybe a little wiser.
“How do you do, Mr. Turner,” she acknowledged his greeting politely.
“Have you given any thought to my offer, Miss Jenkins? I was surprised not to hear from you. It’s an excellent offer, and we’re saving that lot for you.”
“I don’t make decisions like that without some thought,” she said stiffly. Even with her newfound confidence, she hated giving up such a tempting offer. Did she really need all that land? Did it matter if her mother’s family had owned it for generations? Rory had asked how important it was to Cissy, but Rory hadn’t indicated that it meant anything to her.
“We’re quite anxious to start moving on this project,” Turner said with bluff good humor. “If you’re not interested, give your neighbors a chance.”
What if Rory and Clay were wrong? What if Turner really meant to build something out there, and he took his money to their neighbors?
It took all the backbone Cissy had grown over the years, and her respect for Aurora’s intelligence, to straighten her shoulders and look three hundred thousand dollars in the eye and kiss it good-bye. “I think you’d better start talking to my neighbors, Mr. Turner. My sister and I have other plans for that land, but thank you very much for your generous offer.”
She walked away from his stunned expression, terror and a floating feeling of freedom carrying her past the truck and down to the bank where she walked up the marble stairs as if she had as much right to be there as all the rich people did.
To Cissy’s pride and dismay, Rory was just leaving Jeff Spencer’s office, and the banker greeted Cissy as if she were a long-lost relative. Everyone in the lobby turned to stare, and she was wearing only her second-best jeans and a tank top.
But she owned a candy-apple-red pickup and had just turned down three hundred thousand dollars. Taking a deep breath, Cissy smiled and shook Jeff Spencer’s hand. She was a millionaire.