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.
Chicago had a fabulous skyline, far better than Charlotte’s. Her modern chrome-and-glass furniture would fit right into one of those high-rise apartment complexes across the way. She had several college buddies here, and she’d been wined and dined since arriving. She’d spent the last few days in interviews and her spare time finding trendy little restaurants, nightlife, and art galleries. She could have all that, if that was what she wanted.
If that was what she wanted.
She wanted a future with Clay. She would take the Monkey’s jukebox and Clay over bankers and Chicago’s most sparkling nightclubs any day of the week. But if Clay didn’t want her... She had to decide what was best for her, not anticipate a future she had no reason to expect, based on a man who might be in Tahiti tomorrow.
As the CEO’s spiel wound down, Rory offered her hand. “You’ve made an excellent case for transplanting to Chicago, thank you. May I get back to you in a few days?”
Rushing for the elevator and the airport limo waiting for her, she couldn’t believe she’d said that. She could handle anything that affected her family’s financial future from Chicago, probably better than at home. She’d have access to more funds, more people, more everything. She could find loans for the Binghams to develop the swamp, more distributors for Clay if he continued developing software, scholarships for Mandy. She’d have sources at her fingertips.
She should have sealed the deal, signed the contracts, and offered to go to work right there and then. The money and benefits were fabulous. She could support her whole family without their ever having to earn another dime. She could build a garage for their new truck. She’d have all the security she’d ever craved. She could have the fast-paced city life that had been her dream since childhood.
She was no longer that child.
She argued with herself all the way back to Charleston. She cried, and hid the tear tracks by staring out the airplane window. She could have it all, everything money could buy, including the security her impoverished childhood demanded.
The words to an old song immediately trilled in her mind: Can’t buy me lo-ove…
But that was what life was about, wasn’t it? Choices. She could take a risk on the man who offered everything her heart desired, or she could have the security she craved. She couldn’t have both.
She didn’t bother dissolving into the old protests of “It isn’t fair.” One made choices and paid the consequences. Risk everything for happiness, or take the safe road and be satisfied. Cissy had risked and lost. Rory had learned from her and always chosen the safe road.
Loving Clay enough to throw away her career in hopes that he might love her back someday was the height of idiocy.
She was still arguing with herself when she boarded the airport van in Charleston. For her family’s sake she needed to take the safe road, she reasoned as the car drove away from the airport. She had invested a lot of years in becoming a woman of the world. She no longer belonged in the rural town where she grew up.
But her heart belonged there. It wept as she rode toward the clear blue skies and open marshlands of the coast. She craved a steaming bowl of crab gumbo, a brisk walk on the wet sand, and the familiar drawl and welcoming hugs of her neighbors.
She craved the security of love as much as money.
Maybe more. If it had been only her family’s love she craved, she might work this out. But she’d go crazy longing for the love of a man she couldn’t have. She didn’t dare take that path while her emotions scraped her raw. She had to think clearly, and Clay turned her thoughts into passionate sunsets and moonlit nights. Thinking wasn’t what she did around him.
She had to take him out of the picture if she wanted to make a decision based strictly on known factors. Still, she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the courthouse clock as they drove through town. What had he done when he found out she’d left? She didn’t see anyone on the roof.
Watching the crystal blue of the harbor out the car windows, she tried not to wonder what Clay was doing or thinking now. If she walked away, she would never have to wonder again.
She blinked back tears as the driver turned the car down the road toward home. A convoy of trucks carrying balled and burlapped trees and shrubs blocked half the road. No one bought landscaping out here. People just dug up what they needed from the fields.
“Looks like the highway department’s been busy,” the van driver said, gesturing toward a mountain of wood chips. “That used to be all burned trees last week. They even hauled out the roots so the land can be replanted. Someone has clout.”
Jeff and Terry? Rory had a hard time believing that, but they’d promised, and here it was. She smiled at the sight of painters restoring the bubbled finish on Erly’s fence and more men crawling up ladders on his neighbor’s house. Perhaps the insurance companies had all gone together to start repairs at a quantity discount.
Brand-new rosebushes bloomed all along the next fence. She was certain that stretch had been burned out as well. With fascination and a growing joy that her home was being restored better than new, she searched for more changes, finding a painted gnome among newly planted petunias in one garden, a new gaudy gold mailbox amid a circle of young azaleas at the bottom of a drive lined with tender willow oak saplings.
There were still telltale signs of the fire here and there: a scorched tree trunk with branches trimmed back to new leaf shoots, a blackened field just beginning to shoot up sprigs of green, a telephone pole that hadn’t been replaced. The usual beds of rampant flowers and shrubs and eccentric lawn ornaments hadn’t been completely restored, but the half bathtub with its concrete Madonna was freshly painted, and the rosebushes around it would be full of blooms in a week or two.
Miracles happened. Her heart was pounding harder than her chest could contain it as she climbed out of the car at her front door and handed the driver a tip well beyond the expected. She was afraid to go inside, afraid her bubble would burst once she heard the real reason for all these changes.
Her father’s concrete statues had been stripped of their burned paint. Someone must have hauled in an entire tank of paint remover and dipped them en masse. She could see stains of color here and there, a little red on a dwarf’s vest, a bit of gold in a fairy’s wings. One of the massive fountains had been given a white base coat, and several of the ducks and turtles already sported new paint jobs.
Burned shrubs had been ripped from the fence rows, and the ground had been tilled, ready for replanting. At the sound of hammering, she peeked around the corner of the trailer and saw a wood frame going up where the toolshed had been. The frame was far larger than the old shed, big enough to be a garage. She didn’t recognize the carpenter.
Work trucks littered the drive, but the candy-apple-red extended cab was nowhere to be seen. Maybe nobody was home.
She was hit with the realization that she had been eagerly anticipating entering a house spilling over with life and laughter. She would never enjoy an empty apartment again, no matter how fashionable. She wanted to share Mandy’s shrieks of triumph when she received her driver’s license and scholarships. She wanted to help Cissy get back on her feet again. She wanted her father’s hugs and earthy advice and bottle caps promising prizes.
She wasn’t a rebellious child wanting the respect money bought anymore. She’d seen the world and knew what was really important.
Tears threatening to stream down her cheeks again, Aurora dared the front door. A telephone rang as she entered. A computer announced someone had mail. A sorcerer dressed in robes with moons and stars waved a magic wand on the TV screen. Stacks of paper covered the once pristine carpet, and filing cabinets lined the wall where the knickknack shelf had been. The big green sofa had been shoved aside to make room for a desk and computer table.
Cissy jumped up from an office chair at Aurora’s entrance—or jumped as best as she could with her healing hip. “You’re back, thank goodness! We were afraid you’d moved up there. Here, you need to talk with the banker. I have no idea what he’s going on about.” She shoved a message slip at her.
Hugging Cissy, taking the pink piece of paper, Aurora felt something shift into place. Still too overwhelmed by all the changes, she didn’t analyze the feeling as the back door opened and her father stalked in. Behind him trailed Clay.
His eyes met hers over Jake’s shoulder. Aurora tried to read his blank expression, but Clay had his turtle act down to perfection. He merely threw a file folder on the kitchen table and waited while Jake shouted his welcome and began a spiel about the new mold he’d installed that would make his fortune.
At Aurora’s congratulations, Jake grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and wandered out again, satisfied that she’d arrived home safely.
Clay remained. Unable to make sense of all the changes and still read his mind, Aurora focused on what she could. “Wait a minute, if you’re all here, where’s the truck?” She was terrified they’d tell her someone had wrecked it. Mandy? Mandy wasn’t here.
As if understanding her panic, Cissy stepped in. “Mandy got her beginner’s permit. She and Erly have gone out to Grandma Iris’s. The Binghams are gathering out there before the zoning meeting, and we promised to give them all our charts and research.”
Somewhat shakily, Rory nodded her head. She’d have to remember that having family around would always mean living with fear as well as joy. Her safe, sane—lonely—existence would be transformed into one upheaval after another if she stayed here.
She couldn’t stay here. Glancing around the littered front room, she knew this wasn’t her home. Just as she’d outgrown childhood dreams, she’d outgrown the trailer as well. Cissy was welcome to it. She didn’t belong. She needed her own space. If she stayed on the island...
She turned back to the man who possessed the power to keep her here or drive her away. Her heart raced a little faster as she looked for some signal, some sign of hope from him. But he offered none. She supposed he was waiting for an explanation.
“I’ve been offered a job in Chicago,” she said nervously. Since Clay wasn’t inclined to talk, she had to be the one to get it out in the open. She didn’t know what he wanted from her, if anything, so she had to make him understand where she stood. “If I take it, I’ll help you find someone else to deal with the business end of the company.”
His flat nose didn’t twitch. She thought she saw fire erupt behind the gray glass of his eyes, but he banked it quickly.
“Thanks, but no thanks. If you want to go to Chicago, I can buy back your share. Just let me know how you want to handle it.” With those cold words, he walked out the back door. Before Rory could run after him and attempt to explain, a Harley roared into gear.
Cissy sighed and shook her head. “Damn, Rora, you sure know how to kick them where it hurts.”
“Where? How? He didn’t even give me time to finish!” Sick to her stomach, she stood there, bewildered, uncertain where she should turn next. She could get back to work; she still held the message slip from their banker, but she thought she’d just been fired. Again.
Cissy looked at her pityingly. “You may have school smarts, kid, but you’ve got a lot to learn about men. Clay’s turned this place upside down these last few days, trying to prove something to you, I guess. I take back any comparison to Dad I may have made. He’s chewed off chunks of Terry’s ass to get his equipment out here. He’s called every insurance adjuster in the book, pulling them together to move in construction crews. And when he isn’t yelling into the telephone, he’s meeting with the Binghams and the Nature Conservancy and the state and who-knows-all so they’ll have it all together for the zoning commission. He even talked to your banker friend about distributing some other software he’s developed so we can generate cash faster. I think that was akin to laying his life on the line for that man.”
Clay had exploded from his shell, and let his genius drive him, just as it had when he’d become a teenage millionaire. He was practicing his corporate skills to the max.
For her?
Dizzy with the possibility of it, afraid to take the leap of faith it would require to believe that Clay had decided to rejoin the real world for her sake, Rory took a deep breath. “Do you know where he just went?”
Cissy shrugged. “Could be anywhere, but when he wants to think about things, he takes apart the clock.”
She knew that. Shedding her fear, regaining her confidence, and with it, her fury that Clay hadn’t waited to hear her out, Rory started for the back door. If they meant to build a future together, the damned man would have to learn that not everyone possessed his intuitive instincts and had the courage to leap blindly into the fray. She needed to logically work things out, one step at a time. “Does Pops still keep his bike keys in the saddlebag?”
“Far as I know. Wait a minute—”
But Rory didn’t have a minute. She’d waited far too long already.
With determination, she ran for the motorcycle parked under the lean-to at her father’s warehouse.