Free Carolina Girl by Patricia Rice Page A

he
thought he was doing.
    “This had better be good, McCloud,” she muttered
as he shoved open the old-fashioned wooden door of Cleo’s store.
    Ignoring her threat, Clay shouted for his sister-in-law
while steering Aurora through the maze of paint cans and lawn tools to the
counter in the back of the store.
    A head shorter than both of them, her short copper curls
tousled from her habit of running her hand through them, Cleo eyed their
approach with the same skeptical expression Clay normally wore. Seeing it,
Aurora laughed out loud and pulled away from his hold.
    “Hi, I’m Rory Jenkins, and I bet you’re
Clay’s ever-suffering sister-in-law. I’ll haul him right back out
of here, if you like.”
    The normally stoic Cleo almost broke a smile at that.
Lifting rounded eyebrows in Clay’s direction, she held out her hand to
shake Aurora’s. “Deal. Keep him away from the Monkey, throw him in
the harbor occasionally, and I’ll do whatever it is you want.”
    “A petition. We can keep a page here on the counter. I
want the zoning commission to hold off on any rezoning on the island until an
environmental study has been completed.”
    “You got it.”
    Clay glared at Cleo’s smug expression as she cleared a
stack of advertising brochures from the cluttered counter, but he didn’t
have to care what anyone thought. He just wanted...
    What the hell did he want? Certainly not another MBA with a
hidden agenda, although he was beginning to suspect Aurora didn’t hide
much. He just wanted to save the swamp.
    No wonder Aurora had rolled her eyes at him earlier. Even he didn’t believe that. He shoved his hands in his back pockets and held his
tongue.
    “I appreciate that.” Rory produced a file from
the bag slung over her back, removed several sheets of paper from it, and set
it on the cleared space. “Anywhere else you’d suggest leaving
one?”
    “The Monkey, Kate’s restaurant, and the
bookstore. Why don’t you give me a few of those? Jared can run them by
the schools and the yacht club, and get some of the hunters and fishermen into
this.”
    “You are a saint!”
    Clay watched in amazement as she produced still another
stack of papers from the bottomless bag. Maybe this wasn’t an intelligent
idea after all. Cleo and Aurora in one room could ignite explosions.
    On second thought, he’d always liked fireworks.
    “Bring me back a hamburger. I’ll be making a few
phone calls.” Cleo tucked a petition into a pocket of her tool belt and
turned an expression brimming with mischief on Clay. “I leave you in good
hands.”
    He wasn’t at all certain who was in whose hands, but
he felt a need to assert himself a little more forcefully than usual as Aurora
started toward the door without him.
    Catching up with her, he took her elbow again, opened the
door, and pushed her out. “I think that went well, don’t
you?” he asked dryly.
    “I think I’m going to like working with you,
McCloud,” she replied, taking off down the street, heedless of his hold
on her. “You’re so damned predictable.”
    Predictable ? He was a friggin’ genius .
Geniuses weren’t predictable, were they? His ex had called him an
uncommunicative sphinx in one of her better tirades. Other women had cooed and
called him mysterious and enigmatic—or the ones with a vocabulary had,
anyway.
    He hadn’t done a damned thing except take her to Cleo.
    Maybe he’d better make a few ground rules clear before
they got started—like that she should tell him what in hell kind of
petition they were carrying around, and why. If he blindly trusted an MBA, he
could be signing away his rights to live and breathe.

Chapter Seven
    “Coffee.”
    Without asking for her opinion, McCloud steered Rory down
the next block, in the direction of the concession stand at the harbor.
Unaccustomed to being hustled around in quite that manner, she wasn’t
prepared with an effective protest. She had a cup of coffee in her hand and
McCloud at a picnic table