Clay Read online

  Waiting, endlessly waiting while watching her child endure the pain of intermittent peritoneal dialysis every other night of her young life had worn on Janna’s nerves until she could stand it no longer. She’d picked up the phone and called the number of a doctor whose name had been whispered to her the last time that she’d waited outside the door of the pediatric critical care unit. Dr. Gower was a miracle worker, the last hope for patients like Lainey. He had been most interested in Lainey’s case and certain that he could find an appropriate black market kidney for her. She only had to wait a little longer. It might not be the optimum solution, but was better than any other that was offered.

  Janna was tired of waiting. Now she had a solution of her own.

  “You didn’t have in mind to hurt Clay, did ye?” the old man asked.

  “No.” Janna looked away as she spoke. It was true in principle, wasn’t it? “I just…I was just going to keep him here for a little while. Until it’s…over.”

  Arty grunted, then appeared to ruminate while staring at his hat, which he turned around and around in his hands. Finally he said, “I guess I could maybe bring Beulah over here.”

  She swung back to face him at the hint that he would not interfere. “Arty!”

  “Now don’t go making nothing of it. It ain’t my business what you do, and I guess you got your reasons.”

  “You know…”

  “Don’t tell me!” he said in irascible haste. “Less I know, the better I like it. Besides, I got eyes in my head for what’s going on, don’t I?”

  Janna was silent as she wondered just how much the old man really did see. She glanced at Clay, who seemed to have drifted into deeper slumber now, then back again to Arty.

  As if in reply to the strained speculation of her gaze, he gave a curt nod. “I ain’t doing this for you, but for the little gal.”

  “It’s the same thing, really,” she answered, her voice quiet. “But I don’t care why you’re doing it. I’m still grateful and will love you forever.”

  “Be a waste,” he answered succinctly. “You’d do better saving that for some hunk like Clay, here. But enough palaver. You’ll be needing some help with him. Might be best if he’s well and truly hog-tied before he wakes up.”

  It seemed an excellent idea.

  Janna had heavy jute string that she used in her fabric dyeing, but couldn’t imagine it would be stout enough to hold a man like Clay. A diligent search turned up little else among her belongings or in the camp house. Just when she was becoming desperate, she found the veterinarian’s supplies on Clay’s airboat. The vials of muscle relaxants and other medical tranquilizers for large animals were tempting, but she settled instead for an armload of animal restraints. At least, that’s what Arty called the bundle of nylon ropes and plastic covered steel cables and chains she showed him.

  Clay used the things to immobilize Beulah and other such patients, or so Arty claimed. He had trained as a vet and actually had practiced with the local horse doctor for a time. That was before he’d abandoned that career to devote his time to rambling through the swamps with camera in hand. He’d gained a measure of fame and glory as a nature photographer the year before with publication of his coffee table book on the Tunica Parish wetlands, and was working on a second book at present. Regardless, he still saw special patients, like Beulah, from time to time. His equipment appeared to be in excellent working order, especially with the addition of a couple of padlocks and keys taken from the boathouse.

  In a relatively short time, Janna and Arty had heaved Clay’s inert form onto the mattress of the iron bedstead and fastened his wrists in front of him with one short length of nylon rope with end loops. While she slid a second rope around his waist to secure him to the bed frame, she asked, “You know Clay well?”

  “I should smile, I do,” the old man said. “Been seeing him back here in the swamp since he was a boy, him and his brothers and all his cousins—that would be Wade and Adam, and Kane, Luke and Roan, too.”

  “You know whether he’s married then?”

  The old man gave her a sly look. “Now why’d you want to know a thing like that?”

  “Not the reason you’re thinking,” she said shortly. “I just wondered who will miss him when he doesn’t come home this evening.”

  Arty snorted, a sound that might have meant anything. “Clay ain’t married. Lives alone for the most part, says no woman could put up with his rambling around the swamp for days on end or dragging home muddy plants, sick birds or hurt things. Probably right, too.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  “’Course, some folk could still get a mite perturbed if he stays gone too long.”

  “Such as?”

  “Roan, for one. Clay’s supposed to dress up in a fancy suit and stand up at the sheriff’s wedding, or so he told me the other day.”

  Janna stiffened. “You don’t mean it?”

  “Big to-do, for these parts anyway,” the old man said with a nod. “The sheriff went and got himself a rich wife with a lot of high-falutin’ friends. They started out planning just a little bit of a wedding, but the thing’s sort of snowballed on ’em. Least, that’s the way I hear it.”

  “You think the sheriff will come looking for him then.”

  “Sooner or later.”

  “How soon?”

  Arty rubbed the back of his neck as he squinted in thought. “Don’t rightly know. Might be a few days, might be longer.”

  She could be forced to move faster with arrangements for Lainey’s surgery. At the thought, she felt her nerves wind a few turns tighter. “The airboat,” she said. “It’s sitting out there in plain sight. I’d do something with it, but I can’t leave Lainey. I don’t suppose you would…”

  “’Bout as well, I suppose, since I’ve gone this far,” he said with a laconic rasp to his voice. “I can hide it over to my place.”

  One more problem down, Janna thought. And only a million or so more to go.

  Arty attached an extra length of plastic-coated cable to the nylon rope at Clay Benedict’s waist. The addition was long enough, barely, to reach to the bathroom that was just across the hall. The old man tested it for holding power, then stood staring down at the younger man for a long moment. Finally he gave a slow shake of his ragged head.

  “Sorry you helped me?” Janna asked from where she stood at the foot of the bed.

  “Just thinking about what’s going to happen, after.”

  In the stress of the moment, she hadn’t looked that far ahead and couldn’t seem to now for the jumble of thoughts and fears and plans in her head. “I don’t follow.”

  “I mean, when it’s over, or maybe just when Clay wakes up. He ain’t gonna like being tied down one bit.”

  No, she didn’t imagine he would. Her gaze flickered to the man on the bed, his solid bulk and strong, competent hands. “You think he’ll press charges, maybe for assault, kidnapping—whatever?”

  Arty pursed his lips. “Might.”

  Dread surged through Janna. She was perfectly willing to face prosecution for the sake of her daughter, but what would she do if she had to leave her to the care of someone else while she appeared in court, or worse, served time?

  “On the other hand, he might not,” Arty went on.

  “Meaning you think he’ll be too embarrassed?”

  “Wouldn’t say that.”

  Arty’s features had not relaxed. Studying the old-timer, she asked, “What, then?”

  “Don’t know, since Clay’s not exactly like other people. He’s a deep one, not easy to figure. He’s also a wild one, not some lapdog you can keep on a leash, and he’s tricky, especially with tools and such. Most country vets are, being as they learn early to make do with what’s on hand. You’ll have a job holding him, I can tell you that much. And I warn you that the devil may be in him when you let him go. Or what’s worse, if he manages to get loose on his own hook.”

  A shiver ran over her, bone-deep and completely involuntary. Th
en she lifted her chin. “He won’t find it easy to get away from me. And when he’s finally free and in shape to get back at anyone, then I’ll be far away from here.”

  “You’d better pray you’re right,” the old man said, his voice dour.

  She did that, and fervently.

  2

  Clay awoke in ragged snatches, like hacking a path through the thick jungle of his mind. He lay still with his eyes closed while he assessed the situation. His head hurt like hell, the back of his skull felt as if it had been thumped against the floor, the inside of his mouth was like a desert and he couldn’t feel his hands. He also had a strong sense of being watched.

  It wasn’t the best start to a morning he’d ever had. Still, he was sure it was daylight for he could see its brightness through his eyelids.

  The last thing he remembered was late afternoon of the day before, and stopping to visit a few minutes with Denise’s friend who had borrowed the old fishing camp. His cousin, who had escaped Turn-Coupe for the delights of New Orleans, had asked him to look in on Janna Kerr. It was likely he’d have stopped by anyway, of course, since the camp was his great-granddad’s old place, and he and his two brothers shared ownership with Denise. Janna had turned out to be an Amazon almost as tall as he was with a plait of silver-blond hair as thick as his arm hanging down her back. She had stepped out to greet him as he pulled up at the rickety dock. They’d talked a few minutes, and then she’d invited him inside for a cup of coffee.

  It had been terrible stuff, he remembered that clearly. He’d swallowed most of it while it was still hot because he felt it would gag a mule when it cooled, but also because he’d been brought up to be polite. In any case, he’d been too intrigued by Janna Kerr, by her dark brows and lashes in striking contrast to her pale hair and dove-gray eyes, and her calm self-possession while living in such isolation, to give it more than surface attention.

  Big mistake.

  God, but who’d have thought that a woman who looked like a Greek goddess come to life would slip him a Mickey? He might have been on his guard in some New Orleans dive, but not out here in the back reaches of the lake where it met the swamp. He could remember, barely, the hope and horror in the woman’s face as he’d passed out at her feet. Now she had him trussed up like a Christmas turkey, or at least he assumed the restraints were her idea. The crazy thing was, he didn’t know whether to kick and curse—or lie back and enjoy it.

  A soft sigh feathered over his face, coming from only inches away. Clay prided himself on excellent self-control, but his eyelids snapped open; there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  The face so close to his was beautiful, with a delicate oval shape surrounded by soft blond curls, smooth, fine-grained skin, rosebud mouth and silky lashes of ridiculous length surrounding the clearest, most intense blue eyes nature ever made. It also belonged to a child, a girl maybe seven years old, eight at the outside.

  “You’re awake,” she said, a smile breaking across her face in sunny brilliance. “I’m Lainey. Who are you?”

  “Lainey,” he repeated. His voice sounded husky from disuse, even in his own ears. He could feel his heartbeat slowing again, and was wryly aware that its fast pace had been because he’d expected to find a very different female beside him in the bed.

  “Where did you come from? You weren’t here when I went to sleep.”

  Clay did his best to focus on the questions and other details of his surroundings, but it wasn’t easy with his head pounding like a jackhammer and a small nose mere inches from his own. “I came by boat,” he answered, even as he dredged his mind for the scant details Denise had given him about her tenant. “You wouldn’t be Janna Kerr’s daughter, would you?”

  “Yes, I would. I mean, I am. She’s my mama.”

  So much for fantasy. “And where’s your dad?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  The unconcern packed into those three words held Clay silent for long seconds. “No?”

  The girl plucked at the ruffle on the dress of the rag doll she carried then met his gaze. “Mama says we don’t need a man, that we’re better off without one.”

  “Then what, I wonder, does she want with me?” he asked with irony and no real expectation of an answer.

  “I wonder, too,” the girl said, her tone matching his word for word. “Are you going to get up?”

  Clay considered that idea a second. “I’m not sure.”

  Young Lainey drew back. “Why not?”

  “I seem to have a problem here.”

  She glanced from his bound hands to the restraint at his waist, then back again. “I think maybe you could stand up, if you tried hard enough.”

  “Thank you for that vote of confidence,” he said as he levered himself to one elbow. “But it’s not as easy as it may look.”

  “Are you sick?”

  “Not exactly.” He felt a little queasy, but there seemed no point in admitting to that weakness.

  “You can have breakfast with us if you’re hungry. Mama’s making scrambled eggs and orange juice, but no bacon. I can’t have bacon.”

  There it was again, that matter-of-fact acceptance of another of life’s major defects. Clay looked at the child more closely. Her skin was milk-white and so transparent that the veins showed beneath it. The shape of her small face was altered by puffiness at the jawline and around her eyes. In stark contrast to her sunny disposition was the impression of haggardness caused by brown-tinted half-moon shadows under her eyes, shadows that were the trademark of kidney malfunction. Her arms were thin, and in the crook of one elbow could be seen the needle mark and bruising caused by a recent blood test.

  Janna Kerr’s daughter was one sick little girl. Clay felt his chest tighten with sympathy even as he swallowed a rush of bile. He hated needles, hated them for himself, hated them for other people. It was the main reason he had dropped out of premed, the reason he was no longer a vet. He couldn’t overcome that inborn antipathy, couldn’t stand to stick even an animal, much less a person.

  Shifting his gaze from the needle prick, Clay met the small girl’s gaze once more. A tingling sensation moved over him then, one that was oddly familiar. He studied her features more minutely; the vivid blue eyes, the almost adult thickness of her brows, the high cheekbones. These were striking trademarks that he’d noticed before, he thought, in photographs seen briefly yesterday afternoon. Her hair was like her mother’s, but the rest of her features in combination gave her a look that was oddly familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it.

  “Lainey! What are you doing in here?”

  Janna Kerr spoke from the doorway, her voice holding equal parts of anger and concern. The small girl whirled around at the sound, the picture of guilt.

  Clay put his bound hands on her arm in an instinctive gesture of reassurance. The silvery-gray eyes of the woman in the doorway widened with dismay, as if she thought he might contaminate her daughter. His temper, quiescent until that moment, flared into life.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice silky as he drew Lainey closer to him. “Don’t you want her to meet the man who spent the night with you?”

  “You did no such thing!” The Kerr woman drew a deep breath. “Turn her loose, or I swear I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” he interrupted. “Make me another cup of your special coffee? Thanks, but no thanks. I believe Lainey and I will have our breakfast here, together. Unless, of course, you’d like to explain to me what the hell you meant by—I mean, why the heck you decided to keep me around?”

  Her gaze flickered, perhaps in reaction to his obvious reluctance to use profanity in front of her daughter. Then her chin came up and she advanced a step into the small room. “I don’t have to tell you anything. You will let my daughter go this instant, or I swear I’ll make you extremely sorry.”

  “Mama…” Lainey began, a small frown between her eyes.

  “I’m sorry already, lady. If I’d known Denise had let a crazy woman have this camp,
I’d never have come anywhere near it. And I can promise I’ll be out of your hair and your life in two seconds if you’ll just let me up from here.”

  “You’ll leave when I say so and not before,” she answered. Hard on the words, she swooped down on Lainey, caught her around the waist and snatched her up.

  “Don’t! Mama, wait!”

  Clay could have held on, could have turned it into a tug-of-war, but it wasn’t in him to injure the little girl in any way. The instant she cried out, he let her go. Then he watched with his lips set in a grim line as Janna backed away with her to the door.

  “You hurt me, Mama,” Lainey wailed.

  “I’m sorry, honey, so sorry, but I had to get you away.”

  Voice abrupt, Clay asked, “What’s wrong with her?”

  Janna stopped as if she’d hit a stone wall. “Nothing’s wrong with her.”

  “I know better,” he insisted. “I’ve got eyes, not to mention a bit of medical training.”

  “Then maybe you should tell me the problem.”

  “Renal disease, at a guess. Is it hereditary?”

  “Certainly not,” she answered with a catch in her voice.

  “The result of a virus or some other illness, then. How far advanced?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “She’s a sick kid from what I can see.”

  The blood receded slowly from Janna Kerr’s face. “You see too much,” she answered, then closed her lips in a tight line, as if she’d said more than she’d intended.

  “So why is she way out here at an old fishing camp without modern conveniences beyond running water, a working bathroom and electricity?” He watched her, his eyes narrowed.

  “My work requires that I travel to out-of-the way places for short periods of time and she has to go with me. Besides, I have a cell phone. Not that it’s any of your concern.”