Fireflies and Magnolias (2 page)

It took a moment for her to regain her composure. “I don’t know, Rye, but I think we should ask her. Tammy’s become so brave.”

They were feeble words to describe how much she admired her sister’s transformation.

Her brother looked away, like he was fighting strong emotion too. “If Tammy does share her story, I probably won’t be able to sing afterwards, but I’ll handle it if she can.”

They would all be reduced to tears.

Everyone turned silent for a moment. “I’ll let you two continue to chat,” Clayton said, interrupting the quiet. “Do you need anything else before I go, Rye?”

Her brother shook himself visibly. “No, I think we’re good. If we keep talking about this, I won’t be able to eat a bite.”

She nodded to herself. Eating after she returned from the clinic sometimes proved challenging after what she’d seen. Other days, she worked so hard, her hunger knew no bounds.

“Why don’t you join us for supper, Clayton?” Rye asked, coming around the desk and clapping him on the back. “Tory’s cooking up something special, and we’d love your company.”

Clayton’s gaze clashed with hers. She knew him well enough to know what was going on in his head. Normally he wouldn’t hesitate, but since he knew she was staying for supper, he was thinking about jackrabbiting out. Being in her presence gave him heartburn, she suspected.

Well, mostly, except for the time he’d held her so sweetly in her brother’s moonlit garden to comfort her after a crazy fan broke into Rye’s house and scared Tammy and her kids. She thought of that moment in his arms every night before she went to sleep, and she prayed he would touch her again. Not in comfort this time, though, but in passion.

The push and pull between them was akin to a teeter-totter. In one meeting, she was the vulnerable one. In the next, it would be Clayton. The strength of the attraction between them unbalanced them both.

She tilted her head to the side and gave him her best Southern simper, the one she’d practiced in the mirror for years while attending Mrs. Augusta Keller’s Comportment School for Girls. His mouth turned up like he’d just tried chewing tobacco for the first time and found it disgusting.

“I’m sure Clayton wouldn’t hurt Tory’s feelings by running off without staying for a little spot of supper,” she added.

“I would never hurt a
lady’s
feelings,” he drawled. “Thanks for the invite, Rye.”

The insult in his voice was hard to miss, and her simper faded.

“You know you’re always welcome. Heck, without Tammy and the kids living here anymore, Tory and I sometimes don’t know what to do with ourselves in this big ol’ house.”

Amelia Ann wrapped her arm around her brother’s waist and kissed his cheek. “This house didn’t intimidate you before.”

He ducked his head, a sure sign he was embarrassed by his confession. “I never minded it before Tammy and the kids came to live here, but I kinda got used to having them around. Now Tory’s the only one I can sing goodnight to anymore.”

Her brother had undergone a tremendous transformation from badass country singer to family man. She wished Clayton would do the same. As far as she could tell, he preferred relationships shorter than the expiration date on a gallon of milk—if that. She’d often wondered if he was a natural player, or if a bad breakup had soured him to the idea of love. But since his closest friends were Rye and J.P., she could hardly ask around about his romantic past. Seeing Rye change had given her hope Clayton could change too.

“We have our weekly Sunday family dinners,” she told him. “Personally I love seeing Tammy and the kids in their new house. She’s never had that kind of freedom before, Rye, and you know how important it is for her.”

He hugged her close. “I do, sugar, and I’m happy for them all. I’m going to head upstairs to find my lovely wife. Y’all give me a moment, will you? I want to kiss her senseless before she makes me set the table.” Rye winked at her as he headed out the door.

Left alone with Clayton, she glanced over to see his neutral expression had fallen away. His mouth was pinched as tight as if he were drinking a sour mint julep.

“Yes?”
she drawled as if she didn’t know why he was upset.

“I know what you’re doing, Amelia Ann, and it isn’t going to work.”

She batted her eyelashes to annoy him. “Doing what, honey?”

“Don’t play the simpering Southern belle with me.” He stood and put his hands on his hips. “This act is beneath you.”

“But you don’t
like
women who challenge you, honey.”

He growled. “If you call me honey one more time, I swear…”

Oh, this was getting interesting. “You swear what?”

He opened his mouth to say something and then paused. “Nothing.”

Right, they both knew she was pushing him to lose his cool. She fantasized about driving him to the brink and cracking his iron-clad control. Then he would yank her into his arms and kiss her senseless—just like they both wanted.

So far he’d resisted.

She was going to keep pushing until he caved.

“Amelia Ann, I’ve tried to be nice, but this thing you want. Between us. It’s never going to happen.”

“Why not?” she asked just to keep him talking, allowing her a moment to savor his scent of leather, musk, and wood smoke.

“First, I’m one of your brother’s best friends. Second, he’s my boss. Third—”

“The fact that y’all are so close is a huge plus, don’t you think? There’s no one he would trust with me more. I mean, Rye is thrilled that Tammy and J.P. are together.” Like a good law student, she’d already made a pros and cons list.

“I’m not so sure you’re right about that. I’m not as lily white as that preacher-kid. Now if you’ll stop interrupting me, I’ll tell you the other reason. I’m thirty-one, and you’re twenty-three.”

“I’m twenty-four,” she told him, and it galled her that he didn’t know her age.

That growl again. “You’re still in school.”

“I’m in
law
school, Clayton. Don’t make it sound like I’m a schoolgirl in pigtails. We both know my family made me grow up a whole lot faster than most girls.”

“You mean your blueblood Southern family?” He took off his cowboy hat and slapped it against his thigh. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you about your maturity. Or anything else. I’m done talking about this. You can help out with the concert, but nothing is going to happen between us. Don’t make me tell you again.” He tipped his hat to her like a gentleman would and headed to the door.

That was all he was going to say to her?
“Clayton.”

He halted, but didn’t turn around. “I told you. Don’t.”

Then he walked off, his shoulders as stiff as an over-starched shirt.

The urge to scream in frustration was hard to suppress as she watched him disappear from view. She’d always thought it inevitable that she’d wear down his resistance some day, but now he seemed like an immovable rock, her arguments like raindrops that would take millions of years to change him.

Well, she’d been told how things were going to be before, and she hadn’t listened. This time she’d just have to do what she always did.

Insist on her own way.

Sweet talk when she had to.

And never back down.

Usually Tory’s cooking filled Clayton’s belly with old-fashioned goodness. Tonight he felt like that time in Gulf Shores when he had the fish surprise for dinner and was
surprised
hours later with food poisoning.

The fall air was still warm and humid as he slammed the door to his pickup truck after dinner. Amelia Ann gave him a playful wave from the top of the driveway, standing there with the moonlight turning her blond curls almost white. Even the shadow she cast depicted the luscious curves of her body. He jerked his gaze away and punched the gas.

But he couldn’t get her image out of his mind as he drove to the highway.

Amelia Ann.

Her name was as lyrical and intriguing as the woman she was growing into. She’d been in high school when he’d met her for the first time, backstage at one of her brother’s concerts. Her beauty had held the promise of a prized flower then. Over the years, he’d seen her blossom into the fully exotic specimen she was now.

Heck, she even wore a magnolia fragrance—all sweet Southern sass—that only made her seem more like a blooming flower.

She wanted him. On that point, she never prevaricated.

How did a man forget a woman who’d asked him to be her lover? At Rye’s wedding, when she so boldly asked him to dance—implying that it was just a euphemism for
more
—he’d felt his gut clench with heat. But thankfully a cooler head had prevailed. He’d tried to send her back to the schoolroom by treating her like a child. She’d only fought back more, this time with the Southern belle ways she still used to her advantage when it suited her.

If there’d only been heat between them, it would have been easier to resist her. But there was respect and tenderness too. She’d cried in his arms on a moonlit night he’d never forgotten, and he’d wanted to level all the reasons for her tears. Her transformation from a Stepford-wife-in-training into a confident, independent woman impressed the hell out of him. He knew the chains she’d snapped to become the first woman in her family to attend law school.

But that didn’t mean things could happen between them.

Especially with Rye being her brother and all. His friend might have mellowed since reconciling with his family and getting hitched, but he could still kick ass. And while he was happy as could be that Tammy had found her match in J.P., Clayton knew an older sister was different from a younger one. He could already feel the sting of Rye’s boot on his backside. It hurt even worse to contemplate the loss of a man he considered a brother.

Amelia Ann weakened his resolve, which was something he couldn’t allow. People who made themselves vulnerable got hurt, end of story. Right now he needed someone to remind him of that, and he knew the perfect person.

If Megan Proctor were home, she’d pick up the burner cell phone. If not, he’d hang up. He never left a message.

“Hello, Clayton.”

“I thought I’d call and see what you have for me.”

“I’m working as hard as I can to get you the actual name of the leak, but it isn’t easy. Just getting Gunner to tell me it was a female family member was hard enough.”

While Clayton understood that, it didn’t change their need for the actual name. The one person they’d believed the leak to be—Rye’s mama—had denied it vehemently. That meant they needed to continue to prove that Rye’s mama had lied, which wasn’t beneath her. Or that someone else had done it.

“You knew this was going to be a tough assignment when I hired you, Megan.”

“As I’ve told you over and over again, Gunner is still being very careful. It’s only been three weeks since I got him to let me use his home computer. It’s not my fault he doesn’t keep any work on it. It’s going to take longer to get him to bring me to his office, and even then, I’ll have to figure out a way to get on his computer there. This is all assuming he actually wrote the leak’s name down somewhere.”

“He’d have to tell his editor, and J.P. tells me the lawyers would have to know about it. They’d fear Rye would sue them over the story if their source wasn’t above reproach. There will be a record somewhere.”

There had to be. He was hitching all his hopes on Megan visiting Gunner Nolan’s office at
The Southern Mirror.

“I need that name,” he told her.

Since the story about Rye Crenshaw paying his sister’s ex-husband a million dollars to secure her divorce, Clayton had tirelessly pursued the leak. He and J.P. had used every legal means to make the reporter produce the name, but freedom of the press was a bitch. The reporter was protected.

So they’d resorted to a sneaky approach to discover the leak. They’d hired a hungry, unemployed actress to date Gunner Nolan, hoping she would secure his confidence enough to learn the name. Megan was the third woman they’d employed after the other two failed to catch Gunner’s notice. She was gaining his trust, and Clayton thought it was only a matter of time until she could give them what they wanted. Once they had the culprit’s name, the person could finally be punished, and it would send a clear message to the world to never mess with Rye or his immediate family again.

“You need to be patient,” Megan told him. “Making a man fall in love with you is hard enough, but…I’m starting to feel guilty here, Clayton. The more I get to know Gunner, the less right this feels.”

The last thing they needed was for her feelings to get involved. “You agreed to do this job, and you’re making a lot of money. If you can’t do the job anymore, we can end this arrangement.”

Starting over from scratch would be a bitch, but Clayton always kept his eye on the prize. It was something he’d learned from his mama.

“No! I can do it. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a human being.”

The lady had claws. They’d hired her for exactly that reason. Few women could pull off this act for a prolonged period.

“Are you implying I’m not human?” he asked since he damn well knew an insult when he heard one.

“You’re the boss. Would I ever say that?”

The sexy pitch of her voice would have made any man quiver with need. He could see why she was the one who’d finally landed Gunner.

“I need that name, Megan.”

“I know, dammit. Let me do my job my own way. We all know Gunner can’t suspect anything. You guys have a lot to lose if he starts investigating why I’m asking so many questions. One thing I do know is that he’s a damn good reporter.”

“You have everything to lose too,” he reminded her.

“I know. I’ll call when I have something.”

“Fine.”

He hung up and slammed his hand down on the steering wheel. At times like this, he wondered if they would ever learn the leak’s name—a quest that had come to feel all too personal. Going home held no appeal. It was barely nine o’clock.

He dialed up the third member of his and Rye’s Vandy trio. They’d become fast friends in college, and now they all worked together to support Rye’s superstardom. “Hey, J.P. What are you doing tonight, bubba?”