Welcome to Last Chance (Last Chance #1)(20)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Clay pushed that unwanted memory from his mind and tried with all his might to be positive about Ricki’s return. She was, to some degree, the answer to his prayer. She was mature. She had some experience. She was definitely interested in rekindling old flames.

Ricki looked up at him and brushed her incredible br**sts against him. He responded in a kind of mechanical fashion, proving that even at the age of thirty-four guys pretty much think with their gonads.

“I do appreciate you putting me up, Clay. I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Ricki said in that throaty voice of hers that had always given him hot flashes as a teenager. The funny thing was that Ricki, who had fulfilled every one of his teenaged fantasies, was falling short of the mark tonight.

While Jane had made him feel about sixteen on Wednesday.

And wanting to feel sixteen was a sure-fire sign that he’d reached middle age.

“It’s okay, Ricki,” Clay said, stepping away from her br**sts. He yanked open the sliding door and pulled her rolling bag out of the back of the van. He slammed the door and headed up the path without looking back.

He heard Ricki close the passenger door and follow. Her stiletto heels sounded like hammer blows as she strode up the concrete walk. As he slipped his key into the front-door lock, Ricki pressed her hot little body up against his backside. Man, she still felt soft in all the right places.

The woman expected to take up where they’d left off seventeen years ago. If he was still seventeen, he would probably take her up on the offer.

But he was thirty-four. And his mature brain had kicked in and sent up a number of warning flares. He had let himself go on Wednesday, and that had been disastrous. Ricki was definitely in the running to be his future mate, but that didn’t mean he had to sleep with her the first night of her return to Last Chance.

He could wait.

He opened his door and turned on the light. “You can sleep in the guest room,” he said.

She wrapped her arms around his middle. “The guest room?”

He turned and looked down at her. She wiggled her h*ps against him and smiled. “C’mon, Clay, you want me.”

“My dick wants you. My brain is being cautious. So you get to sleep in the guest room.”

“But—”

“Ricki, I’m not a fool. I know you came here because you have no place else to go. Everyone in Nashville knows what Randy did to you. And I’m truly sorry about it. I’ll help any way I can. But—”

“Clay, I still have feelings for you.” She pouted, and he remembered exactly how difficult it was to resist her.

“And I still have feelings for you. Some of them are not so happy.”

Ricki pressed against his pelvis a couple of times. “And some of them, obviously, are. I’d say you were extremely happy to see me, Clay. We all know you’ve been nursing a broken heart for almost a year. Is that how long it’s been since you got laid?”

He wasn’t going to dignify that question with an answer. Besides, it hadn’t been all that long, and, really, if he was looking for quickie sex, he would be seeking out Jane right at the moment. Because one time with that woman was actually not nearly enough.

“Ricki, I’m tired. It’s two in the morning. I got up early to work at Pete’s store. So if you don’t mind, I plan to sleep on it. You do the same. As it is, the entire town of Last Chance will be gossiping about us tomorrow morning. And I expect the Ladies Auxiliary will be planning our wedding by late afternoon.”

She laughed. “I could help you relax.”

“I imagine you could, but I think I’d rather sleep on it, seeing as I’m a grown-up now and not a horny seventeen-year-old.”

Clay turned away from his ex-girlfriend. He headed down the short hallway and opened up the linen closet and snagged a set of sheets and some towels. Then he opened the guest-room door. “Bed’s in here. It isn’t much, just a twin. Here’s some sheets and towels. Make yourself at home. I usually shower in the morning. You can have the bathroom anytime in the evening or after I leave for work. Good night.”

He tossed the linens on the bed and turned in the hallway, opened his own bedroom door, and gently closed and locked it behind him.

The lock was a kind of insurance. He could easily fall back into a relationship with Ricki. But for once in his life, he wasn’t going to just fall into love, or lust, or whatever. He wasn’t looking for a good time. He wanted the next woman to be the last woman he would ever make love to.

Clay was just settling down in his bed when the phone rang. At two-forty-five in the morning, a ringing phone could only spell disaster. Why was he so lucky?

He reached for his cell phone and pressed the talk button. “Hello?”

“Clay, this is Cousin Alex.” Alex always referred to himself that way even though, technically, Clay and Alex were not related—by blood, anyway. “We have a problem.”

“What?”

“Someone’s broken into the store and stolen a thousand dollars. I’m calling to let you know that I called Sheriff Bennett. He’s going to be coming round your place any minute.”

As if on cue, a light shone through his venetian blinds as a car pulled into his drive, its tires crunching on loose gravel. “Why’d you call Billy Bennett, when the store’s in Last Chance and in Stone’s jurisdiction?”

“Well, Stone’s down at the store. He’s the one who discovered the broken glass. When he called me, I decided I better call Billy, because it’s doubtful that your brother can be impartial.”

“Impartial? You have to be kidding me, right? Bill Bennett is your cousin. How does that make him impartial?”

“All I know is, one thousand dollars is missing and besides me, Momma, and Pete, you are the only one who knows the combination to the safe. The safe was opened without any sign of being forced.”

At that moment, the knock came on Clay’s door.

“Alex, go screw yourself.” Clay hit the disconnect button and took a couple of deep breaths before rolling out of bed and pulling on a pair of jeans.

Alex was, without question, the biggest a-hole in Last Chance, South Carolina.

It broke Jane’s heart to leave the CD player and CDs behind. For some reason those gifts seemed less like charity than the box of old clothes. But she left all of it that morning. She put on her old clothes and walked up the street to the bus stop.

She stood outside Bill’s Grease Pit, clutching a one-way Greyhound ticket to Columbia. She checked her watch; it was almost seven. The bus would be here in about five minutes.

She pressed her lips together, feeling the tears fill up her sinuses. She didn’t want to leave. But she had no other choice. She couldn’t bear thinking about what would happen when Ruby figured out the truth. And her heart wrenched every time she thought about Clayton P. figuring out that she was, in fact, Miss April in the Working Girls Go Wild calendar.

She had made a lot of bad choices in her life, starting with the doozy she’d made at seventeen. But she had recovered from those mistakes—at least until she allowed Woody West to sucker her.

And the main way she’d rescued herself was by posing for those photos. She had been eighteen years old, living in Florida, working at a fast-food place, and paying the rent had been a challenge. The only way to move up had been to find a better job, and that required financing her tuition to Beauty Schools of America. So those pictures, unfortunate as they might have been, had financed her future.

She knew the holy rollers in this little southern town would never understand that. And, Wednesday night notwithstanding, she had a feeling Clayton P. might not understand, either. She didn’t want to stick around to face that music. It would be better to leave now.

She looked down the deserted main street and knew a moment of deep longing and regret. A morning haze hung over the town and made it look mysterious and quaint. Last Chance, South Carolina, wasn’t very big, and there were a few empty storefronts on Palmetto Avenue, but right then, looking at it through the morning haze, it looked like a safe place. In the last two days, Jane had found kindness here for the first time in a long, long time. She didn’t want to leave, but she knew, firsthand, that kindness could turn in an instant. And she didn’t want to have to go through that.

Jane swallowed hard, trying to look on the bright side. Her two days in Last Chance had been eye-opening. Thanks to Clay, she had a positive plan for getting herself to Nashville, instead of relying on some weasel like Woody. As soon as she found a job and could scrape together a few bucks, she would replace that CD player she had left behind and buy all of Dolly’s CDs. She would learn that material, and she would get a regular gig with a country band instead of singing karaoke.

She only regretted that she hadn’t thanked Clay face to face last night or had a chance to sing “I Will Always Love You” for him and the crowd at Dot’s Spot. But maybe it was better this way, because Ricki was here now. And anyway, the man had settled down into the back of her mind the way winter settled into the Allegheny Mountains of her home. It would be a long, long time before she gave up his memory.

Chief Stony’s cruiser appeared out of the haze and glided up the street in her direction. She had been here long enough to know there were only two members of the Last Chance Police Department, Stone Rhodes and his deputy, Damian Easley. Jane had the distinct feeling neither of these guys ever slept.

The Crown Vic coasted up the street and came to a stop right in front of her. Chief Rhodes got out and strolled around the car, squaring up his Stetson so it shaded his eyes—an unnecessary action, since he wore mirrored sunglasses and the sky was overcast. The firm set of his jaw raised gooseflesh all along her back and arms. This was not a “howdy, ma’am” visit.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked as he came to a halt in front of her and hooked his thumbs into his utility belt.

Jane shrugged. “I decided there might be better opportunities in Columbia.”

A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Can I see your driver’s license, please?”

Oh, crap. She would have to haul out her expired license and get a lecture from him. Although she didn’t think there was any law against waiting for a bus with an expired driver’s license. And getting a lecture about her expired license would be better than making him suspicious by handing him the one that said “Mary Smith” on it.

She opened her purse and noted how Chief Stone went on alert. Hoo boy, the guy was bracing himself as if he thought she might be carrying a concealed weapon. His demeanor put her on instant alert. Something was going down here, and she had this awful feeling that it didn’t have a thing to do with the Working Girls Go Wild calendar.

Jane pulled out her wallet and handed him her license. The chief took off his sunglasses and put the wand through a loop on his shirt pocket. He studied her ID for a long time, and Jane’s hands got wet, and her mouth went dry, and her Greyhound bus pulled up.

“Uh, that’s my bus,” she said. “Can I go now?”

He looked up, his green eyes deadly. “I don’t think you’re going to make that bus, ma’am.” He looked over at the bus driver and waved him off. The Greyhound pulled out in a cloud of dust and diesel fumes.