Chapter 2

[Clay]

Someone rustles beside me in bed before a voice softly speaking, as if to a child, awakens me.

My head is pounding like someone is jackhammering my skull. My throat is as thick as a forest, yet just as dry and brittle as one in the heat of August. My eyelids are heavy, refusing to open. I’m so tired, and I’m shivering.

Whoever moves away from the bed has taken all the heat and I tug at the blankets finding them already tucked up over my shoulders and beneath my chin. I’m reminded of being a kid, my mother pressing in the bedding around me.

“Gotta warm up my ball of clay, so he can get back outside and play.” The memory rushes in, almost as if I can feel her cool hand on my fevered forehead.

I haven’t thought of my mother as often at forty-three years old as I did when I was younger. When my ten-year-old self found her slumped over beside my parents’ bed, body curled inward, as if protecting our only sister who hadn’t been born yet. That was the day my world tipped on its axis.

And right now, I feel upside down as well. The sickening spin of the room has me fighting harder to open my eyes. Someone groaned. Was that me? I shiver beneath the layers of blankets.

“Clay?” A quiet feminine voice has me slowly lifting my lids, assuming my sister will be standing by my bed, telling me to get my ass up and get to work.

Instantly, my lids shut again. What time is it?

The brightness behind my lids tells me it must be daytime, somewhere past noon. Panic strikes. I have too much to do today, but with my head pounding, I’m slow to recall things on the list. Something about a shipment of animal feed arriving, and the part Perry ordered for his tractor which is in the back of my truck. A warehouse inventory and a check on our Christmas supply for the home merchandise section, and—

“Clay? Honey? Can you try to take these?” A cool hand brushes back my hair before resting briefly on my forehead. Then it sweeps down my cheeks and along my jaw before settling beneath my chin. I burrow into the soothing touch, calming strokes, and tenderness of delicate fingers.

Wait. Honey? My sister wouldn’t ever be calling me such a sweet thing in such a pretty voice. My eyelids fly open, and I freeze on the face of a woman that takes a second to come into focus.

Long, midnight colored hair hangs over her shoulders. Her face lightly tan, suggesting the coloring might be permanent. Her eyes wide and dark. Her smile weak, sympathetic, hopeful.

Mavis? Mavis Holland?

I blink once but can’t seem to find my tongue, the muscle dry as dust and swollen inside my mouth.

Mavis Holland is in my house. Squatting beside my bed. What the hell is she doing here? And how did I get here?

The night comes back to me like a trickle of rain. I’d driven a Sylver Seed & Soil truck to pick up a part for Perry. Deciding I was close enough to Glady, I called her. We were a situationship that cannot be defined other than scratching an occasional itch.

We didn’t have a schedule. We didn’t make plans. If one or the other of us wasn’t available or didn’t answer our phones, there were no hurt feelings. I hadn’t seen Glady in months, and not feeling so great, I should have stayed away. However, I figured getting laid out of convenience would hold me off for another few months. The decision was reckless. Glady turned me out the second she saw me, suggesting I might have a fever and should see a doctor.

Fuck that . I didn’t trust doctors. They’d been wrong in the past.

Then . . . the truck broke down on the way back to Sterling Falls. One of my assistant managers warned me the other day something was off with it. One more thing to add to the long list of what needed to be completed. As the CEO, a title still strange to me, and head manager of Sylver Seed & Soil, a family-owned business in which I was one of three family members actively working there, my to-do list didn’t stop at the bottom of a sheet of paper but was pages of stuff to be done.

In reminiscing about the stormy night, I realize how I got home is a bit fuzzy.

The thought makes my already thumping head pulse harder, and I continue to stare into the charcoal eyes of Mavis.

She’s a strikingly beautiful woman. The kind of beauty that ties your tongue, even if it isn’t as dry as the desert like mine is. My heart is racing, and I’m not sure I can blame my fever or illness entirely for that fact. Because there is no doubt that I’m ill, I just can’t remember ever being this sick before.

My limbs ache. My eyes wish to close again. All I want to do is sleep and bring back the warmth of whoever was lying next to me.

My forehead crinkles, an action that makes me want to wince from the pain radiating inside my brain.

“Mavis?” Her name is a croak, as if I’m a toad attempting to speak my first word. Had she been the one beside me? How did I get in my bed?

Slipping a hand from the blankets, I attempt to swipe at my face in hopes to clear my head and recall what happened. As I brush my palm over days’ worth of growth on my jaw, I wince for real. My cheek feels tender, possibly bruised. What the hell happened to me?

“You have a fever,” Mavis says, her voice trembly but calming like the patter of water tumbling gently down a stream. “I need you to take these.” Two white pills rest on her extended palm.

Struggling to sit upright, my body feels weighed down as if a ton of landscaping stone holds me in a horizontal position. Making it only to my elbow, tipped on my side, I take the pills from her hand, noticing the tremor in mine. Mavis holds out a small glass of water and I sip, the cool liquid not enough to quell the thickness in my throat or quench a sudden thirst.

“Mama?” The quiet voice of a small child has me turning my head too suddenly, causing another sharp pain to flash across my temple. The room sways.

“Just a minute, little bear.” Mavis aims her gaze toward the door of my bedroom. When she glances back at me, panicked eyes meet mine.

“What’s going on here?” I flinch at the roughness in my own voice. My tone is normally raspy, or so I’m told, but this sound is sandpaper going against the grain.

“You’re sick,” Mavis reminds me.

“How did I get home? In bed?” My brows cinch again. “And what are you doing here?” I attempt to infuse the question with more inquiry than accusation, but the sound is raw, even to my own ears.

“We can talk about that later. You need more sleep. And maybe something to eat soon.”

My stomach loudly rumbles on cue, reminding me I haven’t eaten since sometime yesterday.

“What time is it?” I shift for my nightstand, where I typically leave my phone. The device isn’t there, but a bottle of acetaminophen is, along with the short glass of water, a washcloth folded over the edge of a mixing bowl, and a package of cough medication.

“It’s a little after one.”

“In the afternoon?” I bark, as if the brightness in the room doesn’t give away that it’s daylight outside. Shoving the covers off me in a rush, I say, “I need to meet—”

The room tilts around me as I attempt to sit upright. Mavis abruptly stands and places her hands on my biceps, pressing against me. My eyes are level with her chest which I have no energy to check out. Still, those perky tits are front and center, wearing a Sylver Seed & Soil tee I recognize as one of mine. Her legs are clad in jeans. Her feet bare as if she has made herself right at home. In my house.

“What the fuck is going on?” I bark, sounding like a baby seal.

“You aren’t going anywhere, Clayton.”

The use of my legal name has me stilling, hoping the room will stop moving as well. With her delicate fingers against my bare skin, I slowly drop back down to the pillow, suddenly aware that I’m naked except for my boxer briefs which feel itchy, as if the material was once damp and dried against me.

Embarrassment hits hard. Did I fucking wet myself? Panicked, I glance at Mavis towering over me. Her long hair falls forward like a curtain. Those large dark eyes mirror the anxiety within me.

“Did you undress me?” More barking noises which sound overly harsh occur. I can’t control my tone. My throat is on fire.

Mavis glances quickly over her shoulder toward the bedroom door before meeting my gaze again while taking a small step away from me.

For a second, I worry she’s planning an escape. She’ll run before I get details about how I’m in bed, and I don’t want her rushing off. I didn’t miss her flinch when I snapped at her, and I don’t want her afraid of me. I can’t help my tone because of my throat. Still, I take a measured inhale to calm my racing heart.

She wrings her hands. “It’s kind of a funny story.” However, there isn’t a drop of humor in her voice as those nervous eyes scan my face.

“Humor me,” I groan.

To my surprise, Mavis rushes forward again and places her hand on my forehead, the coolness reminding me of my thoughts only moments ago of my mother. Mavis’s touch is comforting, and instantly I melt back into the pillow beneath my head. She’s the one who touched me earlier.

Her soothing fingers smooth down my forehead to brush over my cheek, and I wince at the tenderness beneath my eye.

“You fell,” she states, as if reminding me when I have no recall of that happening.

“When? How?” Although, with Mavis gently stroking over my face, my body relaxes more. I fall under the spell of whatever she’s doing to me.

That feels nice.

A soft chuckle follows my thought, suggesting I might have said it aloud.

“Sleep, Clay,” she whispers. The ghost of her breath brushes my cheek, and my eyes want to open in surprise.

Did Mavis Holland just kiss me? Impossible.

She’s a married woman. With a child no less. And my thoughts should not be traveling down the path they sometimes lead. Where the crush I have on an unobtainable woman haunts my dreams and brought me to my knees a time or two, when the fantasy became too much, and I had to take matters into my own hand.

Imagining this woman who can never be mine.

A woman who entered my store with a forced smile and a bruise covered only by the edge of a short-sleeved tee.

A woman who stared at me, as if pleading for someone to protect her when it wasn’t my place to be near her.

She belonged to another man, and he didn’t deserve her.

Not one inch of that midnight hair I want to slip my fingers through.

Not a glance from those dark, hollow eyes which made me weak for her.

Not a kiss from those lips that look soft and thirst-quenching and make my own mouth water for a sip.

No, he didn’t deserve her after what he did.

I don’t either, especially as I drift back to sleep with images in my head of her curled up beside me, warming my skin, and matching my heartbeat.

The one hammering with desire to keep her safe.