Mary Holder - Mckinley's Miracle

Clayton followed her into the kitchen and made himself comfortable on a straight-backed chair at the table. The room was inviting. The pale lemon of the freshly painted walls blended nicely with the brand-new light grey linoleum on the floor. While the coffee perked, Lucy set out ceramic mugs on the counter. She went to the refrigerator and withdrew a container. “Chocolate cake?”

“Thanks.”

She sliced two pieces of cake with medical precision and set them on plates. When she paused to lick a dab of chocolate icing from her finger, he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t do much of anything! The only basic function he maintained was breathing…but only with a concentrated effort. Her lips closed around her finger back to the first knuckle. She pulled it out of her mouth so slowly he almost groaned. She broke the spell by placing the knife in the sink and the cake back in the refrigerator. Clayton shifted in his chair to relieve the beginnings of arousal.

The coffee was finally done and she busied herself placing forks, milk and sugar on the table. She set cake and coffee before him, then went back for her own, carrying a can in the crook of her elbow when she sat down opposite him at the table.

“Whipped cream?” he asked. “I thought all you city people were health nuts. Low-fat this, high-fibre that.”

She shook the can vigorously before squirting a quantity onto her cake. “Not me. There are some things I won’t give up even for the sake of my arteries.”

“Such as?”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “Hamburgers, pizza, potato chips…whipped cream. The kids say my eating habits are going to kill me some day but hey, why not die happy?”

She could eat junk food and still have a body like that? The look of absolute anticipation on her face mesmerized him. Her delicate pink tongue peeked between perfect teeth as she concentrated on sculpting a work of art with the cream. Lucy paused, her fork in midair. “You have a strange look on your face.”

Clayton figured it was a little too soon in their relationship to divulge that watching her smooth whipped cream onto a piece of chocolate cake had aroused him. He didn’t want her thinking he was some kind of pervert.

“I’ve never seen anyone look at a piece of cake like it was a three-course meal.”

“Yeah, well, I skipped lunch because tonight is pizza night and that’s better than sex. But then Max came home and I took him to the doctor, I got so upset, the last thing on my mind was food. Now I’m starving.”

Better than sex? In Clayton’s experience there weren’t many things that even came close to the delicious euphoria of sex.

“Are you saying that you’d rather have pizza than sex?” If that was the case then she hadn’t found the right partner. He was already preparing his application for the position. Fun-loving farmer seeks to warm the bed of prickly little cactus flower. Satisfaction guaranteed every time.

Lucy had given too many safe-sex lectures to streetwise teens to be easily embarrassed, though she wished he weren’t studying her so intently. “You make it sound like nothing could possibly be better.”

“Good sex is pretty tough to top. Two people wanting each other so badly that nothing else matters but the moment,” he said, his gaze dropping to her lips. “A deep-pan cheesy crust with everything doesn’t even come close.”

“At least with a pizza you can order ahead, have it delivered, know what you’re getting, and if it isn’t satisfying you can take it back and get a refund.” With a serene smile that she hoped would effectively end the conversation, she raised the laden fork to her mouth.

Clayton watched her lips close around the fork, gliding along the tines as her eyes closed. He’d eaten meals with a lot of women in his thirty years. But this woman turned eating into one of the most erotic things he’d ever witnessed. Clayton didn’t question the urge he had to lean over and taste the sweetness of cake and cream on her mouth. Nor did he act on it…not just yet. He looked away long enough to get his body back under some sense of control before attacking his own cake.

“How long have you worked with these kids?”

Lucy stirred her coffee. “Five years.”

He smiled. “Not real big on details, are you?”

Lucy raised an eyebrow at him. “That would depend on the topic of discussion.”

He pointed to her with his fork. “You.”

“Then it’s going to be a very short conversation.”

The expression on her face dared him to try to prove her wrong. Normally he didn’t back down from a dare, but he sensed a need to go carefully with her. “So, how do you like your pizza?”

Lucy looked up at him, momentarily startled by the abrupt topic change, and wondered if this was a double-edged sword, given their previous conversation about pizza and sex. “With everything,” she said. “Is there any other way to have it?”

“Cold.”

“God, that’s disgusting!”

Okay. So I’ll never suggest we have cold pizza for breakfast, he thought wryly.

“The one food you couldn’t do without?”

Lucy didn’t even hesitate. “Seafood…any and all.”

He filed it away for future reference.

“What’s going on?”

Clayton looked up. The girl standing in the doorway was in her late teens. She wore pajamas that hung on her thin frame, her long black hair streaked a startling white-blond in places. He wasn’t sure what the nose ring and the black nail polish were in aid of, but despite them she was a very pretty girl.

“Sorry if we woke you, Lisa.”

She stifled a yawn. “No. I’ve been awake on and off since you left,” she said, sparing Clayton a glance.

“Coffee’s hot.”

Lisa looked over at the pot as if it were booby-trapped. “Did you make it?”

Lucy sighed. “Yes, I did.”

“I’ll pass. One medical emergency a day is all you can handle.” She sat down beside Lucy, casting a wary glance at Clayton before looking at her. “You should have taken me with you.”

Lucy smiled and shook her head. “I needed you here to keep Max calm. You’re the only one who can sweet-talk him.”

“I just let her think she can,” said the boy in question, coming into the kitchen, his curly blond hair tousled, his eyes sleepy. “I ache all over, Lucy. I hope you knocked him on his fat old butt.”

Clayton grinned at the sentiment as Lucy fussed over Max, but one look at the boy when he turned around, wearing nothing but bright red shorts, and he was tempted to go find Gerry Anderson and administer a dose of the man’s own medicine. A bruise covered one side of Max’s face. His thin body bore the evidence of his fall. Ugly purple cuts, painful-looking scratches and skin scraped raw. Behind Max two more kids ambled in. The oldest, a dark-haired boy, teetered on the brink of manhood and adopted the stance of a warrior. He was a born survivor. It was in his eyes. The girl standing beside him was younger than Lisa—about fourteen. Her hair was long and red, her smile infectious.

“This is Clayton McKinley. He’s our neighbour from Cable Downs,” Lucy said by way of introduction.

Thomas narrowed his intense glare on Clayton.

“We didn’t mean to wake everyone. Coffee’s hot, Thomas.”

He looked suspicious. “Who made it?”

Lucy made an aggrieved sound. “I made the darn coffee. Besides, McKinley’s drinking it and he hasn’t keeled over yet.”

Thomas shrugged. “It don’t mean he won’t.”

Actually Clayton had yet to taste the coffee she’d made him. He’d tasted bad coffee before. He’d tasted coffee so strong it could anaesthetize a bull at fifty paces. Now he eyed the cup wondering just how bad Lucy’s brew was.

“You’re quite safe, McKinley,” she said, interpreting his look. “I haven’t killed anybody yet.”