Carolina Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

there. We’ll have to pay for the privilege of
boating in our own damned waters.”
    McCloud told him that? Whose side was McCloud on? The
state was paying him to work for them, wasn’t it? “McCloud needs to
stick to locating Binghams,” she muttered.
    “That’s just it!” Jake shouted, waving his
fork at her. “Talk to your friends on that connivin’ tourist
commission. I heard them and the bankers. Soon as they’ve got some
Binghams in their pocket, the frigging vampires got it fixed so all they have
to do is talk one Bingham into selling, and the whole swamp goes on the block,
not just the beach.”
    “All of it?” Mandy stared at her grandfather in
horror. “Even Grandma Iris’s?”
    “All of it,” Jake agreed in a voice of doom,
“Even Luke’s dock and the Watkinses’ shack.”
    A pinprick of uncertainty perforated the fabric of
Rory’s confidence. She knew enough about development to hear a kernel of
truth in her father’s wild accusation. The back of their property ran up
against the Bingham swamp. She didn’t know if Iris and the others living
back there had any claim on the land, but they’d lived there undisturbed
all their lives. They were neighbors and friends. They would have nowhere else
to go if the state was talking major development.
    “The state doesn’t have any use for the
swamp,” Rory said with more assurance than she felt. “They’re
just buying the waterfront areas to protect the sea turtles and improve the
beach. There isn’t any reason for them to even know Grandma Iris is out
there.”
    Thomas Clayton McCloud and his anarchic propaganda were a
bigger danger to their future. McCloud’s outrageous theories would have
the whole island in an uproar, endangering the chances of the park being built.
State legislators didn’t pay for anything that didn’t buy them
votes.
    She wouldn’t let an outsider destroy the first
opportunity her family had of digging their way out of poverty.
    First, though, she’d call Terry to sort rumor from
reality. The state park plan she’d seen had called for only much-needed
beach improvement.
    She didn’t mind developing the nearly inaccessible
beach down the road, but Disney World in her backyard really would sink the
island.
    o0o
    Rubbing his eyes, Clay shoved back from the desk he’d
rigged up in the cottage’s front room. Finding misplaced Binghams was
akin to searching the Internet for passwords. They were everywhere. And they
took forever to uncover.
    Locating the appropriate stack of data, he added another
pile of printouts to it, looked around at the scattered piles of notes, file
folders, and program changes he’d made, and decided he ought to invest in
a good filing cabinet.
    But that would require admitting he was staying here, and he
wasn’t ready for commitment yet. Commitment required some sort of goal,
and he had none. More accurately, he wanted none. Been there, done
that .
    Who knew it was such hard work to be a hermit?
    He kicked aside an empty beer bottle, scooped up a sweaty
T-shirt, and cleared a space for the next stack of papers. If he really wanted
to commit, he’d buy a laundry hamper and a trash can.
    Among the attic rejects and litter of the room, his flat
screen monitor and high-powered laptop were the only indication of the high-tech
life he’d once lived. Childish sketches drawn by Cleo’s
eight-year-old son, Matty, adorned one wall. Shells and sea oat bouquets left
over from previous occupants replaced the expensive artwork he’d once
collected. He couldn’t say that one lifestyle was any less empty than the
other. This one was just cheaper.
    Returning to his seat, he switched the computer to his test
version of “Mysterious II”, took out a couple of rocket ships with
a barrage of blue mushrooms, found the missing princess and her lost laser
arrows, and jotted notes on two dozen ways he could improve the script.
    His stomach rumbled, and he rubbed his bare belly. Cleo had
extended an open