Blue-Jeaned Prince

Chapter One
* * * *

Clay DeVries slowed his tow truck to a halt, considering only briefly that he might have trouble pulling out of the muddy troughs left by drivers before him. Leaning over the stick shift, he eased his head out of the passenger window, ignoring the sheets of rain and hail that came up every August afternoon from the Gulf of Mexico. His shirt, soaked with water and sweat and hard work, clung to his skin. Hard rain lashed his face, but still he stared.

He just couldn't believe what he saw.

She was a mirage, an oasis, the hallucinatory vision given to a man near to a bone-dry death in an isolated desert.

But he wasn't near death, the Mississippi Delta sure wasn't a desert and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, in a ten-mile radius that wasn't sopping wet.

Still, she was a mirage.

Because she sure couldn't be real.

Beauty like this didn't come to Clay DeVries.

Beauty like Jewell's.

Jewell Whittington.

Clay shook his head and ran his fingers through his ink black hair. He blinked several times, willing her away, willing her to stop tormenting him. But she remained--languidly dismissive of the storm, only grudgingly aware of him.

She leaned against the driver's-side door of a tomato red Fiat convertible, holding up a black umbrella to protect herself.

And she should be protected.

Protected. Coddled. Handled with care.

Clay knew she had had a lifetime of that.

A lifetime of protecting her fragile beauty from the likes of this storm, from the thick, oozing trail that passed for a road. A lifetime of protection from a man like him--a man who wasn't, and would never be, her equal.

He guessed her blond hair, the palest golden strands swept into a perfect twist, had been "done" that very afternoon. Her complexion--maybe the result of fancy makeup, maybe natural--was flawless, pale and luminous. Her lipstick, refined with a precise line of color, matched her fuchsia suit to a tee. The matching polished nails were perfectly manicured and ended in long, elegant ovals.

His eyes traveled the length of her, lingering when in any other circumstance he would have had no right to do more than glance in her direction from afar. Her eyes and her pursed lips commanded him to act like a gentleman, but since he had never been expected to be a gentleman in the past and had never enjoyed its benefits, he didn't see any reason to make the sacrifices of a gentleman now.

At least to look, he thought to himself.

And to smell the expensive perfume that mixed with the scent of rain.

He looked, letting his hooded eyes linger wherever he chose, as if she were spread before him on a magazine--he had never enjoyed that particular pleasure in any more than a fleeting way, but now, with Jewell Whittington passively before him, he understood the charms of a centerfold.

His gaze paused only as he felt his abdomen clench.

Those legs, he thought as he audibly gasped, went on for miles, beautiful miles.

And they ended at a pair of stiletto-heeled, black patent leather pumps that were sinking--slowly but surely--into the oozing mud of the ancient Native American trail leading to the Mississippi shoreline.

He looked up.

His eyes met hers. He thought he could study forever--get a degree even--in their pale color. Not quite blue. Not quite violet. Color that seemed to only deepen to shadow as her sooty lashes swept downward.

Her eyes narrowed as she coolly appraised him.

Dismissed him, too, with only the slightest fear--hidden well because she was a woman who was clearly shielded from men like him.

Men like him.

Brutes. Savages. Little better than animals.

Clay knew, with a twisting sensation in his gut, exactly what she saw, exactly what made her look away. He let his eyes drift only for a moment to the rearview mirror and saw for himself the grime, the sweat, the dirt. Mechanic's dirt. His T-shirt was soaked and torn slightly at the shoulders where a seam had burst while he strained to lift a customer's Chevy pickup from the ooze. His jeans, neatly pressed this morning--why, oh why did he even bother?--were caked with mud.

Clay reluctantly conceded to her disdain. He got out and stood in front of her, letting the driver's-side door hang open.

He felt nineteen again, working on the Whittington estate, assisting the gardener. Hard work. Sweaty work under a broiling Mississippi sun. And the best reward in those days wasn't the cash in the envelope given to him every Friday afternoon--that money went straight to his mother, to help raise his brothers and sisters.

No, the best payment for his work was when he'd catch sight of Jewell. In a smooth linen party dress. In a barely there bathing suit. In an evening gown as she waited for a suitor.

From far away, and always completely unaware of being observed. For even when she saw him, her eyes would always pass right over him as if he were a willow tree or a wisteria shrub. He was invisible to her then because he was not her kind.

His admiration of her beauty had turned not so much sour as simply to indifference when he realized she would never see him.

But she was here now. And he was a man. Not a lovesick boy.

He knew the gossip.

Her suitors--so many from the very first cotillion given in the ballroom of her daddy's house--had married other pretty, suitable young ladies. And she, it was rumored, had been passed over. Again and again. And then she went to school, chasing more education and never finishing anything she started, all while what she really needed was a man.

Not a man like him, of course.

A dressed-up version, a cleansed version--with money.

That was her kind of man.

"Afternoon. Name's Clay DeVries," he said, wiping his hands with a handkerchief he kept in his back pocket.

"I ran out of gas," she said, her Southern drawl polite but impersonal. "Tow me back to the station, please."

Dropping her keys into his hand without any fleshly contact, she walked to the passenger's side of his truck, closed her umbrella and got inside.

He looked at the key chain.

Tiffany.

Sterling.

What else would a princess use? Certainly not the plastic key chain with a three-by-five-inch photo protected by polyurethane.

He decided, right then and there, he didn't like her any better for the passing of years. It was a feeling that emanated from his groin, swelled by her coolness and traveled throughout his body with the speed of electricity.

It wasn't that she held him in contempt, or even disliked him--somehow, Clay could have dealt with that. It wasn't that she feared him, as many sensible women might, here on an empty road, no witnesses, nowhere to run.

No, it was that she had completely dismissed him, as if he were of no more consequence than the tow truck itself.

He got in the cab of the truck, and maneuvered the tow into position. She closed her eyes, seemingly lost in sleep. But he knew it was simple evasion. She didn't want to talk to him.

Fine, he thought, I've dealt with b--, ah, witches before.

It took five minutes to get the red Fiat coupled to the truck, and he didn't bother to put the roof back up on it. Let her seat get soaked, for all he cared. He was soaked himself.

"All right, we're ready to go," he said when he got back in the cab.

She opened her eyes, and he felt contradictory pulses within him. He could almost envision the steno pad with a column of her good points on the right and bad points on the left.

On the left side--spoiled, glitzy, out of touch with real people, maybe even downright rude, conceited and not even willing to act like a decent human being to him.

On the right side--as beautiful as an angel, as delicately scented as a flower and maybe just as protected and innocent of the real world as a baby.

Though, of course, she had the tiniest lines at the corners of her eyes that showed her age, mid- to late twenties. Not quite his side of thirty. He couldn't remember whether she had been a year behind him in school--of course, she ran with a different crowd, so it would have been tough to know.

"Will you be taking me to Smith's station?"

"Yeah," he said.

"I hear he died this spring and there's going to be a new owner."

"That's right," he answered, and he waited for the next question.

Who will be the new owner?

The next logical question, one that he could have answered with his entire life story. And he wanted to tell it to her. All the hopes and dreams and ambitions. The hard work, the setbacks and the just plain persistence that might give him a shot at it. At Smith's station in the Natchez basin and at the three others. Profitable ones, money-makers, ready for expansion. He was going places; he was determined and ambitious. He had paid his dues, and now it was his turn to make himself the man he was meant to be.

But there wasn't a second question. She looked out at the cypress and pecan trees weighted down with Spanish moss, as if she were seeing them for the first time.

THEY DIDN'T SPEAK to each other as he drove through the softening storm. At the station, he uncoupled her car and filled it with gas. It was then that he noticed.

"When did you put gas in it last?" he asked, coming into the station's convenience store. She was leafing through a magazine. Newsweek, three years old. Clay realized how desperate she was to ignore him.

She blinked. "About two hours ago. I've been at school in Memphis and I'm comin' home. My daddy's taken sick again. Is something wrong with the car?"

"Your gas line is leaking. You need a new one. I can order it--for a Fiat it'll take a week or more for it to be delivered."

"A week! I can't do without my car for a week!"

"It's all right. I taped the line, it should do you till the part comes in. You can still drive it. At least a little, it'll get you home. But you need to bring it in when the part comes. I'll call."

"And you're sure you know how to work on Fiats?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

He closed his eyes and began counting to ten.

"I'm just askin' because Smith couldn't handle anything foreign made. I usually got my car checked out in Memphis," she explained quickly. "I don't mean any harm by questioning. It's just that you're new, aren't you?"

He started over. One, two, three, four...

"I've been working for Smith for ten years," he said carefully. He left out that he had worked everywhere, taking any back-breaking job to raise his siblings and help support his mother, had even worked for the Whittingtons. But she didn't want to know all that.

"You aren't going to make it back to Memphis, even with the tape job. You need the line replaced before you leave."

"But I have to get back to Memphis!" she wailed. "I have a conference in three days! I'm giving a paper on Jane Austen. I can't possibly miss it!"

"What?"

Last he heard, she was getting a master's in some kind of history.

"Jane Austen," Jewell said primly, pronouncing each syllable carefully. "She was a very famous English writer of the nineteenth century."

"I know who Jane Austen is."

She just barely hid her surprise.

"Jane Austen, huh? What's it about?"

She settled her shoulders as if he had asked her a question she had been dying to answer. She could have no idea that Clay simply wanted to hear her talk, watch those flickering eyes, drink in her figure and perfume, maybe even glance a few times at her legs. The thirty-two-year-old Clay DeVries might think she was an airhead debutante with a bad attitude, but the nineteen-year-old still inside him thought she was worth an aching, nerve-tingling study.

"I'm writing about her life as a member of the privileged class."

"Uh-huh," Clay said. He wondered if her waist was tiny enough that he could span it with his own two hands.

Keep talking, he commanded her silently. He still wanted to look.

"So, for instance, she wrote a book called Pride and Prejudice."

"I've read it," Clay said, thinking her breasts curved and strained at the fabric of her dress in just the right way to make a man forget all about anything except what was on the other side of her clothes.

The silence jolted him. He looked up at her face.

He was good at reading women. But Clay thought it was just that women liked having him around. No reading minds required.

But reading Jewell Whittington, he knew she was torn between wanting to slap him for his open appraisal of her physical charms and shock that he could read.

"I thought Pride and Prejudice was a nice story," Clay said with a wicked grin.

She was so pretty when she lost her footing, her picture-perfect confidence. He'd love it if she stayed off balance forever, if it meant she'd open up to him.

"Well, anyhow," she said, recovering quickly, "the book looks like an English country romantic comedy of manners, but my analysis shows that it's a withering documentary of oppression."

"Why don't you just enjoy the book?" Clay asked. "It was a book about some sisters finding their true loves."

"No, the book is really about oppression of women and the disappearance of the farming community in the face of the industrial revolution."

"Right."

She put her hands on her hips and squared off against him, angry more for his out-of-line looks than his ignorance of her field of study.

"I'm getting my master's degree in English literature, so I know what I'm talking about," she said. "And this paper is very important to me. My car has to be fixed, and I have to be at my conference in three days so I can present it. If you can't fix the car, you should tell me now."

"I'm as much of an expert in cars as you are in Jane Austen."

She almost, almost said something.

Suppressing a smile, Clay guessed that she would have conceded she wasn't the world's foremost expert on Austen.

Which left open the question of whether her precious car was in good hands.

"Well, I don't think we need to debate that point," she said smoothly. "Why don't you give me my keys? I'll take my chances on getting to Memphis with the tape on the gas line."

She held out her soft, pale hand with the five perfectly manicured nails.

That's when he noticed the rock.

Left hand.

Third finger.

Big.

Aggressively twinkling.

Off-limits.

He stared down at his own grimy hands. Strong hands. Callused hands. Worker's hands.

She was engaged.

He hid his shock, hid the part of him that had fantasized for a moment, hid his shame at having debased himself by dreaming of her without even having realized he had done so.

He wiped the keys with a Handi Wipe and gave them to her, forcing her to touch him. To acknowledge his flesh with her own. His fingers gripped the key chain for a second longer than was completely proper.

She looked away.

"Let's talk about you paying me," he said.

"What do you take?" she asked after only a moment's hesitation.

"What do you mean--take?"

"What credit card?"

"We don't do credit cards. Smith never had credit cards on-line."

She pulled a sleek alligator wallet from her black linen purse and rifled through it.

"I've got three dollars."

"That's not enough."

Her chin tilted defiantly.

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

He stared at her. Hard.

Now that the fantasy had been destroyed, now that he knew she belonged to another man, he didn't care what she thought of him.

She stepped back, eyes widened.

It took him a second to realize what she was thinking.

Clay was his own version of a gentleman, even if he had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks. He would never demand the kind of payment she was thinking of. But how he enjoyed the shock on her face. He reveled in the moment, only briefly, when she considered the kind of pleasure she would get from him, the kind of pleasure she would have to return. The violet of her eyes sparkled as she stared. And then she bit her lower lip.

"I'm engaged, you know," she said, twisting nervously at the marble-size diamond. "To Winfield Sims. The fourth."

"Best wishes," Clay said blandly, remembering that men were to be congratulated on their engagements, women to be wished all the best. Men were presumed to have concluded a successful courtship, women to have been caught. Looking at her, Clay had to admit that Winfield deserved some congratulations--and a smidgen of envy. "All this is irrelevant to how you're going to pay."

"My father will send you a check," she said brusquely. "Charles Whittington. We're the Whittingtons of the Pontchartreaux estate."

"I know exactly who you are, Jewell."

She paused only a moment, surprised at his use of her first name.

And then she turned on her heel and strode out the door with her head held high.

Each night for the next three weeks, Clay awoke from the same dream. Jewell Whittington was beneath him, moaning with pleasure, her hair damp and loosened from its pins. He had thought he had gotten over her--many years ago.

"AND WHILE I LOVE JEWELL, I feel it is in her best interests for her to develop independence, self-discipline, initiative and self-reliance. In the event, of course, that she does not marry. Therefore, I leave to my beloved daughter nothing of material value but my boundless love, which will remain true forever."

"What do you mean, nothing?" Jewell asked.

Thomas Fogerty III rustled the papers before him and adjusted his glasses. He closed his eyes and tried once more to read the shocking paragraph.

"And while I love Jewell, I feel--"

"No, I heard you the first time. I mean, explain it to me. The nothing part."

"By the terms of this most recently executed will, your father has left everything to Milwaukee's New Hope homeless shelter run by his son, your half brother, Michael." Thomas nodded quickly at Michael Whittington, who sat in solemn quiet on the armchair by the unused fireplace. "Jewell, sweetie, you are not left anything. Except, of course, for your personal effects."

Thomas placed the papers before him on the mahogany desk. He looked at Jewell. She seemed puzzled. Or stunned. As if somebody had knocked her over the head.

"Jewell, if you're marrying Winfield, you don't need his money anyhow," Thomas said.

"And if I'm not?"

Thomas coughed and took a quick sip of sherry from the glass in front of him. Crystal. With a rolling-script W engraved on the side.

"If you don't get married, your father hopes you'll learn some of these fine personal attributes."

"By not having any money?"

Thomas looked down at his papers.

His eyes skirted over to Michael Whittington, who was leaning back in the velvet chair as if he were engaged in a private, silent but highly personal conversation with the Lord. Only thirty-four years old and already he was showing the effects of years of personal abuse.

Only moments before, Michael had explained that the wild life was all behind him--he had even become a servant to the very people he had once exploited. The homeless, the addicted, the fringe of society--really quite a noble and inspiring story. Thomas looked again at Jewell. Maybe this was for the best. Build some character, escape the curse of bloated living that befell the wealthy scions of Pontchartreaux.

"I thought Daddy was going to leave me everything he owned. I just assumed..."

A discreet cough from Rev. James Copland caught Jewell's attention.

"With a generous gift to our church, of course," she added, nodding at the man who had been the family spiritual guide, or at least the Sunday dinner guest, for the past twenty years.

"Well, all that's been changed," Michael said, rising to his feet. "Father felt strongly about my turn-around. I've worked hard in the past three years to give back to the community that saved my life from the gutter. New Hope gives exactly what its name suggests--new hope to those in need."

"I think your work sounds very important," Rev. Copland said, sounding surprisingly good-natured, considering that he had just witnessed millions of dollars slipping out of his own church's grasp.

"It is important," Michael agreed. "I've raised a lot of hell in my life--pardon my blunt language, but it's true. I've been an embarrassment to my father, no question about it. But I've changed. And New Hope helps me as much as it does those who come to our doors every day. Father was very proud of my work. And I know he wanted to see us succeed. The money he has left us will mean so much."

"If he was so impressed, why didn't he invite you for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner?" Jewell asked. Her half brother's name hadn't even been mentioned in the house for years, and she was shocked--even a little suspicious--of this new Michael.

"I would have loved to come," Michael said with a wistful smile. "But those holidays are ones where the homeless have the most need. I couldn't abandon them at a time when all society turns its back on those most degraded by life's hardships."

Thomas coughed. "I know it's a shock, Jewell," he said. "But you can't fault your father for wanting to fund something like this. Sounds like Michael does some very good things for people, and your father always wanted to do right by others. He was a generous man and he must have thought that you didn't need any more money. You and Winfield will have plenty."

Jewell bit her lip. "Are you suggesting that I distrust Michael because I'm greedy?"

Thomas looked away.

"I just don't understand it," Jewell said.

"Father probably would have explained how we were becoming closer," Michael said gently. "But you've been so busy...with school. Actually, school was one of the reasons that Father thought you should be out on your own. Making your own way."

That stopped Jewell in her tracks. She settled into the cushions of the couch quietly and raised not a protest as Thomas completed reading the final technical details of the will.

School.

That had definitely been a point of controversy between her and her father--had he decided that, at twenty-eight, she needed to finally get out of the ivory tower and into the real world?

Or at least make up her mind what she wanted to be when she grew up.

But she needed just a few more months to finish her master's in literature. And her diploma would hang upstairs--next to the master's in American economic history from SMU and the bachelor's in sociology from Texas A&M. And, like ghosts, there were the programs she had started with enthusiasm and dropped out of when they proved unfulfilling--the Cordon Bleu Cooking Institute, the Parson's School of Design, the Art Institute of Chicago. No degrees, but memories and a smattering of skills.

In a few months, she'd have that master's.

Then, armed with all this education, she would do...something.

"So what now?" Jewell asked as Thomas folded the will and placed it inside a manila folder.

Thomas looked at Michael, and something unreadable passed between the two men.

"Please, Jewell, it is a shock," Thomas said at last. "But I see many people whose parents have left them money, and often it's not for the good."

"It's not the money."

"I'm sure you're right," he said, sounding unconvinced.

"It's not. I just don't understand why my father would leave me with nothing."

"The will explains itself," Thomas said testily. "Jewell, I think you have to come to grips with the fact that you and Winfield will have to live on the money the Simses have. What's so bad about that? He is, after all, extremely wealthy in his own right. A few million here or there isn't going to make a difference."

"I want what is mine," Jewell said, staring intently at her half brother. She hadn't met Michael more than two or three times in her life, but she knew now she didn't like him.

"You've always been so ladylike," Thomas said quietly. "It was--is--your finest quality."

His words seemed to echo through the study. Rev. Copland looked about uncomfortably. Michael stared at the fireplace. Thomas rifled absently through the papers before him. The grandfather clock in the front hallway announced five o'clock. Martha's footsteps could be heard upstairs as she readied the house for evening.

"What happens to me?" Jewell asked. "I mean, if Winfield doesn't marry me? Or if I decide I don't want to marry Winfield?"

"Either way, you don't have any Whittington money," Michael said coolly.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

"Set a wedding date," Michael urged.

Jewell stared at her half brother.

"I'm sure Michael would provide for you," Thomas said. He took out a finely gauged cotton handkerchief and mopped the beads of sweat that had popped up on his forehead. "Wouldn't you, Michael?"

Charles's divorce from Michael's mother nearly thirty-one years before had been ugly and contentious. Now Thomas wondered if Charles should have been a little gentler, a little more generous with his first wife. Maybe Michael wouldn't have turned out the way he had if Charles had been more careful....

"Of course Michael will care for his sister," Rev. Copland said confidently.

Michael stood up and strolled to the window over-looking the sweeping garden of azalea and rose--the flowers drooped from days of rain.

Jewell twisted nervously at the ring on her left hand.

She wondered how Winfield would react to the news that her father had left everything to Michael.

It wouldn't change things, would it? she wondered, staring out the window past Michael. She had been engaged to Winfield for two years now and she had nearly forgotten that engagement was connected with marriage. The days when she leafed through Southern Bride magazine and debated what color her bridesmaids should wear were long over.

Marry Winfield?

Oh, yeah, that's what the ring on her finger was all about.

"I would be happy for Jewell to come work at the New Hope with me if her wedding to Winfield doesn't come off," Michael said at last. "But I know Father thought very highly of Winfield. I've never met Winfield myself, but Father told me many times that he was great for Jewell."

At last, this was something everyone in the room could agree upon. Thomas, Rev. Copland and Jewell nodded, thinking of how Winfield had been so close to Charles.

"How he wished that he could have lived long enough to witness his daughter's wedding," Michael continued.

Again, nods.

And for Jewell, a small, niggling guilt that she hadn't moved a little more quickly. Gotten married, given her father a grandchild...She did miss him in spite of everything.

"So I hope the couple will move with all speed toward a wedding," Michael said. "I would be so happy to give the bride away."

While Jewell put her head in her hands, she noticed Thomas's head bobbing like a buoy in water. Rev. Copland was content to express his agreement by a thin, wavering smile.

The thought of going down the aisle on Michael's arm was strangely disturbing.

"What if we don't get married?" Jewell asked. "That's my birthright we're talking about."

Michael's face briefly flushed at the word birthright. Jewell gasped and nearly apologized. Her father had, after all, virtually abandoned his first family in all but the financial sense. She could see that Michael might be sensitive to the fact that he had never been treated as a son to Charles--although she, like her father, would have said it was Michael's own fault.

But maybe his nefarious experiences were precisely what was necessary to create a caring servant of the poor.

"I think we should remember, as harsh as it sounds, that my father was very determined that the New Hope homeless shelter should be fully funded," Michael said. "After all, he had always known the security of the family home--even in times of financial hardship. He wanted others to have the same chances he did. Each dollar that I were to spend maintaining Jewell's life-style in the manner she's accustomed to would be money taken from the hands of the needy. I'm sure that Jewell isn't so selfish..."

He let his words hang in the air as each man studied Jewell. She suddenly felt self-conscious about the understated but overpriced black boucle Chanel suit that had been just right for the funeral. The matching Ferragamo pumps. The Hermes scarf at her shoulder. She didn't own many pieces of "important" jewelry--and certainly hadn't worn anything to the funeral--except for her engagement ring, which suddenly seemed far larger than the four carats Winfield had claimed it was.

"Of course I'm not against feeding and sheltering the homeless," she said hesitantly. "And I would never want to go against my father's wishes. I apologize--I was taken by surprise."

"So were we all," said Rev. Copland dryly.