They'd taken a vacation in the middle of the winter one year, since they both adored the snow, and spent their time snowmobiling, skiing and snowboarding. But they'd taken a couple of days and gone down to the Cape, thoroughly enjoying the fact that they practically had the place to themselves. He'd taken his thirty-five millimeter on their walk and had gotten some great shots of the sea, and even better candid photos of his bride, Nanook of the North.
He'd been teasing her unmercifully about how bundled up she was, so she'd knocked down the hood of her jacket, and he'd caught her at a moment he always thought of as most herself—turned back towards him, away from the sea, her hair streaming out behind her, a big as life grin on her face that made him ache to smile back at her, even seven years later.
The tears were there, in the back of his eyes, but he refused to give in to them. He would have sworn, at several different intervals since he'd lost the love of his life, that he was all cried out. But like mother's milk, there always seemed to be a drop or two more when the need was there. Clay was sick of crying, sick of feeling the way he had before he'd met April—cold and empty and lonely. It was even getting to the point where he was sick of work, which was absolutely unheard of in him. His land and his ranch were everything to him, especially now that he had lost his other love.
He'd always been a loner. His father died while Clay was young, and his mom had been a single parent at a time when single parenting was definitely not all the rage, and he'd ended up having to spend an inordinate amount of time by himself, trying to keep up the ranch for the sake of his father's memory. He was quiet and serious even from toddlerhood, his mother maintained, and it wasn't until he began to grow up and fill out that he began to get much in the way of attention from anyone else. Once those shoulders began to broaden and his voice dropped sexily, nearly every girl in school ran after him.
But he was having none of it. He'd seen his mother struggle, working herself to the bone to run a sprawling ranch with only the help of her young son, trying to make a decent life for him and get the things he wanted. Clay had made up his mind early on that that he was going to make enough money that his mother wasn't going to have to work anymore, and he'd run and grow the ranch to its full potential. He would be the man that his father, and his father's father, would be proud of. The ranch would not be lost, and he would keep their memory alive.
His dreams had been realized to an incredible extent, due to some lucky investments before the bubble in the market burst, and some wise choices in what direction the ranch should focus on, and he had been able to keep his mother comfortable until the day she peacefully passed. He had made her proud.
The only thing that had been missing in his life for a while was a special woman. Despite his father's early death, he always remembered the healthy dynamic and love his parents shared. He also knew it was the same dynamic his grandparents had—old-fashioned and traditional. The man was the head of the household and had a duty to lead, protect, and love the woman of his life unconditionally. It wasn't a hard concept for Clay to grasp. He liked to be in charge, there was no doubt about that. He took the lead in nearly anything he did, and he would want a woman who could be comfortable with that arrangement. He fully intended to be the head of his household, although that didn't mean that he would ever discount his wife in any way. Clay wanted an equal partner. He wanted a strong woman—strong enough to submit and allow him to have the final say on major decisions. To fully trust that her man would do what was right and always have his wife's best interest at heart. Clay had seen enough from his father, and the way he doted on his mother, to know that he wanted the same in a marriage.
He would also take his wife over his knee if he felt she needed it, although this wasn't something he revealed to every woman he dated, and there were definitely some who could have used a good session over his knee. He let those ladies go with absolutely no regrets. He didn't want a bratty woman. He would spank, and he believed that the man being the head of the household and disciplining his wife when he saw fit was the natural and normal way of things. But it wasn't something he wanted to have to do every five seconds. He took the ideal of domestic discipline very seriously, and he knew his potential partner was going to have to feel the same way.
That was not to say that he didn't have a lot of dates. He did. Ever since he'd gotten smacked upside the head with the load of testosterone that was puberty, he'd had almost more women hanging around him than he could deal with. In high school, the young girls would practically stalk him. And the older they got, the subtler they got, but there were no fewer of them.