Imperfect Rebel (43 page)

She bent over and read the words to him. "It says Gerry better get good grades at school or he'll only get lumps of coal for Christmas." She paraphrased the actual teenage jargon so Matty would understand better. Good thing he was too impatient to sound out the letters that jumbled so easily in his head.

Her son wrinkled his freckled nose in concern. "Santa wouldn't do that, would he?"

"It isn't really Santa, hon. Look, it's Freddie wearing a Santa suit. See, he's hiding Gerry's real present under his beard. Think maybe Jared is telling Gene he'd better study if he wants a gift this year?"

Matty lit up with excitement. "Yeah! Only here, Freddy wants the present for himself. Cool! Can we bake cookies?"

Cleo smiled mistily at the rest of the cartoon. Matty wouldn't get the joke anyway, and he'd already moved on to other things. "After we eat breakfast," she reminded him. "Get your cereal out."

She wondered if Jared's agent was pitching fits about the underlying messages in the strip lately. Responsibility, respect, and communication were a few of his favorite themes, and every prank had a consequence. In this one, Freddie ended up with the coal, and Gerry aced the test and got the present.

The strip wasn't always as funny as it had been in its early days, but it lacked the bitter edge of the past year, and she kind of liked seeing morals in comics again. Kids needed that kind of lesson.

Wondering if love made her sappy, she took down cereal bowls and let Matty pour his own. She sure as hell hoped Jared was making the best of her sacrifice, because there were nights she was so lonely even beer looked good as a method of filling these gaping wounds. If it hadn't been for Matty, she'd be a basket case by now.

Her new doorbell rang the first bars of the Hallelujah chorus, and she glanced at the kitchen clock. Ten. She'd slept late, but this was a little too early for visitors on a Saturday morning.

Of course, the steady parade of would-be archeologists, sightseers, and government officials picking at the pirate graveyard produced any number of strays lately. She'd retired Burt much too soon.

But Matty liked her giggling Tinkerbelle better. It flitted past the windows in a glowing light at night, but it was pretty worthless during the day. She was almost growing used to intruders. That didn't mean she wanted that damned film company down there day and night.

"I'll get it!" Matty shouted, racing to the door ahead of her. He never walked when he could run, and he was accustomed to lots of people coming and going at his aunt's house, so he wasn't shy.

That was good. She wanted him to grow up normal and confident of his place in the world. Maya had done a fantastic job of bringing him around. Now, if she could only find a man with half Jared's kindness...

She stared in disbelief as Matty threw open the door, revealing the towering man filling the screen. Not completely across the room yet, she hesitated, contemplating turning and running out the back door. Then panic mode set in, and she crossed the floor in two strides.

"What is it?" she demanded, shoving the screen door open so Jared's older brother could step inside. "Is it Jared? Is he all right?"

Matty instantly retreated into anxiety as he looked up the long length of the stranger who entered. Cleo couldn't pick her son up and cuddle him anymore, but she knelt down and hugged him while Tim McCloud regarded them as if they were space aliens.

"No one's knocked him silly, or sillier, yet," Tim said gravely, looking a little embarrassed and lifting his gaze to encompass the room instead of their huddle of fear. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

Relaxing, Cleo swept the hair off Matty's forehead and pushed him toward the kitchen. "Eat your breakfast, short stuff. This is Jared's brother, Tim, and everything is fine."

Matty held his ground. He'd spent too many years protecting Cleo's broken spirits to leave her now. "Santa doesn't give coal," he told Tim adamantly, apparently naming him responsible for correcting Jared's comic strip.

Cleo smiled at her visitor's startled expression. Standing, she offered her best chair, a much sounder replacement for the old wicker. "Have a seat. Shall I bring you some coffee? It's awfully early."

"Airports keep rotten schedules." Before taking the solid rocker, he glanced out her front window. "I took a look at that skeleton in the sand dune that Jared told me about. I don't think it's a pirate," he said carefully.

He'd come here to look at a skeleton? Cleo raised her eyebrows but responded in the same cautious manner as he used. "I keep telling them that, but the movie people think it would make great publicity."

"Movie people?" He grimaced. "That mean the beach house won't be available any longer?"

She hadn't thought about it. She had scarcely begun the repairs. If they really did film down there... She shook her head. "I'd rather someone convince the idiots it's a slave cemetery."

"Not unless they're white slaves," he answered gravely. Producing a DVD from his jacket pocket, he finally accepted her offer of a chair.

White slaves didn't calculate on any level. Cleo's mind slipped back to drunken Ed's stories of spies, but she couldn't cling to irrelevant thoughts while Jared's brother sat there, obviously on different business than long lost skeletons. "Coffee?" she asked again.

"Coffee would be nice if you have some. I brought something I thought you should see."

Cleo stared at the proffered DVD in bewilderment, but more than a little unnerved by his presence, she attempted her best hostess manners and didn't grab it from his hands. "Give me a minute. Cream or sugar?"

"Neither." He fell into a staring match with Matty, both exhibiting curiosity with no undercurrents of anger or fear.

Cleo could see a lot of Jared in his scientist brother, and her heart ached as she poured the coffee and returned. She thought Jared would be the kind of man who loved Christmas. Maybe his brother was the same and had decided to deliver some kind of early Christmas gift. Odd, though.

Taking a sip of the coffee, Tim nodded his appreciation, then gestured toward the video. "It didn't occur to me until I was on the plane that you might not have a player. Do you?"

She opened up the plastic case and slipped the disk into the machine hidden by one of Matty's towering stuffed animals. She could afford a lot more than teddy bears these days. "DVD players are a requirement for anyone with kids. Can't have them watching the garbage that passes for television." She glanced at Matty who had settled into his favorite cross-legged position, ready to absorb any new entertainment. "It's okay for him to see?"

Tim laughed softly. "Yeah. I'm not transporting porn across state lines." He hesitated, then added carefully, "Jared doesn't know I'm here."

She'd wondered. She had a dozen questions, but it seemed easiest to punch the power button then ask.

She settled behind Matty on the floor and watched the film flicker on. There were no opening credits. A cartoon flared into life with a roar of trumpets and a witch rocketing across the screen on a purple broom tied with a big yellow ribbon. Matty practically sighed with ecstasy, settled his elbows on his knees, and fell into a trance.

"Jared found an animator willing to work with him," Tim said quietly, so as not to disturb the action on screen. "They've been pulling together a network of friends who respect each other's creativity, or so he says. I don't understand half of it."

Fascinated by the almost familiar creatures dancing across the TV, Cleo only half-listened. Jared had done this. She recognized the style of the drawings, even though they moved and talked instead of sitting still with word balloons over their head. She recognized the witch with the red shoes, and laughed aloud as the skeleton cracked a joke.

That was definitely Jared's dry humor. A bubble of pride swelled inside as she realized she'd done right to send him away. He was doing splendidly without her. This was wonderful stuff. She laughed as the knight in shabby armor swung a wicked pizza at the wise-cracking skeleton.

"He sold his place in Miami so he could produce this himself."

Cleo tore away from the cartoon to stare at Tim in disbelief. "I thought he
loved
living at the beach."

Tim sipped his coffee and regarded her solemnly. "He said it was just a place and there were more important things in life. He's living with our parents, if that tells you anything."

Her eyes widened as she examined the horror of that simple statement, and her bubble popped. Jared would lose his mind living with those stifling people. What was he, crazy?

"Mommy!" Matty shouted in excitement, bouncing up and down and tugging at her jeans leg. "Look! That's you!"

Dazed, Cleo turned back to the action on screen. The shabby knight had removed his visor.
Her
visor. As the character taunted the skeleton with his shallowness—a shallow skeleton, what a concept!—Cleo studied the image in puzzlement. Like all cartoon heroines, the image was young and fresh-faced and beautiful. She couldn't see anything of herself except maybe the red of her short-cropped hair. She had a mouth on her, that was certain, and Cleo smiled as the skeleton stepped back, rattling a bony hand over his nonexistent heart, complaining of being pierced to the bone. The man was good, she'd give him that.

Caught up in trying to see what Matty saw, she watched more carefully, and was transported into the story as thoroughly as her son. They both cried as a really wicked witch stole the children's magic broom so they couldn't go home. Matty shrieked at the fire-breathing dragon's appearance, and Cleo experienced a clear sense of déjà vu.

That was Kismet's dragon. That was Gene and Kismet lost in the dangerous forest.

"Porky," Matty sighed happily, pointing to the talking pot-bellied pig. "And Petey." Absolutely enthralled, he leaned into Cleo's embrace and let her hold him while he admired lurid imitations of his pets stalking, sauntering, and dancing across the set.

The feminine knight duly resisted involvement with a menagerie of preposterous animals, but her conscience—in the form of a nagging parrot—kept overruling her better judgment as she pulled one character after another from various disasters. The disasters tended to be stereotypical: the pig over-ate on magic mushrooms, the peacock let vanity lead him into a lake to better see his own image, and the children fighting over something inconsequential lost the clue that would lead them home. But they were moral tales that children could grasp while adults could laugh at the dry wit aimed at character flaws everyone recognized. It was brilliant.

The knight was a hero.

The knight was her.

Cleo could scarcely believe what she was watching, but that was her house/castle, her menagerie, her kids, her attitude. Even Matty recognized it. This was Cleo as Jared saw her.

The man was obviously demented. Grumbling, she stood and escaped to the kitchen for more coffee. Tim followed her, leaving Matty to watch the ending on his own.

"I admit, I didn't understand his infatuation," he said without prelude, offering his cup for a refill. "But when I saw that..." He shrugged and wandered to the table. "I saw you. I never thought of Jared as a deep thinker, but he's proved me wrong. He's not seeing you through rose-colored glasses, he's seeing your flaws as well as your strengths."

"He just has a warped view of things," she said grumpily, sitting down across from him. "I'm shabby, but I'm no knight."

"Jared talks about you constantly. Unless he's lying, you're as close to a heroine as it comes these days." Tim stretched his basketball-player legs across the pine floorboards and stared at the toes of his polished shoes. "So, why aren't the two of you together?"

She ought to be angry. He had no right to interfere.

She wanted to weep at the thought of all that brilliance trapped in the stifling environment of his parents' cold home when he belonged on a sunny beach, chasing pelicans and laughing.

"Because he's better off without me," she mumbled. She didn't want to have to explain why.

She didn't have to. Knowing eyes bored right through her skull.

"The perpetual hero," Tim scoffed. "I always knew heroes were stupid. Jared's the one who believes in them."

"I'm not a hero." She raised her voice belligerently. "I'm an ex-con and an addict and probably worse. I can barely rescue myself."

"Tell that to Jared," he answered coldly. "The man never comes out of his studio anymore. He's so focused, he's scaring me. And I haven't heard him really laugh since he came home."

Cleo buried her face in her hands and tried not to listen. She couldn't do this. She was a nothing, a nobody. Jared was a brilliant artist with a future in lights and success written all over him. She'd ruin him.

He thought her a hero.

Tim interrupted her reverie with a nervous clearing of his throat. "A wise man once told me that acceptance must come from within. It's more important that you accept who you are than that others accept you."

The town had accepted her as she was, flaws and all. So had Jared. She hadn't. She didn't know if she could. But Jared expected her to.

Heart pounding erratically with an unknown rhythm she thought might be hope, Cleo lifted her head and met Tim's gaze.

"I've got to see him, don't I?"