Imperfect Rebel (44 page)

Tim dipped his head in agreement. "I thought so."

Chapter 36

"This is insane," Tim muttered as he nailed the last piece of paraphernalia to an ornate wooden molding near the ceiling.

"Tell me something I don't know." Climbing down from her ladder, Cleo glanced around the two-story foyer of the enormous McCloud Long Island mansion. If she'd thought she'd been right about letting Jared go before, she was firmly convinced now.

The McCloud family home reeked to high heaven of old money and aristocratic lineages. She could gag on the high-falutin' atmosphere in here. Even the Christmas tree had prissy white doves and angels instead of flashing colored lights. She bet they were all made by Lalique and trimmed in fourteen-karat gold. Her methods of decoration were guaranteed to drive Jared's uptight parents into hysteria.

She dropped the neck chain bearing an emerald ring beneath the neckline of her tunic. It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed to take this step out of her self-imposed isolation and face the terrifying consequences of emotional involvement. She didn't have to tattoo her heart on her sleeve while she was at it.

"You're planning on this blowing up in your face, aren't you?" Tim's brother accused as he folded up his ladder and frowned upward at the foyer's newest embellishments. He didn't seem particularly worried about going down as her accomplice.

Cleo crossed her arms. "Self-destruction is what I do best."

He shot her a wary look. "That's not a particularly heroic attitude."

She laughed shortly. "You're telling me that comic heroes leaping in front of speeding bullets aren't self-destructive?"

"Mommy," Matty shouted in glee from upstairs. "Look at the reindeer!"

Cleo glanced at her tormentor. Jared's brother deserved his place in hell for dragging her on an airplane and bringing her up here, but he'd been a good sport about taking along her eccentric decorations and sneaking her into the house at her request. It was a bit difficult to read past his impassive expression, but she had a nagging feeling that he wouldn't have taken no for an answer any more than Jared.

At her questioning look, TJ shrugged. "Jared rigged up toy reindeer so they dance. He doesn't have your flare with the mechanical, but one has a flashing red nose. Mother hyperventilated and banished them to the nursery."

The nursery. The blamed mansion had a nursery. "I'd better see what he's up to. Do I need a map to get there?"

He studied her for a moment, and Cleo nervously brushed glitter off her deep green tunic, then ran her hand through her hair to see if it had fallen flat or something. She didn't belong here. She was so totally out of place that she was amazed the house didn't spit her out like bad meat, and Jared's brother had a way of disturbing her more than a fed could.

"Jared will be here any minute," he finally said. "Unless you're having second thoughts and want to hide, you'd better stay put."

Terror did a step dance in her stomach, but she nodded. "Go away," she answered grimly, hearing the sound of a car purring to a halt in the drive.

Hearing the car at the same time, Tim grabbed their ladders and disappeared into the nether regions of the mansion. She'd been mad to think she could get away with this. Knowing her twisted mind, she'd probably thought she'd be caught before she carried it off.

Jared's damned brother, on the other hand, seemed to be an expert on covert actions. He'd pulled off the whole thing with an inexorable timing that bordered on dangerous. She'd hate to have him for an enemy.

A car door slammed. She tugged her tunic down over her leggings and wished she'd worn something more upscale. At the time she'd bought these, she'd thought velvet was upscale.

Her gaze swung frantically to the door as someone inserted a key. She could hide—
Nahh
. She was here to prove a point.

The door swung open to her tape of
Silver Bells
played by the church bell choir. Garbed in leather jacket and looking taller and more handsome than ever, Jared halted in the doorway as a reindeer-racing Santa streaked past his face, flinging glitter behind him.

"Ultra-rad." He admired the Santa speculatively as it flew back across the foyer like clockwork.

Frozen, Cleo fixed her gaze on the heart-stopping sight of Jared's broad shoulders filling out a battered bomber jacket. With his face carved into interesting angles and planes, he looked more artistic and distant than she remembered. He'd let his hair grow, and rather than mess with it, he'd apparently pulled it back in a rubber band. Still, he couldn't disguise his cool competence and knowing eyes as he calculated Santa's arc in order to step past him. Wearing a hand-knitted fishermen's sweater beneath his jacket, he stuck his hand into the pocket of elegantly tailored wool slacks, and transferred his gaze from the chortling Santa to Cleo.

"Assault by glitter?" he asked impassively as Santa sparkled his hair with red and green and silver.

Terror filled her at his lack of reaction. This wasn't the man she remembered. Had TJ been wrong? Had she lost Jared with her recalcitrance? Had she really thought he'd always be there for her, even when she was behaving like a stupid cow?

Not if she knew Jared. She'd hurt him, and he was being wary. Somehow, she had to reach out and show him she had the strength to love him back—that she might be whole enough to love him as he should be loved. Heart in throat and hope pulsing, Cleo stepped backward, into the doorway she'd just finished decorating. "I don't do 'No Trespassing' signs anymore. Consider yourself showered with welcome," she said cautiously, trying not to hold her breath.

His dark eyes lit with an unholy gleam as he regarded the spinning disco globe of mistletoe and her placement under it. "Even if it's rigged to explode, I still like your style."

"I'm the one likely to explode," she said darkly, watching him in exasperation.

His eyebrows quirked and a slow smile transformed his lean face as he got the message. "You've come to rescue me from purgatory?"

She widened her eyes at this description of his self-imposed exile, but she nodded agreement. "Yeah, maybe."

Crossing the gleaming parquet of the foyer in three strides, Jared swung her into his arms and captured her mouth with his.

She couldn't breathe, didn't dare breathe for fear she dreamed the fantasy of Jared's welcoming arms hugging her, the bristles of his beard rubbing her cheeks, the heated hunger of desire on his tongue. She dug her fingers into the leather of his jacket, clinging for dear life as her head spun like a Christmas top.

He kissed her until both their heads spun, or the insanely flashing strobe light from the spinning mistletoe made them dizzy.

Laughing, Jared stumbled, and broke the kiss rather than fall over.

Filled with the bliss of knowing Cleo actually cared enough to abandon her personal prison for him, he swung her in a circle with more glee than he'd felt since he'd been six and discovered a walking, talking robot under the tree.

When he finally returned her to her feet, she nervously tugged on a gold chain at her throat, a chain bearing
his
ring, he noted smugly. Needing to touch, he ran his hand through the glimmering red of her... curls? He glanced down to verify this fascinating phenomenon. She glared back, and his tension melted away. All was well with his world when Cleo glared. He knew how to make her really smolder.

He sobered quickly as he read the uncertainty in her gaze. "Are you ready to admit I'm man enough to handle you and your life?" he asked. Too many people had underestimated him for too long. He needed Cleo to believe in him.

"Put that way..." She slid her hand into his and studied him through troubled eyes. "I don't doubt your abilities to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It's me that's the problem."

"Not from my viewpoint, Cleo." Jared clasped the ring and held it up between them. "From where I stand, you're almost perfect."

"Almost perfect?" A child's wonder crossed her face before she narrowed her eyes in disbelief again. "I'll never be perfect."

"Yeah, that's the good part. I don't have to live up to you and be perfect either. I promise, I won't stop loving you if you throw pinecones at me or wear your porcupine shirt. Would you give up on me if I lost my job or my money?"

"I might consider it if you lost your mind. I'm kind of fond of fractured brains." She tried to tug the necklace back, but more confident now, he wouldn't let go. She quit fighting and stood there staring at him, looking lost and vulnerable. "But how would I know if you lost it? You're already crazy."

A grin tugged the corner of his mouth as he recognized her dilemma. She simply couldn't admit she was soft putty at heart. "You don't want to say it, do you?" he taunted. "It's killing you to admit you feel anything. I love you, Cleo." He backed her up against the door frame. "I'm gonna love you until the end of time."

He kissed her temple and wrapped her curls around his fingers. "I'm gonna show up on your doorstep night and day if you don't admit you love me. I'll sing serenades beneath your window. I'll camp on your beach." He planted another kiss beneath her earlobe and was rewarded with a gasp.

"You have all this," she said in bewilderment, drawing reluctantly away to gesture at their elegant surroundings. "You have more talent in your little finger than I'll ever have in my whole life. Why would you want me holding you back?"

He sobered and dropped the necklace to stroke her pale cheek. "You still don't understand, do you?" No longer hidden behind tinted glasses, her eyes studied him with wariness and a prayer, waiting for the reassurances that he willingly gave.

Maybe he hadn't done it right the first time. For a moment, he feared he wouldn't do it right again.

"You freed me, Cleo," he murmured, touching her, for he couldn't not touch her, not while she was finally here, the best gift he'd ever been given. He repeated her gesture to indicate their surroundings. "All this traps me behind the iron bars of expectations. I'm not allowed to fail. I can't explore new paths, try new things, for fear that I won't live up to my success, but I can be Jared McCloud, comic artist, only so long. Then I'm expected to climb higher, become Jared McCloud, screenwriter, Jared McCloud, director, producer, superstar, whatever. I have to follow the road someone else tells me to follow." His hand slipped away, but he held her gaze. "I want to choose my own road."

The hunger flaring in her eyes showed she understood. "I'm a badly beaten path," she murmured in protest.

"A beautiful, unexplored jungle," he countered, relaxing now that they were both on the same wavelength. "But you won't expect me to be Tarzan or to mow down the jungle and create palaces. You'll let me run the beach, and inspire me to create new worlds, and you won't complain if those worlds don't suit your image of profitable."

She shot him a look of scorn. "Your talent should be for the good of all, not just the good of someone's wallet. Even I can see that. Tim showed me your film. It's
good
, Jared. Don't you dare give up that kind of work because it won't make millions."

"My damned spy of a brother must have stolen a copy, but I'll forgive him—this time." Love lightened his heart, and he smiled. "Cleo, my knight in battered armor, I don't need you to rescue me—or sacrifice yourself for my sake. Not any more than you need a superhero to sacrifice himself for you. That's not what love is about. Couldn't we just amble along the yellow brick road together and see where it takes us?"

"Only if I can be the tin man." Enhanced by the emerald of her velvet tunic, Cleo's eyes began to gleam with amusement and—he hoped—with a little more freedom from the heavy burdens love had laid on her shoulders in the past.

"You have a heart, idiot," he reminded her. "You just need to quit sitting on it." Gently, Jared unclasped her necklace, removed the ring, and taking her hand in his, slipped the emerald on her finger. "Tell me yes, Cleo. Don't make me beg."

Provocatively, she slipped a finger between her lips, tilted her head, and studied him. "I don't think I'll ever be one of the self-indulgent rich. You aren't planning on being rich, are you?"

Jared grabbed a fistful of luscious curls, wishing he could kiss her until they fell into bed and woke up married. "Depends," he answered warily. "I just sold the film for a hefty advance and nice percentage of everything, but there's this foundation I want to fund for teenagers from dysfunctional homes..."