McCloud's Woman (12 page)

Mara flashed a smile at a reporter, accepted a new martini
from her PR man, and whispered to Ian, “He’s an old friend, okay? Leave
him alone.”

“Does Sid know he’s an old friend?” her producer demanded.
“Better yet, does Sid know your old friend is the reason production
costs are gonna skyrocket?”

“It’s none of Sid’s damned business,” she retorted, “and it’s none of yours either. Lay off, Ian.”

“Sid’s talking about hiring a lawyer to move McCloud’s fat ass out of there.” Ian threw back a swig of scotch and scowled.

“Quit talking to Sid behind my back.” With a hiss of
distaste, Mara swung on her heel and awarded the reporter her biggest
smile. This was her project. Her ex could just keep his bloody hands off
it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mara watched TJ throughout
the evening. He didn’t appear to bat a lash when Glynis practically
assaulted him in the shadows of the jasmine-covered trellis. Looking as
tailored and business-like as the politicians and millionaires she
courted, he accepted a fresh drink while the mayor berated him about the
access problem. She prayed they’d come to terms, but the parade of
businessmen and council members approaching him throughout the evening
didn’t bode well.

She knew from prior experience that once TJ decided
something was right, nothing shook him from his designated path. The man
could give concrete fence posts a lesson.

He appeared at ease, sipping his drinks, occasionally
sketching something on a napkin, other times sticking his hand in his
pocket and nodding thoughtfully while someone talked. He might be bored,
but he didn’t show it. He rewarded everyone with his undivided
interest.

Even the women. They flocked around him, touching, flirting, doing their best to capture his attention.

He wasn’t even good-looking, Mara told herself. He had
that sharp jut of a nose and no dimple to speak of, unless one counted
the dent in his square chin. He seldom smiled. He oozed no charm. He
simply regarded everyone with dark-eyed intensity and had them lapping
out of his hand.

She hated him for it. He’d had that effect even as a
solemn, rather shy high school athlete. She’d always had to fight for
every ounce of attention, but TJ just stood there, radiating power, and
the world bowed at his feet.

Well, she wasn’t a high school wallflower anymore. She
could attract just as much interest as he could. She smiled at the young
anchorman in front of her, and he brightened perceptibly. She drifted
toward one of the film’s investors and laid a hand on the sleeve of his
Italian silk suit. He caught and squeezed her fingers, holding her there
while he talked sports with her director.

Across the room, TJ offered a glass of champagne to one of her supporting cast members, a young actress barely out of her teens.

Mara smiled invitingly at the local banker, a distinguished silver-haired gentleman. He zoomed in and hovered.

TJ collected a long-haired local model and another of the
supporting cast, this one older than himself. He caught her look across
the room and lifted his glass in salute.

She wanted to rip the skin off every woman in his
vicinity. Did TJ feel the same about the men in hers? The thought added a
thrill of anticipation to the game.

The evening grew late. The levels in the liquor bottles lowered.

She caught TJ edging toward the door. So did Glynis Everett.

Enough was enough. Zigzagging through the noisy crowd, Mara cut them off at the pass.

“Glynis , Tony is looking for you,” she purred at
Hollywood’s top box-office draw. Deliberately turning her back on the
sexy redhead, Mara took Tim’s arm and guided him into the corridor. “I
think the party can go on without me now. Why don’t we find some place
quiet, where we can talk?”

She’d wipe that inscrutable expression off his face one way or another.

“I’m not shutting down my excavation,” he informed her
grimly as they entered the lobby. “You can set the mayor and all the
king’s men on me, and I won’t leave until I’m done.”

So his evening hadn’t been any more pleasant than hers.
Fine. Served him right. “What if I set Glynis to persuade you? How soon
would you cave?” She led him toward the staircase.

“Do you really think all that hair and the lipsticked
smirk would turn my head?” he asked scornfully, following her up the
stairs. “Give me plain honesty every time.”

Mara quaked a little at that, but she wasn’t exactly
dishonest. She just didn’t think she knew what honesty was anymore. She
lived in a Technicolor world with flashing lights and glittering gems,
some of which might even be genuine. Black and white had disappeared
along the way.

She’d find it again once she got this film in the can and
the company in her name. She’d have time to look around and rediscover
herself then.

She unlocked the door to her suite and led TJ in.

She’d never done anything this brave or this insane in her
life. She’d been a virgin when she married Irving, her first husband.
Yeah, she’d slept with Sid before they married, but she had his
engagement ring on her finger at the time. This was different. This was
temporary.

This was Tim.

She wasn’t really thinking of going to bed with him, was she?

No. Definitely not. She just wanted to get even for all
those miserable school years she’d watched him wander off with the
cheerleaders and the country club girls, leaving Brad’s kid sister
behind. She’d been sixteen before Tim deigned to notice her as anything
more than a pest. By then, he’d been off at college, and those few short
months of telephone calls and hasty weekend visits weren’t enough to
make up for the prior years of longing.

“Is honesty all you require in a woman?” she asked with interest.

“That’s a stupid question.” He prowled her suite
restlessly, like a caged tiger, picking up expensive antique accessories
and putting them down without really looking at them. He didn’t really
look at her.

Cooled by a blast of air-conditioning, Mara draped an
expensive Italian lace shawl over the thin straps of her gown. She toyed
with the fringe of feathers on the shawl much as TJ paced the room. If
sexual tension could be bottled, they could supply the entire state of
South Carolina tonight.

She’d parried TJ’s insults enough in the past to know how
to deal with his bluntness. “Thank you,” she purred, “I’ve always
thought stupidity one of my more attractive assets.”

He turned and eyed her with suspicion. “We don’t have anything sensible to say to each other. Why am I here?”

This wasn’t the considerate man of this morning, but a
hot-blooded, angry one. His controlled façade had definitely slipped.
She might have woken the sleeping tiger, but she was fairly certain she
wasn’t the one who had kicked him. Someone else had done that.

She longed to explore the secrets TJ McCloud hid beneath his stony exterior, but they had past issues to work through first.

He shrugged off his coat as if the room had become warm,
and Mara shivered nervously at the sight of the powerful biceps she’d
admired earlier that day. If she were casting this film, he’d be the
sexy antihero who snarled and offed people without a qualm.

Now that she had garnered his full attention, she almost
wanted his Clark Kent glasses back. Aware that TJ’s focus could bore
holes through steel, Mara spilled the silk of her shawl through her
fingers and considered his question. Why
had
she asked him here?

She understood the answer he anticipated when she felt his
gaze drop to the red feathers teasing the black lace of her
barely-there neckline.

Defiantly, she shifted the shawl a little, letting the
silk slide over her cleavage. She smiled when TJ practically growled at
her teasing gesture. The simmering cauldron she remembered had reached
boiling, and her blood raced just as it had when she’d been sixteen.

Neither of them were inexperienced teenagers any longer. They no longer had any reason for restraint.

“If you don’t know why I’m here either, maybe I’d better
leave.” TJ reached for his coat. The threat in his voice rumbled with
the tension of a summer storm.

My, unleashed tigers were sexy. Maybe it was time for her
to get in touch with her primitive side. Daringly, Mara slipped the
shawl further down her arms. “I think maybe you know why you’re here
better than I do,” she taunted.

TJ’s enigmatic mask slipped, exposing raw hunger in coal
dark eyes as he stalked toward her. Too late, she realized tigers were
also dangerous.

He dropped his coat on a chair arm as he crossed the room.
Mara took a step backward, but the needy little girl in her refused to
run.

“All right, I’ll tell you—this is why I’m here.” He caught
the edges of the shawl, wrapped them around her arms, and tied them
behind her, effectively creating a silken strait jacket.

Nervously, Mara tried to defuse what she’d set in motion. “TJ—”

His brawny arm curled around her waist, and lifted her
from her feet. An abrupt encounter with his solid torso cut off her
warning.

His hard lips slanted across hers, silencing all protest.
The demanding grasp of TJ’s arms, the heated pressure of his mouth, made
her feel as no man had—as if she were manna from heaven, expressly
delivered for his salvation. Helpless to beat him off with her hands or
hold him off with her sarcasm, Mara succumbed to the fantasy of being TJ
McCloud’s dream come true.

When she yielded to his kiss, TJ’s tongue instantly took possession of her mouth, and fireworks exploded inside her head.

She thought she might have moaned. She knew she let him
take her weight as his grip softened, and she slid down his body. She
pressed her hips closer to his until he bent her backward over his arm
and increased his demands on her greedy mouth.

He left her no choice but to respond in kind, to curl her
tongue about his, kiss him deeply, and moan in ecstasy at her
helplessness beneath the heat pouring through her bloodstream.

She should have shoved him away when she had the chance.
He was mixing sex and anger, and she didn’t want him taking out his
frustration on her—

She wanted him any way she could have him. This was the closure she needed to her adolescent daydreams.

She shuddered with desire as TJ’s tongue probed and
caressed and his hand slid between them to crush her breast. It had been
so damned long since anyone had touched her like this...

There was good reason she didn’t let anyone touch her like this.

Arms still bound by the shawl, Mara tried to wriggle away,
but TJ lowered her against the bed’s edge, positioning her between the
yielding mattress and thighs as solid as tree trunks. His kisses slid
across her cheek and into her hair, melting her synapses with fire and
tenderness. Panting and operating on sheer animal instinct, she returned
his kisses where she could, desperate to hold him and kiss him
properly.

TJ’s solidness crushed her into the mattress. His arousal
pressed through the thin layers of their clothes. Unable to use her
hands, Mara lifted her hips to meet his—even as she tried to form a
reproach through lips bruised and aching from his kisses.

She understood now why mares in heat screamed when
stallions trapped and covered them. The primitive instinct to resist
submission warred with the sexual excitement of being dominated.

Animal lust won. Hands still trapped, she accepted TJ’s ravishment with a shudder of desire.

His hand slid between them, taking possession of her
breast again. Aroused by his deceptive caress, drowning in his kiss,
Mara’s brain didn’t kick into gear until he had the shawl and gown off
her shoulders and the hook off her bra. Abruptly aware of her
seminakedness as cool air blew across her breasts, she struggled
briefly. Then realizing he’d freed her from the confines of the shawl,
she slid her hands behind his neck and tugged his head closer.

TJ took advantage of her lifted arms to caress her
nipples. His kiss strayed from her mouth to her throat, and delicious
anticipation followed wherever he touched. She arched upward, needing
his mouth where his hand played.

TJ took her breast in his mouth. Crying out at the
electrifying touch of his tongue, Mara grabbed his shirt so she didn’t
levitate to the ceiling.

“TJ!” She tried to protest again, but to her surprise, his name emerged more as a demand.

He obliged by switching to her other breast. Need sizzled
as he pushed her farther back on the bed. Her gown slid to her waist
with the aid of his big hand.

“We’re adults now,” he muttered, returning to kissing her
throat while his hands covered her breasts, teased, then explored lower.
“It’s time we got this out of our systems.”

She didn’t want it out of her system. Not now. Not this way.

But she needed it. She needed it so badly she registered
no complaint when he ripped off her expensive lace panties. She merely
offered a high-pitched cry of satisfaction as he touched her between her
legs.

She quit thinking entirely and gave herself up to the
sensation of TJ McCloud stripping her naked—a fantasy she’d created in
her mind a long, long time ago.

Mara’s satin skin radiated an erotic perfume that shot
straight to TJ’s groin. Riding high on alcohol and lust, he didn’t fight
a driving urge he normally curbed and whose power he’d forgotten.

She was beyond breathtaking. Mile-long legs adorned in
outrageous high-heeled sandals, a taut abdomen framed by sharp hip
bones, a tiny waist swelling to creamy hills more the size of cupcakes
than the overripe melons she displayed in public. When he caressed her
breasts, she closed her eyes and hummed in pleasure, as if he were the
only man in the world who could do this for her.

The effect was astonishing. Her slender hips arched into him, and he grew so hard he’d erupt if he didn’t act soon.