McCloud's Woman (19 page)

“Nothing the referees could call him on,” Mara answered,
playing to her eager audience. “But oddly enough, Sugar ended up in the
strangest places on the court that night—in the stands, on top of his
coach, rear-ending his own team, falling over the floor announcer—until
his coach finally pulled him from the game for clumsiness.”

Jared snorted. “Our side howled because they knew it was
Tim, the Intimidator. All he had to do was get in someone’s face and
snarl, and they fell all over their feet backing off. Sugar didn’t have a
chance.”

“Wow!” Gene looked at TJ in awe as he returned to the table. “You played basketball?”

Mara chuckled. If that was all the boy got out of the
story, fine. Maybe it was better that he didn’t realize the dangerous
depths of the outwardly bookish man he saw. Kids saw so much television,
they willingly accepted real life acts of courage or villainy as
ordinary. They didn’t understand the motivation or character that would
drive their heroes to behave like steamrollers.

She did. She’d seen through TJ’s outward composure from the first day they’d met.

Ignoring TJ as he spoke to Gene about high school sports,
Mara turned her attention to Kismet, who was eyeing her naked hair
speculatively. “Is it a total mess?”

Kismet shook her wild tawny mane. “No, ma’am. Your hair is beautiful even with potatoes in it.”

Mara dabbed at it with her napkin, searching for traces of
potato. Leave it to TJ to hit her in her vanity. “Thank you. I used to
hate it. It’s naturally curly and mousy and horrid. A good hairdresser
is a miracle worker.”

The girl bit her bottom lip and stared at her plate.

Uh-oh.
Realizing no one else had caught the
exchange, Mara worried over the appropriate response. If the kid had
been an adult, she could have exchanged ribald jokes and hairdresser
notes. She had a feeling that teenagers demanded a little more
sincerity.

It horrified her to realize she didn’t know how to do that anymore.

All right, dig deeper
, remember her own teenage years. “Do you have someone to teach you how to fix your hair?” Start simple, she decided.

The girl glanced up with a flash of hope, shook her head, then embarrassed, looked back at her plate. “Mama braids it.”

“My mother pulled mine in a ponytail. I looked like a
total dork.” Mara smiled gratefully at the steaming cup of espresso Cleo
set before her. She could tell Cleo had caught on to the conversation
by now but wisely stayed out of it. “I was too busy to figure out how to
fix it on my own. You get out of your hair the amount of work you’re
willing to put into it.”

“You could never look like a dork,” Kismet whispered in awe.

“Don’t let TJ or Jared hear that,” Mara whispered back.
“I’ll show you my high school yearbook sometime if you want real yucks.
How much time do you want to spend messing with your hair?”

Kismet gave that some thought, then shook her head. “Not
much,” she admitted. “I’ll never be pretty. I just want to look. .
.normal.”

“Ah,” Mara said in satisfaction, finding an edge she
understood. “There’s the hook. There is no normal. You’re supposed to
look like you, whoever you are inside. If you’re a wild woman on the
inside, then that’s how you should look. If you’re a meek little bunny
rabbit, then cute is probably how you want to look. I’m five-ten and I
figured I was bigger and better than everyone else, and that’s how I
wanted to look, not like a dork of a mouse. So, who do you think you
really are inside?”

Kismet frowned in concentration, apparently aware that
identifying herself could be important. “I’m... different.” She eyed Mara
carefully. “Begging your pardon, but I don’t want to be like you. I
don’t feel bigger and better, just
different
.”

Cleo lifted Matty up and set him in her lap so she could
sit next to Kismet and look across the table at Mara. “Kismet is an
artist. She sees things around her that no one else does, and draws them
brilliantly.”

Mara nodded in understanding. “Excellent. Then you should
enhance your differences. You have spectacular cheekbones and great
eyes. Flaunt them. Pull your hair back off your face as tight as you
can—force the world to look at you and recognize you for who you are.
Then let the natural exuberance of your hair spring out behind you.
That’s a great look for kids your age. Later, when you have more
experience and confidence in yourself, you can go sophisticated, tie it
into a knot and decorate it. It’s all about who you are, right now.
People change.”

Kismet’s eyes widened as she touched her cheekbones, but
she only smiled shyly and nodded, not begging for more compliments as
another might. Mara’s heart wept, seeing the damage behind that gesture,
and she glanced to Cleo for verification.

Cleo nodded, but in her typical nonverbal fashion, she
acknowledged the advice by brushing Kismet’s hair back from her high
forehead and holding it so Mara could see how it would look.

“Yes, that’s it exactly. I’ll send over some of my elastic
headbands. They should work.” With a sigh of relief that she’d solved
Kismet’s problem without making a total idiot of herself, Mara glanced
up at the sound of silence around her.

Jared merely watched her with interest. TJ scowled and
sipped his coffee as if she were the shallowest specimen of worm in
existence.

“You have potato on your nose,” she said sweetly, then hit him with the egg she’d held in reserve.

If he was taking her down, she’d go in flames.

The legal papers crackled in TJ’s pocket as he helped Mara
into the car. It was nearly midnight. She and Cleo had found so many
things to talk about that he hadn’t been able to pry them apart until
now. He couldn’t believe a woman as perceptive as Cleo could actually
like the lying, conniving piece of work that Patsy had become.

Or maybe he could. She was good, he’d grant her that. He
couldn’t believe she remembered that old incident from his basketball
days, and spoke about it as if he were some frigging hero instead of the
spoiled thug he’d been.

Then she’d turned the charm on the kids, and she’d almost
had him believing that she cared about Kismet’s problems or that she’d
even remember to send the hair gear she’d promised the girl. He supposed
he’d have to go out and hunt down whatever in hell an elastic headband
was so Kismet wouldn’t think she’d been forgotten for the millionth time
in her neglected life.

“You’ll never get the butter out of your jacket. I’m
sorry.” Mara examined his coat sleeve in the dim light of the overhead
light when he opened the car door. “I didn’t realize mashed potatoes
were made with butter.”

“Butter is better than blood,” he said curtly, before
slamming her door and going around to the driver’s side. She was at it
again, making him believe she was something she wasn’t, making him
believe she could be the person he desperately needed her to be.

She crossed her arms and glared out the window as he took
his seat and snapped the buckle. Better. Now he wouldn’t have to live
with the illusion of the Patsy who understood when life got too
complicated, listened when he wanted to talk, and didn’t condemn him
when he’d been a fool. He shifted the car into gear and backed out.

“I am
not
responsible for that cease-and-desist order,” she said firmly. “I was handling the access road perfectly well on my own.”

“Yeah, right.” He hit the sandy lane at a speed higher
than the tires could maneuver, and slowed down. She’d probably thought
seducing him was “handling” the matter. He gritted his teeth. He should
have known better than to think he could connect in any meaningful way
with a blond bombshell, even if she had once been Patsy Simonetti.

“Screw you.” Holding her head high, she didn’t look at him the rest of the way back to the inn.

Just as well
, he thought. He could get back to
doing his own research. He’d retrieved another box of documents to read.
The first box had made a good case for believing someone had allowed
accused killers and rapists to go free, but just because the colonel was
in charge of the unit assigned to Kosovo didn’t mean he’d done it.

Not wishing to contemplate Martin right now, TJ stopped the car in front of the B&B.

Mara slammed out before he could turn off the ignition. He
was tempted to just let her go, but he’d been brainwashed by good
manners at an early age. Cutting off the engine, he climbed out and
loped after her into the lobby.

Inside, Mara stood frozen before a distinguished man with a
thick head of dark hair turning gray at the temples. Tall, slightly
stoop-shouldered, wearing a New York black sport coat over a black
T-shirt, the man had started to speak when TJ barged in.

With her back turned toward the door, Mara didn’t even
notice his entrance. “Irving!” she cried in disbelief. “I told Aunt
Miriam not to send you!”

TJ barely heard anything beyond “Irving.” He’d been
looking for a fight all evening, and the bastard who’d broken Patsy’s
nose would do far better than any other opponent he could name. His rage
finding a target, TJ grasped Mara’s slender shoulders, set her aside,
rolled up his fist, and plowed it into Irving’s prominent proboscis.

The crunch that followed satisfied TJ far more than the spurt of blood.

Mara shrieked. The inn clerk reached for the telephone. And Irving crumpled to his knees with a howl of pain.

Shit. The fight was over before TJ had even begun.

Mara clapped a hand over her mouth, and wide-eyed, turned
to stare at TJ. He shoved his bruised fist into his pocket, prepared to
apologize, when he recognized the dancing light behind those cat-green
eyes. She was laughing. And the admiration he remembered from their
youth lit her from within.

Something impossibly light invaded his heart, and he
couldn’t prevent the slow smile relaxing his jaw. No other woman had
looked at him as if he were her hero, as Mara did. He knew he wasn’t any
such thing. He knew he’d behaved like a testosterone-driven jerk. That
didn’t prevent his primitive response to her appreciative expression.

“Might as well go to jail for something I enjoyed doing,” he muttered.

“I’ll bail you out,” she murmured, “and give you a halo. Want to be my bodyguard?”

TJ bit back a chuckle. Bashing a wimp wasn’t anything to
laugh about. He’d just not realized Irving was a wimp until too late.
That’s what came of living outside civilization for too long. “
Guarding
your body wouldn’t be enough,” he admitted. As long as he was throwing
out all restraint, he might as well go all the way. “You’d best tend to
your ex. You can tell the sheriff he’ll find me at the dig, disobeying
the cease-and-desist orders.”

“Wait, TJ—” She held out her hand to him.

Too wired to listen or even to think, he strode away
before he did anything more incredibly stupid, like haul Mara up the
stairs and back to the room where she’d shown him heaven. Repeating that
night was a fantasy he couldn’t afford. It was easier to write the last
time off as a result of the alcohol than to believe it could ever
happen again.

Not that the sex wouldn’t be great again, but his cynical
mind corrupted anything it came in contact with. If he could still
suspect that she used sex as a ploy to wheedle him out of the dig, he
didn’t deserve to believe they could have a relationship. And with
Patsy, he couldn’t settle for anything less.

TJ left the car at the B&B and walked to let off
steam. He’d never been driven by hormones. Well, almost never. He
couldn’t believe he’d made such a Neanderthal of himself. Jared would
laugh his head off when he heard.

Still, TJ smiled grimly at the memory of crunching cartilage. Now Irving could buy his own nose job.

She’d married a damned movie star! Shit. He’d been
picturing some weasly nerd with slimy hands and slavering fat lips who
was so weak-kneed that he had to hit on women. Why in hell hadn’t he
known better? Patricia Amara Simonetti wasn’t the kind of woman who
walked into something like marriage without a good head on her
shoulders, no matter how young she’d been.

She’d probably thought she loved the bastard. A shy kid
like Patsy would have been desperate for love and attention anywhere she
could find it.

Hell. He kicked a clamshell, and it ricocheted off the
Blue Monkey’s plate-glass window. The noise and laughter from inside
didn’t cease. Maybe he ought to go in and have a few beers before the
sheriff came looking for him.

Mara was probably hauling poor, broken Irving up to her
room right now, making soothing noises and calling for cold compresses
or whatever it was women did when their men were hurt. Not that he had
any experience to draw on. Women who talked about cadavers in bed
weren’t inclined to be overly sympathetic in other areas.

Stepping into the smoke and noise of the bar, TJ found a
seat beside Ed. There was always a seat beside Ed. On both sides. His
submarine obsession was notorious.

TJ ordered a beer and listened with half an ear to Ed
expounding upon his theories. The old guy had obviously done his
research on U-boat activity on the East Coast, not that the subject
mattered in the age of satellites.

Given current events, TJ could understand the fascination
with terrorists, but even the most fanatical wouldn’t blow up a nearly
deserted island. Pity Ed hadn’t applied his time and effort to something
more productive, like having a life.

TJ winced. Nothing like the pot calling the kettle black.

“Dr. McCloud?” A suave young man in
GQ
casual
tapped TJ on the shoulder. In pressed slacks and designer campshirt, he
looked like a swan in a duck pond in this bar filled with drunken seamen
in crumpled shorts and T-shirts.

TJ dismissed the intruder with a glance and returned to
his beer. He was waiting for the sheriff, not one of Mara’s Hollywood
leeches.