McCloud's Woman (23 page)

Maybe if she defied Tim’s federal injunction, ignored Sid, and brought in dozers...?

She couldn’t go back to Brooklyn and live with her aunt
and uncle. She couldn’t go back to Irving. She didn’t have enough
experience for anyone else in Hollywood to hire her. She only had this
job because she’d married the boss. She had no education, no career, no
talent except for disguising herself—and that was wearing mighty thin.

The film was all she had.

A pretty sad state of affairs if she did say so herself.
Mara glanced up at the gracious old homes framed in ancient oaks and
azaleas and wondered what it would have been like to have grown up here,
in this oasis of stability in a world gone mad. Boring, probably, but
boring wasn’t necessarily bad.

Maybe her family was right. Maybe she was meant to be a
boring housewife, helping her husband to move up in the world, raising
beautiful babies. Children were the future, after all.

She shook her head. Not her future. Going there was even worse than contemplating bankruptcy.

She was her mother’s future
.
If she was her mother’s future, then they were both damned.

A wry grin curled one corner of her mouth at that churlish prediction. At least her sense of humor hadn’t deserted her.

Once upon a long time ago, she’d worshipped TJ, loved him
with all her adolescent heart. He’d understood truth and justice with a
basic honesty that had shone through his every action. A teenage hunk
who could be kind to a plain-Jane nerd had to have a special place in
heaven reserved for him.

How could she destroy his work by bringing in bulldozers?
Building her career on the ruins of his would turn her into a monster
like Sid.

With her world crumbling around her, she needed to believe
in TJ’s honesty and sense of justice. He represented an island of
sanity in her life.

She needed TJ on her side. She’d already lost everything—what else did she have to lose?

Turning down a street leading to TJ’s storefront office,
Mara knew what she had to lose, but she’d lost that a long time ago. Her
stupid teenage heart had gone with TJ the day he’d walked away without
looking back.

He could keep her damned heart. She’d lived without it this long. She just wanted her life back.

***

Cooled by the air-conditioned ride into town, TJ parked in
the alley beside the office and climbed out of the car without glancing
in the mirror to see what he looked like. He hadn’t showered and he
probably stank, but that certainly ought to give his new secretary food
for thought. He’d hired an airheaded teenager to guard the door and open
the mail, hoping the age difference would discourage any of the
fanciful ideas Leona had harbored.

As long as Mara was in the vicinity,
he
certainly
wouldn’t be having ideas about other women. He’d forgotten how crazy
she’d made him all those years ago. How could a woman drive him to the
brink of murder and arousal at the same time? He alternately wanted to
feed her and strangle her, depending on what tangent she’d taken that
minute. He could spend the rest of his life spinning like a top with a
woman like Mara around. He wouldn’t need war zones.

Hefting the box of artifacts from the trunk, he slammed the lid and carried them to the front door.

TJ grimaced as he recognized Roger Curtis lounging against
the brick wall outside his door. Bad omens everywhere. Must be a full
moon tonight.

“I’m tired, hot, and irritable,” he growled before the
reporter could open his mouth. “Go find a bar and bother me some other
time.”

Roger eyed TJ’s mud-streaked T-shirt and jeans. “I take it you won’t be joining me in a cold one.”

“I could, but I won’t.” He reached for the office door. He
didn’t have the patience for pleasantries right now. His gut ached with
guilt, and his mind roiled in doubt. He couldn’t remember ever being
reduced to a state where his next action wasn’t clear and straight. He
hated this.

“The independent investigator’s office this afternoon
recommended a court-martial,” Roger said, undeterred. “Looks like Martin
and his buddies are going on trial.”

“I’ve got my problems, he’s got his.” Rudely, TJ shouldered past Roger and entered the office, slamming the door behind him.

The phone was ringing off the hook. He should have thrown
it against the wall along with the answering machine. It wasn’t as if he
had more than two weeks left before the management company threw him
out of this dump, anyway, so who needed phones?

Looking harried, his teenage secretary served coffee in
Styrofoam cups to a couple of reporter types lounging on the cheap
plastic chairs in his front office. From his laboratory, a radio blared a
Gilbert and Sullivan opera. Just what he needed—musical accompaniment
to his comic-opera life.

Cursing mentally, TJ ignored the men leaping to their
feet, strode straight to the back room, and nearly dropped his box. Mara
rose from his stool, wearing a white lab coat and her reading glasses
and looking as if she belonged there. Behind her, his laptop slipped
into a screen saver of a polar bear on ice.

He couldn’t
do
this. He wanted to drop the box and
run for his life. Instead, he stood there gaping at the wickedly
deceptive image of a Hollywood star dressed as his assistant and looking
like the kid he’d loved back in the stone age.

She’d pulled her riotous curls into a fluffy knot on top
of her head. The small wire-rimmed glasses looked so natural that he
could swear it was Patsy staring over the top of them—but a different
Patsy, one who had strength and determination shining behind her cat
eyes instead of pleading anxiety and hero worship.

He liked the strength. It looked good on her. And it took
some of the burden off his shoulders. He could fight equally with this
woman and not fear hurting her feelings.

“I just talked to a Colonel Martin,” she informed him
before he could formulate a coherent sentence. She glanced at a phone
slip in her hand. “He said it’s urgent that you call him back.”

Life had an unfortunate way of dumping truckloads of
manure on his head all at one time, TJ decided. He heaved the box onto
the counter, grabbed the slip from her hand, and shoved it into his
jeans pocket. “What are you doing here?”

“Borrowing your computer, since the library doesn’t have
one. You said I could research your project. Considering I’m out of a
job, I thought maybe you could use an assistant as well.”

He could tell by the twinkle in her eye that she was
tweaking him, but he could also tell she’d been crying. He’d seen Patsy
cry far more than he cared to remember. Damn, but he’d been an
unthinking fool back then, a hormonal unthinking fool, although he’d
never made her cry at the time.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. He refused to let guilt and
tears drive him from finishing the excavation, if that’s what the crack
about a job meant.

“What do you think is wrong?” she shot back.

The kid she’d been would have burst into tears. This one
looked daggers at him, probably rightly so, but he didn’t have patience
with the problems of her world of glitz. Let her take them to one of her
rich ex-husbands. “Irving wanted a loan and pouted when you refused?”
he suggested nastily.

Mara’s chin shot up. Her lips tightened. And TJ thought
for a second she’d throw her clipboard at him. He waited. She didn’t
respond as anticipated. She reached for a notebook on the counter and
slammed it into his chest.

“Here. Look at this. See if you think it’s feasible before I present it to Cleo.”

He glanced at the opening page, recognized the drawing of
the access road and dig site with modifications, and flung it back to
the counter. He was too rattled to think right now. “I’ve got to label
those specimens, take a shower, and answer my messages. I’ll look at it
later.”

Mara drew herself up to her full height, nearly pressed her nose to his, and stabbed his chest with her finger. “This is
me
,
Timothy John, not one of your lovestruck assistants. I’m sitting right
here until you take time to listen to me. I’ll join you in the shower if
I have to. You will
not
drive me off like you have every other damned female in your life.”

Out of all the shit load of crap turning his life into a
cesspool, Mara’s blunt words pealed like heavenly bells of joy. He
figured he’d gone insane, but something very like hope wormed through
the barriers around his heart and opened a pinprick of light. Maybe he’d
start with that shower offer.

The phone shrieked.

His secretary returned and burst into tears rather than answer it.

Both reporters appeared in the doorway at once.

Mara raised her eyebrows and waited expectantly.

“You’re hired.” Spinning on his heel, TJ shoved past the reporters and stalked out the door.

***

If it wasn’t so funny, she’d cry. Mara bit back both tears
and laughter, gathered the teenager in her arms and patted her back,
and glared at the stunned journalists who—when faced with genuine human
drama—didn’t have the sense to follow TJ.

“Out,” she commanded them firmly. “Business hours are over. Go find Ian down at the bar and commiserate.”

They shrugged and obeyed. The answering machine she’d just
purchased at Cleo’s Hardware picked up the call, and whoever it was
hung up.

Mara listened to the girl’s sobbing account of a bad day and a broken love affair and idly wondered if happy teenagers existed.

Remembering TJ’s wild-eyed look as he stormed out, she
smiled again. Men like TJ needed mystery and adventure in their lives
but didn’t have the sense to recognize it in the everyday world around
them. She thought maybe she could teach him a thing or two.

He’d better learn fast. She needed him here rather than out beating up reporters.

“Look, honey,” she soothed the miserable girl, “men aren’t
worth our tears. Cry over babies and invalids, but tell the men in your
life to go to hell. It’s the only language they understand.”

The girl looked at her in disbelief, but something in
Mara’s expression must have made a believer out of her. She nodded and
wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

“Go on home. I’ll lock up here. I don’t think Dr. McCloud will need you this evening.”

Mara ushered the girl out the door, turned the key in the
deadbolt, and with grim-lipped decision, marched back to TJ’s office and
the box marked “Martin” that she’d found in the closet.

She hadn’t just spent the last hours weeping in her beer.
She’d been listening, reading, and catching up on news she’d ignored
while involved in her own troubles. A man named Martin had played a
significant part in current events lately. TJ had been in the Balkans.
This box contained notebooks that mentioned both the colonel and TJ.

It looked to her as if TJ McCloud might be involved in
something far larger and darker than his impassive façade revealed.
Maybe if she explored further, this could be her chance to rescue him
the way he used to rescue teenage Patsy.

***

Showered and relatively more lucid, TJ drove across the causeway back to town. He would have to call Martin tonight.

First, he needed to see what Mara wanted. If she owned
half the film company, surely she couldn’t be out of a job. She was just
being dramatic.

After the debacle at the dig site, he couldn’t believe
she’d come to him unless something was far more wrong than she was
letting on. She might infuriate him, she might enflame his hormones, but
she was still Patsy Amara, the funny, sensitive girl he would protect
with his life.

So he had overdeveloped Neanderthal tendencies. Probably went with the size and hardheadedness.

He’d intended to find Mara at the B&B, but passing his
office on the way, he saw a crack of light through the curtains. The
idiot he’d hired should have turned them off and locked up at five.
Surely she could manage that much.

Surely thieves didn’t turn on lights.

Switching off his headlights and pulling to the curb a few
doors away, TJ got out of the car and slipped back to the storefront.
Curtains blocked any view inside.

Without hesitation, he stuck his key in the lock and opened the door.

Mara instantly appeared in the lab doorway. “I hoped you’d be back tonight.”

She had dust smudges on her perky little nose, and he
wanted to kiss them away. Her topknot was tumbling from its pins, and he
thought her natural curls far more crushable than the elaborate
hairpiece. She’d shed the lab coat, revealing her movie-star designer
crop top and hip- huggers, but he rather liked that tanned expanse of
taut tummy wedged between vibrant reds. He more than liked it.

Reluctantly tearing his gaze away from the distraction, he
focused on familiar green eyes. They watched him warily but not out of
fear as much as concern. He had the sneaking suspicion Patsy had been
playing snoop again.

“Some things don’t change, do they?” he asked wearily, repeating her favorite phrase, closing and locking the door behind him.

“Have you eaten? I ordered pizza.” She swung around and marched back into the lab without hammering him with questions.

He remembered that about her with a degree of pleasure—she
didn’t try to pry things out of him when he didn’t want to talk.
Unfortunately, she still possessed the audacity to apply her razor-sharp
mind to discovering his secrets on her own.

The aroma of sausage-laden pizza rumbled his stomach, and
he grabbed the Coke bottle on the counter before tackling whatever
monumental catastrophe Mara was about to fling at him.

“The answering machine has caller ID.” She took one of the
counter stools and swung in slow circles, sipping her soft drink and
not watching him. “The person with the Washington area code keeps
slamming down the phone rather than leave messages. The last few times,
it’s come through as ‘unknown caller.’ Do you think that means he’s on a
cell phone now?”