McCloud's Woman (31 page)

“Thank you for nailing Sid for me,” she whispered, wearing the admiring expression that turned him inside out every time.

“I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done, once you’d
got beyond your niceness. You need to trust yourself more,” he said
gruffly.

He had to make her see she could stand on her own. He
wouldn’t always be there. She’d gain her confidence once she had this
film in the can. She’d go back to Hollywood, he’d go back to whatever
career was left to him, and he would never see her again. He had to
imprint that fact on his lust-riddled brain.

“I’ll give you two minutes to get decent!” an irritatingly familiar voice echoed from below.

“Shit.” TJ dropped back to the mattress, jarred from his
black thoughts by the intrusion. “This isn’t Jared’s place, baby
brother,” he shouted at the ceiling, lacking the energy to do more.

“There’s no food in Jared’s place,” Clay shouted back.
“But I picked up today’s newspaper from his box. The headlines should
have Mom on the phone screaming shortly.”

Just what he needed.
Triple damned shit
. Roger must have had an entire team of reporters working through that material to get a story out this soon.

Beside him, Mara chuckled and leaned over to kiss his
bristly jaw. “I remember your mother. Charming woman. Give her my
regards. I’ll go fetch dinner and shove it down Clay’s throat.”

He’d just destroyed her ex-husband and partner, without
warning her of what he was doing. She hadn’t offered a word of objection
to his high-handedness. Did she understand that he’d done it for her?
Had he really found a woman who got it?

It didn’t seem possible, but TJ wanted—needed—to keep the
lines of communication open between them. He didn’t want to screw things
up this time, no matter what the future held.

He caught Mara’s waist and held her still. “I’m sorry if I hurt you with what we did to Sid.”

Mara blew a raspberry and wrinkled her nose. “He had it
coming. I tried to save him, but I was just enabling. You did him a
favor. And me. Bless you.” She kissed his cheek and wriggled out of his
hold when TJ’s hands began to roam. “I want to hear the story, though.
Let me get dressed first.”

“There isn’t much of a story.” Reluctantly, TJ rolled from
the bed and reached for a pair of cutoffs. “Clay tracked down his
schedule for the week—and we won’t ask how he did that. Then we had a
private investigator follow him. Sid set himself up. Everyone knew where
he was going and what he was doing. The PI just called the cops.”

“The terrible waste of a good mind.” Mara headed for the
shower, carrying her clothes. “And I’m not talking about Sid. That
brother of yours needs a life.”

TJ chuckled as she disappeared behind closed doors. Life could be very interesting with a woman like her around.

He sobered as he trotted down the stairs to face Clay
holding a folded newspaper. If he read his brother’s expression
correctly, Roger’s story must be a humdinger.

“Don’t suppose that’s news of Sid’s arrest you’re
reading.” Stoically, without reaching for the newspaper, TJ headed for
the kitchen. The scent of fried chicken wafted through the small
cottage, but what he needed was a drink.

“Nope. Looks like your old friend Martin is in a bit of
hot water.” Clay flung the paper on the table and accepted the beer that
TJ handed him. “Seems evidence has revealed that Balkan war criminals
have been released without benefit of trial, and there’s rumor of favors
and cash being exchanged. The colonel’s name seems to be all over it.
They’re talking of locking him up.”

“And this involves me how?” TJ took a long gulp of beer.

“It doesn’t, yet. But even you strong, silent types
occasionally mention who you’re working with. And an old family friend
in the headlines tends to attract Mom’s notice.” Clay rattled through
the paper bags from the café, removing Styrofoam cartons of the dinner
Mara had intended for her and TJ.

“The man’s not convicted yet.” TJ wandered to the kitchen
window but his excavation site was too far away to tell if Clay had
brought back the car along with their dinner.

Cold winds wailed through the hollow of his heart as he
listened for Mara’s footsteps on the stairs. Instead of trusting his
friend and mentor, he’d betrayed Martin to the press, thrown him to the
jackals. Retribution would follow. He didn’t expect anything as dramatic
as Brad’s fiery exit, but the result could be just as devastating to
his family.

The phone rang. TJ didn’t answer it.

Gnawing on a chicken leg, Clay watched him with interest.

Mara’s happy footsteps danced down the stairs. TJ turned
to watch her enter. Inquisitive green eyes darted from him to Clay to
the telephone, but she ignored the ringing as well. “That’s my chicken
you’re eating Thomas Clayton McCloud. Did you steal the car too?”

“Hot-wired it. If I’d known I’d still have to walk, I’d
have left it there. Why would anyone live out here where there isn’t
even a Starbucks?” Clay threw the chicken bone into the trash and
reached for a paper towel to clean his hands.

The phone stopped shrieking. The cottage had no answering
machine or voice mail. TJ rummaged in the sacks, while Mara reached for
the newspaper. She whistled at the headline, scanned the article
rapidly, then threw it back to the table.

To TJ’s relief, she walked across the room and wrapped her
arms around his waist. He folded her in his arms, and soothing warmth
and energy seeped through him from every place they touched. He couldn’t
let her get involved in the train wreck heading his way, but for right
this minute, he absorbed the comfort of what might have been.

“If he’s innocent, the truth will set him free,” she whispered against his skin. “If he’s guilty, he needs to go down.”

“If he’s guilty, TJ’s likely to go down with him,” Clay
added cynically, popping open a carton of mashed potatoes. “Guilt by
association, if nothing else. TJ’s a trained observer and worked closely
with Martin. A good prosecutor can tear his reputation to shreds.”

“No one will believe the Incredible Hulk would be involved
in covering up war crimes.” Kissing TJ’s shoulder, Mara slipped away to
find plates and silverware. “Have faith, little brother.”

“She’s lived in Never-Never Land too long, hasn’t she?” Clay inquired of the air.

Snorting in disbelief at both of them, TJ finished
emptying the sacks and opening the cartons. He opened a bottle of the
water that Mara favored and found her a glass. “You’re the one who flies
up in helicopters expecting Starbucks at the seashore. Peter Pan has
nothing on you.”

TJ pulled back a chair for Mara. She rewarded him by
sliding her cool fingers down his arm as she took the seat offered.
Realizing he wasn’t wearing a shirt, TJ returned to the front room to
pick up a pullover he’d discarded the night before.

“It’s the beach,” Clay reminded him when TJ returned to
the kitchen still tugging the knit in place. “People don’t have to wear
shirts at the table here.”

“I do.” Pulling up a chair, he ignored his brother’s
ribbing. When life was cracking apart at the seams, sometimes it helped
to hold things together with the glue of proper conduct.

“Tell me how you tracked Sid.” Mara intruded on their argument. “Even when I was married to him, I never knew where he was.”

Clay shrugged. “He keeps his appointment book online.”

Mara waited. TJ helped himself to the rest of the potatoes.

Starting to squirm in the silence, Clay reached for his beer. “Computers are my business, okay?”

“You hacked his computer?”

“I told you not to ask.” Ignoring his brother’s discomfort, TJ poured more water into Mara’s glass.

In obvious fascination, Mara leaned back in her chair,
sipping her water. She’d donned a long-sleeved shirt, but the clinging
silk did little to disguise the fact that she wore nothing under it. TJ
debated whether he preferred knowing she did that for him or if he
should jerk a heavy sweater over her head to keep Clay’s eyes in his
head.

“Can you hack anyone’s computer?” she asked with deceptive innocence.

“Hacking’s illegal.” Clay ripped off a huge bite of biscuit so he wouldn’t have to say anything else.

“You wrote the software for Jared’s cartoon animation, didn’t you?” She started digging from a different angle.

Fascinated watching how her mind worked, TJ sat back as
Mara lured his cynical younger brother into her snare. He had never
fully appreciated the range of her dangerous imagination.

Clay shrugged, finished chewing, and eyed her skeptically. “Yeah. That’s what I do, write programs.”

“For the film industry.” She nudged a little farther.

“Yeah, it’s more entertaining than Wall Street.”

“What can you do with the actual film? Or do you just write programs?”

Looking a little less uncomfortable now that they’d
reached a topic of interest, Clay sat forward and leaned his elbows on
the table. “I work with film. That’s how I know how to write the
programs. I not only can create animation, I can slice, splice, dice,
and rearrange anything you can film.”

Mara beamed happily. “Okay, if I give you tape of the deep
blue sea and tape of a pirate ship, you can make the two work
together... for how much?”

“If you want the ship to roll with the waves, it costs more.”

“How much?”

The phone began to ring. Shaking his head at the full-scale negotiation war erupting at his dinner table, TJ reached for it.

“Timothy John McCloud,” the voice on the other said scathingly, “if you’re involved in this... this
scandal
, I’ll never forgive you. Never.”

His mother.

The fun had just begun.

“He’s always been the fair-haired boy, the one who could do no wrong.”

Mara heard the admiration behind Clay’s cynicism, but her
attention was focused on TJ. A cloud of gloom all but circled his head.
Had she done the wrong thing in encouraging him to turn over those
evidence boxes? She hadn’t realized the colonel was an old family
friend, that the scandal had complications beyond her understanding. TJ
had warned her, but she had blithely believed his world operated on the
black and white that hers didn’t. Silly her.

They’d finished their meal and retired to the front room,
but TJ had scarcely uttered two words since his mother’s phone call. A
few moments ago, he’d retrieved the cordless and taken it out on the
front porch, leaving Mara and Clay to entertain each other.

“Does he never let out any of those things churning in his
gut?” she asked, not certain how one dealt with stone walls. Irving had
whined and Sid had thrown fits. Her family never stopped talking,
usually in circles and all at one time. She didn’t know how to cope with
a man who thought he was a law unto himself.

“I didn’t know anything churned TJ’s gut. Growing up, I
occasionally wondered if I had a robot for a brother. I rarely saw him
laugh or cry or get angry. If someone hassled me, he’d pick them up by
the shirt collar and toss them without saying a word, kind of like the
cartoon heroes Jared admired on TV.” Restlessly, Clay paced the room,
examining the few artifacts that had collected there over the years of
Cleo’s haphazard care.

Mara shook her head in disbelief. “Smoke practically pours
from the man’s ears. You didn’t really think he earned the tag of
Intimidator because he was cold and unfeeling?”

Clay fingered a childishly molded pottery vase and glanced
at the window framing TJ talking into the phone. “Kids don’t think like
that. He’s almost six years older than I am. I saw him as my big
brother, the guy I admired when he fixed my broken toys and who made me
angry when he yelled at me for playing with matches. He was in college
before I went to high school. He was the one who got good grades, won
awards, the one our parents and teachers expected Jared and me to
emulate.”

“So, of course, being McClouds, you did the exact opposite.”

“Maybe. Sometimes. But mostly, we thought Tim walked on water and that we’d never be that good.”

Mara understood. Brad had been that person for her. She
could have been resentful, but she’d seen the burden her parents’
pressure had placed on her brother. He’d ultimately crumpled under it,
while she had survived. If she ever had kids...

She couldn’t ever have kids. She refused to inflict the
horror of watching a loving mother’s bewildering deterioration on any
child of hers.

TJ punched a button on the phone and set it on the porch rail. Instead of returning inside, he stared at the incoming tide.

“Time you took yourself back to Jared’s place,” Mara said softly to Clay. “I need to adjust his steam regulator.”

Clay chuckled. “Glad you know where to find it. I’ve been wondering if he would just explode.”

Mara shivered, remembering a brother who had reached that
dangerous point. She ought to run as far as she could before it was too
late.

She watched as Clay and TJ exchanged quick farewells,
waited for Clay to disappear down the boardwalk to the main house. When
TJ still didn’t return inside, she went to him.

“Talk, McCloud.” She massaged his tense shoulders and
leaned against him until he reached behind him and pulled her to his
side. She’d dreamed of sharing moments like this with a man she loved.
She didn’t believe in dreams anymore, but she held onto every piece of
one that came her way.

“Nothing to say. I left messages on Roger’s machine and
called the hotel where Jared and Cleo are staying to give them some
warning. They’re out having fun, so I just told them to give me a call
when they had a chance.”

“That ought to relieve their minds,” she said wryly. “Do
you really care what your parents think? Would it have been better to
let a criminal go free to please them?”

“He was my friend.” TJ rubbed her arm and continued
staring over the water. “Whatever was in those boxes doesn’t explain his
motivation. I could have caused a national security breach by revealing
those files.”