McCloud's Woman

by Patricia Rice

  Still frantically trying to avoid bloodshed, Mara tripped over a suitcase as she entered. Overcorrecting, she nearly staggered into another before TJ caught her arm and helped her regain her balance. His ominous silence warned her even before she realized that the suitcases belonged to her.

  Digging her fingernails into TJ’s supportive arm, she looked up.

  Irving was trundling his overnight bag down the stairs, and Ian stood at the bottom, directing the placement of her pillows and boxes of photos. Somewhere overhead, Constantina screamed Italian curses.

  Icy terror momentarily froze her lungs, but TJ’s locked jaw warned he’d already switched to battle mode, and he didn’t even know what was happening here.

  Neither did she. “We’re moving locations?” she inquired casually.

  Ian quit speaking into his cell phone, gestured for Jim to place her box of favorite books beside the photos, and stepped over her pillows to greet her. “Sorry, Mara. We need space. Now that you’re off the job, I figured we could use your room. Irving offered to see your stuff back home. I need Jim and the car here.”

  Her stomach dissolved in terror. Here it was, the moment she’d dreaded. Homeless.

  She didn’t bother looking at her ex. Five years of living with him had taught her his underhanded tactics well. Ian was the one she wanted nailed to the wall. She thought fast and furiously, searching for her producer’s vulnerabilities, refusing to sink into crisis mode yet.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said calmly enough. TJ would probably have scars where her nails dug into him. True to his word, he let her speak first and remained blessedly silent, although she sensed her ex darting him nervous looks. Good, keep him occupied. “This is my project, and I’m here to see it stays under budget.”

  Ian shrugged. “Talk to Sid. He’s my boss. I just do what he tells me.”

  TJ’s muscles tensed beneath her hand, but she dug her nails deeper. “Tell Sid I’m the one who got the financing, the investors are expecting me at the helm, and if I tell them I’m off it, they’ll pull their backing so fast, Sid’s pockets will explode from the vacuum.”

  TJ snorted quietly, but she was too tense to smile. She had no idea if she could pull off her threat, but money was always a producer’s Achilles heel.

  Ian looked uneasy but determined. “You and Sid fight that battle. I’ve got a film to do and people coming in and I need the space.”

  “And I’ve already called your Aunt Miriam,” Irving intruded, sensing victory. “I told her we’d rent a van and drive back. They’re thrilled to have you.”

  Cold pizza curdled in her stomach, and Mara thought she would spew it up here, on the antique Persian rug in the B&B’s elegant foyer.

  “I’ll call the security office,” TJ intruded with such solemn aplomb that every head in the room swerved in his direction.

  Mara stared at him wide-eyed, wondering what the devil he was talking about.

  He picked up her box of framed photos and tucked it under one arm as if it were her pillow. “The chain link will go across the walkway tomorrow, and I’ll have guards posted on the perimeters. I told Cleo I’d keep her property clear of trespassers. She doesn’t think of Mara as a trespasser, but the rest of you...” He shrugged and gathered her luggage.

  He was scaring the shit out of Ian without laying a hand on him.

  “We’ve got permission to use that beach,” Ian shouted frantically, punching numbers into his phone. “You can’t keep us off. I’ll call the mayor.”

  Mara smiled and tucked her favorite lace pillows under her arm. “TJ has a federal injunction closing the access road, and Cleo owns all the property around it. Sail the crew in. I’m sure Glynis will love the adventure. And by the way, I have all the phone numbers in my cell. You and Sid don’t even know who the investors are. I’ll let them get a good night’s sleep before I call them.”

  In Italian, Mara called up to Constantina, who replied with a stream of invectives and a reassurance that Glynis would hire her—once she reamed Ian’s black heart into an anatomically impossible edifice.

  Reassured that her last remaining employee wouldn’t be stranded, Mara grabbed the handle of her overnight bag and rolled it toward the door. Only then did she remember she had no car waiting outside and no chauffeur to pick up the rest of her luggage. And no place to go.

  The bottom of her stomach fell out, but she gritted her teeth and forced the panic down. One foot in front of the other, get out before anyone sees you shatter.

  “Have a good evening, gentleman,” TJ intoned in a toneless voice. “Tell Aunt Miriam that Tim McCloud sends his regards."

  Mara choked on mixed laughter and sobs as he caught up with her, carrying her two heaviest bags along with the photos.

  “Aunt Miriam will wet her undies if Irving delivers that message. You know that, don’t you?” The overnight bag’s wheels bumped down the stairs.

  She’d taken such good care of these damned Vuittons, making Jim handle them for her, hauling them in the limo instead of airplanes, and now they were dragging them up a seashell drive while her life crumbled under her. There was a metaphor in there somewhere.

  “I don’t believe I was anything but excessively polite to all your family,” he said in that same grave voice he’d used all evening. She had an odd hunch TJ retreated behind politeness when confronted with turmoil. Excellent survival skill. She ought to try it sometime.

  The big suitcases rattled as they progressed up the drive. “You’re not only an infidel, but in my aunt’s way of thinking, you’re the infidel who cost the family Brad’s genius.” Mara regretted the words the instant they popped from her mouth. “I’m sorry—I should never have said that.”

  “It’s all right. It’s not anything I haven’t thought myself.”

  If his voice had been without inflection earlier, it was sepulchral now. Her panic took a detour. “TJ, you’re a brilliant man. You know full well Brad did what he did to himself. You were not my brother’s keeper.”

  “I could have prevented it.” Self-disgust welled in his voice, more terrible for the calm that had preceded it. Although he was hauling the heavier pieces, he caught up and stalked ahead of her.

  “How? Locked him in his room?” she shouted after him.

  “If I hadn’t been too blinded by hormones, he’d be solving world hunger today,” he reminded her coldly, slowing his pace so she didn’t have to shout.

  The tears Mara had been holding back poured down her cheeks. Hands full, she made no attempt to wipe them away. “No, TJ,” she said insistently. “Brad brimmed with idealism, but he would never have been strong enough to carry anything to completion.”

  “He would have grown stronger.” TJ heard her tears, but he was wrestling with his own demons and didn’t want them spilling over on her. “Brad just thought he had to carry the weight of the world alone, and the burden was too heavy. I should never have let him drive while he was upset.”

  The scene from that night seared TJ’s memory. As a know-it-all Harvard sophomore on spring break, he’d driven over to the Simonettis to see Patsy. He wasn’t much of a ladies’ man, but over Christmas he’d finally recognized the budding woman in the intelligent little girl he’d known for years. He’d spent hours on the phone with her, and the hours in between thinking of how they could be together.

  In that spring night etched in his memory, she’d stood there in tight shorts and tailored shirt, her tan bare legs looking like a college kid’s dream come true. Her solemn green eyes had watched him come up the walk as if he were not only a man, but the only man in the world. He hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her to acknowledge his best friend standing on the doorstep beside her.

  “He won’t listen to me!” Brad cried as TJ walked up the cracked sidewalk. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m never going to be a doctor, no matter how hard he pushes.”

  TJ had heard the argument before. Brad’s grades at Harvard had never been as high as he expected, but Brad had alwa
ys wanted to be a doctor. TJ figured grades wouldn’t stop Brad from whatever he wanted once he stopped worrying and applied his mind to his goal. But right now, TJ wasn’t in a humor for school or studies. He didn’t want to waste a single precious minute with the girl watching him with shining eyes and a love that turned everything he believed inside out.

  He was afraid if he took her out in the car the way he felt now, he’d be in her pants before the night ended. She was only sixteen and didn’t understand the hormones careening through his besotted veins. He loved her too much to push her too fast. He had to be the responsible one here.

  “Then don’t be a doctor,” TJ said unsympathetically. “Are you planning on chaperoning us for the evening?” That had been cruel, but he wanted Patsy to himself. He could listen to Brad’s harangues anytime.

  “Not if you give me your car keys. I’ll go get Ben and Jerry’s.”

  That should have signaled Brad’s state of desperation. Brad not only never wasted money on frivolities, but he was a lousy driver and rarely drove alone. But Patsy broke into a broad smile, and the need for her kiss obliterated TJ’s ability to reason. He threw Brad the keys to his BMW just to get rid of him.

  Seconds later, Brad roared off, leaving TJ and Patsy to stroll the nighttime city streets. TJ didn’t remember his best friend existed as he pulled Patsy into his embrace in the shadows between the streetlights. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him with such soul-piercing joy that his heart rate escalated to explosive. He’d kissed plenty of girls before, but none had touched the empty places inside him as Patsy did.

  His only fear was of his palms sweating as he slid his hands beneath her shirt and touched her braless breasts for the first time. Her muffled moan of surprise and excitement wreaked havoc with his plans for restraint.

  And then the quiet rumble of distant traffic erupted in a squeal of tires and brakes, followed by the crash that shattered their universe.

  Leaping apart, staring at each other in terror, they wordlessly broke into a run toward the road Brad would have taken. Racing into the unlighted intersection, TJ panicked at the sight of the familiar BMW smashed against the lamppost. Recklessly, he ran across the road, dodging skidding traffic and slamming brakes.

  Before he could reach the opposite corner, a spark from a downed electric wire caught in the gas spilling from the punctured tank, and the street exploded in flames. Brad never had a chance.

  The anguish of that fatal scene still had the power to twist his heart in knots.

  And here TJ was again, walking a dark street with Patsy, contemplating kisses he didn’t deserve from a woman who felt like his missing half.

  “TJ.”

  He bumped into Mara before he realized she’d forged ahead of him and quit walking. She set down her pillows and touched a hand to his chest, forcing him to halt or plow over her. He didn’t want to halt. He wanted to keep on walking, march right on out of here, head for Mexico and never look back.

  “TJ, nothing you could have done would have saved him.”

  He wanted to believe that, wanted to forget that night and every other by burying himself in her welcoming arms and making the world go away. He couldn’t tell if the exotic scent filling the night was from her or the magnolias, but it wrapped him in temptation.

  “He’s gone and I’m here,” he answered doggedly, if illogically. He never talked about this, didn’t want to talk about it now, not on top of everything else. A dam inside him strained on the edge of breaking, and talk would only unleash the flood. “It’s too late to do anything now. Come on, let’s get moving.”

  “TJ.”

  She dropped her suitcase handle and the bag rolled off the walk and tumbled over. She didn’t notice but put both her hands on his chest, where they burned through his shirt.

  “He left a note, TJ.” Tears still choked her voice, but she spoke firmly. “Before you came over, he’d told my dad that he wasn’t good enough to be a doctor, that he hated Harvard, that he wanted to teach.”

  TJ tried to push her aside, but his muscles wouldn’t work. Her quiet words were forcing the cracks in his hard shell wider. Brad had always wanted to be a doctor, for as long as TJ had known him. Throughout high school, that had been all Brad had ever talked about, the reason he’d studied constantly, the reason he could never fail, because he wanted to save the world. Something had changed in college, but TJ had been too busy with sports and studies and girls to listen.

  “He would have made a fine teacher,” he growled in defense of his friend.

  “Yes, he would have been a great teacher,” she said softly, “but my father wanted him to be a doctor. Brad tried to tell him he couldn’t take the stress of Harvard, that he’d never handle medical school. They’d skirmished over this before. That night, Dad told Brad he wouldn’t pay his tuition unless he agreed to study medicine. Brad was panicking as he always did when they fought. I was tired of the arguments and wanted you to make the world go away for a little while. So I let him go, just the same as you did.”

  Her sadness dropped like a pall over TJ. He’d known Brad was agitated, but he’d brushed it aside without thinking beyond the nuisance his friend was making of himself. He certainly hadn’t imagined the tragic results.

  Not knowing what else to do, TJ stood there, suitcases in hand, staring down at his teenage dream, who was trying to unlock the chains of guilt that shackled him by taking them on herself.

  “Brad wrote a note before you arrived, TJ, although I didn’t know that until later. He would have died that night whether you’d been there or not.”

  Suicide. TJ let that horrifying revelation sink in. Deliberate suicide and not just a tragic accident.

  Closing his eyes against the stab of agony, TJ wrestled with a fear he’d known all along but had refused to accept. His best friend had killed himself, believing TJ had deserted him.

  Relentlessly, Mara continued. “TJ, it’s not your fault. Brad was distraught that night. If you loved him as much I did, then you have to believe Brad didn’t know the hell he condemned us to when he drove so recklessly.”

  She stroked his cheek while she caught her breath, and TJ shuddered beneath the tenderness of that touch he didn’t deserve.

  “I try to remember him as the loving brother who taught me the joy of books,” she finished softly, “and who did what he could to look after me when our parents fell down on the job. But in no way can you ever share the blame in what he chose to do.”

  With a sigh that ripped his heart out, TJ hefted the suitcases and started walking again. “Stand forewarned, Patsy. I’m a lousy friend.”

  Chapter Twenty

  They walked to TJ’s car in silence. He heaved one suitcase in the trunk of the Taurus with the evidence box and the other in the back seat, tucking her boxes and pillows around them. Mara didn’t know where he was taking her and didn’t want to know. She just wanted to subside into misery and wallow for a little while.

  But TJ was just as miserable, and that ancient part of her that had once adored him couldn’t let him suffer any more than he already had. She wasn’t much of a caretaker or nurturer, but TJ was a part of her she didn’t want harmed.

  “What will you do about the colonel?” she asked quietly as the car rolled smoothly through dark streets in the direction of the causeway.

  He didn’t answer immediately, and his silence worried her. “If he’s guilty of covering up any of those things in those notebooks—” she began.

  “It’s not that simple,” he answered curtly, staring ahead.

  “Explain,” she demanded. “It looks to me like you’re covering up evidence. Hand it in and let someone else decide the truth.”

  “You’re a fine one to preach about truth.” His fingers tightened on the steering wheel and the car picked up speed over the empty causeway.

  “When have I ever lied to you?”

  “What do you think that hairpiece is? The padded bras? The nose job and dyed hair and glue-on lashes? Yo
u’ve become so fake, I don’t think you could see the truth if you walked into it.”

  Mara reeled with shock at this unanticipated attack from a man she’d trusted to defend her. “And that makes you perfect, I suppose?” she retaliated, seeking a means of returning the hurt. “You were born with looks and brains and money,” she continued in scorn, “so you never had to pretend or fudge the truth. You just walk away when things get tough.”

  In the back of her mind, a little voice screamed that she was onto something here, but she wasn’t listening to little voices through the red rage of anguish.

  “Money hasn’t bought you happiness, has it?” TJ said coldly. “And what does beauty get you? Shallow friends? Or is that what money buys? All the money and looks in the world mean nothing without honesty. Where are your so-called friends now?”

  “I thought I was sitting next to one.” The pain hurt too badly for tears, and Mara whispered the reply. “Turn around and take me back. I’ll sleep in Constantina’s room.” She stared out the window at the ghostly ocean lapping against the causeway and wished she were dead.

  “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for,” TJ admitted hoarsely. He didn’t turn the car around but eased up on the speed as they reached the island.

  “You have every right to speak what you think.” She wrapped her arms around her pillow and wouldn’t look at him, although every pore of her body was aware of him and their destination. This was Tim. He wouldn’t have said those things to her without reason. Was that how he saw her? As shallow? Had she turned into a female version of her exes?

  “I hate seeing what they do to you,” he growled. “I think you’re too smart and too real to put up with that crap back there.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk,” she said, still hurting and not wanting to think about his accusations. “You’re letting some trumped-up punk in uniform tell you what to do. Hell, for all I know, you let Brad’s death break us up and steer your course all these years. You can’t punish yourself for what either Brad or your damned colonel did. Accuse me of selfishness for surviving, if you like, but I always figured I can’t do anyone good if I’m dead.”