McCloud's Woman

by Patricia Rice

  She’d chosen to celebrate life, and he’d chosen to study death. Nothing could cement their differences more.

  The car jolted onto the sandy lane leading back to Cleo’s house and the beach. Mara thought he meant to ignore her again, and burning resentment built inside her, but TJ spoke before she could formulate the words to express it.

  The gentle lap of waves upon the distant beach and the hoot of an owl were the only other sounds besides TJ’s quiet voice. “There’s more at stake than the colonel’s career.”

  She should have known. “Do I want to hear it?”

  “No.”

  She was still bleeding from a dozen verbal wounds and internally hemorrhaging over psychological ones. She wanted to be held and loved and understood, but that had never happened in her lifetime. TJ’s curt reply jarred her out of her self-absorption, to recognize what her instincts had been trying to tell her.

  The wretched oaf was driving her away again. He was waiting for her to throw things at him and walk out, to resolve his need to protect by leaving, so he didn’t have to dump his fears on her.

  Lifting her chin, Mara glared at the headlighted lane. She’d be damned if she’d repeat the performance of that ninny he’d called an assistant.

  He slowed the car at the juncture of Cleo’s drive and the access road. “I can take you to Cleo, or you can go home with me. Your choice.”

  “Let’s not wake the kid. I can sleep on your couch,” she replied stubbornly.

  He shot her a look and eased the car down the bumpy road. “I’m still working on that image of you following me into the shower. Be wary.”

  Something hungry and desperate in his voice matched the gaping wounds in her, and Mara relaxed. “Comfort sex,” she said bluntly. “I’ve done that. I’ve done a whole lot of things the brave and noble Boy Scout Tim wouldn’t approve of.”

  “The Boy Scout is a figment of your overactive imagination—always was.” He braked the car at the foot of the excavation. “I hope you have what you need in the overnight bag. I’m not carting those packing boxes you call suitcases over the dune.”

  Mara pondered the inferences of his not being a Boy Scout as they trudged through the sand carrying her overnight case and pillows. Did that mean he wanted to sleep with her? Expected to sleep with her? Would jump her bones the instant they walked through the door?

  That idea shivered her bones nicely, but what did bones know? He’d just insulted everything about her for reasons known only to his inscrutable mind. Sleeping with an explosive powder keg like TJ wouldn’t be conducive to logical forethought or action. It would simply be reaction to the day’s disasters. She didn’t do things like that.

  She’d done it with him a little over a week ago.

  He flipped on a light switch as they entered, illuminating the Spartan interior of futon and wicker chairs without a personal item in sight. Switching on a lamp, Mara decorated the futon with her lace pillows and felt better.

  “I’ve always thought you were beautiful.”

  Mara swung around to find TJ’s broad shoulders still blocking the doorway. Suitcase in hand, he didn’t appear drunk, didn’t give her a steamy look or use a sexy voice. He simply looked at her as she was, in all her rumpled, tearstained mess, stated a truth, and shattered her fractured heart into ten million pieces.

  “And now?” She hoped she kept the quiver from her voice.

  “I prefer full-grown women to teenagers,” he answered gravely. “You can have the room upstairs. I’ll take this up.” Without waiting for reply, he hauled her bag up the stairs.

  Damn the man. That was probably as close to flattery as she’d ever pry from him.

  She didn’t need flattery. She needed honesty. TJ was never less than honest. He’d thought skinny, plain, four-eyed Patsy was beautiful.

  Of course, that didn’t say he liked her better now. He just liked women better.

  The man would drive her insane.

  She was Patricia Amara Simonetti, and she knew how to make his clock tick. She was perfectly capable of discovering why TJ McCloud had taken to driving women out of his life. Then she could return the favor and drive him insane.

  “Your couch will do,” she called after him. “I don’t need to disturb your privacy.” Clutching one pillow under her arm, she tucked trailing strands of hair behind her ear, and rubbed beneath her eyes to remove any smeared mascara.

  “There’s a cot the kids use in the spare bedroom.” He turned right into the first doorway. “I’ll be fine.”

  Mara followed him into the bedroom and fell in love. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the ocean, letting in ocean breezes and lifting the gauzy draperies. “I could live in here,” she murmured, drifting to the cushioned window seat, impervious to the tension vibrating between them. “The view is spectacular. How could you ever leave?”

  “I’ve seen spectacular views,” he answered gravely from behind her. “None of them had anything to hold me until now.”

  The eternal flicker of hope grew brighter as she stared over the moonlit sea and let his words seep in. She had no reason to believe he meant she gave him reason to linger after he’d just done his best to drive her off. She wouldn’t demand an explanation. She’d just let hope smooth its way through the many and varied hurts of the day to start the healing process.

  “Could we lay Brad to rest and start all over?” she asked wistfully.

  “I think you’ve got two too many husbands on the scene right now,” he said bluntly. “Let’s lay them to rest first.”

  A wry smile tugged at her lips at the image of whacking both Irving and Sid with a shovel and burying them in that big pit on the dune. “Is that a promise?”

  A peacock shrieked through the resulting silence. She thought he wouldn’t answer, but TJ set her suitcase down with a thump.

  “I’m not in a position to promise anything, but I figure I can lay a few ghosts to rest. Get some sleep, and we’ll talk it over in the morning.”

  Clinging to the windowsill, Mara let him walk away. She wanted to be strong. She wanted to handle things herself.

  But she had an inkling of suspicion that she and TJ working together might be far more effective than either of them alone, and he might need her aid as much as she did his. That’s what friends were for, right?

  The idea of trusting the reins of her life to someone else’s hands terrified her almost as much as risking her heart to the man who’d already broken it once.

  ***

  “That old black magic that you do so well...” drifted up the stairs, belted out in a husky voice that raised every hair on his body and shot pure testosterone straight to TJ’s morning arousal.

  He groaned, tried to turn on his side, and almost fell out of the narrow cot. Floundering awake, he collapsed on his back, staring at the early morning light on the ceiling, nursing a straining erection, while he tried to stir his bloodless brain.

  Mara. If his thoughts weren’t so dislocated to the wrong part of his anatomy, he’d smile at the ancient lyrics pouring from his normally silent kitchen. He’d forgotten that about her—she had a lovely voice, even if the notes tended to miss more often than not. He could remember her tagging behind him and Brad, singing advertising jingles to make them laugh.

  Remembering the good times eased some of last night’s agony. Maybe if he listened to Mara long enough, the good memories would override the horrible ones. He’d like to believe that.

  He wondered what the devil the woman was doing in his kitchen at this hour. Once the question took root, his curiosity grew. With Mara, anything was possible.

  With Mara, every day could be a new puzzle to solve.

  Grunting at that anarchic thought, TJ rolled out of bed and staggered for the shower. Life got too confusing when half of him wanted to explore the intricacies of a woman’s mind and the other half hungered for mindless rutting.

  Showered, shaved, and with a clearer vision of the day ahead, TJ followed the aroma of coffee and bacon down th
e stairs—and out the front door.

  Figuring that made about as much sense as anything else in his life these days, he shoved open the screen to investigate.

  Her natural curls springing exuberantly in a halo around her face, Mara looked up from her coffee with a blinding smile that would have knocked his socks off had he worn any.

  “Got any more of that?” Feeling as if he’d been on a two-day binge, TJ collapsed in the wicker chair he could have sworn had been in the front room last night, and for the second time that morning, he tried to orient himself.

  Mara filled a second cup from his Mr. Coffee carafe. “I have a plan,” she announced in satisfaction.

  Sipping cautiously, eyeing the colorful tablecloth he hadn’t known he possessed draped over a table he couldn’t identify, TJ listened. The lapping of the waves against the shore a few yards away and the beautiful woman amazingly occupying his breakfast table lulled him into believing domesticity was worth considering.

  “I’ll start by calling the film backers here on the East Coast. I’ll tell them Sid is destroying a delicate ecosystem in a manner that would give the film really bad PR, that I’m working with the locals to prevent harm, and they need to twist Sid’s arm to do the right thing.”

  She was so pleased with herself that TJ couldn’t point out all the obvious flaws in her plan. Patsy never had grasped the venality of human nature. Match ecosystems against money, and nature lost every time. Her investors would follow the money and figure any publicity was good publicity.

  Sipping his coffee, TJ realized he didn’t want her sunny openness to change, even if he could cheerfully throttle her when she applied it to her blood-sucking ex-husbands.

  “That’s a start,” he agreed noncommittally.

  She crunched a piece of bacon and poked at her PDA with the handle of her spoon. “While I’m doing that, you need to call up one of those reporters hanging around and tell him to pick up that box of military stuff.”

  He sat up straight, nearly spewing his coffee through his nose. “Reporters? You want me to hand a ticking bomb to reporters?”

  She looked up with interest. “What kind of bomb?”

  TJ ran his hand over his face and reached for his coffee. “A bomb that could explode the career of a good man and take down all his associates with him.”

  “That’s not for you to decide,” she said calmly, buttering her biscuit.

  “It’s for reporters to decide?”

  “One of the balances of power in our country is freedom of the press. Why have you been stalling over giving that box to the authorities?”

  Because Martin was the authority. Mara beamed at him as if she’d read his mind.

  “I don’t trust the Defense Department,” he admitted grumpily.

  “And you can’t hand the evidence to the colonel if he’s guilty. But if he’s not guilty, maybe the press can uncover that faster than we can. We certainly won’t have to worry about them covering it up.”

  Another of his concerns. If Martin was guilty, TJ wanted to know, no matter how much damage it inflicted to his career.

  “Something dire is likely to happen to that stuff if you leave it around too long,” she continued, “or is that what you’re hoping will happen? If the box conveniently disappears, you won’t have to deal with it?”

  TJ gulped more coffee. “There’s more where that came from,” he growled with surliness. Leave it to Patsy to reduce an issue to the lowest common denominator. For the first time in his life, he’d been letting justice take a backseat to his doubts—doubts about Martin, about their friendship, about the consequences of uncovering the truth.

  Helping himself to a freshly baked biscuit and liberally smearing it with jelly, TJ debated ignoring her admonition or acting upon it. The beeps as Mara dialed her cell phone and started all-out war clashed with the peace of the lapping surf.

  “That box could cause a feeding frenzy,” he pointed out after she hung up on the first call.

  She perked right up at that thought. “Lots of reporters?”

  He should have realized they operated on opposite wavelengths. “I’ll have to hide in the jungle. Cleo and Jared will have to leave town.” Of course, he’d already told them to do that. “The newspapers could frame Martin before he has a chance to build a case.”

  “Forget Martin,” she ordered, stabbing a pencil into her hair to scratch her head. “Let justice take its course. From what I could tell of those notebooks, if you hand them over to the government, they’ll bury them so deep they’ll never see the light of day. That kind of criminal activity on the part of our military would be a political debacle. If you want the truth, give them to someone who’ll see they reach court.”

  “Reporters are sensationalist leeches.” TJ tried not to shout.

  Mara slammed down her cup of coffee and leaned over the tiny table so her nose practically poked his. “Defense Department lackeys are elitist assholes.”

  A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. He remembered this game. TJ leaned over until their noses touched. “The media feeds pablum to the masses.”

  “Are you going to kiss me now or will I have to grab you by the ears?” she whispered against his mouth.

  TJ grabbed her arms and hauled her across the table. Cups smashed and jam smeared but he had her coffee-flavored mouth against his and the world went away.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A cough intruded. TJ ignored it. Why had he never realized coffee tasted far better on Mara’s lips than in a cup? She kissed with the same passion she displayed in everything she did—full speed ahead, no questions asked, and with the inventiveness of her Gemini mind. She had his shirt buttons unfastened before his thoughts had traveled past the rich silk of her hair and the wicked heat of her tongue.

  “I really hate to intrude on this poignant moment, but there’s a padlock on your office and a military notice declaring it off-limits, so I don’t have anywhere else to wait.”

  Mara gave a little screech and jerked away. TJ growled at the loss of her heat, and turned to glare at the reporter. “Roger, you’re in serious danger of losing your head if you stay there.”

  Roger shrugged. “I’ve walked mine fields. I’ll take my chances. What’s with the padlock?”

  “Militaristic pigs,” Mara whispered defiantly.

  “Rumor mongers,” TJ retorted, but his heart wasn’t in the game any longer. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he tried to pin his whirling brain in place.

  “Justice,” Mara reminded him in a whisper Roger couldn’t hear. “It’s not about Martin and it’s not about you. It’s about justice.”

  She was right. Betraying a friend or destroying his career were all about him and not about the truth he’d spent his life defending.

  Time to wake up and smell the roses. The world didn’t revolve around him.

  TJ hated hurting his family who thought he walked on water, but he couldn’t stand in the way of justice if those boxes would convict a man who freed murderers. Maybe Martin had thought he was protecting national security or his counterparts in other armed forces. It wasn’t up to him to decide. And it wasn’t up to the military to bury.

  Mara’s uncomplicated outlook untangled the knot he’d been tied in.

  “There’s a key hanging on a hook by the back door.” TJ bathed his weary soul in the pride gleaming in Mara’s eyes, ignoring Roger’s suddenly alert stance. “There’s a tag on it for a storage unit up in Charleston. The contents may or may not be helpful. I’m relying on you to keep me out of this for as long as you can.”

  The anonymous storage unit distanced his connection to the material, but the box in his car didn’t. He’d figure out how to get that to Roger some other time.

  “Far as I know, you’re honeymooning with your Hollywood starlet,” Roger answered. “I just stopped by to wish you well.”

  “Yeah, tell the creep from People that we’re an item.”

  Mara’s lips turned up in an engaging grin at his sarcastic to
ne, and TJ didn’t resent his descent into rumormongering while basking in her approval.

  Roger coughed again as they shut him out, and shuffled his feet in embarrassment. “Well, you kids have fun. I’m off to Charleston.”

  “Have a safe trip.” TJ didn’t watch him lope around the corner of the house but kept his attention focused on Mara’s shining eyes. Her pride in him almost made decimating his career worth it. He wouldn’t contemplate what would happen should Martin actually be guilty.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” she murmured, her cheeks pinkening beneath his stare.

  “Yeah, I always wanted to be a beach bum,” he agreed. At her startled look, he relented. No point in adding to her troubles by explaining he’d just burned his bridges, and the walls would come tumbling down shortly. “I better call Jared and tell him and Cleo to skedaddle. I have a feeling privacy will be in short supply.”

  Her eyes narrowed into a speculative look that TJ knew to be wary of. “What?” he demanded. He might want to carry her up the stairs and bang her brains out right now, but Mara’s brains had a dangerous tenacity he respected.

  “If we don’t need to worry about Jared’s and Cleo’s privacy...” She halted, still thinking furiously.

  “Forget it, whatever you’re planning. Stick to calling investors. Your ex and his cronies can find some other beach to fry.”

  He started to stand up, but Mara slammed the coffeepot on the table, startling him into sitting again.

  “That’s my film! Sid’s just looking for an excuse to pull Glynis out from under me and stick her in one of his losers. That film is my one and only chance of getting the company out from under his thumb. I won’t let it die. Too many people are depending on me. You could pull that injunction and let me take dozers in there.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, TJ could see Roger hurrying down the path toward the dig site, key—and TJ’s future—in hand. Forensic anthropology might not be glamorous, but his nomadic existence had allowed him to save a good deal of money. The market had been kind to him, and he’d found safe nest eggs for most of his assets. He wouldn’t starve anytime soon, even after his career crumbled.