"Can you keep the damned tourists out?" Cleo demanded. "One of them will break their neck out there looking for pirate gold."
"Chain link and barbed wire," he agreed, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I'll need a place to stay."
Jared met Cleo's eyes, read her answer in her softening expression. She was a sucker for wounded souls, and Tim was more wounded than she knew. With a sigh of exasperation, he kissed her as payment for her agreement. Then he lifted his head and glared at his brother. "I've been using the beach house for an office, but we're adding a wing to the main house that should be done soon. You can have the cottage then, if you like, but you'll have to find some way of protecting your gear if a hurricane comes along."
"We need to get busy protecting the site in case one comes along before then. I'll talk to a few people." Tim strode off without a word of thanks.
As bad as Linda, Jared decided. He glared at his beaming wife. "We're gonna start a zoo out here, aren't we? All the nutcases in the world, unite."
"Reptiles are my specialty." She stuck out her tongue at him.
With Cleo, that could be interpreted as a come on, and Jared grinned.
Matty's cries of delight echoed over the pounding surf, and they both turned to see what he was doing. A rowdy game of chicken volleyball had formed along the water's edge, and Matty was perched on Gene's shoulders, swinging his fists with all his might at the soaring ball. The ball sailed into the water, far out of bounds. The golden retriever Jared had bought for him dashed into the water after it. He'd thought the kid deserved one normal pet, but the dog had developed a penchant for hanging out with pot-bellied pigs. The pig squealed and trotted into the lapping surf after his pal.
"I don't think it can get any better than this," Cleo sighed contentedly. "I keep waiting for the storm to break over my head."
"I'll drag you to shelter." Jared slid his hand upward to caress her breast. Despite the distractions, he'd had only one thing on his mind all evening. Maybe now was the time to broach it. "You've got friends and family now, Cleo. You're safe. Bad things may happen, but you won't be alone to handle them. Are you ready to accept that yet?"
She reached behind her to pull his head down for a kiss. He loved the way she expressed herself. She did it with body and soul as much as language. But kisses weren't all he had in mind tonight. He pulled away, waiting for a better answer.
"I'm still trying to accept that you're willing to live here and not L.A." As if she'd read his mind, she curled her fingers in his hair, refusing to let him go. "They're dubbing Hollywood voices to your project as we speak. How can you not want to be there?"
He shrugged. "They've paid me good money for that film. They're the best in the business. If they can't do it right, how could I make a difference? I've got my priorities straight. I'm afraid you haven't married a workaholic, love. You're stuck with a beach bum cartoonist."
"I love my beach bum cartoonist. Don't you think Maya can handle the kids for the rest of the evening? They have a nanny looking out for the baby and nothing better to do."
Jared laughed. That would be the day when her sister didn't have anything to do. She was probably the one who had started the volleyball game. Motherhood had never slowed her down. But Cleo was on the same track as he was, and he'd give her the point.
"Speaking of babies..." He kissed her neck and fondled her breast, feeling her arousal as keenly as his own. "Do you think we might consider making one of our own someday?"
He held his breath as she moaned softly under his ministrations and wriggled closer. He hadn't realized how much this meant to him until now. He wanted to experience all of life, and this seemed a necessary next step.
"The old biological clock ticking, McCloud?" she teased. "Afraid you won't be able to produce on schedule?"
"I want a baby with green eyes like yours and Matty's," he whispered against her ear. "A red-headed monster to scream the night away. How can I write about kids unless I have one of my own?"
He could feel laughter vibrating in her chest. She wasn't bolting from him in horror. It was a subject they should have discussed long ago, but they'd been overwhelmed by all the other problems, and he'd just wanted his ring on her finger before confronting any new ones.
"What if I can't have more?" she asked. "Maybe Matty was a fluke. Maybe I'll be a failure at this parenting business."
He released her waist and tugged her toward the beach house. "If you're a failure at parenting, then the whole world is in trouble because there isn't a better mother on the planet. And if we can't make babies on our own, I'm sure we'll find others along the way. There seem to be plenty of kids out there. I just like the idea of making them."
She laughed, a crystal clear tinkling of music over the sounds of voices and surf. Several heads turned their way, but they returned to their activities when they noted Jared's direction. The beach house was only yards away.
"I like the idea of making them," she mocked. "It's the minding of them that requires a superhero. Ready for that responsibility, Superman?"
Jared caught her by the waist and hauled her into his arms, carrying her up the last few steps of the porch and into the house. He nuzzled her neck through her screams of laughter, his heart pumping ferociously at the thought of the night ahead. The primitive need to procreate had conquered his imagination.
"I'm not the superhero here," he murmured, dropping her to her feet and pushing her toward the stairs to their room. "I'm not the one who can carry a ten-pound bowling ball around inside me for nine months, and I'm not the one willing to suffer the pains of childbirth in return for a screaming bundle of gas and liquids. I'm simply the lackey willing to run out for chocolate pistachio caramel ice cream in the middle of the night at the request of my superior."
Cleo raced up the stairs, laughing, and flopped backward into the nest of their wide bed. "Will you do it in the rain?" she demanded. "Will you do it in a hurricane? Will you, will you, Superman?"
Kicking off his sandals and dropping his shirt on the floor, Jared fell on top of her, catching his weight on his hands as he smothered her face in kisses. "If we're really good, maybe we can beat the hurricane season. Otherwise, I'll have to buy a yacht. I'm not trying that helicopter stunt in a hurricane."
"Supercomic," she whispered against his scratchy beard, taking his face in her hands and holding him still to kiss him. "I'd have heart failure if you took to the skies. Give me your baby, and I promise to love him with all the love in me. That's the best offer I can make."
"Her," he insisted. "I want a green-eyed witch. We already have a son to spoil."
Tears spilled from the corner of her eyes, running into the red curls at her temple as she hugged him tightly. "I don't deserve you," she murmured. "But Matty does," she finished firmly, before he could argue.
"When you're big and round and cranky with my child, you'll think differently," he answered. "Until then, fine, I'm easy. I'll be Supercomic, and you can be X-Lady, capable of stomping wrongs in a single bound."
She giggled, and Jared took that as a signal to continue on the path toward his goal. As he slipped the buttons from his wife's shirt, and felt her hips surge eagerly against him, he didn't think he'd have any problem focusing on his objective this time. X-Lady's powerful magnetism held him firmly on a righteous path, but he suspected that path might include a curve or two to keep things interesting.
As a glowing mechanical Tinkerbelle soared across the dusk near the ceiling, Cleo reached for the elastic waistband of his swimsuit. March, he calculated. He'd be a SuperDaddy in March.
Laughter spilled from the direction of the bonfire, but the occupants of the beach house had flames of their own to entertain them.
The End
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REBEL CHARM
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His assistant's lab notebook clipped him on the ear, bounced off his shoulder, and struck the human skeleton hanging from a rack behind him, rattling its bones. TJ McCloud sighed and caught the skeleton stand before it toppled.
"Take your damned bones to bed with you then. That's the only relationship you'll ever know." Leona stalked out of the shabby inner office, disappearing into the even shabbier outer one.
TJ heard the front door slam behind her. As he leaned over to retrieve the scattered pages of the notebook, a gentle clapping broke the silence.
TJ's head jerked up, almost slamming into the counter. Bent over, he could only see a shapely ankle accented by red high-heeled mules. Straightening slowly, he absorbed the magnificent apparition magically appearing in his doorway.
The high heels emphasized the curving perfection of long tanned legs, capped by a tight red miniskirt. Eyes popping, TJ looked higher, to a breathtaking figure that could have graced the pages of Playboy. Aware of his gaze, the genie posed seductively against the institutional green of his office door.
Damn, was he hallucinating? He should have heard her enter.
Hell, her looks should have screamed her entrance. That red spandex top revealed far more than it concealed, even with the silky transparent shirt thrown over it. Removing his glasses, TJ massaged the bridge of his nose.
He was surprised at himself—he never noticed what women wore. Had a covey of angels alighted, he might have noticed they wore a lot of white before returning to work. His ex-fiancée had pointed that out to him on numerous occasions.
TJ raised his gaze from that distracting body, only to be captured by more fascinating phenomena. Whipped-cream-and-lemon-pie-colored curls bobbed from an impossible heap atop a tan face of delicate angles. Slanted green eyes watched him with amusement as she crossed her arms under her bounteous bosom. Her taunting smile and turned-up nose alone could have halted a rampaging grizzly and morphed it into a drooling teddy bear. The rest of her could roll dead men in their graves and kill live ones in the sheer ecstasy of testosterone overdose.
Why did she look familiar? Startled at that reaction, TJ absently polished his glasses while applying his analytical mind to the puzzle.
"I applaud your ability to defy temptation," she purred, swiveling her hips as she moved toward him, watching him through eyes gleaming with interest.
Where had he seen her before? She was beautiful enough to be a movie starlet, but he didn't watch movies, so that couldn't be the answer.
"I don't have time for this," he said aloud, returning his reading glasses to his nose. "Tourist information is down the street." He swung around on his stool, presenting her with his back.
"Did all that youthful energy bouncing out of here wear you out?" she asked with a hint of humor. This close, her subtle cologne drifted temptingly between the sharper odors of ammonia and formaldehyde.
Awareness crept across TJ's skin, irritating him far more than Leona's senseless departure. "This is a private office. I'll thank you to state your business or depart."
"Timid Timothy," she teased. "That much hasn't changed."
She ran a fingernail down his lab coat, and the part of him with no brain reacted instantly. He broke his pencil lead and cursed.
She laughed, a low, knowing chuckle. "Want a hint? Or shall I just fling something at you and flounce out like the last one?"
"Flounce, please," he answered mildly. "Without throwing anything breakable, if you could arrange it."
The sexy vibration of her laugh shot straight to his groin.
"I see the years have taught you flattery and charm," she teased. "I suppose there have been so many women in your life, they all look alike to you these days."
The second statement was as much mockery as the first, although TJ wasn't certain she knew it. He was certifiably charmless, and the only women in his life threw things at him.
Pointed jabs at open wounds didn't improve his humor. "The women I know have more brains than boobs, so their appearance is irrelevant," he replied, reaching for another slide.
"Oh, I'll get even with you for that one, Tim, just see if I don't." Her velvet voice slid into a dangerous undertone.
He couldn't concentrate on the slide under his microscope while inhaling an exotic scent with more mind-bending effect than pure opium. Was there something familiar in that warning? "If you're done threatening me, close the door behind you as you leave."
The air almost buzzed with her reaction, but her reply was bright and cheerful. "Your wish is my command, TJ."
He sensed more than heard her quiet departure. He couldn't know her, he swore. He'd certainly remember anyone that stunningly sexy if he'd met them. "Stunning" and "sexy" were not words to describe the women he'd dated these last years.
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"Bridge over Troubled Water" hit its last wailing note as Thomas Clayton McCloud sauntered in. He'd apparently taken time to scrub off in a rest room, wetting his long, sun-streaked hair. He wore the ash brown length tied back with a leather thong against his bronzed nape. He'd donned a plaid cotton shirt to cover his bare chest, but with the sleeves ripped off, it didn't do much to disguise his sculpted biceps.
Rory had to bite her tongue to prevent drooling as he slid into the booth across from her, exuding male pheromones. Brains won over brawn any day in her book, but that didn't stop her from appreciating the view when he crossed his sinewy arms on the table. This was the town's computer expert?
He lifted his sunglasses, sliding them into his overlong hair. Up close, Rory could see that it had an unruly curl to the ends. The sunglasses had partially concealed a broad nose with a slight downward slope instead of the classically handsome one she'd expected. He wasn't Hollywood pretty, but his long-lashed gray eyes could ring her chimes any day.
"There'd better be a good reason for dragging me down here this early in the day." With a gesture at the bartender, he ordered a beer. The boy knew his brand of choice without asking and carried the bottle over still sweating from the cooler.
Sipping the beer, Clay admired the glory of the fullfigured redhead across from him—his fantasy Viking princess sprung to life in Technicolor. She'd twisted strands of her strawberry-blond mane in
to a knot at the back of her head, but it was too heavy to stay in the pins. One escaped lock curved in a delicate line along her throat, just brushing her red silk shirt. The stiff-collared, no-nonsense shirt didn't bother him, but the gray business suit she wore with it warned he really didn't want to hear what she had to say. He didn't listen to suits these days.
Leaning back against the wooden bench, he took a good chug of beer and waited for her to get past his rudeness. No sense in encouraging whatever maggot had stuck in her craw. Instead, he engaged his mind in admiring the way her luscious lips tightened into a disapproving line.
"I'm Aurora Jenkins," she said with only a hint of the soft drawl of the island inhabitants. "Terry Talbert has put me in charge of developing a budget for the park grant. I have an MBA in finance and grew up here, so I volunteered to help him out for a while."
Raising an eyebrow, Clay continued sipping his beer, waiting for her to come around to what she really wanted.
In the dim light of the bar, her eyes appeared almost violet. They narrowed at his nonresponse.
"I'm developing a budget for the land-planning grant," she continued without voicing an iota of frustration at his stonewalling. "I understand you're overseeing the software development of a program capable of identifying and locating the Bingham heirs. If you haven't pulled your cost figures together yet, I can help you with them."
Clay nearly snorted beer out of his nose. Wiping the smirk off his face with the back of his hand, he leaned forward, bringing them face-to-face across the narrow table. "I do software. I don't do numbers."
"The state requires numbers, Mr. McCloud."
"The state can go screw itself. I'm working for next to nothing and nothing is what they'll get if they don't leave me alone."
Imperfect Rebel Page 31
