Almost Perfect (11 page)

“Snakes?” Liz squealed, leaping from the gate. “No one told me she has snakes. You mean those poor children could be stumbling over snakes every time they get off the bus? That's dreadful. Someone ought to do something!”

“Someone already has,” Jared assured her, catching her arm and steering her toward the beach. “They picked up the snakes and put them in boxes and only get them out when people trespass on their territory. And something tells me they consider Cleo's house their territory. Let's go get some yummy Dr Pepper. Or didn't someone bring that syrup they call sweet tea? Just what I need, a big cold glass of syrup.”

“It's tea, silly, with sugar in it.” Liz gaily walked off at Jared's side, chattering about the intricacies of fixing sun tea versus the way her mama always made it.

If she could see him now, Cleo would be rolling in the grass, laughing her head off. The woman had no idea what he had to put up with in the interest of getting in her good graces.

He still wasn't entirely certain why he wanted to be in the good graces of a firebomb like Cleo, except that it would be nice to have just one person in the world think he had more substance than Bugs Bunny. Why he'd picked Cleo probably had Freudian connotations far beyond his ability to analyze.

From her unfinished attic window seat, Cleo watched the tribe of intruders straggle back toward the beach. She'd made a wildly insane mistake by opening the beach house to Jared. He'd said he wanted
privacy
.
What in heaven's name did he consider privacy? First, a battalion of construction workers, and now …

Oh, hell, why worry about it? Leaning her head against the two-by-four behind her, Cleo let the jungle surrounding her home soothe her aching head. They were just people. Well-meaning and chowderheaded, perhaps, but just people. She was the one who didn't fit, the one who didn't dare come within a mile of a beer keg and Jared's partying lifestyle.

She'd learned she was happier climbing to the courthouse roof with the town drunk and fixing a clock that hadn't worked right since World War II than talking to anyone sane.

A normal person would have joined the party to find out what they'd done wrong with the gate mechanics. A normal person would have learned from the experience, not hidden from it.

It looked as if she had still another step to make in her progress toward sanity. Well, another day, perhaps. The kids were hiding out in the cool shadows of the front room, watching television and munching sandwiches before they went home to their nonexistent dinner. The kids understood her aversion to crowds.

Matty wouldn't. Matty adored people as well as animals, as he should. There were days when it terrified Cleo to think her son might be better off with Maya. She
wanted
to be as good with him as Maya. She'd never be as good as Maya.

But maybe someday she could be good
enough
. That was her goal—to be good enough to be Matty's mother. She figured if she hadn't killed Jared McCloud by December, she will have proved herself sane enough to have her son back.

She climbed down the attic stairs contemplating the amount of time it would take to convert the upper story
to a large playroom for Matty when he moved home. She could put the walls up this winter. She'd need to install heat and air ducts, though.

The phone rang as she reached the bottom. The kids looked up at her expectantly as she passed by the front room. They probably thought people actually answered working phones.

Oh, heck, why not? She picked up the receiver with a curt “Alyssum here.”

“I apologize.” Jared's voice didn't sound particularly apologetic over the background noise of music. “I should have known they'd be curious. You know, if you could just come down here and meet a few of these people, they'd quit wondering and probably leave you alone.”

Cleo laughed out loud. She couldn't help it. It had been an impossible day, and she was hot, sweaty, and in desperate need of a drink she couldn't have. And he thought once people met her, they'd leave her alone. How right he was!

“You can control yourself now,” he said dryly through the receiver. “Maybe I didn't phrase that right, but you know what I mean.”

“Strangely enough, I do.” She didn't laugh often enough. It eased the depressing need for a drink. Taking the cordless to the counter, she poured a lemonade. “But I'm not about to gussy myself up to speak nonsense to strangers. This is my day off, and I don't have to speak to anyone, if I don't want to.”

“All right, I won't twist your arm, but these are decent people. They don't bite. Drink too much maybe,” he admitted with a hint of humor, “but not unreasonably much. It's a far cry better than one of my Miami parties.”

If she needed a reminder of the distance between them, that was it. He moved in a social world that included the
entire East Coast. She couldn't even manage a tiny South Carolina town. “Just don't let them go swimming in the undertow,” she warned.

“They've been sufficiently cautioned. Besides, the coach is a swimming instructor and lifeguard. Look, let me make it up to you, okay? I'll take you to dinner and the movies, or bring you pizza, or whatever you like. You name it.”

She wandered to the doorway of the front room, where the kids were totally engrossed in some cable cartoon. “I don't need anything. Just lay off the kids and their mother. You don't understand the situation, and you won't be here long enough to follow up on any mistakes you make. I'm tired of picking up pieces.”

“They shouldn't have to live like that,” he said angrily. “They deserve better.”

“We all deserve better, but the chances of us getting it are up to us, not the government. Got it?”

“No, but I'll take your word for it, for now. The government has programs for just this kind of—”

“Yeah, and I'll tell you all about them sometime. Now go back and play and leave us alone, deal?”

“No deal. I'll bring a pizza by later and we can discuss the deal then. If you can keep the kids that long, I'll bring some for them.”

“I send them home before dark, and you'll never get rid of that crowd before then.” She didn't want to discuss anything with Jared McCloud. She wanted her life back where it had been before he started poking around in it. She didn't like being reminded of her shortcomings, and she particularly didn't like his knuckleheaded interference into things he knew nothing about. “Just forget we're here, and we'll be fine.”

“Forget you're there,” he scoffed. “That's like asking
me to forget the moon exists. It's time we had a talk, lady. I'll be there.”

He hung up before she could argue. Cleo stared at the receiver in puzzlement. Like forgetting the moon existed? What the hell did that mean? That she was big and round and white? That she threw light on a dark night?

The man definitely did not have a way with words.

She let the kids hang around until almost dark, not telling them about potential pizza for fear they'd be disappointed one more time in their short lives. She heard the party breaking up with the roar of car engines and chatter of voices as they eased past her barriers. Once upon a time she'd been the sort of person who could mosey over to a party, down a few beers, and chatter and laugh mindlessly with others. She didn't want to dive down that hole again. Loneliness haunted her, but not enough to burn down her safety barriers.

She walked the kids through the shortcut to their house before the sun set. She saw no sign of Linda except a light burning in the front window. At least the electricity was on. The bare-board siding covered logs older than her own home, but the place had withstood a century or more of heat and hurricanes, so it wasn't in danger of falling on anyone's head just yet. When she was sober, Linda kept the place up. A couple of plastic chairs adorned the sagging porch, and a pot of unwatered geraniums withered on the railing. Somewhere beneath the brassy hair and venomous attitude was a mother who longed to make a nice home for her children, if she only knew how.

“I'll wait here until you're inside,” Cleo told them. She didn't have the energy for a confrontation with Linda tonight. Nighttimes were always the worst for intelligent conversation if Linda had hit the bottle at noon.

She watched them drag into the house, knew they expected
to find their mother passed out, and wished she could change things for them. But no Social Services worker in the world would let someone with her past have care of kids, and she doubted if the system could find foster parents willing to take in biracial teenagers who'd grown up wild.

Kismet waved at her from a window, and Cleo waved back. All was well, then. She could return home with an easy conscience.

She didn't know when she'd developed a conscience. It was a damned nuisance and nagged at her far more than she liked. There had been a time back when she and Maya had been shuttled from one foster home to another that she'd relentlessly tried to protect her naive younger sister. So she supposed their parents had taught her to be conscientious.

She'd lost that as soon as the system spit her out, though.

Not wanting to think of those dark years, Cleo stripped a few kudzu vines of their leaves and dropped them in the menagerie for the animals as she passed through. She hadn't heard a car drive by in a while, so she supposed Jared's guests had all departed. If she hid out here long enough, he might go away. Or maybe he'd already forgotten.

She'd showered off the tar and sweat earlier, and put on clean clothes, not for him, but for her own selfrespect. She'd never actually slept in doorways, but she'd been without water and electricity and had lived in filth at one time. She took pride in knowing that was far behind her. She hoped.

She'd been lucky, but she wasn't counting on luck to help her out a second time. Instead of blowing it on a big house and car, she had invested her grandfather's unexpected legacy with the help of a friend of Maya's. She
wasn't rich, but she had assets and an income, and they were growing steadily. Matty would never know the poverty she'd climbed out of. He'd forget those few early years with time.

All she had to do was stay the course, avoid situations that would bring her in contact with the wrong sorts of people, avoid the emotional chaos that could send her into a tailspin, walk the straight and narrow with the help of counseling, until she reached some semblance of steadiness. She'd been sober and drug-free for over two years now.

She didn't know how she'd know when she was steady and walking on firm ground, but emerging from the shadows of the trees to see Jared's long, sinfully appealing frame lounging on her front step with a pizza box beside him, she knew an obstacle to her steadiness when she saw one.

She should have turned the burglar alert system back on.

Jared watched uncertainly as Cleo emerged from the jungle of trees. A sliver of moonlight caught on the pale apricot of her cheek, accenting the fragility of her cheekbones and shadowing the depths of her oversized eyes. Maybe that's why she wore those darned glasses—to hide the emotion easily exposed by those depths.

Or maybe his imagination had run away with him again. Usually it didn't take much to live on the surface, accept women as he found them, and go with the flow. Recent events had jarred him more than he liked, and now he was seeing shadows behind every tree. Or skeletons in front of every door. Whatever.

He really didn't want to be blasted by Cleo's scathing tongue tonight. He knew he'd set himself up for it, let his confidence carry him away with a woman he knew nothing about. Any other time, he might have figured out how to shrug off rejection. Not tonight.

He hated it when a party ended and everyone went home. Usually, he had one of the women lingering behind for company. Tonight, he hadn't been in the mood for anyone but Cleo, and that bothered him. The sight of her striding toward him shot straight to his groin.

He lifted the pizza from the porch to cover his lap and tried for casualness as he rose to greet her. “Peace offering.”

For a brief moment, her eyes widened, and he felt a connection, sensed a resonating loneliness and uncertainty from the woman staring back at him. Neither of them were teenagers any longer. They'd both been around and knew the score. But it was as if the years fell away, leaving them exposed and vulnerable like young kids. Or live wires.

Then she carelessly shrugged her shoulders beneath her loose cotton shirt, donned her brittle who-cares expression, and nodded curtly at the door. “It's open. I'll get us a Dr Pepper.”

He'd known better than to expect beer, but he'd hoped she'd stocked something else by now. Wrinkling his nose in resignation, he opened the screen door and let her throw open the weathered wooden one. “Remind me to carry up the leftover soft drinks.”

“Suit yourself. Kids will drink anything.” She shoved the door open with her hip and hit the light switch. “If you don't mind eating in the kitchen, there's room on the table back there.”

The lamp glowed on gleaming, newly refinished pine floors, throwing her shabby furniture into shadow. He admired the stripped and stained crown molding of the high ceiling and the thick panel doors. Most houses didn't have solid structure like this anymore. This house was meant to shelter generations.