Almost Perfect (38 page)

They approached the house stealthily from the back. Someone had boarded all of the downstairs windows, so if Kismet was here, she couldn't see them.

“You go around front,” he ordered. “I figure she's been using the back door; it's not blocked. If she has an escape route in the front, you can catch her there.”

Cleo nodded—without argument, he noted. He liked being thought competent for a change.

He heard Cleo ripping off one of the boards barring a front window. The front door would still be blocked by sand. He waited for the back door to fly open, but either Kismet wasn't here, or she wasn't running.

Cleo's cries of joy and delight set him jogging around
to the ocean side. Despite his confidence that he'd guessed right, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Kismet was curled up and crying in Cleo's arms when Jared arrived. He'd never seen her hug the kids before, and he stood back and admired the sight. She was coming out of her shell. She was already a different woman from the one who'd all but met him with a shotgun that first day.

Now that he knew she could live here in confidence with no one to scorn her, he suffered a moment's niggling doubt about whether she would need him anymore, but he shoved the doubt aside. What they had together went beyond that kind of need. He simply had to make her see his way was the right way.

The beaming smile she sent him reaffirmed his belief that all was well.

“It's all right, Kis.” Cleo hugged the crying teenager one more time. “It's not jail. They let you use the phone. You can call me anytime.” She had difficulty fighting back her own tears as the caseworker waited patiently for them to part. “You scared us all to death that last time. You don't want to put us through it again, do you?”

Kismet shook her unruly curls against Cleo's shoulder. “No, ma'am. Is Gene gonna be okay?”

That was something solid Cleo could grasp instead of this welling of anguish inside. “We'll make it okay. You don't want him having to worry about you right now, do you?”

Kismet shook her head again and let the caseworker lead her away. Cleo gulped back a sob. She despised assigning the child to the fate she and Maya had suffered. She hated herself for not being in a position to stop it.

Hiding her moist eyes and reddening nose as they left the government offices, Cleo stared out the window
while Jared started the car. Maybe if she asked around, she could find someone willing to take in the kids and give them a decent home. They needed encouragement and routine and support. She knew what they needed better than anyone, but she was considered unfit and Linda wasn't. The world was insane.

Jared's quiet mantle of sympathy gave her space to pull herself together. A man like that was so rare, she figured he had to be some kind of guardian angel sent from above. She so desperately wanted to love him that she choked on the need. But she wasn't whole enough yet. She still couldn't go into his world without stumbling. As recent events proved, she could barely handle the small world she'd carved for herself.

“Got something you might like to see,” he said quietly, turning down the street to the store.

Cleo blinked back to the moment, rubbed her eyes, and politely looked ahead. The street seemed awfully crowded for the middle of a weekday. “Are they having a fair or something? I don't remember the Chamber mentioning it.”

“Nope. Keep looking. I won't stop, but I thought you ought to see what your neighbors think of you.”

Yeah, right. They thought her an insane idiot and an ex-con. Had they posted signs to that effect?

She frowned as she noted the party atmosphere of people gathering to chat. Almost everyone had a plastic sack from her store. Was Marta giving the inventory away? That almost made a sick kind of sense.

Someone looked up, saw the Jeep, and waved. Others followed suit. She sent Jared a suspicious look. “What have you done now? Bought a new school?”

He chuckled dryly. “You never give up, do you? Want me to stop so you can ask?”

She saw a reporter from the weekly newspaper scribbling notes as he talked to one of Marta's cousins, and shook her head. “No, I don't think so. My picture will be on page one as it is. I'd rather not provide the entire paper.”

He shot her a look of exasperation, removed the cell phone from its holder, and handed it to her. “Call Marta.”

Looking at the stern planes of his angular jaw, she gulped, and took the phone. She trusted this man not to hurt her. She dialed.

“Cleo's Hardware,” a bright voice answered. Not Marta, but one of the many women who assisted during peak seasons. This wasn't Christmas. This wasn't even a weekend.

“This is Cleo. Is Marta around?” she asked warily.

“Sure, Cleo. I'll get her. Have you seen the turnout here? The registers are rocking off the counter.” She set the phone aside before Cleo could respond.

Jared maneuvered around a car attempting to parallel park and slowly followed traffic past the store. Cleo could see a line of customers through her plate-glass window.

“Hey, Cleo,” Marta answered cheerfully. “We've got a full house here. When you coming in? We'll need an express order to restock the shelves before the weekend.”

“What the hell is going on?” Cleo demanded. “I'm out here stuck in traffic and the place is swarming.”

“Jared didn't tell you? That man's a keeper, girl. Don't you worry about a thing. We have orders coming in that will keep us busy right through December.”

Staring blankly out the window, Cleo nodded, said something inane, and hung up the phone. She didn't dare meet Jared's eyes but watched his long, talented fingers skillfully steering the wheel. “What did you do?” she asked very, very carefully.

She could almost hear his surprise.

“Me? Not a thing. If anyone did anything, Marta did. I just gave her a few words of encouragement, and she apparently got on the phone and called every relative in two counties. How many husbands has she had, anyway? And I lost track of the brothers and sisters somewhere after the twelfth stepbrother and thirteenth half sister on her mother's side.” He turned and gave her a significant look. “And then she must have started on all the people you've helped in the year you've been here.”

Cleo gulped, twined her fingers together, and let the tears pour down her face.

“Shall I take you out somewhere fancy to eat?” Jared asked as he helped her from the Jeep in front of the house, politely ignoring her tears. “I could take you into Charleston where no one knows us.”

Cleo didn't know how to answer that. She didn't know much of anything just yet. She needed to recover her equilibrium and find the shield she used to hide intrusive emotions, the one she needed to cover up her desperate desire to be folded into comforting arms and loved.

He'd said he loved her. The panic and outright terror of that much responsibility clawed at her. She simply couldn't carry a bigger load.

She shook her head. “Maya is heading down here with Matty after school. They don't believe Axell that everything is all right.” Matty. If she didn't go to jail and didn't have to move, maybe they'd let her have him home on schedule?

Despite all her efforts, hope crept through every crevice and cranny in her soul. Maybe all
could
be well, for a little while. Love never lasted, but she was stronger now. When it came time for him to go, she might survive, if she had Matty back. Cautiously, she tamped the thought down for later examination, and looked up to Jared for stability. Proved the extent of her insanity if she looked to a playboy artist for stability, but she'd learned that laughing, lanky frame of his disguised muscles and a brain and compassion.

At her look, he ran his fingers through her hair and quirked his eyebrows in a question she could read all too well. Love poured through the broken dam of her heart, and her smile shook a little.

“Don't you have work to do?” There, she was returning to normal a little bit. She'd be back in the swing of it shortly.

His gaze lingered on her face, then dropped consideringly to the highly respectable tailored shirt and khakis she'd donned for the visit to bureaucracy. “Probably a lifetime's worth,” he agreed. “But I think I'll enjoy every minute of it.”

Heat seeped through her breasts and up her throat. “I'm not a very profitable endeavor.”

“Depends on your definition of profit.” He lowered his head slowly, watching her, giving her time to run.

She didn't. With relief, she grabbed his neck, and lifted into his kiss. Sex, she understood. Or maybe not. What had passed for sex in her past was nothing like this. This was what the romance books called making love. She
poured herself into the press of lips and tongue, showing him what she couldn't tell him. She prayed he understood because she couldn't sort out gratitude, joy, relief, and love in any meaningful measure. He was the life she'd never known, and what moments she could steal from his time would buoy her through a lifetime of crises.

“I think I'll buy a sailboat,” he murmured against her mouth, before steering her gently toward the door, hand at the small of her back.

“Sailboat?” She halted his progress for another kiss. She needed to bank these, stack them up in her mind to be taken out and examined every time she felt lonely. He obliged willingly, cupping her breasts and stroking until she thought she'd have to have him right here on the lawn with the snakes and mosquitoes.

“I want to make love to you with the sound of surf in the background, and I have a suspicion sand and crabs would get in the way if we tried the beach.” He lifted her past the steps to the porch so their lips met on an even level.

She laughed breathlessly against his mouth. “Two minds and all that. Are we getting old or just learning caution?”

“Peter Pan never grows old, but he knows better than to tangle with Captain Hook. Come along, Tink, let's tangle.”

They didn't make it any farther than the wide couch cushions.

There was something to be said about the power of the male body, Cleo mused as Jared stripped off the last of his clothes, revealing the subtle musculature of long thighs supporting all that masculine studliness. She bit back a smile at her hedonism. She'd never indulged in sensuality in any form, but she thought she could learn as
she reached to touch him, and he responded with an encouraging ardency.

A warm breeze drifted through the open windows. A cardinal chirruped in the branches of a wax myrtle. Sunlight stole through an opening in one of the shutters, throwing a golden path across the pine floor Cleo had lovingly polished until it shone.

Her sighs joined the cardinal's song as Jared kissed away decades of hurt and returned life where there had been none. She knew she'd have to return the favor soon, but not right this minute, with the faint scent of late honeysuckle and jasmine filtering through the air they breathed. The perfume mingled with the scents of sweat and musk as they teased each other lingeringly, neither willing to hurry.

When they could no longer deny the urgency building between them, Jared took the initiative, driving into her and taking her so high, so fast, she barely had time to catch her breath. It all burst too suddenly, in a shattering explosion of suns and stars and a deep heat within her that would keep her warm on the wintry days to come. She could hold him deep inside her in her memory for a long time. “Superman, my hero,” she murmured, and he kissed her in reply. She hoped he understood.

The sun rays moved across the floor as they lay there spent and exhausted with emotion more than physical release. The world outside wasn't perfect, but it was peaceful for a change, and they let that peace seep through them.

Cleo drifted for a while, content with the heavy weight of Jared's leg across hers, his arms holding her securely. She could imagine having children with a man like this— a little girl with Jared's dark eyes and long lashes, at the very least. She didn't bother hoping, but it made a nice dream.

Eventually, they woke to the growls of their stomachs and the knowledge that Maya and Matty would arrive in a few hours. Cleo ran her hands over biceps strengthened by restless push-ups, hoping to restrain him from getting up, but Jared seemed insistent on retrieving his clothes. She let him go, and wondered how she would explain his presence in her bed tonight. She didn't think she could make him leave just because her son and sister were arriving. She didn't want to.

“This isn't the way I pictured doing this,” he grumbled, pulling on his shirt, leaving it unbuttoned as he reached for his pants. “But I suppose having you naked adds an air of interest.”

Propping herself on an elbow, Cleo watched him jerk his trousers over narrow hips and fumble in his pockets. Jared McCloud was one good-looking hunk of man, but she'd seen loads of handsome men. This one had something special besides the pretty-boy hair and wide shoulders and flat abdomen she adored. She'd call it intelligence, but she thought it was more than that. Understanding, perhaps. He simply understood where she'd been and accepted that without questioning. She loved him for that more than anything.

He produced a velvet jeweler's box, and she blinked in disbelief. “Payoff time?” she inquired lightly to cover her discomfiture.