Almost Perfect (39 page)

He dropped onto the cushion beside her and slapped her bare rump. “I'll get even with you for that some day, but not right now. I'm too nervous to do this any other way but straight.” He popped open the box.

Cleo dropped back against the pillow and stared at the shimmering ring in incredulity and shock. “You're kidding, right?”

He took a deep breath, and she watched in fascination
as his lightly furred chest swelled, probably with righteous indignation. She drew a finger down the line of hair trekking from breastbone to belt, and he exhaled.

“Believe it or not, Cleo, I'm a grown man capable of making adult decisions. I'm not kidding. I can't promise I'll be rich,” he said hurriedly. “I have to pay back that Hollywood advance, my agent may dump me, and I don't know what the future has in store, but I'm confident I can make a good living if you don't require yachts and things. This may be the only time you'll see me like this, but I'm deadly serious. Marry me, please?”

She reached for her shirt and yanked it on. She didn't have the words for this. She'd never expected it. Never. Men like Jared didn't commit. They certainly didn't commit to ex-con addicts with less-than-perfect kids and a penchant for throwing really embarrassing fits, and who could still end up in jail for a few more years if the cards didn't fall her way. The future still looked far too bleak to paint a miracle into it.

Fastening a button over her breasts, Cleo eyed the ring he held as if it were a copperhead. “Jared, you don't mean this. You've just got caught up in the moment, unless you seriously think we can adopt the kids this way, and I'm not about to tie you down over those two.”

She saw the anger darkening his eyes. She'd seen it once before, but he didn't frighten her. She loved him far too much to let him ruin his life. She might not have much going for her, but she was stubborn.

“I'm not an amiable idiot, dammit!” he yelled at her. “I know what I'm doing, and it's not for the kids. It's for
us
. We can see that the kids get into good foster homes until the courts decide what to do with them. I want to be here to look after them, but I don't have to marry you to do that.” He didn't reach for her, but raked his spare hand through his hair and glared. “I love you, Cleo. Let
down your smoke screen and admit that you love me, too.”

He looked so handsome and frustrated, she was tempted to give him anything he wanted. It would be so easy to slide down that lovely road into dependency again.

But she couldn't do that to him. Blinking back the unanticipated sting of tears, Cleo stared at the window instead of the glitter of temptation.

She'd been prepared to share Jared's bed any time he asked, and to savor the memories when he left. She wasn't prepared for this, couldn't believe he'd even asked it of her.

He thought she was whole and normal. He thought she was strong enough to make him happy. Superheroes either weren't very smart, or they thought everyone as strong as they were. Or both.

Matty had always been her priority. Now it seemed she had two. Straightening her shoulders, Cleo swiped angrily at the tears rolling down her cheeks. Jared had a brilliant mind and kind soul and deserved a splendid life in the big wide world that was his for the taking. He'd sacrificed his film for her already. How many more sacrifices would it take before he realized he'd given up his soul for her? She wouldn't ask that of anybody. She certainly wouldn't ask that of the man she loved with every cell in her body.

She bit her lip as she darted one last glance at the gleaming promise of the ring. “I can't do it, Jared,” she said firmly, looking away again. There, she'd been strong. For once in her life, she'd done the right thing. Steadfastly, she watched the window where she'd first seen him, while her heart shrank in misery.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jared set the ring down beside her.

“You can, Cleo.” Anger replaced patience in his voice.

He didn't like rejection. She'd known that. He didn't have much experience with it. He'd learn. She had confidence in him. It was herself she doubted.

“Then, I
won't
,” she corrected. “I'll sleep with you. I'll rebuild the beach house for you. I won't marry you and destroy your future.” She couldn't say it any plainer.

“Isn't that for me to decide?” Jared jumped restlessly to his feet and paced. “Why does everyone think I'm incapable of making my own decisions?”

“Because you don't make good ones?” she asked carefully. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, but she was treading waters she didn't know. They'd gone through a lot together, but they hadn't had time to really know each other. “Giving up success and a career you love for a loser like me doesn't show a lot of attention to detail.”

Jared's arms bulged as he swung around and yanked her to her feet. For a moment, Cleo feared she'd pushed a little too far. Fury tightened the muscles over the taut planes of his cheeks, and his eyes practically danced with fire.

“Giving up money for love makes sense to me,” he asserted. “Giving up stress and a committee of jerks for a woman and a real life works in my way of thinking. You just let me know when you've shed a few layers of that thick carapace of yours, Crab Cleo. I love you, and when you're ready to admit you're worth loving, you can find me. I'll wait, but I won't come looking for you this time. Understand?”

He released her, spun around, and stalked out, vibrating with male fury.

He forgot his shoes, she noted wearily as he slammed the door behind him. She figured he'd leave his shoes and all his clothes before he'd return, though.

He'd left the ring. It sparkled in a late-afternoon sunbeam.

The Jeep spun its tires in the driveway and squealed off. She just wanted to sit here and cry for a million years or so.

But she knew how to handle that feeling, too. All that glue she'd used pulling herself together over the years had some purpose.

Picking up her clothes, she went looking for a pair of jeans. She needed to start fixing up the attic if Matty was coming home.

Tears slid down her cheeks as she reached for her tool belt.

December, New York

“I've been commissioned to see that you eat your supper.” Tim slapped a steaming bag from a Chinese takeout in the center of a table cluttered with drawings and pages of discarded script.

“Hey, TJ.” Jared glanced up from a dancing character on his computer, noted the bag, nodded, and returned to fiddling with the figure on-screen. “Didn't know you were home.”

“It
is
almost Christmas,” Tim said dryly. “One does what one can.”

“Right. Be with you in a minute.” Running his hand
through his overgrown hair, Jared growled at the uncooperative character, hit a key, and changed the costume to purple.

“Eat,” Tim ordered, “or I'll pull the plug. I've seen your idea of a minute, and I don't have that much patience.”

“I'm working,” Jared growled back. “I'll eat later. We'll talk when I get back to the house.”

“No, we won't. Mother will talk when we get back to the house. Eat now. I brought your mail.” Tim paced back and forth across the studio floor, not restlessly, but searching for the right cord to pull in a tangled web of wires.

“Touch that plug and die,” Jared warned, knowing his brother's capacity for destructive action. “I don't have this saved yet. Did the mail bring a contract for a million dollars? Otherwise, I'm not interested.”

“There's a big envelope from that podunk town in the Carolinas.”

Jared hit the “save” key. Rising from the computer, he ignored TJ's quizzical expression as he reached for the manila envelope instead of the food. “I sent Cleo a drafting software program,” he explained, as if that meant anything to his brother at all.

“I thought that thing with her was all over.” TJ opened the restaurant bag and poked around the cardboard boxes, looking for his order.

Settling into an easy chair with stuffing popping from the worn seams, Jared held the envelope warily, trying to guess what surprise Cleo had in store for him. She never answered his phone calls, and her taciturn replies to his e-mail hadn't been encouraging. It took every patient cell in his body not to pursue his earlier tactics of showing up at her door and wearing her down. He had to have the confidence in her that she didn't have in herself. Yet.

At least her attorney had kept in touch. The feds had
agreed to drop their case and remove all charges against Cleo in return for the lawyer dropping his suit. She was a free woman, technically. She'd sent him a cigar when Matty had been released to her. He kept it in his shirt pocket.

“Cleo has issues,” he asserted, wondering if he ought to postpone opening the envelope until TJ left.

“Yeah, right, who doesn't?” TJ took one of the retro aluminum-and-vinyl dinette chairs that had collected in the studio, and using chopsticks, pried a piece of pork from the box he'd chosen. “That mean she walked instead of you?”

“She didn't
walk
.” Jared grimaced as the smell of Chinese hit him. He couldn't remember when he'd last eaten. “Got any lo mein?” He grabbed the box handed to him, procrastinating over opening Cleo's envelope. “She just has this weird idea I'm some kind of superhero and too good for her, and she doesn't want to ruin my future. Like I said, she has issues.”

“Yeah, she's crazy.” TJ dug into his rice while organizing the chaos of papers cluttering the table. “You're thirty-two, broke, and living at home. Maybe you're the one who's crazy, and she's being polite.”

Jared snickered at the idea of Cleo being polite. “I'm not broke,” he protested in his own defense. “I just have all my cash invested in the future. This project will make more money than the Hollywood one ever would have. Cleo doesn't care about
money
.” He knew that much. He simply wasn't certain of anything else. No one had ever called him Superman before. Finding a woman who thought him so special that she didn't deserve him had him totally flummoxed, though. How the hell did he overcome that attitude? Fail?

He had thought focusing totally on the script would help him get through these lonely months without Cleo.
It hadn't. He'd organized an entire team of animators and experienced film editors and whatnot to drive him crazy, in hopes that would drive Cleo's haunting laughter out of his head. It hadn't. He'd stayed up nights rather than sleep in his bed without her arms wrapping around him in her sleep. Remembering her tears drove him to new heights of fantasy that had his creative team believing he lived in Oz, or at the very least, La-La Land. He needed to be with her, craved the brush of her skin against his, and the taunt of her voice grounding his wilder schemes. He needed Cleo like a martini needed vodka. He couldn't be whole without her.

He kept hoping Cleo would regain her senses and let him come back.

He glanced at the envelope in his lap. He didn't think Cleo would ask him to come back in an oversized letter.

TJ was regarding him oddly, and Jared dug into his food rather than explain. Trying to explain Cleo would be akin to trying to depict the sun rising to a blind man.

“She thinks you're a superhero and doesn't care about money,” TJ said solemnly, as if working through one of his theories on the origins of racial diversity. “Sounds to me like you ought to be down there on bended knee, snatching her up before someone else gets her.”

Jared choked on a laugh and a mouthful of noodles. “No one
gets
Cleo,” he managed to say after swallowing. He grinned again at the double entendre. “That's the whole damned problem. I can
get
any woman I want. I can
have
Cleo. That isn't the same thing as Cleo agreeing that we belong together. I'm not settling for less, and she won't settle for more. She won't be pushed, so I'm waiting for her to come around on her own.”

TJ stared at him as if he'd just announced martinis were more nourishing than milk. “You're waiting for a woman to come around instead of chasing after her?”

Jared sighed and glared at the envelope. “Yeah, ironic, ain't it?” Not only ironic, but futile, he was coming to suspect. He'd hoped it would only take a week or two before Cleo realized what she'd thrown away. It had been over two damned months. Maybe he had a little higher opinion of himself than he'd realized. Maybe he ought to crawl.

Cleo would just tell him he couldn't take no for an answer and slam the door in his face.

He didn't like the sinking sensation in his stomach at that scenario. He much preferred optimism. He'd figured if he worked hard, stayed focused, and tried not to think too much about how it felt to wake up to mischievous green eyes and a lithe body that drove him insane and a wicked mind that matched his in every way … Kind of hard to focus thinking like that.

“You're saying you offered her
marriage
?” TJ asked in disbelief.

“Yeah. Got a problem with that?” Irritated, Jared set aside the Chinese box and tore the end off the envelope. Cleo was a stubborn brat, but she wasn't stupid. Surely she knew what they had together was special. She just needed time, that's all.

“And she
refused
?”