Almost Perfect (8 page)

TJ quirked an eyebrow as he climbed into the Jeep. “You mean you've found a woman who doesn't swoon at your feet? That doesn't bode well for making deadlines.”

Shifting gears and spinning tires in the sand, Jared scowled. “Cut it out, Tim. I came down here to get away from you and all the other nattering curmudgeons of the world. Inspiration isn't something one calls up on the
phone or types on the keyboard. It comes from living, and that's what I'm doing—
living
. Now, what the hell are you doing down here instead of in Africa or China or whatever?” His brother's expertise in forensic anthropology had taken him down many strange paths, all of them successful and important, many of them dangerous. Jared didn't need to be told that drawing cartoon strips wasn't anywhere in the same category. Creating TV flops didn't even rate a place on the chart.

“I'm only making polite conversation,” Tim said stiffly. “I'm interested in your work. If it's a sensitive topic, I'll stay off it.”

“Stay off it.” Jared didn't like talking about his work even when it was going well, which it wasn't. “What happened to your lady scientist?”

“Physicist. She was a physicist, and our relationship was purely intellectual. I believe she's marrying some two-bit actor from the theater department in the spring.”

Jared politely stifled his laughter. He might be a failure in the career department, but Tim had a long track record of failures with the female gender. “She went for passion, did she? Women are weird like that.”

“I thought a physicist would be logical.” Tim leaned forward to better view the brief flash of peacock strutting away from the road. “I didn't think peacocks native to the low country.”

“Iguanas and potbellied pigs probably aren't either, but there's one of each. For all I know, there's wild boar and panthers. I don't think you'll find my landlady is strong in the logic department either.”

“Interesting.” Tim sat back and regarded the approaching ocean view with apparent pleasure. “I thought her quite helpful and forthright.”

Jared felt a twinge of the old competitive urge, and fought valiantly to quell it. Tim had no interest in a
hardware-store clerk who wore tinted glasses and an attitude. He was just being deliberately provoking. “Candid to the point of brutality,” he agreed.

Tim almost grinned. “Yeah. The two of you in one place ought to spark spontaneous combustion. Invite her for dinner.”

“If you're that bored and in need of entertainment, invite her yourself.” Steering into the weed patch he called a driveway, Jared halted the Jeep. “There's beer in the fridge. Make yourself at home.”

“Jared.”

He turned to his brother questioningly.

“Thank you. I needed a bit of time away.”

Ah, hell. Tim must have really fallen for the fickle physicist. He punched his brother's arm and threw open the door. “This is away, all right. No one will find us here.”

Petey shrilled his warning scream, and getting up from the desk where she'd spread her drawings of the courthouse clock gears, Cleo leaned against her bedroom window frame to see who was invading her territory now. The construction crews usually didn't slow down enough for the peacock to scream at them.

She'd had to rip out the rotten sill in here before she could glaze the windows, and she'd replaced it with a wide polished pine board for piling up pillows and sitting on. Maybe she shouldn't call what she did “repairing” houses so much as improving them.

A lone bicyclist, blond hair streaming from beneath her cap, pedaled past the pop-up warning sign, probably because it didn't pop up. A flaw in the design required the weight of a car to trigger the action. Crossing her arms in irritation, Cleo waited to see which way the intruder went. She really needed to finish that barrier, but
without a fence it wouldn't stop a bicyclist. Maybe a swamp on either side of the road …

The woman pedaled past the drive and on down the lane toward the beach. Did everyone in the world believe No Trespassing signs weren't for them? Maybe she needed to erect a Panther Crossing sign. That should give people something to think about.

Especially if she could play a recording of one roaring. Hmmm.

Wandering back into the cool shadows of the house, Cleo checked the refrigerator for some evidence of dinner. The days were getting shorter. She hoped the bicyclist had a way back that didn't involve pedaling. This end of the island didn't have streetlights.

The phone rang, and she ignored it. Answering machines existed for the sole purpose of answering phones. She scavenged a bottle of Coke and a Styrofoam box of leftovers from yesterday's lunch at Porky's. Soggy fries and barbecue should nuke well.

Jared's mechanical voice spoke over the machine. “Cleo, I know you're there. I've got the kids' teacher here. Come over and we'll talk.”

The kids' teacher. The blond bicyclist. She remembered the woman from the hardware store, buying pink paint for her toddler's room. Not a teacher, but the school counselor. Just what the world needed, another counselor. She hit the microwave setting and sipped her drink while leaning against the terra-cotta tile counter, admiring the satiny finish she'd given to the kitchen's old pine flooring. The place had been a pigsty before she'd bought it, but she was turning it around.

“Cleo, pick up the damned phone or I'm coming up there!”

Well, hell. Giving up on positive thinking, Cleo
grabbed the receiver. “Come on over, lover boy,” she cooed, “and I'll feed you to the alligators.”

He laughed. The wretch had the nerve to laugh! How in hell did one get rid of idiots?

“I'll bring Tim sometime and you can let them feast on him. We'll be up in a minute.”

Cleo stared at the phone in disbelief as he disconnected. No one came over here but Maya and the kids. She didn't invite people here. Was the man deaf, dumb, and blind? Or impervious to verbal bullets?

She slammed the phone back on the hook and gazed frantically around her humble abode. She hadn't graduated to the decorating level of home improvement. She had a kitchen table and two chairs, one for her, one for Matty. The living room had a couch she'd rescued from the roadside and re-covered so she'd have a place to flop down and stare at the TV at night. The rest of the place was more or less inundated in electrical components, gears, cogs, bits of wood and sheet metal, and whatever else she happened to be working on. They'd walk in here and know she was every bit as dysfunctional as she appeared.

Muttering curses, Cleo contemplated turning on her security system and scaring the bejeebers out of the blond Nosy Parker.

School authority figures communicated with legal ones. The blonde would probably report Cleo to the sheriff as a dangerous psychopath. He'd look her up, and before she knew it, her supervisor would be down here snooping.

She'd known better than to let anyone out here. Hell.

With resignation, Cleo took her Coke outside, slammed the door shut, and wandered out to wait for them in the drive. No one said she had to be polite.

Body language said it all, and Cleo had a hell of a loud body, Jared thought admiringly, watching her T-shirt pull tight as she crossed her arms at their approach. Trim tanned legs that could have matched the best in Vegas emerged from a pair of cutoffs. He'd have to catch her by surprise more often so she didn't have time for her usual disguise.

“Hey, Cleo, do you know Liz Brooks?” He gestured toward the guidance counselor. If they'd had teachers who'd looked like Liz back when he was in school, he might have paid more attention in class. To the teacher, anyway. But he'd outgrown the need for sweet blondes since those days. He liked sassy redheads now.

Cleo nodded curtly and waited for an explanation. Had he a sensitive nerve in his body, he would have backed away from the icy waves rolling off her, but sensitivity wasn't one of his strong points.

“Liz says Kismet may be developmentally handicapped and should be in some special program. Do you know Kismet's mother? Can you introduce Liz to her? In a special program Kismet can—”

“I know all about special programs,” Cleo said coldly. “When square pegs don't fit in round holes, schools find a special program for them.”

“Square pegs need special attention,” Liz said, with
her best guidance counselor's smile. “Teachers can't devote enough time to the ones who don't fit in with the rest.”

“So you stick them in a special class where they don't have a chance of ever fitting in, instead of trying to figure out some way of making square holes for them. Kismet isn't developmentally handicapped.” Cleo laced the words with heavy sarcasm. “She's
socially
handicapped.”

Liz stepped backward at the hostility. “Well, that's possible, I suppose, although her tests say—”

“The mother, Mrs. Watkins?” Jared intruded with this reminder to turn down the heat. Or the cold. Freezers had nothing on Cleo. “Is she around here?”

“She works nights,” Cleo responded sweetly.

Jared knew to be suspicious of that tone, but the counselor was oblivious.

“Perhaps I could see her some afternoon,” Liz bubbled eagerly. “Kismet is a wonderful little girl with lots of potential if we could get her the right help.”

“And Gene?” Ice edged Cleo's voice again. “Do you have a special program for truants?”

“Actually, we do—”

“But that won't be necessary,” Jared interrupted. “Gene and I had a talk. If I can find sponsors to start a wrestling team, he'll stay in school. Now that he has a decent pair of shoes, he's willing to give it a try. Do you think his mother would mind if I took the kids shopping? Kids his age are clothes conscious. That could be part of their problem.”

For a moment, Jared thought he might have almost caught a look of approval in Cleo's eyes. Her fleeting admiration fired his ego sufficiently to work for it again.

“I'm sure they'll appreciate the attention,” she said with polite scorn. “If you'll excuse me, Miss Brooks, my dinner is on the table. The children's phone number
should be in your records. Call Mrs. Watkins after noon and before six, and you might catch her.”

“Thank you, Cleo, and it's ‘Mrs.’ I'm a widow.”

Jared thought that might be for his benefit, and from Cleo's uplifted eyebrow, she did, too. She smiled silkily, made her farewells, and escaped behind the closed walls of her fortress.

“Well, I think that went well, didn't it?” Liz said perkily. “Cleo is what is known as one of our eccentric Southern characters. Every town must have one.” She frowned as much as her smooth brow would allow. “She earned the reputation rather quickly, but I suppose befriending the town drunk has something to do with that.”

“Come along, Mrs. Brooks, I'll put your bike in the Jeep and drive you home. It will be dark soon.” Eccentricity didn't offend him. Ignorance did.

“Why, that's so thoughtful of you! And offering to help sponsor the wrestling team … Why, I …”

Jared listened to Liz's prattle with half an ear as they strode back to the beach. He'd much rather hear Cleo's opinion—not on his sponsorship of the team, but on the subject of the children's mother. He had a feeling she knew a lot more about the mysterious Mrs. Watkins than she was willing to relate for a guidance counselor.

Did Cleo only befriend drunks and truants? What did he need to do so she'd befriend
him
?

Her burglar alert system bellowed its impressive cop routine, and lying on the sprawling sofa, Cleo sighed as she threw a banana peel at the waste can. The siren on the drive had gone off when Jared took the counselor home, and again, half an hour ago, when he returned. She'd have to shut the whole damned rigmarole down
just so she didn't establish his routine with the local spinsters and widows.

The door knocker sounded even though she'd heard the skeleton chain whir into place. “Go away, McCloud,” she shouted, turning up the television so she didn't have to hear his reply.

He opened the door as if she'd invited him in. “You really ought to get a bolt for this thing,” he commented, shutting it behind him.

She didn't want to look at him, but his energy charged the air, drawing her eye to the sexy sight of a long, lean, good-looking hunk standing inside her doorway, hands in pockets, absorbing her idea of interior decoration with an air of interest. The bottom dropped out of her stomach—not just because he was good-looking, but because he expressed interest where all else showed scorn or wariness. The damned man had so much selfconfidence that he didn't need to be wary, and enough intelligence to keep an open mind when he stumbled into something—or someone—different.

He ought to have Danger—Alert signs flashing above his head.

“Early teen male, I'd say. Where are the oily car parts?” He dropped into the ratty wicker chair, waited for it to steady beneath his weight, then draped a leg over the chair arm. He grinned at her scowl, and the electricity in the room shot to megakilowatts.

“In the bathroom, soaking. What do you want, McCloud?” Maybe she could install a lightning rod and ground them both. She might be out of practice, but she knew a look of male appreciation when she saw one.

“Don't I get the standard lecture on trespassing? Or are we past that now?”