Almost Perfect (29 page)

“That's not the way it works,” Cleo whispered, turning her back on him to stare out at the muddy remains of her yard now that the waters had receded.

He might not understand all of her fears, but he could sympathize. He was living on the thin edge of panic himself these days. Uncertainty was a terrifying thing, but the only way he knew to fight it was to do something. At least by taking action he controlled some of what happened.

Of course, knowing his actions could have more than one result left more uncertainty in its wake. He'd finally persuaded Cleo into bed, but that hadn't solved a damned thing, only raised a hundred different questions.

“I'll be here, Cleo. Whatever happens, Linda can't
take you down. I won't let her. Give me that much credit.” No one else ever had. He didn't know why he expected Cleo to take him at his word. She didn't trust anyone. Why should she trust a cartoon hero?

She gripped her elbows and bent her head as if summoning some inner strength. They'd spent these past three days and nights together in each other's heads as well as in bed. He knew as well as she did the arguments swirling around inside her. He had the uneasy feeling they'd just reached a crossroads.

“All right, do it,” she muttered, still not turning around.

Pent-up air expelled from his lungs, and Jared circled her waist to hug her. “It's gonna be okay. We'll be with them every step of the way, doing whatever we can. It has to be better than letting them go back there. You can't keep fighting Linda on your own.”

She leaned into him, letting him support her for this brief moment. He relished that small surrender, the admission that she needed him. He'd thought that her giving in would be enough, but now that they'd chosen their path, he could see catastrophe on the horizon. If anything happened to those kids, he would be the one she blamed.

The burden of that responsibility all but bowed his shoulders. No wonder she'd finally caved. How had she carried it all this time?

“We're human, Cleo,” he whispered against her ear. “We can only do what seems best at the time.”

“Why can't any of the choices be good ones?” she asked bitterly.

“Well, we wouldn't learn anything from easy ones, would we?” Like he had a lot of experience in this department. He supposed he had to start somewhere, especially if he meant to take on Cleo for a lifetime.

Hell, he wouldn't need a Jag for excitement then. She'd ride him over hills and hurdles faster than lightning.

The thrill shooting through him was definitely not vicarious.

As soon as the radio declared the causeway open, Jared piled them all into the Jeep and cruised in for pizza. They'd caught Gene eyeing the flooded paths through the jungle leading home and decided it wouldn't be safe to leave them alone, so he left Cleo valiantly guarding the kids in the back room of her hardware store while he drove over to the sheriff's office. He didn't know how long Cleo could prevent them from slipping away to check on their mother. The sheriff would have to act quickly.

Jared had promised to return with pizza, and a new notebook for Kismet since he'd scribbled all over hers, but he had an uncomfortable suspicion his return might be accompanied by the police or a social worker. The kids would probably hate him forever.

He could shoulder their hate if it saved their lives—if only he could feel equally comfortable with the idea of Cleo slamming the door in his face.

The sheriff frowned and sighed heavily when Jared arrived and reported his tale. Bouncing his pencil up and down on the desk blotter, he reluctantly reached for the telephone. “I've seen cases like this,” he warned. “The kid won't place charges. If you're willing to sign a warrant, we might put the bastard away until he stands trial, at least. Won't promise nothin' after that.”

Jared nodded. That didn't sound like enough justice to him, but it would suffice to keep Kismet safe a while longer.

As the sheriff phoned the social workers, Jared wondered how long it would take for a trial. He had a dozen
new ideas for the strip and the screenplay, but he really had to go to L.A. to present the script and answer questions and do the rewrites after the first of the year. He pretty well understood that Cleo wouldn't come with him. Would she go with him to his parents' house for the holidays at least?

That might depend on the outcome of the sheriff's conversation.

All he'd wanted to do was write the damned script. How had he gotten involved in all this?

The sheriff hung up the phone and nodded. “We have it under control, son. The caseworkers are up to their armpits with disaster relief right now, but they'll be out to the island by Monday. I've got a man going out there now to pick up the SOB, so he won't hurt the kid none in the meantime. All you have to do is sign the warrant.”

Jared signed with a flourish. He had no qualms at all about removing a child molester from the streets.

Striding out into the brilliant sunshine, realizing the month of September was gone and he had exactly two months to turn the chaotic sketches in his mind into a script, Jared shoved his hands into his pockets and gazed up and down the street. Cleo had told him it could take days before they fixed the utility lines on the island. He needed a phone, and he didn't think it a good idea to use the one in Cleo's office.

Not knowing how much his family knew of his whereabouts or if the news had picked up the story, he figured he'd better call them first. Maybe his cellular would work here in town. He'd get the calls done, buy pizza and a notebook, then see if Cleo had a place to plug in his laptop at the store. If he could find a scanner, that would help.

Driving the Jeep to the closest thing resembling a hill in this low countryside, Jared began his round of calls.

He tracked his mother down at her office, where she wasn't too busy to yell at him for not telling her he was in the middle of a hurricane.

“Mother, there's the small matter of downed phone lines in high winds—”

“I had no idea you were in the path of a hurricane until your father showed me the clip from CNN. You made a public spectacle of yourself, Jared. On a roof like some white trash too foolish to leave—”

He didn't think he wanted to get into that argument if it progressed to the other occupants of the roof. “I'm fine, Mother, I survived, and I'll try to be home for Thanksgiving so you can see for yourself. If not Thanksgiving, then certainly by Christmas.”

“Surely you'll be here when Timothy receives his award for solving that case in Singapore, you know the one, where the government asked for his help? It will be on the news.”

His brothers made news with their successes. He only made the news with his failures. He got the connection.

Static finally ended the conversation, and he wearily punched in the numbers for his agent. He'd had the right instinct to run and hide on Cleo's island. Now, if only he'd overcome his compulsion to communicate with the rest of the world, he might get some work done.

His agent heartily cheered the hurricane publicity as if he'd scheduled the storm on purpose. Jared leaned the Jeep seat back and listened as Georgie extolled the virtues of the franchise deal he was packaging with the film producers for the characters Jared had already drawn.

Maybe he could take a hiatus from the daily strip if the film deal worked out. He was too out of touch with teenagers to take
Scapegrace
into any new territory, although Gene and Kismet had fed him a few ideas to drag
it out a little longer. Now, if only he could do one about truly troubled teens …

Ha, like that was going to happen. Ann Landers had that one covered.

Bankruptcy loomed too close for comfort. He couldn't abandon
Scapegrace
until he had some assurance of income elsewhere. Maintaining three residences wasn't exactly cheap.

Or maybe just one. If the Manhattan apartment had sold, and the beach house was the disaster he figured, he'd only have the place in Miami. How would Cleo like living in Miami?

She wouldn't. He realized that with a sinking sensation just as Georgie told him he needed signatures on the franchise contracts pronto. Telling his agent he'd scout around for a fax, Jared hung up and dialed the Manhattan office to see if they'd sold the apartment yet. He'd like some good news for a change.

Good news—they had a buyer. Bad news—he needed to sign the sales contract and empty the place.

Calling his broker and ascertaining that the loan had covered his losses, but his savings had not miraculously rematerialized with a sudden stock market boom, Jared punched the cell phone off and stared gloomily at the horizon of trees.

Life didn't stop just because he decided to drop out for a while. His life wasn't here. Cleo's was. He loved parties and people and a faster lane of living than this backwater. Cleo would be destroyed by it. Just because they'd shared a few halcyon days out of the rat race didn't mean they could survive once they returned. He intended to try, to find some means of making Cleo a part of his life, but he had the black feeling Cleo wouldn't budge an inch.

He couldn't sacrifice his career to become a beach
bum. The idea had a certain childish appeal, but despite his current string of disasters, he loved drawing cartoons. He couldn't
not
draw. If
Scapegrace
had a chance of keeping him happy and in the money, he might conceivably drop all his other endeavors and stay here to draft it. But he already had one failure behind him, and he could feel another coming from a mile away.
Scapegrace
should go out in a blaze of glory, not die with a fizzle. He probably should retire the strip now and finish the film script, if for no other reason than to keep him solvent until he came up with a strip he could love again.

So, maybe Cleo would fly up to Manhattan with him, meet his family, help him clean out the place, and stay safe while the law dealt with Linda and the kids.

And maybe butter flies.

Cursing obdurate women, his own asininity in falling for an obdurate woman, and the fates for creating them, Jared keyed up the ignition and hit the gas. He had to find electricity and a scanner, get his strips out of here, then confront Cleo with the real world.

He'd rather drive a truck.

Carrying his laptop on top of a pizza box into Cleo's hardware store, Jared gazed at the crowd emptying the shelves of repair supplies, caught Cleo's eye, and nodded at the computer. She gestured toward her back room and returned to punching in sales at the register.

A girlfriend who ran a hardware store—Jared shook his head in disbelief at what he'd gotten himself into now. He couldn't remember the last woman he'd dated who'd actually had a job.

Kismet and Gene were looking bored and anxious in Cleo's office, and they hung up the phone with guilty looks as he entered. He pretended not to notice as he gave them the pizza and listened to their cries of delight.
The island wouldn't have phone service yet. He just needed to keep them occupied until Billy-Bob was gone. He was kind of relieved the social workers wouldn't show until Monday.

He produced the sack of drawing pads, pencils, and watercolors he'd bought along the way. They weren't the quality he could find in the city, but better than Kismet was used to. She screamed in excitement and pounced on them as if he'd given her gold. That so simple a gift could produce such sheer joy stirred him more deeply than he'd like to admit. And here he'd wasted thousands of dollars buying foolish jewelry and flowers for women who accepted them with boredom. Idiot!

Gene, on the other hand, watched him warily, with a more sullen expression than usual. The boy wouldn't understand what Jared had just done at the sheriff's, so he might as well enjoy these last few hours with the kid. Of course, Cleo would kill him if she discovered how much he'd spent, but he'd at least resisted buying anything bigger. He handed Gene another bag from the office supply store.

The boy removed the handheld computer from the box and looked at the miniature keyboard with puzzlement at first, then dawning wonder. “Is it for real?” he demanded, instantly finding the switch and discovering the battery worked.

“You can do e-mail on it, anyway. I bought a package with free service for a year. It has some games, and I don't even want to know what you keep in the notebook. You've got to keep it powered up, though. Read the instructions.” He had some vague hope that maybe Gene would keep in touch if he wasn't here in a few months. He'd always been the optimistic sort until Cleo came along.

“Beyond rad,” Gene whispered, poking the tiny keys
with a pointer. A frown suddenly creased his forehead, and he glanced at his sister, who looked up at the same time. “Maybe we orter keep this stuff at Cleo's?” he asked her.

Kismet nodded and went back to drawing. Gene looked relieved, and gave Jared a goofy grin. “Thanks, dude. Can I plug this in?”

Jared glanced around Cleo's crowded office. She had a new computer, a scanner—he noted with relief—more file drawers than any one person should ever see, a fax, one phone, and one tiny chair crammed into a space smaller than his Manhattan bathroom. And that was small. “See how many outlets she has under that desk,” he ordered.

Verifying they had two phone jacks but one belonged to the phone ringing off its hook in the front of the store, they agreed Gene could use the other until Jared was ready to send in his material. Kismet wandered off to a quieter corner of the store to draw, while Gene sprawled across the remaining floor space—pizza in hand—to figure out his new toy.

Finally faced with a computer and the drawings he'd done on the island, Jared went to work. He had too many things he wanted to do with Cleo once she closed for the day, so he had to get this stuff out now.

Amazing how a little anticipation could glue his butt to the chair.

He gave the kids money to bring back drinks and a mid-afternoon snack when they complained of starvation, and stayed at it, scanning in the drawings, bringing them into Thomas's graphics program, reformatting them with his laptop's art files. His smart-ass
Scapegrace
teens were about to meet reality. About time, too.