McCloud's Woman (2 page)

“Flounce, please,” he answered mildly. “Without throwing anything breakable, if you could arrange it.”

The sexy vibration of her laugh shot straight to his groin.

“I see the years have taught you flattery and charm,” she
teased. “I suppose there have been so many women in your life, they all
look alike to you these days.”

The second statement was as much mockery as the first,
although TJ wasn’t certain she knew it. He was certifiably charmless,
and the only women in his life threw things at him.

Pointed jabs at open wounds didn’t improve his humor. “The
women I know have more brains than boobs, so their appearance is
irrelevant,” he replied, reaching for another slide.

“Oh, I’ll get even with you for that one, Tim, just see if I don’t.” Her velvet voice slid into a dangerous undertone.

He couldn’t concentrate on the slide under his microscope
while inhaling an exotic scent with more mind-bending effect than pure
opium. Was there something familiar in that warning? “If you’re done
threatening me, close the door behind you as you leave.”

The air almost buzzed with her reaction, but her reply was bright and cheerful. “Your wish is my command, TJ.”

He sensed more than heard her quiet departure. He couldn’t
know her, he swore. He’d certainly remember anyone that stunningly sexy
if he’d met them. “Stunning” and “sexy” were not words to describe the
intense, intelligent women he’d dated these last years. He looked for
brains in women so he could converse with them on an equal level.

He shouldn’t have insulted her, though. Obviously, his
temper had reached the snapping point, and he’d better resolve his
problems soon, before his mind snapped with it.

He very definitely didn’t need any more complications cluttering his thoughts, hampering the decision he had to make.

He hadn’t been called Timid Tim since grammar school, and only his brothers lived to tell of it. Who the hell was she?

***

Humiliation still scalded.

Platform heels slapping the hot sidewalk, Mara Simon
sizzled down the picturesque oak-lined street of the coastal South
Carolina town she’d just arrived in. She hadn’t been this embarrassed
since tenth grade, when she’d asked a boy to the movies while they were
standing in the school office, only to discover the office microphone
had been left on. The whole school had heard him laugh at her, and she’d
hidden at home for a week. Leave it to Tim to dismiss her as if she
were still that unwanted teen. Her cheeks burned.

Timothy John. TJ, as she’d heard the angry twit call him.
TJ McCloud. He had changed since high school, but she’d still have known
him anywhere. Obviously, though, he didn’t know her.

That ought to teach her humility, if she needed any more
lessons. She’d spent years believing they’d once had a meaningful
relationship—even if it had consisted mostly of long-distance telephone
calls for a brief time when they were kids. Tim had obviously forgotten
her the instant he’d walked out of her life.

Stopping to elevate her sagging self-esteem, Mara applied
her practiced smile to her reflection in a storefront window. Sticking
her chin out, she noticed how her red lipstick matched her shirt, and
she offered silent thanks to that dress-for-success book. Red was
definitely a power color. She still had it together, even if Tim had
shattered a few illusions.

She hadn’t always had it together. Shy, skinny geeks seldom did.

Admiring the expertly lifted jut of her breasts as she
took a deep breath, she recalled Tim’s boobs comment. She’d wanted to be
angry about it, but it only made her feel as giddy as a schoolgirl that
he’d actually noticed she had breasts.

She should be pleased Tim hadn’t recognized her, she
decided. She’d worked long and hard to become a new and better person,
and his lack of recognition proved she’d succeeded.

But he hadn’t appreciated what he’d seen. She scowled again.

The last time she’d seen Tim, she’d been a gawky, owl-eyed
teenager, and he had towered over almost every boy at the university.
All awkward arms and legs from an adolescent growth spurt, he’d been
almost as skinny as she. Remembering the muscular breadth of the big man
in that office, she could honestly say he wasn’t skinny any longer.

She was, but she’d learned to deal with catty charges of anorexia. If he didn’t like the way she looked, he could lump it.

Define lump
, she muttered to herself, stopping on a
street corner and waiting for the town’s lone traffic light to change.
TJ McCloud still had the power to yank her chain.

Sunlight poured down on her, and she could smell the sea
air from here. After the smog of L.A., the fresh air should be
invigorating, but the only thing she could focus on was the look on TJ’s
face when he’d seen her. She might as well have been a fly in his jam.
Damn him for reminding her of how demeaning humiliation felt. She’d
suffered enough of that for a lifetime.

Sauntering across the intersection with the light change,
Mara winked at a teenage boy. Head swiveling to follow her, the poor
thing nearly fell over his feet.

My, how things changed. Once upon a time, she couldn’t attract the interest of the scrawniest nerd in class.

Other things hadn’t changed, though. Even as a gawky
teenage boy, Tim had possessed that same dangerously impassive façade
he’d presented to her today. She had been the only one in high school to
glimpse the cauldron of passion simmering behind the façade. He’d been
fiercely loyal, unfailingly generous, and uncompromisingly protective of
those he considered friends. For whatever odd reason, he’d considered
her brother, Brad, a friend.

At the memory of Brad, Mara’s smile faded. She’d have
mascara streaking her cheeks if she followed that thought. Seeing Tim
brought back the devastating event that had torn her tightly knit family
to shreds. Why the devil had she bothered looking him up?

Approaching the quaint B&B where she’d taken a suite,
she grabbed an enormous pair of sunglasses from her bag and shoved them
on her nose. Mara Simon didn’t cry, but Patsy Simonetti, the teenage
girl inside, still wept sometimes.

Think good thoughts, dope
. She remembered the time a
football player had called Brad a fag, and Tim had calmly lifted the
two-hundred-pound linebacker, slammed him against a locker, and left him
hanging on a hook by the back of his shirt. The memory provoked a
smile. Tim hadn’t raised a fist, or even his voice, but the effing jocks
had left Brad alone from that day on.

Gad, she’d worshipped at Tim’s feet that summer. He hadn’t even known she’d existed.

Still didn’t, she thought with wry honesty, although there had been those few short weeks...

But that led back to unhappy memories again, and she
didn’t go there anymore. She had a glorious future at her fingertips—one
she’d earned by surviving hell—and those teenage days were behind her.
She would taunt Tim to get even for his insult, then move on, as they
both had before.

She stepped past the overgrown gardenia bush outside the
B&B, inhaling the fragrance of a late blossom and admiring the
carpet of magenta crape myrtle petals beneath her feet. The driver of
the studio’s Lincoln Town Car looked up from his newspaper. At her
gesture, he laid the paper aside and smoothly rolled the limo up beside
her. She did so love the perks of this business. Pity she had to give up
most of them when she’d divorced Sid.

“Where’s Ian?” she inquired, sliding onto the soft leather
rear seat, cooled by the air conditioner. She checked her hair in the
mirror and applied a fresh coat of Rogue Rouge as the car purred past
the gate and into the street.

“’Round the corner, ma’am. Said to stop for him when
you’re ready.” He drove the car past an antebellum mansion shaded by
drooping oaks, and down a narrow, crowded alley of brick restaurants and
taverns.

The limo rolled up in front of a bar quaintly called the
Blue Monkey, and Mara wrinkled her nose. They could be at an oasis in
the Sahara, and Ian would find a bar. Her ex said Ian was the best
producer in the business, but she’d already learned that meant Ian could
connect with anybody, anywhere, over a drink. She buzzed his cell
phone, and he swaggered out a few minutes later.

“Hiya, babe. Was it the old boyfriend?” He slid in beside her, tucking his phone into his inside pocket.

Short, suave, and sophisticated, Ian would never be so
crude as to reek of beer, but his three-hundred-dollar-an- ounce cologne
smelled worse. Mara rolled her eyes behind her dark glasses and picked
up her notebook. “Jared’s brother, yes,” she snapped.

She hadn’t seen Jared McCloud in years, either, but he was
on the outskirts of the film industry, and her screenwriters had
mentioned he had a house near this coastal resort. She’d put two and two
together the instant she’d seen Tim’s name in the weekly newspaper.
There couldn’t be two forensic anthropologists of the same name, living
in the same town with Tim’s brother.

It was a small town. She supposed they’d all bump into
each other sooner or later. She didn’t know why she’d hoped for a more
enlightening reunion. Must be that damned Patsy part of her, still
clinging to teenage dreams of parties and popularity. Still, this way,
she could derive some entertainment in wondering how long it would take
for the elusive McCloud brothers to figure out who she was.

Ian gave the driver directions to the beach where they’d
be filming, while she studied a map of the area. Sid’s scouts had been
out here last year, but she’d been in town only a few hours. Time to get
to work. “How difficult will it be to haul equipment?” she demanded.
“It looks pretty rural from this.”

“Last time I was here, they had an unpaved access road a
crazy lady blocked with weird contraptions,” Ian answered, “but the
state film board says that’s all been cleared up. We have use of the
road, but we have to stay off her property.”

Mara grimaced. She was operating with a horrendously tight
budget, and lunatics could be expensive. “The beach is public, right?
We don’t need anything but the state permit?”

Ian idly flipped through the channels on the limo’s tiny
TV. “Yeah, but the guys in the bar said there’s been a hurricane through
here since then. Sid should have sent someone to check it out. If the
damned beach has washed away, we’ll end up hauling sand.”

Damn Sid. Her ex had a penchant for ignoring details. Mara
swallowed a lump of panic. Ian got paid whether this film made a profit
or not. He didn’t care how much sand cost. But every penny over budget
cut into her share, and she needed every cent of it to buy out Sid. If
she couldn’t buy him out... she’d have to move back to her mother’s
place in Brooklyn, right back where she started ten thousand years ago.

Never. She would bring the film in under budget and then
some. She’d own the best small independent studio in Hollywood, and then
no one could stop her.

The limo rolled quietly over a two-lane causeway
connecting the town to the island. Pelicans soared across the Carolina
blue sky. Waves lapped against the concrete abutments. Only Georgia
pines and oaks broke the horizon. She loved the sun. She could work on
her tan while here. She could work on Tim at the same time. She was a
free agent now. The divorce was final, even if the financial settlement
was iffy.

Smiling wickedly at the thought of freedom, Mara watched
out the smoky glass as the limo turned from the asphalt highway onto a
sandy lane. A thicket of bushes and palmettos gave the appearance of
deserted jungle, but she could see the shimmering copper of a
weathervane above a widow’s walk on some house in the distance. The
crazy lady’s? If so, Mara liked her taste. It would be heavenly to sit
in that tower, sipping coffee, watching the tide roll in as the sun came
up.

The limo slowed to a halt, and Mara slipped off her
Ferragamos to wiggle her toes. She should have brought sandals for
strolling on the beach.

“Can’t get no farther, ma’am,” the driver said apologetically.

Thick spiky bushes and dwarf palms lined either side of
the road. Erasing the frown wrinkling her forehead, Mara slid her shoes
back on and swung her legs out when the driver opened the door.

“Oh, shit,” Ian muttered from the other side of the long black car.

Mara stared in horror at the chain-link fence stretched
across the road, blocking access to a towering barrier of sand and
debris.

A giant sign shouting WARNING in red letters hung from the rail. Mara stepped closer and read:
This property protected by the federal government. For information, contact TJ McCloud Enterprises
.

The dig site blocked the access road to the beach house
Cleo rented to him, so TJ usually parked at the dig and walked home over
the dune. Tonight, he considered bypassing Cleo and Jared’s place and
going straight home, but he knew it wasn’t a healthy choice. The beach
house had no food in the refrigerator, and he’d end up working half the
night instead of eating.

Working half the night had more appeal than facing the
abundant cheer of his brother’s house, but despite his currently
depressed state, he was only contemplating career suicide. Aside from
the mental-health aspects of avoiding family, Cleo would no doubt kill
him for ignoring her invitation. Or torment him mercilessly.

Thinking of his brother’s odd marriage, TJ shook his head
and parked his rented Taurus beside Jared’s Jeep. How his effervescent
younger brother had hooked up with a misanthropic piece of work like
Cleo was beyond his ability to comprehend. It just proved TJ’s
cluelessness about relationships, though, because he’d never seen two
people happier together.

A seven-year-old bundle of energy burst through the front
doorway, leapt from the porch, and landed squarely in TJ’s arms as he
approached the house.
Eight-years old
, he reminded himself. Matty had just celebrated a birthday last week. The boy smelled of lemonade and onions.