McCloud's Woman (27 page)

Another of his concerns. If Martin was guilty, TJ wanted to know, no matter how much damage it inflicted to his career.

“Something dire is likely to happen to that stuff if you
leave it around too long,” she continued, “or is that what you’re hoping
will happen? If the box conveniently disappears, you won’t have to deal
with it?”

TJ gulped more coffee. “There’s more where that came
from,” he growled with surliness. Leave it to Patsy to reduce an issue
to the lowest common denominator. For the first time in his life, he’d
been letting justice take a backseat to his doubts—doubts about Martin,
about their friendship, about the consequences of uncovering the truth.

Helping himself to a freshly baked biscuit and liberally
smearing it with jelly, TJ debated ignoring her admonition or acting
upon it. The beeps as Mara dialed her cell phone and started all-out war
clashed with the peace of the lapping surf.

“That box could cause a feeding frenzy,” he pointed out after she hung up on the first call.

She perked right up at that thought. “Lots of reporters?”

He should have realized they operated on opposite
wavelengths. “I’ll have to hide in the jungle. Cleo and Jared will have
to leave town.” Of course, he’d already told them to do that. “The
newspapers could frame Martin before he has a chance to build a case.”

“Forget Martin,” she ordered, stabbing a pencil into her
hair to scratch her head. “Let justice take its course. From what I
could tell of those notebooks, if you hand them over to the government,
they’ll bury them so deep they’ll never see the light of day. That kind
of criminal activity on the part of our military would be a political
debacle. If you want the truth, give them to someone who’ll see they
reach court.”

“Reporters are sensationalist leeches.” TJ tried not to shout.

Mara slammed down her cup of coffee and leaned over the
tiny table so her nose practically poked his. “Defense Department
lackeys are elitist assholes.”

A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. He remembered
this game. TJ leaned over until their noses touched. “The media feeds
pablum to the masses.”

“Are you going to kiss me now or will I have to grab you by the ears?” she whispered against his mouth.

TJ grabbed her arms and hauled her across the table. Cups
smashed and jam smeared but he had her coffee-flavored mouth against his
and the world went away.

A cough intruded. TJ ignored it. Why had he never realized
coffee tasted far better on Mara’s lips than in a cup? She kissed with
the same passion she displayed in everything she did—full speed ahead,
no questions asked, and with the inventiveness of her Gemini mind. She
had his shirt buttons unfastened before his thoughts had traveled past
the rich silk of her hair and the wicked heat of her tongue.

“I really hate to intrude on this poignant moment, but
there’s a padlock on your office and a military notice declaring it
off-limits, so I don’t have anywhere else to wait.”

Mara gave a little screech and jerked away. TJ growled at
the loss of her heat, and turned to glare at the reporter. “Roger,
you’re in serious danger of losing your head if you stay there.”

Roger shrugged. “I’ve walked mine fields. I’ll take my chances. What’s with the padlock?”

“Militaristic pigs,” Mara whispered defiantly.

“Rumor mongers,” TJ retorted, but his heart wasn’t in the
game any longer. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he tried to pin his
whirling brain in place.

“Justice,” Mara reminded him in a whisper Roger couldn’t
hear. “It’s not about Martin and it’s not about you. It’s about
justice.”

She was right
.
Betraying a friend or destroying his career were all about him and not about the truth he’d spent his life defending.

Time to wake up and smell the roses. The world didn’t revolve around him.

TJ hated hurting his family who thought he walked on
water, but he couldn’t stand in the way of justice if those boxes would
convict a man who freed murderers. Maybe Martin had thought he was
protecting national security or his counterparts in other armed forces.
It wasn’t up to him to decide. And it wasn’t up to the military to bury.

Mara’s uncomplicated outlook untangled the knot he’d been tied in.

“There’s a key hanging on a hook by the back door.” TJ
bathed his weary soul in the pride gleaming in Mara’s eyes, ignoring
Roger’s suddenly alert stance. “There’s a tag on it for a storage unit
up in Charleston. The contents may or may not be helpful. I’m relying on
you to keep me out of this for as long as you can.”

The anonymous storage unit distanced his connection to the
material, but the box in his car didn’t. He’d figure out how to get
that to Roger some other time.

“Far as I know, you’re honeymooning with your Hollywood starlet,” Roger answered. “I just stopped by to wish you well.”

“Yeah, tell the creep from
People
that we’re an item.”

Mara’s lips turned up in an engaging grin at his sarcastic
tone, and TJ didn’t resent his descent into rumormongering while
basking in her approval.

Roger coughed again as they shut him out, and shuffled his
feet in embarrassment. “Well, you kids have fun. I’m off to
Charleston.”

“Have a safe trip.” TJ didn’t watch him lope around the
corner of the house but kept his attention focused on Mara’s shining
eyes. Her pride in him almost made decimating his career worth it. He
wouldn’t contemplate what would happen should Martin actually be guilty.

“You’re doing the right thing,” she murmured, her cheeks pinkening beneath his stare.

“Yeah, I always wanted to be a beach bum,” he agreed. At
her startled look, he relented. No point in adding to her troubles by
explaining he’d just burned his bridges, and the walls would come
tumbling down shortly. “I better call Jared and tell him and Cleo to
skedaddle. I have a feeling privacy will be in short supply.”

Her eyes narrowed into a speculative look that TJ knew to
be wary of. “What?” he demanded. He might want to carry her up the
stairs and bang her brains out right now, but Mara’s brains had a
dangerous tenacity he respected.

“If we don’t need to worry about Jared’s and Cleo’s privacy...” She halted, still thinking furiously.

“Forget it, whatever you’re planning. Stick to calling investors. Your ex and his cronies can find some other beach to fry.”

He started to stand up, but Mara slammed the coffeepot on the table, startling him into sitting again.

“That’s
my
film! Sid’s just looking for an excuse
to pull Glynis out from under me and stick her in one of his losers.
That film is my one and only chance of getting the company out from
under his thumb. I won’t let it die. Too many people are depending on
me. You could pull that injunction and let me take dozers in there.”

Out of the corner of his eye, TJ could see Roger hurrying
down the path toward the dig site, key—and TJ’s future—in hand. Forensic
anthropology might not be glamorous, but his nomadic existence had
allowed him to save a good deal of money. The market had been kind to
him, and he’d found safe nest eggs for most of his assets. He wouldn’t
starve anytime soon, even after his career crumbled.

All his nest eggs put together wouldn’t be enough to save Mara’s film if her vicious ex meant to steal it from her.

She watched him with hope in her eyes, as if he could
really be the star of her film. Well, he wouldn’t have anything better
to do shortly. TJ shoved back his chair. “Okay, let me talk to Jared and
Cleo. There may be a thing or two we can try.”

***

Oh, damn, she loved the man so much she thought her heart would burst of it.

Sitting back, Mara stared out over the ocean as TJ
disappeared inside. He’d listened to her. He’d respected her opinion
enough to go against his own wishes by turning those boxes over to a
reporter. No one had ever valued her opinion that highly.

Mara sighed and toyed with her cold biscuit. Her head had
just swelled with pride there for a moment. She’d revert to form
shortly. Clinging to an ancient infatuation probably wasn’t healthy for
anyone concerned.

TJ returned carrying his cordless phone and two more
coffee mugs to replace the ones he’d smashed. “Cleo heard about the
padlock on the office. I had to explain about the colonel. She and Jared
want to stay and help me fight whoever shows up next.”

“What did you tell them?” Mara accepted a mug and poured
cold coffee into it. She hadn’t forgotten the head-spinning kiss of
earlier, but she figured it was safer not to encourage fantasies.

“Told them I’d taken care of it. With the boxes gone,
Defense can search all they like. I have nothing to hide. Jared’s eager
for any excuse to pull Cleo and Matty out of here, so he’s taking my
word for it. He suggested bringing in Clay to help you, and he may have a
point.”

“Little Tommy?” she asked in incredulity, remembering a
curly-haired little brat with an evil genius for destruction. Thomas
Clayton McCloud—hadn’t she heard that name recently?

Slopping coffee into his cup and leaning against the porch
rail, TJ studied her. “Say what you will about him, but he can dissect a
problem with razor-sharp accuracy. He’s a computer whiz with access to
things I don’t even want to think about, and he thinks outside the box.
We may be too close to the problem.”

“You don’t think my calling the investors will work,” she stated for him.

“Nope. Their money is on Sid and Glynis. You’re an unknown factor.”

“I hate it when you’re right.” She grimaced at the coffee
and flung the contents over the rail. “So, where does that leave us? If I
can’t influence the investors to get my job back, how does Clay fit
in?”

“I’ve got one or two ideas, but let’s get Clay on this
first. It’s too early in California to give him a ring. Can your people
be trusted to keep the film on schedule without you? Or will Ian start
running up expenses? Should I hire more security and block them out?”

She did adore the way he treated her as if she knew as
much as he did and more. Why couldn’t she have found a man like that the
first time around?

She had, but he’d walked out on her. She’d better remember that for future reference.

“I’ve reconfigured the schedule to work around the dig for
the next few days while we’re waiting for the ship replica to arrive.
I’ve got good people on this. They’ll be all right if Ian doesn’t
interfere and my director doesn’t decide to create his own island idyll
out of the jetty. They really don’t need me. I’m available to help you
with your research, if you’d like.”

TJ’s smoldering gaze suddenly blazed like hot coals, and
Mara thought she’d melt beneath the heat of it. She knew exactly where
his thoughts had traveled the instant she’d said she was available. She
quit breathing while her mind frantically sought excuses.

“We have a few hours before California time catches up
with us,” he said without inflection, not moving from his relaxed
position against the rail. “How would you like to spend them?”

Butterflies flooded Mara’s stomach. This was it, the
moment of decision. Did she have the courage to take up the challenge?
Could she risk her heart again? Court a third disaster?

What did she have to lose? Certainly not her self-respect.

Rising, she stepped so close that she pressed TJ back
against the rail. His khakis rubbed her capris, and her unharnessed
breasts crushed against his cotton polo. She ran manicured nails over
his clenched jaw, and triumphed in the instant press of his arousal
against her belly. She drank in the sea scent of his subtle shaving
lotion and absorbed the faint tingle of stubble beneath her fingers.
“Let’s spend the next hours as Scarlett and Rhett,” she murmured,
standing on tiptoe so she could reach his mouth.

“That almost makes sense.” Without further quibble, TJ
buried his fingers in her hair, lowered his mouth to hers, and set about
devouring her.

***

The ocean breeze blew the gauzy curtains across the bed,
cooling their perspiring bodies. Mara tried to clear her head and
schedule the rest of the day, but the sensations TJ had created inside
her wound her tighter than a coiled spring. The solid muscle of his
thigh pressed against hers. Conscious that he was wide awake and
breathing as hard as she was, she couldn’t think of anything else but
the perfection of his lovemaking.

He’d carried her up the damned
stairs
. She wasn’t any petite lightweight, but he’d carried her up the stairs as if she truly was Scarlett and he was Rhett.

And then he’d slowly made love to her as if they were the
last two people on earth and had the rest of their lives to do it in. It
made her realize Sid and Irving had always made love to her as if
they’d penciled it into their day along with their vitamins and lunch.

She didn’t think there was a place on her body that TJ
hadn’t touched or kissed. Just thinking of what he’d done made the
juices run.

“Did I see a whole box of Trojans in that drawer?” she
inquired, staring at the shadowed ceiling, afraid to gaze over the vast
expanse of bronzed chest so close beside her she could feel his heat.

“Yeah, I wasn’t taking any chances.” He didn’t turn either, but his thigh inched closer to hers.

Daringly, Mara dropped her gaze to his groin area. “I think it will take a very
big
warrior to cover that.”

“As long as it fits.” TJ shifted abruptly, hauled her on
top of his hard abdomen, and drank in the sight of her with a ravenous
gaze.

Excitement pooled in the pit of Mara’s belly as TJ curled
reverent hands around her breasts and studied her otherwise skinny
frame. She saw nothing but approval in his eyes, and desire bubbled
through her blood.

Constantina had been right. It took a hot man to melt her
cold reserve. She needed to feel desired before she could desire in
return. TJ made her feel as if she really were the most beautiful woman
in the world.