The strong silent act might work in some circles, but not in hers. Mara grabbed his arm as he passed, and jerked hard enough to either stop him or drag her down with him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To call a lawyer,” he spit out, glaring at her as if she were a cockroach he meant to crush. “You’re not getting away with this.”
A tiny tendril of panic pushed through one of the multitudinous cracks in her wall. “Get away with what?”
“As if you didn’t know.” TJ tugged his arm free and would have pressed forward, but Jared’s voice halted him.
“Cleo’s been working all day on this dinner. She has the name of a legal shark, but I’d suggest you stay and eat before you ask for it.”
Mara could see TJ obviously wavering, torn between family loyalty and the lethal fury boiling inside him. She swallowed hard, hating to lose the bridges they’d started to rebuild this evening.
Bracing her backbone with the knowledge that she was innocent for a change, she steered him in the right direction. “I don’t know what you think I did, but can it for a few hours. Only ambulance chasers answer phones at this time of night.” She was rattled by those papers, but she knew how to put on a show. He could learn to do the same.
TJ ripped the papers from his pocket and waved them in her face. “Look at these and tell me you don’t know what you did.”
She snatched the document and tried to read it in the bad light but the printing blurred. Laser surgery had corrected the worst of her vision problems, but she still needed reading glasses. She never wore them in public, didn’t even carry them with her. “It’s too dark,” she said boldly. “Let’s go in.” She started for the door that Jared was blocking.
TJ tore the papers from her grip and returned them to his pocket. “It says I have to cease and desist blocking the access road. Now tell me again that you don’t know what this is about.”
Jared whistled. “Cleo’s not going to like that. She likes our privacy, and they’ll have reporters crawling all over this story.”
Sid. Mara recognized her ex’s grimy pawprints all over it. And Ian, no doubt. She’d have to fire her producer—once she owned the company. Dammit.
You could start filming the night scenes now, a wayward voice in the back of her head crowed. They could bring in the sound equipment and concession trucks so the crew didn’t quit en masse. And haul in the dressing rooms so Glynis didn’t call her agent and complain for the umpteenth time this week.
At the cost of losing the friendship of the McClouds. And TJ. Double damn. She’d dearly like to know what it was like to have real friends. Was that asking so much? Maybe asking to have TJ in her bed again was pushing her luck, but she couldn’t let Sid hurt people who had done nothing to him.
She had an opportunity to start a fresh life, her own life, and already she was flubbing it because she wasn’t greedy enough to choose her career over friendship. Some tycoon she was.
“Are the lot of you going to stand out there gossiping, or do you prefer your potatoes cold?” Wearing a dark green miniskirt and matching tank top, Cleo appeared in the screen door like an inquisitive leprechaun.
Mara had the feeling that Cleo had even more issues than she did, and that her hostess was capable of slamming the door in their faces and telling them all to go to hell if they carried their argument inside. Maybe the way Jared opened the door and chucked his wife under the chin with a reassuring smile gave her the impression of her hostess’s vulnerability. Maybe she just liked believing there was one man in the world who loved his wife enough to protect her from harm, and she simply imagined Cleo’s insecurities.
Either way, she didn’t want this misunderstanding to interfere in the first evening she’d had off in what seemed like decades. These were real people, from her real life, and she wanted to be herself for a little while, if she could just remember who that self was.
“TJ says I can’t throw eggs at him,” she told Cleo with her best actress pout. “Is he always such a spoilsport?”
Jared grinned approval and shot his brother a warning glare. “You have to ask? Big Brother created the law, and we all bow before it. C’mon, and I’ll see if I can slip you an egg or two before the evening’s over.”
Eyeing them warily, Cleo didn’t appear fooled, but she pushed the door open. “It’s always more fun if he doesn’t know when it’s going to hit him.”
“He plays broody gloom so well, too,” Mara chirped happily, grabbing TJ’s arm and tugging him toward the door. “If I ever do a remake of Jane Eyre, will you try out for the part of Rochester?” She flapped her fake lashes at him.
“Only if the self-righteous Jane gets murdered in the end,” he said dryly, hauling her into the house.
The evening worked its way from hostile to surreal in a matter of minutes. Jared and Cleo evidently thought nothing of entertaining in the kitchen, and the neighbor’s children apparently treated their kitchen as home. Mara knew how to handle the teenage boy’s awe, but doing it with TJ glowering at her was awkward. Matty’s excited chatter and Jared’s humor eased the conversation, but the girl called Kismet strained it with her shyness.
Cleo managed the whole milieu without any sign of noticing her guests’ difficulties. Mara admired the way she nudged Gene when he grabbed for the chicken without asking, reminding him without words to use his manners. She’d not spent much time with kids, but she could remember her father’s scolding. She liked Cleo’s method better.
TJ didn’t look at her as he complimented Cleo on the chicken. She couldn’t believe the bastard thought she was capable of Sid’s kind of treachery. What in hell made him think she cared so little? Hadn’t they just discussed the result of their earlier lack of communication?
She wouldn’t be ignored or forgotten this time.
“Rubber eggs should have rubber chickens,” Mara murmured thoughtfully, fingering the toy Cleo had sneaked into her hand.
TJ lowered his V-shaped scar into a scowl but didn’t otherwise acknowledge her senseless remark.
“The Three Stooges had a rubber chicken,” Gene suggested eagerly. “They’re funny.”
“Spoken like a true man,” Cleo acknowledged with a knowing grin.
Ignoring the by-play, Mara squeezed her weapon. It went splat, and she almost checked her hand to scrape off the non-existent goo. Jared and Gene snickered. Kismet watched her with interest. Eight-year-old Matty grinned.
TJ reached for the mashed potato bowl.
Splat.
Fluffy white spots riddled TJ’s forehead and jacket sleeve. One particularly fine glob slithered into his crooked eyebrow. It was his own fault for not believing her.
Mara recognized the dangerous gleam in his eye as he set the bowl down. When she’d been very young, she’d run from that look. In later years, she’d learned how to work it to suit her purposes. TJ had been her very first male role model, and all other men in her life had failed to live up to his standards. Had she fantasized the man she remembered?
“Oops.” She smiled coyly and batted her lashes. “The rubber chicken must have laid a rubber egg.”
All conversation stopped as TJ swirled the egg in the potato bowl with deadly calm. Mara propped her elbow on the table and set her chin in her palm while she admired his intimidating maneuver. “Uncool, McCloud. Gentlemen don’t strike ladies. Whatever would your mama say?”
“That you’re not a lady?” he suggested, fishing the potato-covered egg from the bowl.
“That people don’t play with their food?” came from the surprising quarter of Kismet, whose brown eyes had widened with both interest and trepidation.
“Tim, if you throw that thing, I’ll dump the bowl over your head,” Cleo intruded firmly. “How am I supposed to teach the kids manners?”
Mara stuck her tongue out at TJ’s black glare, knowing perfectly well the childish phrase he longed to unleash. “Say it, I dare you,” she goaded him.
Splat.
Mara’s golden hairpiece
caught the blow, tilting precariously over one ear while a gob of mashed potato slowly rolled down her forehead.
“She started it,” TJ said in a childish falsetto.
The table erupted in roars of laughter. Even Cleo was wiping her eyes and laughing too hard to carry out her threat as Mara carefully plucked the comb of the hairpiece from her matted curls.
Gravely, she laid the once-lovely curls across the remains of TJ’s fried chicken and string beans. “You win.”
She turned to the wide-eyed, giggling children. “Let this be a lesson to you. Uncle Tim doesn’t get mad, he gets even.”
“Maybe Baby Patsy ought to take heed of her own advice,” TJ responded, a warning hidden behind his gibe.
Wiping her forehead with her napkin and running her fingers through her natural curls to check for damage, Mara savored the triumph of jarring a reaction from his cold demeanor. She didn’t know why she needed evidence that the Tim she knew still existed, but even with egg all over her face—or potato, to be perfectly correct—satisfaction licked deep inside her. “I’m not Sugar Dave. I don’t back down.”
Jared chuckled at her reference. When all eyes turned to him for explanation, Jared shrugged. “Dave was on the basketball team of our high school’s biggest rival. He was the only guard large enough to block TJ on the court. He made the very bad mistake of calling our cheerleaders a rude name.”
“Okay, I’ll bite.” Cleo handed Mara a clean wash rag. “What did our favorite Scorpio do?” She tugged the back of TJ’s jacket until he stood up and took it off so she could clean the potatoes off of it.
TJ calmly dumped Mara’s two-hundred dollar hairpiece into the trash and found a clean plate, obviously pretending the tale had nothing to do with him.
“Nothing the referees could call him on,” Mara answered, playing to her eager audience. “But oddly enough, Sugar ended up in the strangest places on the court that night—in the stands, on top of his coach, rear-ending his own team, falling over the floor announcer—until his coach finally pulled him from the game for clumsiness.”
Jared snorted. “Our side howled because they knew it was Tim, the Intimidator. All he had to do was get in someone’s face and snarl, and they fell all over their feet backing off. Sugar didn’t have a chance.”
“Wow!” Gene looked at TJ in awe as he returned to the table. “You played basketball?”
Mara chuckled. If that was all the boy got out of the story, fine. Maybe it was better that he didn’t realize the dangerous depths of the outwardly bookish man he saw. Kids saw so much television, they willingly accepted real life acts of courage or villainy as ordinary. They didn’t understand the motivation or character that would drive their heroes to behave like steamrollers.
She did. She’d seen through TJ’s outward composure from the first day they’d met.
Ignoring TJ as he spoke to Gene about high school sports, Mara turned her attention to Kismet, who was eyeing her naked hair speculatively. “Is it a total mess?”
Kismet shook her wild tawny mane. “No, ma’am. Your hair is beautiful even with potatoes in it.”
Mara dabbed at it with her napkin, searching for traces of potato. Leave it to TJ to hit her in her vanity. “Thank you. I used to hate it. It’s naturally curly and mousy and horrid. A good hairdresser is a miracle worker.”
The girl bit her bottom lip and stared at her plate.
Uh-oh. Realizing no one else had caught the exchange, Mara worried over the appropriate response. If the kid had been an adult, she could have exchanged ribald jokes and hairdresser notes. She had a feeling that teenagers demanded a little more sincerity.
It horrified her to realize she didn’t know how to do that anymore.
All right, dig deeper, remember her own teenage years. “Do you have someone to teach you how to fix your hair?” Start simple, she decided.
The girl glanced up with a flash of hope, shook her head, then embarrassed, looked back at her plate. “Mama braids it.”
“My mother pulled mine in a ponytail. I looked like a total dork.” Mara smiled gratefully at the steaming cup of espresso Cleo set before her. She could tell Cleo had caught on to the conversation by now but wisely stayed out of it. “I was too busy to figure out how to fix it on my own. You get out of your hair the amount of work you’re willing to put into it.”
“You could never look like a dork,” Kismet whispered in awe.
“Don’t let TJ or Jared hear that,” Mara whispered back. “I’ll show you my high school yearbook sometime if you want real yucks. How much time do you want to spend messing with your hair?”
Kismet gave that some thought, then shook her head. “Not much,” she admitted. “I’ll never be pretty. I just want to look. . .normal.”
“Ah,” Mara said in satisfaction, finding an edge she understood. “There’s the hook. There is no normal. You’re supposed to look like you, whoever you are inside. If you’re a wild woman on the inside, then that’s how you should look. If you’re a meek little bunny rabbit, then cute is probably how you want to look. I’m five-ten and I figured I was bigger and better than everyone else, and that’s how I wanted to look, not like a dork of a mouse. So, who do you think you really are inside?”
Kismet frowned in concentration, apparently aware that identifying herself could be important. “I’m... different.” She eyed Mara carefully. “Begging your pardon, but I don’t want to be like you. I don’t feel bigger and better, just different.”
Cleo lifted Matty up and set him in her lap so she could sit next to Kismet and look across the table at Mara. “Kismet is an artist. She sees things around her that no one else does, and draws them brilliantly.”
Mara nodded in understanding. “Excellent. Then you should enhance your differences. You have spectacular cheekbones and great eyes. Flaunt them. Pull your hair back off your face as tight as you can—force the world to look at you and recognize you for who you are. Then let the natural exuberance of your hair spring out behind you. That’s a great look for kids your age. Later, when you have more experience and confidence in yourself, you can go sophisticated, tie it into a knot and decorate it. It’s all about who you are, right now. People change.”
Kismet’s eyes widened as she touched her cheekbones, but she only smiled shyly and nodded, not begging for more compliments as another might. Mara’s heart wept, seeing the damage behind that gesture, and she glanced to Cleo for verification.
Cleo nodded, but in her typical nonverbal fashion, she acknowledged the advice by brushing Kismet’s hair back from her high forehead and holding it so Mara could see how it would look.
“Yes, that’s it exactly. I’ll send over some of my elastic headbands. They should work.” With a sigh of relief that she’d solved Kismet’s problem without making a total idiot of herself, Mara glanced up at the sound of silence around her.
Jared merely watched her with interest. TJ scowled and sipped his coffee as if she were the shallowest specimen of worm in existence.
“You have potato on your nose,” she said sweetly, then hit him with the egg she’d held in reserve.
If he was taking her down, she’d go in flames.
Chapter Fifteen
The legal papers crackled in TJ’s pocket as he helped Mara into the car. It was nearly midnight. She and Cleo had found so many things to talk about that he hadn’t been able to pry them apart until now. He couldn’t believe a woman as perceptive as Cleo could actually like the lying, conniving piece of work that Patsy had become.
Or maybe he could. She was good, he’d grant her that. He couldn’t believe she remembered that old incident from his basketball days, and spoke about it as if he were some frigging hero instead of the spoiled thug he’d been.
Then she’d turned the charm on the kids, and she’d almost had him believing that she cared about Kismet’s problems or that she’d even remember to send the hair gear she’d promised the girl. He supposed he’d have to go out and hunt down whatever in hell an elastic headband
was so Kismet wouldn’t think she’d been forgotten for the millionth time in her neglected life.
“You’ll never get the butter out of your jacket. I’m sorry.” Mara examined his coat sleeve in the dim light of the overhead light when he opened the car door. “I didn’t realize mashed potatoes were made with butter.”
“Butter is better than blood,” he said curtly, before slamming her door and going around to the driver’s side. She was at it again, making him believe she was something she wasn’t, making him believe she could be the person he desperately needed her to be.
She crossed her arms and glared out the window as he took his seat and snapped the buckle. Better. Now he wouldn’t have to live with the illusion of the Patsy who understood when life got too complicated, listened when he wanted to talk, and didn’t condemn him when he’d been a fool. He shifted the car into gear and backed out.
“I am not responsible for that cease-and-desist order,” she said firmly. “I was handling the access road perfectly well on my own.”
“Yeah, right.” He hit the sandy lane at a speed higher than the tires could maneuver, and slowed down. She’d probably thought seducing him was “handling” the matter. He gritted his teeth. He should have known better than to think he could connect in any meaningful way with a blond bombshell, even if she had once been Patsy Simonetti.
“Screw you.” Holding her head high, she didn’t look at him the rest of the way back to the inn.
Just as well, he thought. He could get back to doing his own research. He’d retrieved another box of documents to read. The first box had made a good case for believing someone had allowed accused killers and rapists to go free, but just because the colonel was in charge of the unit assigned to Kosovo didn’t mean he’d done it.
Not wishing to contemplate Martin right now, TJ stopped the car in front of the B&B.
Mara slammed out before he could turn off the ignition. He was tempted to just let her go, but he’d been brainwashed by good manners at an early age. Cutting off the engine, he climbed out and loped after her into the lobby.
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