TJ nodded and sipped from his bottle. When neither the mayor nor his mother continued, he pried a little deeper. “Did you let him know you were there?”
The mayor shrugged uncomfortably. “I was a kid and terrified of my father. That’s the way things were back then. I knew they were Germans. I’d heard the shots. But the sight...” He broke off and stared into the distance. “I was glad I didn’t have to go off to war. I ran back to my rowboat and rowed home to Mama. I heard them arguing later that night.”
“Frederich kept their money,” Mrs. Bridgeton answered before TJ could ask. “I don’t know where he hid it, never knew how much it was. But every so often, when he discovered a piece of land for sale, he invested some of it. I imagine the money was all gone by the time he died.”
She fumbled in her handbag and produced a little black book crumbling around the edges. She handed it to TJ, but Clay was instantly on his feet, looking over TJ’s shoulder.
“I don’t speak German, but I think the letters in there are probably abbreviations of German words. I can’t make head nor tail of them, never could. But I can read dollar signs. Frederich had it on him the day he died.”
Mara leaned against TJ’s arm and traced her fingers over the fragile pages. “Lists of land he bought?” she suggested.
The mayor cleared his throat, drawing their attention. “I apologize for the trouble I’ve caused you. If you still need the office, my rental company will renew your lease. I will admit I encouraged a few overeager hoodlums by telling them there might be pirate gold in hopes they’d scare you off. I didn’t want my father’s action to become public knowledge, and I thought keeping it secret was in my family’s best interest. I can see now that it’s better not to hide the truth. Mother and I have talked about it, and we’ve decided to donate the proceeds of the sale of the remaining land to a public park out here. It seems the only fitting thing to do.”
Clay looked up with interest. “You’ll have to buy out the people who own the beach property, won’t you?”
The mayor glanced uncomfortably toward the happy party in Cleo’s backyard. “They won’t all have to sell. Most of the land to the east of here is uninhabitable, occupied by trailers and fishing shacks. They’ll be happy to have the money.”
Mara, meanwhile, was considering the old notebook in TJ’s hand.“A mystery,” she murmured. “Some of that money might still be hidden somewhere.”
Right there and then, TJ decided it was time to answer a few questions of his own before opening up a whole new can of worms. He had all he needed for his report, and no need to share it with the crowd drifting in their direction.
Catching Mara’s elbow, he returned the book to the mayor and steered her toward the cottage. “Write your story later. We need to talk.”
She widened her eyes at him. “Why, do tell, Timothy John. What can we possibly have to talk about?”
He still didn’t know whether to strangle her or hug her, but he wasn’t doing either while covered in filth. “Books and bones and babies,” he told her curtly, half-dragging her across the sand. “Not necessarily in that order.”
“You can’t make me talk,” she warned jovially.
“Oh, yes, I can.” Out of sight of the rest of the party, TJ scooped her up and carried her across the cottage porch, shoving open the unlocked door with his shoulder, and kicking it closed behind him.
Only when he had her completely to himself did he dare lean over and kiss her.
Chapter Thirty-three
Mara eagerly inhaled the scent that was TJ and threw herself into the kiss with all her wounded heart and soul. She could never replace what was lost, but TJ’s desperate hunger washed over her like a soothing balm. She might be reading far more into his kiss than she deserved. She was very good at fooling herself. But this was TJ, and she would trust him far more than she trusted herself.
She spread her palms across his back, reveling in his strength as he held her. Instantly, he lowered her to her feet. With a dazed look on his face, he shoved a hand through his hair, and stared down at her.
“I stink. I’ve got to take a shower. We can’t do this anyway. Wait here. Don’t go, or I warn you, I’ll hunt you down.” He jogged up the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Mara couldn’t follow at that pace. As he’d reminded her, she wasn’t in any condition to be thinking of an act that might create another child.
The idea of TJ and the shower however... That was all about living. She’d vowed to live her life to the fullest, and so she would, one day at a time. She wanted to take TJ with her on that journey into the future. She wanted to show him how much she loved him, how beautiful life could be—if he would let her.
She prayed he would give her a chance to share thousands of showers and sunrises and sunsets. Gripping the cottage windowsill, she stared out at the surf lapping the beach a few yards away. The few years of a human lifetime were grains of sand in the face of the eternity out there.
Vowing not to waste another moment fearing the future because of past heartbreaks, she swallowed her uncertainty and listened for the sound of the shower shutting off.
By the time TJ clattered down the stairs, dressed in a blue button-down short-sleeve shirt and khaki shorts, looking his respectable professorial self, Mara had ice water in tumblers creating wet spots on the navy tablecloth she’d spread over the porch rail, and a bouquet of sea oats waving from an empty blue wine bottle. She could set a scene anywhere. She smiled at TJ’s stunned look.
“I’m good at this, you know. I designed the set on that jetty.” She gestured toward the ugly gray rocks now covered in what appeared to be sand, sea oats, and waving palmettos.
TJ grabbed a glass of ice water and gulped half the contents. Firmly setting it down on the railing, he met her questioning gaze. “I still want to marry you.”
Mara laughed. She couldn’t help it. The man must be close to six-foot-six and over two hundred pounds, and he looked as if he’d just volunteered to climb down an active volcano. He didn’t look any more pleasant at her laughter.
Before he could stalk off in a snit, Mara leapt from the rail to throw herself into his arms. He caught her, as she’d known he would. TJ had excellent reflexes, which was good, given her precipitous tendencies. “I love you, Timothy John McCloud. I love you, adore you, and I want to spend my life with you, but we have one or two problems.”
His arms closed around her, and joy swept through her at his instant acceptance. TJ wasn’t one to hesitate, ponder, or calculate her worth. She snuggled there, with his head resting on top of hers as if nothing could separate them.
“No, we don’t,” he assured her. “Last night, I cursed myself for not telling you how I felt, and I’m not letting you go until you understand. I love you. I’ve loved you since you were a skinny kid following me around, singing Do-wah-diddy-diddy off-key, and I love you even more now and probably more tomorrow. I don’t want to lose you.”
She needed those words so badly, she thought she’d soak them up before they emerged from his mouth. Flattened against TJ’s hard body, she was whole. It was the most exhilarating sensation she’d ever experienced. She didn’t interfere with his confession. Couldn’t. She just meekly nodded and let him ramble.
“I’m not good at words or feelings, never learned what to say when. I’m more comfortable with old bones that can’t talk.” He ran his hands down her back, keeping her nestled against him. “But I can say things to you that I could never say to anyone else. I love you whether you look like a librarian or a starlet or Scarlett. You bring terrifying things out in me, but I’m more alive when I’m with you. The other night—” His voice broke. “Don’t make me try to explain how I felt that night when I thought I could lose you—that the world could lose you. You bring life to everyone you touch.”
She heard his tears, knew how painful this was for a man so courageous and honorable he would risk his life to save another’s. She cupped his face and pressed a kiss to the side of his mou
th. “You don’t have to tell me, TJ. I know. I’ll always know. Whatever you feel, I feel. It’s frightening, but we’re old enough to deal with it this time.”
He directed the kiss more firmly, inciting her to passions they couldn’t explore yet. Before they went too far, he set her back from him and took a deep breath. “I love you, and I don’t know what the hell to do about it, but I’m not letting you get away again.”
“We could go inside for a start,” she suggested, with a slight gesture toward the crowd at Jared’s. “We’re not completely out of sight.”
Glaring at the party on the hill above them, TJ tugged her into the dim light of the front room, and carefully seated her on the sagging sofa. “I don’t have a house to take you to. I don’t have a glamorous life to offer. I had a call this morning from the state police in New York in the wake of all these news stories. They’re offering a steady contract, but I haven’t given them an answer. I can rebuild my independent contracting business without the feds, but that means traveling.”
“Sit down, TJ, you’re making me dizzy. It’s like watching a Ping-Pong ball when you pace like that.”
He flopped onto a slatted wooden rocking chair across from her. He clenched the rocker arms, then ran a nervous hand through his still-damp hair. His crooked eyebrow quirked in an expression more doubtful than questioning, but Mara didn’t underestimate the intellect behind that expression for a minute.
She’d intimidated the Intimidator with weapons he hadn’t learned how to handle.
“I have to finish this film,” she told him, while he gathered his forces and regrouped. He’d march right over her if she didn’t take the initiative. Maybe she’d needed these years of experience to learn how to handle a man like TJ, so she didn’t become the floor mat her mother had been. “A lot of people’s jobs are at stake if Sid keeps the company, and I won’t let that happen.”
“Let me take care of Sid,” he suggested hopefully. “Any man who doesn’t appreciate what he has in you ought to be flushed down the sewer.”
“You aren’t listening.” Unable to stay away from him any longer, Mara got up from the couch, planted her knees on either side of one muscled thigh, settled her butt on his knee, and dug her elbows into his shoulders. Staring into her breasts shut him up.
“I learned from Irving, and the second time around, I married someone who liked what I had to say and how I handled business. Sid appreciated me. He just thought he could shut me up in the closet when he didn’t need me. I took care of that. You don’t need to.”
TJ scowled and locked his hands around the chair arms rather than her. “He’s still too stupid to live. I’m not. What do you need me for?”
She pressed a kiss to his nose, then licked it. He bucked in the seat but refused to grab her. She wiggled her rear on his knee and her Wonderbra-less chest nearly rested on his. “I don’t need you for your money or your connections, TJ. Are you going to listen or do I have to munch your ears?”
He took a long time thinking about it. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he relented. “You’d better talk quickly,” he muttered, “because the position we’re in right now is dragging my brain southward.”
She chuckled and returned to the couch. “Despite all his faults, I learned from Sid. I know how to hire good people. I learned I hate being management. I like designing sets, and I love working on the scripts, but let’s face it, I’m a creative flake and not executive material.”
“You’re organized, efficient, hardworking, and far more logical than anyone else I’ve seen out there. You’re damned good executive material.”
Mara adored TJ’s loyalty, but sometimes his Hulk hormones made him just a little dense. “Just because I have the brains to do it, doesn’t mean I want to do it,” she corrected. “I can do anything I damned well want to do, but all I’ve ever done was what I had to do.”
She waited for that to sink in before continuing. “If I have to, I’ll run the studio, but I don’t want to. I need the money to pay for around-the-clock nursing for my mother, but if I bring her to live with me, then I won’t need so much. Or if I live somewhere else besides L.A., I’ll have enough to pay for both nursing care and my own home. Life is about choices.”
She watched TJ’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he absorbed all the implications of her words. The man wasn’t slow by a long shot. He just needed time to grapple with his place in the scheme of things.
“What do you want to do?” he asked carefully.
She beamed at him, her heart swelling with joy and pride. She got up and planted herself in TJ’s lap properly this time. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, feeling his instant arousal, she nibbled on his ear. “I want to write screenplays,” she whispered against the ear she nibbled. “And maybe sometimes design sets. I want to make a home for you, TJ, and take care of you. You need someone to look after you.”
“Take care of me?” he asked in incredulity. “You want to—”
She bit his earlobe, and he shut up. “I can take care of you far better than you can take of yourself. I can make a home for you. If the company makes money, I can pay for my mother’s nursing care. She doesn’t have to live with us, just somewhere I can visit. I don’t know about children, though,” she said with familiar sadness, but even that eased a little as TJ rocked her with his arms around her waist.
“I can afford you and your mother and anything else that comes along,” he said, “unless you have a penchant for expensive jewelry and yachts and that kind of thing. But if I tell you I can take care of you, I figure you’ll hit me.”
She laughed into his shoulder. “Probably. I’m taking care of myself these days.”
He nodded, as if that answered his question. “I’m fine with that. I want to hear you singing and laughing and throwing things at me. I want your arms around me, telling me I’m alive and real and not bad company.”
She tightened her arms around him and kissed his whiskery cheek. “No finer company anywhere,” she murmured.
“I don’t know what to tell you about children. Until these past few days, I never thought about having them. I’m terrified I may be too much like my father and forget they’re there, but I like the idea of having kids. If you want them, I figure you’ll help me be a good father..”
TJ stopped rocking to catch Mara’s face between his hands. “But if what you’re worried about is the future of your mind, don’t. You’re the sanest person I know. If you want children, we’ll have them. Life doesn’t come with guarantees.”
She broke down and cried again, and let him rock her like a baby. Even the sound of a helicopter overhead didn’t deter her, though her crying slowed as the rocker did.
A whistle and a splat hit the roof.
Mara’s head jerked up as TJ shifted into instant alert.
Another whistle and a splat, followed by the low roar of the helicopter, then a hail of splats against the roof.
“Is the colonel bombing us?” she asked more in wonder than fear. TJ’s arms gave her the courage she didn’t naturally possess.
“Not from a helicopter.”
Something suspiciously yellow and egg-like slid down the side window exposed to the elements.
“What on earth?” Jarred out of her tears, Mara tried to peer out the window without leaving TJ’s lap.
“Remember how I used to avoid Clay and Jared by sneaking out the back door and over the pool fence?” TJ inquired, carefully returning her to her feet so he could rise.
“Yeah, you said they were pests who would follow you everywhere.” Mara cupped her hands and face against the window, trying to see what was happening up there.
“Every time I escaped them, they conspired to find ways of annoying the devil out of me when I returned.” TJ opened the door to the porch, and leaned over the rail for the water hose on the side of the house.
Mara stood safely in the doorway, listening to the helicopter overhead, eyes widening as TJ turned on the faucet. Normal people would use it to
clear the egg dripping down the window. There was nothing normal about a McCloud. “TJ, you really shouldn’t—”
He did. Turning the knob on full force, pulling the trigger of the hose nozzle, he shot a steady blast of water at the occupants of the small helicopter as it passed near the porch.
Mara heard the shouts, closed her eyes, and listened for the helicopter’s crash. Instead, it ducked and dodged and sped out of range.
Laughter bubbled up from deep inside her. “That’s insane, TJ,” she cried. “You could have killed them.”
“Nah, Clay has excellent reflexes.” He shut off the nozzle and looking both professional and satisfied, turned to admire her standing in the doorway. “They’d only have landed to see if I was still alive if I hadn’t come out. I saved their hides and an expensive machine. There’s not enough beach for a safe landing.”
“What were they throwing at the roof?” Mara could barely keep from diving into TJ’s arms again. He stood there looking so fearless and confident with his hands shoved into his pockets and love smiling from his eyes. From the looks of the stream of visitors heading this way, she didn’t think they’d have time for kisses. Maybe later. At the thought of a lifetime of laters, she beamed with joy.
That rocked his expression a little, but returning her smile with a heartwarming one of his own, TJ shrugged. “Cleo’s rubber eggs, apparently with the latest addition of a whistle. And when there wasn’t enough of those, they resorted to the real thing.” He indicated the slime sliding down the porch rail.
“Your brothers might be more problem than my mother,” she said solemnly as the helicopter hovered over a distant landing field.
“My mother will be more of a problem than yours,” he asserted. “My brothers are just icing on the cake. Before Cleo gets down here and starts ribbing me, are you going to marry me and be the boring wife of a forensics anthropologist?”
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