Almost Perfect (41 page)

She'd wondered. She had a dozen questions, but it seemed easiest to punch the power button than ask.

She settled behind Matty on the floor and watched the
film flicker on. There were no opening credits. A cartoon flared into life with a roar of trumpets and a witch rocketing across the screen on a purple broom tied with a big yellow ribbon. Matty practically sighed with ecstasy, settled his elbows on his knees, and fell into a trance.

“Jared found an animator willing to work with him,” TJ said quietly, so as not to disturb the action on-screen. “They've been pulling together a network of friends who respect one another's creativity, or so he says. I don't understand half of it.”

Fascinated by the almost familiar creatures dancing across the TV, Cleo only half listened. Jared had done this. She recognized the style of the drawings, even though they moved and talked instead of sitting still with word balloons over their heads. She recognized the witch with the red shoes, and laughed aloud as the skeleton cracked a joke.

That was definitely Jared's dry humor. A bubble of pride swelled inside as she realized she'd done right to send him away. He was doing splendidly without her. This was wonderful stuff. She laughed as the knight in shabby armor swung a wicked pizza at the wisecracking skeleton.

“He sold his place in Miami so he could produce this himself.”

Cleo tore away from the cartoon to stare at TJ in disbelief. “I thought he
loved
living at the beach.”

TJ sipped his coffee and regarded her solemnly. “He said it was just a place and there were more important things in life. He's living with our parents, if that tells you anything.”

Her eyes widened as she examined the horror of that simple statement, and her bubble popped. Jared would lose his mind living with those stifling people. What was he, crazy?

“Mommy!” Matty shouted in excitement, bouncing
up and down and tugging at her jeans leg. “Look! That's you!”

Dazed, Cleo turned back to the action on-screen. The shabby knight had removed his visor.
Her
visor. As the character taunted the skeleton with his shallowness—a shallow skeleton, what a concept!—Cleo studied the image in puzzlement. Like all cartoon heroines, the image was young and fresh-faced and beautiful. She couldn't see anything of herself except maybe the red of her short-cropped hair. She had a mouth on her, that was certain, and Cleo smiled as the skeleton stepped back, rattling a bony hand over his nonexistent heart, complaining of being pierced to the bone. The man was good, she'd give him that.

Caught up in trying to see what Matty saw, she watched more carefully, and was transported into the story as thoroughly as her son. They both cried as a really wicked witch stole the children's magic broom so they couldn't go home. Matty shrieked at the fire-breathing dragon's appearance, and Cleo experienced a clear sense of déjà vu.

That was Kismet's dragon. That was Gene and Kismet lost in the dangerous forest.

“Porky,” Matty sighed happily, pointing to the talking potbellied pig. “And Petey.” Absolutely enthralled, he leaned into Cleo's embrace and let her hold him while he admired lurid imitations of his pets stalking, sauntering, and dancing across the set.

The feminine knight duly resisted involvement with a menagerie of preposterous animals, but her conscience— in the form of a nagging parrot—kept overruling her better judgment as she pulled one character after another from various disasters. The disasters tended to be stereotypical: the pig overate on magic mushrooms, the peacock let vanity lead him into a lake to better see his own image, and the children fighting over something inconsequential lost the clue that would lead them home. But
they were moral tales that children could grasp while adults could laugh at the dry wit aimed at character flaws everyone recognized. It was brilliant.

The knight was a hero.

The knight was her.

Cleo could scarcely believe what she was watching, but that was her house/castle, her menagerie, her kids, her attitude. Even Matty recognized it. This was Cleo as Jared saw her.

The man was obviously demented. Grumbling, she stood and escaped to the kitchen for more coffee. TJ followed her, leaving Matty to watch the ending on his own.

“I admit, I didn't understand his infatuation,” he said without prelude, offering his cup for a refill. “But when I saw that …” He shrugged and wandered to the table. “I saw you. I never thought of Jared as a deep thinker, but he's proved me wrong. He's not seeing you through rosecolored glasses, he's seeing your flaws as well as your strengths.”

“He just has a warped view of things,” she said grumpily, sitting down across from him. “I'm shabby, but I'm no knight.”

“Jared talks about you constantly. Unless he's lying, you're as close to a heroine as it comes these days.” TJ stretched his basketball-player legs across the pine floorboards and stared at the toes of his polished shoes. “So, why aren't the two of you together?”

She ought to be angry. He had no right to interfere.

She wanted to weep at the thought of all that brilliance trapped in the stifling environment of his parents' cold home, when he belonged on a sunny beach, chasing pelicans and laughing.

“Because he's better off without me,” she mumbled. She didn't want to have to explain why.

She didn't have to. Knowing eyes bored right through her skull.

“The perpetual hero,” TJ scoffed. “I always knew heroes were stupid. Jared's the one who believes in them.”

“I'm not a hero.” She raised her voice belligerently. “I'm an ex-con and an addict and probably worse. I can barely rescue myself.”

“Tell that to Jared,” he answered coldly. “The man never comes out of his studio anymore. He's so focused, he's scaring me. And I haven't heard him really laugh since he came home.”

Cleo buried her face in her hands and tried not to listen. She couldn't do this. She was a nothing, a nobody. Jared was a brilliant artist with a future in lights and success written all over him. She'd ruin him.

He thought her a hero.

TJ interrupted her reverie with a nervous clearing of his throat. “A wise man once told me that acceptance must come from within. It's more important that you accept who you are than that others accept you.”

The town had accepted her as she was, flaws and all. So had Jared. She hadn't. She didn't know if she could. But Jared expected her to.

Heart pounding erratically with an unknown rhythm she thought might be hope, Cleo lifted her head and met TJ's gaze.

“I've got to see him, don't I?”

Tim dipped his head in agreement. “I thought so.”

“This is insane,” TJ muttered as he nailed the last piece of paraphernalia to an ornate wooden molding near the ceiling.

“Tell me something I don't know.” Climbing down from her ladder, Cleo glanced around the two-story foyer of the enormous McCloud Long Island mansion. If she'd thought she'd been right about letting Jared go before, she was firmly convinced now. This place reeked to high heaven of old money and aristocratic lineages. She could gag on the high-falutin' atmosphere in here. Even the Christmas tree had prissy white doves and angels instead of flashing colored lights. She bet they were all made by Lalique and trimmed in fourteen-karat gold. Her methods of decoration were guaranteed to drive Jared's uptight parents into hysteria.

She dropped the neck chain bearing an emerald ring beneath the neckline of her tunic. It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed to take this step out of her self-imposed isolation and face the terrifying consequences of emotional involvement. She didn't have to tattoo her heart on her sleeve while she was at it.

“You're planning on this blowing up in your face, aren't you?” TJ accused as he folded up his ladder and frowned upward at the foyer's newest embellishments.
He didn't seem particularly worried about going down as her accomplice.

Cleo crossed her arms. “Self-destruction is what I do best.”

He shot her a wary look. “That's not a particularly heroic attitude.”

She laughed shortly. “You're telling me that comic heroes leaping in front of speeding bullets aren't selfdestructive?”

“Mommy,” Matty shouted in glee from upstairs. “Look at the reindeer!”

Cleo glanced at her tormentor. Jared's brother deserved his place in hell for dragging her on an airplane and bringing her up here, but he'd been a good sport about taking along her eccentric decorations and sneaking her into the house at her request. It was a bit difficult to read past his impassive expression, but she had a nagging feeling that he wouldn't have taken no for an answer any more than Jared.

At her questioning look, TJ shrugged. “Jared rigged up some toy reindeer to make them dance. He doesn't have your flare with the mechanical, but one has a flashing red nose. Mother hyperventilated and banished them to the nursery.”

The nursery. The blamed mansion had a nursery. “I'd better see what he's up to. Do I need a map to get there?”

He studied her for a moment, and Cleo nervously brushed glitter off her deep-green tunic, then ran her hand through her hair to see if it had fallen flat or something. She didn't belong here. She was so totally out of place that she was amazed the house didn't spit her out like bad meat, and Jared's brother had a way of disturbing her more than a fed could.

“Jared will be here any minute,” he finally said. “Unless
you're having second thoughts and want to hide, you'd better stay put.”

Terror did a step dance in her stomach, but she nodded. “Go away,” she answered grimly, hearing the sound of a car purring to a halt in the drive.

Hearing the car at the same time, TJ grabbed their ladders and disappeared into the nether regions of the mansion. She'd been mad to think she could get away with this. Knowing her twisted mind, she'd probably thought she'd be caught before she carried it off. Jared's damned brother, on the other hand, seemed to be an expert on covert actions. He'd pulled off the whole thing with an inexorable timing that bordered on dangerous. She'd hate to have him for an enemy.

A car door slammed. She tugged her tunic down over her leggings and wished she'd worn something more upscale. At the time she'd bought these, she'd thought velvet was upscale.

Her gaze swung frantically to the door as someone inserted a key. She could hide— Nahh. She was here to prove a point.

The door swung open to her tape of “Silver Bells” played by the church bell choir. Garbed in leather jacket and looking taller and more handsome than ever, Jared halted in the doorway as a reindeer-racing Santa streaked past his face, flinging glitter behind him.

“Ultra-rad.” He admired the Santa speculatively as it flew back across the foyer like clockwork.

Frozen, Cleo fixed her gaze on the heart-stopping sight of Jared's broad shoulders filling out a battered bomber jacket. With his face carved into interesting angles and planes, he looked more artistic and distant than she remembered. He'd let his hair grow, and rather than mess with it, he'd apparently pulled it back in a rubber band. Still, he couldn't disguise his cool competence and knowing
eyes as he calculated Santa's arc in order to step past him. Wearing a hand-knitted fishermen's sweater beneath his jacket, he stuck his hand into the pocket of elegantly tailored wool slacks, and transferred his gaze from the chortling Santa to Cleo.

“Assault by glitter?” he asked impassively as Santa sparkled his hair with red and green and silver.

Terror filled her at his lack of reaction. This wasn't the man she remembered. Had TJ been wrong? Had she lost Jared with her recalcitrance? Had she really thought he'd always be there for her, even when she was behaving like a stupid cow?

Not if she knew Jared. She'd hurt him, and he was being wary. Somehow, she had to reach out and show him she had the strength to love him back—that she might be whole enough to love him as he should be loved. Heart in throat and hope pulsing, Cleo stepped backward, into the doorway she'd just finished decorating. “I don't do No Trespassing signs anymore. Consider yourself showered with welcome,” she said cautiously, trying not to hold her breath.

His dark eyes lit with an unholy gleam as he regarded the spinning disco globe of mistletoe and her placement under it. “Even if it's rigged to explode, I still like your style.”

“I'm the one likely to explode,” she said darkly, watching him in exasperation.

His eyebrows quirked and a slow smile transformed his lean face as he got the message. “You've come to rescue me from purgatory?”

She widened her eyes at this description of his selfimposed exile, but she nodded agreement. “Yeah, maybe.”

Crossing the gleaming parquet of the foyer in three strides, Jared swung her into his arms and captured her mouth with his.

She couldn't breathe, didn't dare breathe, for fear she dreamed the fantasy of Jared's welcoming arms hugging her, the bristles of his beard rubbing her cheeks, the heated hunger of desire on his tongue. She dug her fingers into the leather of his jacket, clinging for dear life as her head spun like a Christmas top.

He kissed her until both their heads spun, or the insanely flashing strobe light from the spinning mistletoe made them dizzy.