Chapter 14

 

There, he'd said it—the word that scared him shitless—"rape." Jared wasn't at all certain he had the right interpretation. He wasn't a child psychologist, after all, just a cartoonist. He was still struggling with Cleo's revelation that she was an addict who had been in jail.

His mother would call his current companions trailer-park trash. She would be appalled at his association with any woman who'd admitted to addiction, much less jail time. He was pretty appalled, as well, but whether with himself or Cleo, he didn't know yet.

He had ten dozen questions and no lessening of interest in the woman who was barely tolerating his stroking. Electricity and tension vibrated through his fingertips, and he didn't think it was all his. He'd done shallow attraction before, but what he felt right now shot off the altimeter.

But first things first. They had to save Kismet. Like he was capable of that.

Cleo dug her fingers into his hair. Jared merely glanced up at her.

"You saw that in her sketchbook?" she demanded, hastily releasing his hair at his heated look.

"The sketch is ambivalent, but I'd say it reflects oppressive fear and an unhealthy knowledge of male physiology, okay? I don't know how a psychologist would say it." He released her ankle before she yanked his hair. Tension throbbed between them, and he figured he'd better concentrate on matters of importance. Avoiding Kismet's situation wasn't an option.

Cleo practically breathed a sigh of relief as he inched to a safer distance. Jared was tempted to reach over and stroke her, just to feel her tense up again. His ego shot several notches higher knowing she wasn't as impervious as she pretended. Better yet, he liked that she was focusing on his concerns and not scoffing at his overactive imagination.

"I can't believe Linda would let her men out of her sight long enough to cause harm, but if today was any evidence of what might have happened in the past..."

He waited while she struggled with the consequences. He didn't understand her passion to protect the children on her own. As far as he was concerned, that was the job of the police and social workers and whatnot. But he didn't live here and she did. He'd have to rely on her judgment, respect her opinion as she apparently did his. He could get into being appreciated for his intelligence instead of his money or warped humor.

She unconsciously ran her fingers through his hair as if he were no more than one of her weird animals. Well, he could handle that, he supposed. For now.

"I'll keep Kismet here, talk to Linda again," she muttered aloud. "She may take a knife to her current boyfriend if she suspects it's him, or she may not believe me. It's a no-win situation. I wish I could teach Kismet how to protect herself, but she doesn't know the meaning of fighting back. I could teach Gene..."

He wanted to shake her. That was not the reply he wanted. This respecting each other's opinion business only went so far. Yanking his head away from her invading fingers, he glared up at her. "There are laws, Cleo! This has gone beyond negligence to child abuse. They need to throw Linda's screwed-up head into jail and get those kids some help. Why the hell do you think you're the only one who can protect them?"

She stood up and walked away, toward the woods. Not a word. Not a sound. Just walked away. Damn, but he'd thought he was good at avoidance. Cleo could win awards.

He didn't know why the hell he cared. Maybe some of his mother's do-gooder training had surfaced. He despised the patronizing ignorance of his mother and her cronies, but he simply couldn't ignore this situation.

He jumped up and stalked after her. Against the backdrop of the pine woods, Cleo appeared more wraith than human. The cheap dye job was fading from her cropped hair, and he could catch an occasional glimmer of red. He didn't want to examine why she hid herself behind men's clothes and bad haircuts, but a whole new world was opening before him. Or he'd just opened his eyes for the first time.

Grabbing her shoulder, he sucked in his abs in case she wanted to bruise her fists using him as a punching bag again. She didn't. She simply stared at him blankly. "You've got a kid," he said accusingly. "Would you want his plight disregarded if someone was abusing him?"

For half a moment, Jared thought her eyes swam with tears, but then she reached for the nearest tree branch and hauled herself up where he could barely see her. He leaned against a nearby tree trunk and waited.

"What do you want, McCloud?" she demanded from the safety of her branch. "My life story? My credentials to prove I know where I'm coming from? Why should I smear it all out for your perusal? Why can't you just believe I know what I'm doing and go away and leave us alone?"

"Don't you think I've been asking myself that?" He crossed his arms and glowered at her unsuspecting tree. "Damned if I have an answer. What did they do, take your kid away from you? Is that why he's not here?"

An enormous pinecone bounced off the tree over his head, but it fell apart. Apparently, he'd hit too close to home. He almost chuckled. He had her treed like a trapped raccoon. This time, he'd get some answers. He shot her a smirk she probably couldn't see in the rapidly descending shadows. "Pretend I'm Superman and trust me."

"I should trust a guy in blue tights and a cape? I'd trust your Scapegrace character sooner." She wrapped her hands around the branch above, not looking down at him. "Matty is with my sister. If I'm a real good girl, I can bring him home in December."

"Then what are you afraid of? You afraid you'll take up Linda's occupation and neglect him?" He was probably risking his life by antagonizing her like this, but it seemed safer than what he really wanted to do. Maybe if she put him off enough, he'd get the message. Generally, he fell out of love as easily as he fell into it.

He just had a sneaking suspicion that this time he'd been snagged by something far more complicated than a few weeks of lust and illusion. Usually by now he'd be hitting the party circuit, not watching angry pinecones flying over his head.

"I won't," she said fiercely. "I'd never hurt Matty. Never."

"You just admitted you were an addict. That's what addicts do, don't they? Hurt everyone, including themselves?"

She uttered a foul curse, flung another pinecone, and climbed to a higher branch. Jared feared she meant to spend the night up there. Maybe he ought to go away so she'd come down before she broke her neck.

"I was clean when I had Matty," she asserted out of the darkness. "David and I both were. We were in counseling, had jobs, and a decent place to live for a change. I thought we'd finally climbed out of the gutter and found a normal life, and I wanted a family so badly I could taste it.

"David didn't want the responsibility of me or a kid or anything else, but he said he wanted to make it work. I should have known better. We limped along for a year, until I came home one night to find him higher than the Mars mission. He'd somehow forgotten to tell me he'd lost his job and had taken up pushing to meet expenses."

She didn't say more, but Jared's insides clenched at the lost-child pitch of her voice. He didn't dare speak.

"You might have noticed I don't have a polite mouth on me," she finally said. "That night, David decided to shut it up by slamming me against the wall. I was nine months pregnant and started hemorrhaging. My screams brought the neighbors running. When I woke up in the hospital, Matty was healthy and David was gone."

Jared could hear the anger and tears in her voice. He thought he ought to stop her, that he didn't deserve her trust, that he wasn't worth this pain, but she plowed onward as if once under full steam, she had no brakes.

"I knew where David was, of course, knew who he was with and what he was doing, but I'd lived that horror for years and wasn't going back to it. I was scared out of my mind, but I packed everything up, sold anything I could lay hands on, and moved back to the town where I was born, on the opposite coast. I figured running away would keep me safe from who I am inside, but I was kidding myself."

Tears slid down Cleo's cheeks, but she clung to the branch above her for support and couldn't wipe them. "I never neglected Matty," she asserted firmly.

That much, she knew, no matter what anyone accused her of. "I didn't have a lot of education and didn't know a lot about running a shop, but I set up business and we got by for a while. I got a break on the rent and a loan, and I could work and keep Matty with me. He was the most beautiful baby, and he never gave me trouble. He was perfect, and I'd never hurt him."

Tears dripped off her cheeks and onto her shirt, because she knew she was lying now. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, but she had, and that was the whole problem, in a nutshell.

"But sales fell off, and I couldn't make the rent, and if I couldn't keep the shop running, I'd lose the apartment, and I knew they'd take Matty away from me. So when I found out the guy who owned the building was dealing with pushers, I demanded a piece of the take. Stupid, but I was desperate.

"I would have slit my wrists to keep Matty with me," she cried. "I knew what it was like to be neglected, and I'd not let any child of mine suffer what I had. Never."

"You don't have to tell me more," Jared said quietly from below. "It's not any of my business."

"If you tell anyone any of this, you'll have to die." Viciously, she swiped at her tears with one hand. "I'm stupid, okay? I'm not like my sister. I didn't go to college, didn't have the sense to stay away from danger, and thought I was tough enough to take on the world by myself. When the bastard offered me a joint, I took it. Big deal, a little pot. I'd been doing pot since I was a kid. I only used it when Matty was asleep, to help me relax. I wasn't hurting anybody. It didn't cost me. It was free."

She choked on a bark of laughter. "Nothing in life is free. I had to buy a gun because the thought of dealers in the back room scared me shitless. Then one week the bastard told me he was a little short of cash and offered me some crack as collateral. I wasn't into selling, no way. The stuff sat in my cash register for weeks.

"I'd been trying to teach Matty reading and writing so he wouldn't start school behind the other kids, but he didn't catch on real well. I'd get frustrated with him, and he'd cry when he couldn't please me. And then I'd cry, and he'd try to make me feel better, and I'd cry worse. I was a basket case. The store was still going downhill, I had crack dealers in my back room, I couldn't afford good clothes for my kid, and I had a stash of crack sitting in my cash drawer instead of money."

She sobbed and hated herself for doing so. She was past that stage now. She was strong. She'd had counseling. She understood the destructive forces that had made her do what she'd done. None of it helped. She wept and rubbed her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

And then Jared pulled onto the branch beside her, scaring her half to death. With one arm wrapped around her, a hundred-eighty pounds of solid male crushed her into the tree.

"Stop it," he hissed. "Quit beating up on yourself for my sake. I don't care what happened." With his free hand, he brushed a tear from her cheek, then he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

She shivered all over, craving a healing touch, knowing she didn't deserve it. She simply needed to gather sufficient strength to push away. He pressed her tighter, as if reading her thoughts.

Oh, God, he smelled of male musk and aftershave and all those masculine things she hadn't known she'd missed so much. She wanted to collapse into his strong arms like some weepy teenager and simply let him handle it all. He held her as if she mattered, as if she were actually valuable instead of a piece of shit. She so desperately wanted to believe she was worth something.

"Come on, let's get down." His arm closed around her waist, forcing her into close contact with his shirt. Cleo dug her fingers into male warmth and muscle, took a deep breath, shoved against his shoulders, and jumped.

She knew how to land like a cat, bending her knees and letting her hands and the balls of her feet break the impact. She could hear Jared cursing above her as he grabbed a branch and climbed down in more traditional fashion. She had a chance to run, to hide, to slam the door and lock herself in, but she didn't take it.

She didn't know why, precisely. It had something to do with his strength when he held her, the way he'd come up after her when she certainly hadn't encouraged him, the way he'd stood up for Gene and Kismet and took all the damage thrown in his direction. She couldn't brush him off as a polished yuppie any longer. Somewhere behind that smiling demeanor was a tough streak of incorrigible.

"I thought you'd be halfway home by now," he admitted as he swung down.

He didn't attempt to hold her again, and Cleo relaxed. She couldn't have tolerated a touch right now. She needed her distance. "You didn't let me finish."

"I got it. You're not Linda. You got straight and protected your kid and then you strayed. What happened, cops find the crack in the register?"

He said it dismissively, as if it didn't matter. Even her own sister was horrified that she'd let it happen, but this man stood there all loose-limbed and accepting and ready to move forward. She couldn't get beyond what she had done, and he acted as if it was something that had happened to some other person and had no relevance to here and now.

"On Matty's first day of school, I got high, that's what I did." Dammit, she'd rub his face in what she was, make him see her. "Matty always adored animals, and I wanted to buy him a teddy bear to show how proud I was of him. Just a simple teddy bear. He'd never had one." Hands on hips, she tried to glare at him, but a single tear strayed down her cheek.

Jared crossed his arms and watched her warily.

Satisfied, she continued. "People on drugs are stupid. Instead of going to Goodwill, I floated out with all the cash in the register and went to a toy store in a grandiose gesture to prove my love. I didn't have enough to buy even a baby bear. But I was high and brave and alternatives aren't what it's about with all that muck shooting out brain cells. I simply walked out with the biggest, most beautiful bear I could find."

He snorted but didn't say a word.

Turning her back on him, Cleo started toward the house. "The cops caught me a block from the store, of course. They knew I was high. They got a search warrant and searched the store, and I was busted for shoplifting and possession and illegal weapons. It's a wonder they didn't hit me with dealing after they pulled my California record. I didn't even get to meet Matty when he came home that day. Social Services did."

She wouldn't cry. Not any more. She'd cried until her lungs dried up and her soul shriveled, and she'd become an inhuman monster. She didn't go there anymore—only this once would she open that snakepit, for the sake of the kids. To make him understand.

He came up beside her. "They took your kid away from you?"

"Maya ran to the rescue." She still sounded bitter, although she'd been eternally grateful and simply didn't know how to express it. She'd give her soul for her sister, if she had one.

"She knew what it meant to be left to the state, and she wouldn't let it happen to Matty. She took care of him for nine months while I dried out again. If I hadn't been busted, I would have been doing crack within another day or two, and dealing soon after, so don't feel any sympathy for me. I can't control the compulsion any more than Linda can when she's under the influence. It's physical as well as psychological, and it never goes away."

"But you tried," he insisted. "You took your son away from dangerous forces, and Linda doesn't even recognize them. Don't make her into your image."

Cleo laughed shortly. "Like my image is so great. Get real, McCloud. Linda tries. She gets jobs and keeps them and she stays sober for a while. She fixes the house up, cooks a great meal, and loves her kids, even though the kids' father got her disowned by her family and most of the town despises her for them. You don't know half the names they call those kids around here. Then one of them comes crying home over some insult, or the teachers finally get through to her and report their failings, and she goes off the deep end and loses her job and it's another snowball downhill."

He walked silently beside her for a minute, considering, but he still shook his head. "That's Linda's problem. The kids shouldn't have to pay for it. They need to be placed in a safe home."

Cleo climbed to the top step and hands on hips, glared down at him. "Are you saying that I'm such a pitiful excuse for a human being that they're not safe with me?"

He didn't answer fast enough.

Biting off another curse, Cleo swung around and stalked into the house, slamming the door in his face and fastening the lock.