Chapter 23

 

The calm before the storm, Cleo thought as she woke to a disquieting silence—the eye of the hurricane probably. She was amazingly unstressed by the knowledge.

A man's heavy hand fell over her waist, and his naked heat against her back shot warm shivers through her. She hadn't had a man in her bed for nearly eight years. What the hell did she think she was doing?

Avoiding a hurricane.

All right. She wasn't a saint. Matty wasn't here to see the slip, and that's what mattered. Matty was fixated on his Uncle Axell, and that's the way it should be.

Gene and Kismet really didn't need any more examples of immorality either, but they weren't naïve seven-year olds. They'd probably thought she and Jared had been sleeping together all along and would see nothing unusual in it. She didn't know how to undo their lifetime of experience.

Carefully swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she crawled from beneath Jared's hampering hold. He stirred as the cold air hit him, but she'd escaped. Let him wake if he wanted.

She desperately needed a shower but she'd have to settle for the water she'd left hanging over the fire. She could heat more on the kerosene stove later. She really should have rewired and installed a generator by now.

"Do you always wake so early?" Jared grumbled from the bed. "You can't be thinking of going in to work."

Pulling on a flannel shirt, she dared a curious glance at the bed. His styled hair now stood on end, dark whiskers marred his jaw, and his dreamboat eyes were only half open as they watched from the pillow. Her heart flipped over in her chest, and she almost smiled in pleasure at the gorgeous sight, and that was before he pushed up on his elbows and let the sheet fall to his waist. Men like that had never graced her bed. It was like waking inside a TV soap opera.

"I thought I'd check for storm damage while I have a chance. You just stay where you are, Sleeping Beauty." She couldn't help the sharp edge of her words. That's who she'd been for too long to discard it after a single glorious night of sex.

He winced and flung a pillow at her, then dragged himself fully upright. "Fine. You crawl around on the roof and I'll fix breakfast, if role reversal suits you."

"Somebody wakes up grumpy in the morning," she taunted, pulling on the trousers they'd left in a heap by the door. She looked like hell, but beauty queens didn't climb on roofs.

In one graceful move he stood, reached across the gap to grab her, and hauled her next to all that breathtaking male nudity. Cleo thought she ought to run, but the flame in his eyes fascinated her. How could he look at her like that when she was such a mess?

"No, somebody wakes up hungry in the mornings, and pancakes aren't the menu he has in mind."

He nibbled the nape of her neck, ran his hands beneath her shirt to cup her breasts, and buckled her knees before she could take a breath. Then he politely stood back, still holding her upright, and grinned at her in satisfaction.

"But I'm a patient man," he declared generously. "If this is the eye of the storm, we'd better take advantage of it, although I am beginning to see the disadvantage of kids around the house."

He released her to reach for his jeans, and Cleo ran while she had the chance. She thought she heard him chuckle, but she avoided the image. Charm like that could totally waste a woman.

As she crawled around on the roof a little later, searching for damage to the newly installed shingles, Gene fed the animals in the shed, and Jared climbed up to join her, carrying a steaming cup of coffee.

"That's not an easy trick," she grumbled, taking the cup precariously offered and sipping while scanning the landscape below. Her witch tree had toppled. She'd have to power up the saw before a car could get out or in. Regret stabbed her at losing her favorite mechanism, but the man surveying the scene at her side soothed the worst of the pain. His laid-back presence had a way of taking the edge off. She sipped the scalding coffee.

"I don't want to go up to the top and see the beach, do I?" he asked.

"You can't really see anything but the surf from here. The tide is high and a lot of beach has washed out from the looks of it." And that was only the first half of the storm. She could feel the wind rising beneath the heavy clouds already.

"I always wanted to live right on the beach." He leaned back against his elbows and scanned the drive. "But I can see where it might be a problem losing a house every few years."

He seemed so calm about it. She was up here frantically checking every shingle to be certain her home didn't blow away, and he was already accepting the possibility that his had washed to sea. Of course, he had others to take its place. That was one of the many huge gaps between them.

"Can you rebuild your witch?"

She shrugged. "I suppose, but I don't like repeating myself. Shows a lack of imagination."

He snorted and gave her a look that should have pierced like a laser. He knew her far too well already.

"I am not a repeat of your past mistakes," he reminded her. "We have our differences, and we might not work them out, but giving up without trying would be the mistake here."

It frightened her that she almost believed him. She handed him the cup, and slid toward the attic window. "We'd better go in before we blow away."

He'd scared her by pushing too hard. Jared drained the cup and glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the beach. He'd loved that house. He didn't want to think what would happen if it was gone. Cleo might not appreciate his moving in with her permanently just yet.

His agent would have a dire fit and fall in it if he didn't turn in his strips soon. A sensible man would have stayed on the mainland and taken shelter instead of wasting out here for days without the means to finish his work.

The world was full of sensible men. He wasn't one of them.

Sliding down the roof to follow Cleo, he could hear his family's admonitions already: "Wastrel. Slacker. You could have a brilliant career in films. How do you plan on getting ahead in the world if you don't apply yourself?"

He had yet to figure out what he was supposed to get ahead of, much less why.

Gene was haunting the kitchen while Cleo poured batter into a frying pan over the kerosene stove as Jared entered.

"Cleo says the strawberries are melting in the freezer and we'll have to eat them up. And there's whipped cream in the fridge we've got to finish off. I'm starved!"

"Yeah, the kid with the hollow leg. How you can eat after everything you put away last night is beyond me." Jared affectionately clipped the back of the kid's head and watched Cleo's economical movements as she flipped one pancake, poured another, and reached for a plate. When he realized he could stand here all day and watch a wild-haired woman flip pancakes, he knew he was in deep trouble.

She looked up then and their eyes met. The bolt of lightning between them should have fused them both to the floor.

Rearranging a suddenly stiff portion of his anatomy, Jared smiled ruefully and eased out from under foot. He now understood the custom of a honeymoon. Two people in the throes of first lust should not be left in the company of others, especially not impressionable teenagers, drat it.

He discovered Kismet huddled on the floor in a far corner beside the couch, obviously doing her best to disappear into the woodwork. That cooled his ardor rapidly. He tried to imagine Cleo hiding from her molesters and couldn't. She would have defied anything and anyone and thrown their advances back in their face, then taken their beatings until they ultimately killed her. Instead, she'd stayed alive by killing a portion of her soul. He hadn't met her younger sister, but he suspected Cleo's need to protect had warred with her survival instincts until her confused psyche found an effective compromise. He wondered if it was really cigarettes she'd obtained the first time, or something the sister needed.

"Hey, kid, got any good drawings I can use?" He dropped into a chair as far from the girl as the small room would allow. On the surface, he had no clue as to what he was doing, but he remembered his own eagerness to show his work at that age. Kids at school had loved it. He'd quit showing his parents when their disinterest became too painful.

Kismet darted him an uncertain look, slowly flipped a few pages of her ever-present drawing pad, and slid it toward him.

He leaned over and picked it up. The upright dragon had shrunk to a more proportional size, still equipped with the necessary apparatus, unfortunately. Jared supposed it was preferable to sketching a real man in that position. The dragon's victim was nowhere in sight this time. He didn't want to delve into the psychology of its disappearance.

The object she apparently wanted him to see was a knight in shining armor, he supposed. Not Cleo as phoenix this time. The guy wore one of those weird visor things so an observer couldn't see the face, but the length of the knight's legs and arms and his strange fighting stance stirred uneasy recognition. His brothers had laughed at Jared's ungainly proportions enough to see satire for what it was. The kid would make a damned good caricaturist.

He grinned, probably weakly, and handed the pad back to her. "Give the knight a sword, at least, so he stands a fighting chance. You've got talent. We just need to give you better subjects."

A shy smile teased the corner of her mouth, and she settled in to give her knight a sword. Jared thought his heart would break at the sight of her fey face beneath the ebullient curls industriously bent over a psychological horror story. The child had skill to rival his. What were her chances of ever applying it successfully? He'd had connections, education, opportunities she would never see. And he'd come from a stable home with no dragons to fight while developing his work. Someone had to rescue her.

He made a damned awkward knight, just as she'd so cleverly discerned.

* * *

The wind slammed the remaining palm across the shed roof before they'd finished washing the breakfast dishes. Leaves and debris crashed against the windows in the sudden squall, and daylight dimmed to night. The kids looked worriedly at the ceiling as if expecting it to take flight, and Cleo sought for some way of reassuring them before they started worrying about their mother and the shack they called home.

"Well, at least the rain will refill the water barrel," she said brightly.

"The battery in my computer won't last long enough for a rousing game of Battleship," Jared mused aloud, drying the last dish and returning it to the cabinet. "I know how to play on paper, if anyone's interested."

Cleo doubted if the kids had ever even heard of the yuppie strategy game, but she was grateful he had accepted part of the responsibility for distracting them. A man who accepted responsibility—what a concept.

"How about poker?" she asked wryly when the kids looked blank at Jared's suggestion.

That offer brought grins and definite interest, and Jared wiggled his eyebrows as Gene ran off to find the cards and Kismet ambled after him.

"A little illegal gambling as a sideline?" he inquired. "Teaching them how to strike it lucky in the slots?"

"Nobody ever called me a Baptist preacher." She hung up her dishcloth and tried to avoid the penetrating light in his eyes. This house was too small for the two of them.

"I used to make my beer money at poker," he informed her, catching her by the waist before she could escape.

His nibble on her ear paralyzed her as effectively as a cobra's stare, and her pulse escalated much as its victims must. Once confident she wouldn't fight, Jared transferred his attention to more dangerous zones. Cleo closed her eyes and clung to his shirt while his kiss devastated her defenses as surely as the storm wreaked havoc on sand dunes. She desperately wanted to be the woman he thought she was.

To hell with saving her house. Who would save her?

* * *

By evening, the frantic flailing of wind and rain had settled into a steady downpour as the storm swept out to sea. Jared and Gene had braved the wind and water to check on the animals, and lured the peacocks from the damaged shed roof into the attic. Rivers of mud and debris flowed down the drive in the direction of the beach, but the house stood firmly on its high foundation.

Cleo clicked off the staticky radio reporting flooding in all outlying areas and tried to look casual as she glanced at Jared. He worked away obliviously on some drawing project he'd started after supper. She'd insisted the kids keep school hours and sent them to bed, if only to give her guest some peace.

She'd never seen him so intense. He even made love with a carefree nonchalance that diverted and distracted instead of scaring her. She didn't doubt his desire one bit for his lack of focus. She loved the way she could distract him from one goal by offering another he'd neglected. Men who simply wanted wham-bang-snore showed a serious lack of imagination. Jared wanted it all, and her skin tingled at just the thought of what he could do to her.

But right now, he didn't even know she was in the room. If she had to guess, from what little she'd gathered from Maya, he probably had one of those hyperactive disorders of the brain. She bet he'd driven his parents insane. He was darned lucky they hadn't drugged him as a child or he would never have learned the focus that had driven him to his successful career. She wondered if he understood how lucky he was.

She eased from the room and thought she'd escaped without notice, but she only had time to splash in a little water and soap and return to her bedroom before Jared appeared in the doorway. He'd driven his hand through his hair and loosened that rebellious strand again. If he knew how young that made him look, he'd probably cut it off. It didn't help that his gaze darkened with the same hunger as a teenager's as it focused on her.

"You're a major distraction," he muttered, strolling in, and shrugging off his shirt.

She gulped as bronzed, muscled shoulders emerged. She should have blown out the candle. "Go back to your work," she offered. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Good, because I'm not either."

Without any further warning, he backed her up against the bed until her knees folded and she was lying sprawled across the mattress beneath him. Why had she thought his lovemaking lacked intensity? Just his gaze could incinerate her.

"Do you have any idea how damned hard it's been keeping my hands off you all day?"

She couldn't answer as her breath left her lungs and his kiss trapped her more solidly than any prison cell. She ought to feel fear, but the hand insinuating itself beneath her loose shirt was gentle and loving and melted away any panic before it formed.

He had their clothes off and the lean length of him positioned over her before she remembered to breathe. She gasped when he drove into her.

This wasn't just a physical joining of bodies. She felt him inside her, filling the empty place beneath her heart, demanding the recognition she'd rather deny. Somehow, the lost child in her responded to the one demanding attention in him, and they spiraled crazily together with a playfulness and longing and a thrill of release that made absolutely no sense in a real world.

But in this dark cave protected against the elemental forces outside, they sought and found something precious, probably ephemeral, in each other.

The darkness lightened as he exploded inside her, and she rode the waves of ecstasy he created. As Jared's heavy weight collapsed on top of her, Cleo brushed the hair from his face, relishing the lingering traces of pressure in her womb. Whatever the future might bring, she could cherish this moment of complete happiness. Perhaps she'd learned a few things from years of hardship. Happiness was too rare to ignore when it happened.

Matty had taught her that.

Jared propped those splendid arms of his on either side of her head and covered her face in lingering kisses. "Once we get out of here, I'm going to find a real deserted island where we can ravish each other until we're too starved to move. Then we'll order sumptuous feasts, and start all over again."

"You might have difficulty ordering feasts on a deserted island," she reminded him wryly. "Besides, feasts involve wine, and I'll thank you to remember not to indulge me like that." She had lots of experience at bringing dreamers back to earth and pointing out the rocky shoals ahead.

"I don't need wine to make me high. I have you."

Jared pushed off of her and stood. They hadn't made it any farther than the edge of the bed. Thrilling beneath his blatantly satisfied gaze, she stood and stripped back the covers, then lay down in as provocative a pose as she could manage. "High enough, or do you want more?" she inquired in her best imitation of a whore's invitation. Insolence had always been another form of striking back, but she wasn't entirely certain if she was being insolent or covering anxiety.

Interest flared in the darkening of his eyes as well as rising parts south, but he remained stubbornly where he was.

"I've got to earn a living, so I'll have to learn to put aside temptation when she calls." He leered appreciatively. "Get some rest. I expect tomorrow to be a test of our endurance."

With that startling statement, he grabbed his clothes and walked out. Well, hell. He certainly wasn't shy about his nudity, she noticed as she watched his taut buttocks stride away. She wanted him all over again, and considered going after him to have her way.

She'd never chased after a man in her life. She'd been perfectly happy sleeping alone before he came along.

The wind howled in derision as Cleo pulled the covers over her shoulders and firmly shut her eyes.