Chapter 31

 

"Climbing on roofs isn't the way mature adults handle problems," Axell said wearily, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands as he sprawled in a ramshackle wicker chair. Jared had brought Cleo home after the firework display to find Axell waiting for them. He should have known Cleo's sister would insist on reinforcements.

"So sue me." Hugging her knees, Cleo nearly disappeared into the corner of the couch. A single lamp illuminated little more than her bare feet with their curled-up toes.

Jared thought he recognized a resemblance to Kismet's turtle act in her body language. After the scene she'd created, she ought to be accustomed to being a target. If he was too rattled to think clearly right now, he supposed she had to be in worse shape.

Without asking permission, he lifted Cleo off the cushion and hauled her into his lap. She didn't struggle but curled up beneath his chin, her head warm against his chest. That behavior frightened hell out of him, but he wouldn't let her brother-in-law know that.

"Give it a rest, Axell. Does the lawyer really think he can keep Cleo out of jail? If not, I'm liable to act equally childishly."

"Why does this not surprise me?" Axell slumped in the chair and glared at both of them. "I should have let Maya come down here, except I figured she'd join Cleo on the roof and blow bubbles, and my heart couldn't stand the shock."

Jared could sympathize, but not right now. The shoulder of his shirt was growing damp where Cleo's tears soaked into it. She hated for people to see her cry, so he pretended to ignore her temporary relapse. He hadn't sat on a roof all day, defending helpless kids, so he had strength enough for both of them. "We can discuss womanly quirks some other time. First I need to know if I should be booking tickets to Venezuela."

Axell snorted. "Now there's an idea, but no, don't do it for my sake. Amos could talk the sun into exchanging places with the moon if he applied his mind to it, but since heavenly bodies don't pay his rates, he'll plead Cleo's case. It's your money. If it were me, I'd still let her cool her temper in jail awhile, even if she has a respectable argument."

Cleo twitched in his arms, but Jared held her down. Fortunately, she was too emotionally drained to argue, and she just leaned her head against his shoulder instead. Oddly enough, her weight wasn't any burden at all. He'd have one of his scientific brothers do a study on the weird ways love affected the brain. And other parts south.

"Cleo was railroaded the first time," Jared insisted. "I won't let that happen again. If she's definitely not going to jail anytime soon, then our next priority is the kids. Kismet won't come out of hiding until she knows she's safe. What do we have to do to get them into a good home?"

"Marry Cleo and adopt them," Axell offered cynically. "No one else will take in wild teenagers, one of whom has been charged with possession with intent to sell, I might add."

Cleo lifted her head and glared at her brother-in-law. "Yeah, like they'll let me adopt when I've just blown my chance to get my own kid back. That's gonna happen. Go home to Maya, Axell. Her insanity is catching, but at least it's legal."

"Teach her gratitude, will you? Respect and politeness is too much to ask." Axell hauled himself out of the tottering chair.

"I appreciate what you did today," Jared offered.

Axell smiled wearily. "It was all your idea. All I did was hire what you wanted. And I was joking earlier. I'll help with the legal fees. She's family, and if the feds gave her a raw deal, we need to call them on it."

"I'm still in the room," Cleo announced edgily. "I can pay my own damn bills. If you really want to be helpful, hire a hit man to take out Linda and friend."

"Oh, that's good, Cleo. The feds will like to hear that." Jared dropped her back on the couch and stood to see Axell out. "There's room here, if you need some sleep before driving back."

Axell shook his head. "I brought one of the kids from the bar with me. He can drive. Thanks for the offer, though. It gives me hope that at least one of you might be civilized. That firework display left doubts."

Jared shrugged. "It gave people something to talk about while we sneaked down. I had a great getaway planned if the lawyer hadn't said he had Cleo's bond in hand."

"I don't want to hear it." Shaking his head, Axell let himself out.

As the door closed, Cleo returned to hugging her knees. "Where is Kismet?" she demanded.

"Safe. You don't need to know more tonight." Jared pried her hand loose from her knees and dragged her upright. "Go take a shower and hop in bed. I'm too rattled to yell at you, so I'll wait until morning."

"You have no right to yell at me, McCloud." She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. "This is my life, and I'll live it as I choose."

"Yeah, right, without any thought to those who love you. I know." Exhausted from too many rampant emotions for one day, Jared didn't give his next action a second thought. He grabbed Cleo's waist, heaved her over his shoulder, and carried her, kicking dangerously near his crotch and pounding his back with her fists, to the shower, where he proceeded to strip off her clothes.

"I won't be treated like a recalcitrant child, you lummox," she shouted as he dragged her shirt over her head and threw it on the floor.

He ignored her protest and ripped open her button-fly jeans. She grabbed his shoulders before he could tip her over trying to pull them off.

"I can get them off myself! Go away. Leave me alone."

"I'll leave you alone once you get in bed." He let her finish stepping out of the jeans while he flipped on the faucet handles. Adjusting the temperature, he lifted her into the tub as soon as she was bare. He told himself he wouldn't take advantage of her when she was dazed and vulnerable, but damn, all that naked female flesh in his arms felt good. He ought to be too tired to care.

As soon as the water hit Cleo, he began stripping off his own clothes. He could be strong and resist temptation, but only so much of it.

Cleo gasped and crossed her arms over her soapy breasts as Jared climbed into the shower with her. Her gaze instantly dropped to the evidence of his arousal, and she glared at him. "I don't go to bed with bullies."

"I'm not a bully. I'm just at a disadvantage because I'm male and can't hide what I'm feeling like you do. That doesn't mean I have to act on it." He reached for the soap and began lathering his chest. "I like your double-headed shower. Planning on holding any orgies?"

"I like water and space," she grumbled, grabbing her soap-soaked scrubby and scouring the day's horrors from her skin, if not her soul. It might be the last time she showered without a room full of women around.

She ought to turn her back on him, but she couldn't if her life depended on it, and it wasn't just admiration for those nicely proportioned muscles. He'd not used his strength to harm, but to help. He'd come back for her, even though she'd thrown a fit and made a scene and could easily end up in jail for a few more years. If he'd smacked her around or walked out on her, she'd understand and react accordingly. As it was, she didn't know how to behave.

"Want me to wash your back?" he asked with a hint of wryness as his erection grew harder under her admiring stare.

Oh, hell. There was only so much self-denial she could manage in one day. Deciding she'd had enough thinking, she took her scrubby to his chest, creating soap sculptures in his chest hairs, massaging tense muscles, closing in on his "disadvantage."

"You scared me to death out there," he whispered, grabbing her waist and hauling her to her toes so he could kiss her.

Hungrily, she took his kiss, let his excess of energy pour into her depleted reserves, and his outpouring of passion revive her long dead soul. She clung to his slippery shoulders, and pressed skin to skin as his mouth plundered and claimed, and she relinquished all control to his demands. Newly awakening emotions left her helpless and weak as a newborn.

She might come to like this business of trusting someone else to occasionally take command of her insane life. She gasped, then sighed in ecstasy as Jared massaged her soapy breasts with gentleness, arousing the nipples until her entire being concentrated on the need for joining. His plundering tongue wasn't enough any longer. Need drove her.

Jerking away from the captivity of drugging kisses, she followed the cascading water down his chest, nipping at his flat brown nipples until he grabbed her hair and tried to drag her up. She wasn't having any more of his commands. It was her turn.

She sank to her knees and committed her own act of possession as the shower pounded on her hair, and Jared groaned in protest above her. Satisfied she had him where she wanted, she stood up again, grabbed the shower handle behind him, and placed one foot on the seat molded into the plastic shower wall.

He wasn't slow; she'd give him that. Grabbing her buttocks firmly in his artist's long hands, he took her invitation and lifted her into place, driving deep until she had to wrap her other leg around his hip to hold on.

"It's not about control, Cleo," he muttered through clenched teeth, abruptly stepping out of the shower with her still attached. "It's about accepting and sharing." He caught up a heavy bath towel and wrapped it awkwardly around her back as he carried her across the hall to the bedroom.

She didn't care what the hell it was about as long as he satisfied the need spiraling higher with his every movement. Just holding in one place was driving her crazy, and her inner muscles frantically gripped him, trying to force the rhythm they required. She understood the physical far more than the emotion behind it.

She groaned a protest as he dropped her on the bed, but he covered her before she had time to grow cold, and entered her deep enough to draw a cry of anguish and satisfaction from somewhere in her soul.

Here was the drug she'd needed all those years ago, the peaking excitement, the thrumming of life, the rhythm of inner music she'd sought in all the wrong places. She'd thought it denied to her, but he offered everything her lonely heart desired, with no price tags attached. Heaven couldn't be sweeter, and he took her heavenward again and again, producing convulsions of joy and the elusive oblivion that made the world go away for these few moments of bliss.

As Jared finally lost control and took that same release, she hugged his shuddering shoulders and let pleasure drain the tension away.

"It has to be love, Cleo," she heard him mutter as she slipped down the path to sleep. "My heart aches."

So did hers. Another worry she would put off until tomorrow.

* * *

Lying on the rumpled sheets with the late morning sun already high above her bedroom windows, Cleo let the delicious smell of frying bacon and fresh coffee waft around her while she stared at the ceiling, trying to absorb this odd sensation of peace. She had no right to feel peaceful. She was in danger of losing Matty, returning to jail, going broke, and never knowing what happened to the kids.

But Jared had taught her the dangerous appeal of sharing her troubles as well as her pleasure. The cliché that two heads were better than one almost made sense while lying here recalling the night's physical excesses through the various aches and soreness of her body. They'd both lost their heads, if she wanted to be realistic about this, but hunger prevented logic, she concluded.

Jared appeared in the doorway looking as rumpled as the sheets but so sexy with his day's growth of beard and his hair down in his eyes that she smiled without thinking. The tray in his hands might have had some influence as well.

His jeans rode low on his lean hips, and he hadn't bothered donning his dirty shirt, so she could admire all that tanned, muscled leanness in the light of day. "Hi," she said a trifle warily since he didn't smile back.

He rested one knee on the bed as he adjusted the tray in the middle of the mattress as if it were the most important task in his life right now.

He was supposed to be creating a screenplay, not babysitting her.

She sat up, pulling the sheet with her. She'd let too many fantasies dance through her head. The world had gone away last night, but it was back full force this morning. "If you start yelling, I'll hurl coffee at you," she warned.

He smiled then, a curling of one corner of his mouth and not the full white-toothed grin that could bring her to her knees. "That's the Cleo I know and love. Eat something. It improves your humor."

Satisfied the tray was stable, he sat cross-legged on the other side of it and drank deeply of his mug of coffee.

She watched the muscles of his throat work as he swallowed and wondered what it would be like to share this intimacy with a man on a daily basis. She'd never known security in her life. She longed for it, but not at the sacrifice of other lives.

She sipped her coffee and nibbled at a slice of bacon as she waited to hear whatever wonders swirled in his brain now. The way his mind worked excited her as much as the way his body felt inside hers. She thought that might be a lethal combination.

"Carbohydrates." He pointed at the toast. "Raise the blood sugar."

Obediently, she tore off a corner of buttered toast. She didn't have to be told to eat, but if it satisfied his need to command, fine by her.

"You don't have to baby me," she said, wiping the butter from her lips with the back of her hand. "I'm perfectly capable of facing the consequences on my own. You need to be working."

"I'll work when I'm ready." Stubbornly, he wrapped a fried egg and a piece of bacon into a slice of toast and bit into it.

"All right, then remind me of the order of today's events. Do I report to the sheriff's office, the courthouse, or call a real estate agent to sell everything I own so I can slip away in the middle of the night?"

"We'll let them figure it out when they're ready. Our friend Amos is keeping the law busy for now." He sipped his coffee, then eyed her askance. "Unless you have some place to go, I wouldn't recommend the real estate company just yet."

Her stomach tightened, and she looked away. "I'm not rich. I need to work, and I don't imagine business will be booming anytime soon. I can't think of too many places that will accept a crazy ex-felon with open arms."

"You'd be surprised." He didn't sound concerned. "I think we need to concentrate on doing something about the kids."

Well, at least that gave her something positive to think about. "Social Services has them, I assume?"

"Gene was remanded into their care, yeah. Kismet's holding out, but she can't do it for long. I didn't connect with their caseworker yesterday. Guess that's a starting place."

She nodded. His tension upped her level of anxiety. "I can handle that, if you have some way of reaching Kismet. I don't know if the caseworker will let me see them once they're in custody."

"Probably best if you don't until the law straightens out Gene's story. He's got to be pretty confused by now."

"I'm not blaming him for whatever he said. He didn't know what would happen, and he didn't want his mother going to jail."

Jared nodded and looked past her to the window. "I'm going to ask the lawyer if I can adopt them. It's a long shot, but I can't abandon them to the system you described."

If she'd doubted what she felt about this man before, she didn't any longer. She wouldn't apply fancy names to the emotion welling inside her and threatening to spill over into tears, but she didn't think she'd ever feel this way again, not with any other man. She wouldn't destroy him by telling him that, though.

"Even should their mother relinquish her rights, that's asking a lot," she said cautiously. "You don't know anything about raising kids, and you've got the kind of life that doesn't adapt well to teenagers."

"I know. I've been giving it some thought, but I figure I'll take this one step at a time."

The look he gave her curled her toes. She didn't want to know the words behind that look. She couldn't handle them right now. "So I'm supposed to sit here and wait to see if the law comes to haul me off in chains and leave the kids up to you?"

"Yep." He finished his coffee. "You had your day in the sun. Now it's my turn."

Blithely, he unfolded from the bed and wandered off. Cleo couldn't decide whether his attitude was worth getting angry over. He was depressingly right, and she couldn't think of any immediate solution.

Finishing her food, she heard him go out to the car to find his duffel, listened to him shower, and waited anxiously until he returned to the doorway. She didn't possess enough shyness to hide her nakedness from a man who'd seen her stripped to the soul. She waited.

"I'm going out. Don't leave. I'll call you to see what you've found out from Social Services after I leave the lawyer's office."

"All right." She'd learned a modicum of cautiousness over the years. She used it wisely now. One temper tantrum a decade was enough for her. Until yesterday, she hadn't thrown a proper fit since the time her ex had knocked her against the wall, and she'd run away across the country. She really didn't want to repeat the experience.

"I'll be back," Jared reminded her, before striding off.

She believed him this time. Picking up the newspaper he'd left beside the breakfast tray, she turned to the comics.

The teenage nerd in Scapegrace attending a party where marijuana was being smoked wasn't funny, even if the kid fell into a pool and drowned a teddy bear in his frantic effort to escape. The final panel showed emergency services arriving to rescue him while all his socialite friends fled.

If Jared was putting himself in the place of his teenage character, the symbolism was too painful to consider, even if the strip had been drawn weeks ago.