Imperfect Rebel (29 page)

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.

Chapter 24

"Carolina sunshine..." caroled off-key from a not large enough distance as Cleo rolled over and jerked the sheet over her head.

The deep male chords jarred loose all the shattered pieces of her defenses, until she could practically hear the shards tinkling to the ground and disintegrating. The damned man was
singing
. In the
morning
.

Oh, God, save her. She wrapped her arms around the pillow and squeezed, but she couldn't suffocate herself. Her body hummed with vibrations she didn't recognize as her own. She didn't even know who the hell she was anymore.

Jared had come to her bed in the early hours of the morning and made love to her with a gentleness that had her weeping.
Weeping
, for crying out loud. She'd felt beautiful and cherished and whole—she'd damned well been dreaming.

Jared didn't just come from Mars. He came from a whole 'nother galaxy, far, far away, one to which he'd return one day.

Despite all her clever warnings, she still felt—odd. She'd lived in hiding for so long, she felt as exposed as an unshelled crab. She couldn't go out there like this. She had to toughen up, find her armor,
something
.

A knock interrupted that piece of panic, and she wildly grabbed the sheet to cover herself as she turned over and swiped at her hair.

"Make yourself decent, Sunshine, you've got company."

Company, her ass. She'd kill him. She'd pound him into sawdust and scatter him to the winds. She didn't own a robe or gown. She dived for a discarded shirt on the floor and pulled it over her head. "Go away, McCloud," she shouted in muffled tones through the cotton.

"We made coffee, Cleo," Gene called happily.

Oh shit—shoot, sugar. She struggled into the T-shirt, ran her hands through her hair again, and pulled the covers around her. "I'll be right out," she grumbled, but she knew the man behind that door too well.

The door popped open as expected, revealing the glorious sight of a smiling Jared in a rumpled golf shirt straining at the shoulder seams, carrying a tray of steaming coffee, eggs, and bacon. She hoped the bacon hadn't gone rancid.

She couldn't tell him she intended to kill him, that she hated surprises, and she really needed to get up and inspect the damage now that the storm had passed. The kids smiled too proudly, and Jared looked too damned pleased with himself. She wanted to cry all over again.

"You aren't going to burst out in song, are you?" she asked suspiciously as he lowered the tray to her lap and the kids piled on to the bed to help her eat.

He grinned hugely at her predicament. "Depends on how many weapons you're hiding under the pillow."

He knew quite well what he was doing to her, and he was doing it on purpose. Embarrassment, helplessness, and other emotions she couldn't name swamped her. No one had ever done anything like this for her. No one. Ever. She had no concept of how to behave.

"You've struck her speechless. I declare this a red letter holiday and no one has to go to school." Jared pulled up an aging chair with arms, propped his sock feet on the mattress, and reached for a burned piece of toast as the kids scoffed at his declaration. School would be closed until the roads opened.

Cleo shot him a glare and turned a wavering smile on the anxious teenagers. "You're beautiful, both of you. Thank you. I feel like it's my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one."

The kids grinned in relief, chattered, and helped themselves to the food as if this were a picnic and the bed, their table. They were so eager to please and so easily hurt—Cleo choked on the panic welling inside and threw Jared a frantic look.

He leaned over to hold a coffee cup to her lips, and his chocolate gaze warmed and reassured. "You make me feel the same way," he murmured as she took the cup from his hands.

Tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed into the coffee.

Salty coffee, damn him.

* * *

They all climbed through the attic window to the roof to survey the submerged landscape lapping around them.

"At least the soil is sandy and we have no river to flood," Cleo said with a sigh as a raft of dead palmettos drifted toward the coast on a muddy current.

Jared massaged the nape of her neck and knew he'd made progress when she didn't automatically duck away. He felt more pride in accomplishment at breaking her prickly barriers than he had at scripting the stupid TV show. Reaching out and touching a woman as proud and strong as Cleo felt right. The TV show hadn't.

"You think Mama is all right?" Gene asked anxiously.

In Jared's opinion, the bastards of the world always survived, but he wouldn't say that to the kids. They both wore worried frowns, and he let Cleo offer the reassurances they wanted to hear.

It was pretty much a given that his beach house was wrecked and the condos out at the point had to have taken a brutal beating, but these farmhouses in the island's center had been built to weather storms. Rowboats bobbed on the deeper water along the road bed and drainage ditches. People were emerging from the security of their homes to check on neighbors and damage. Several boats lingered so their occupants could hail them, but Cleo waved them on. There were others who needed help more.

He ought to be finding a way back to phones and electricity so he could send in his strips, but he feared the intrusion of the outside world might sever the slender bonds that held Cleo to him for now. Once she returned to her usual routine, she wouldn't need him. Or wouldn't admit she did, anyway.

Jared felt as oddly floating and cut off as the house. He didn't mind the feeling, but he knew it couldn't last. The real world waited out there, ready to dig its claws into the still vulnerable connection they'd developed. He didn't know how anyone could establish a solid, steady relationship in this day and age.

"You need one of those power boats if you're going to keep living here," he said idly, watching one zip by, destined for a crash.

"I'll trade in my truck." Her sarcasm lacked its usual edge.

Jared smiled and ran his fingers into her stubby hair. This time, she brushed his hand away but didn't fight when he caught her waist instead. He had no idea why this bristly porcupine attracted him. Maybe he was under a spell and it would dissipate when he left here.

He didn't think so. He couldn't think of another woman in the world with whom he would be willing to share a two-bedroom farmhouse and two teenagers and still feel good about it. If he tried analyzing the whys and wherefores, he'd figure he just knew Cleo was rock solid honest, and she valued his opinion. And he knew her well enough to know she wouldn't have gone to bed with him unless she thought he was special. Obviously, the knowledge had gone to his head. And elsewhere.

"We'll do pizza when the water goes down," he promised.

The kids cheered, and Cleo slanted him an odd look. Damn, but he liked the way she looked like a mischievous elf and an evil genie at the same time. She had the kind of thin, aquiline nose and pointed eyebrows and delicate chin to pull it off. The short auburn hair completed the picture. His fingers were itching for the drawing board again.

"You hear that helicopter?" she asked.

Uh oh. He watched her expression in suspicion. "Yeah. TV news, I figure. They love disasters."

"Wave when it goes over," she said complacently.

Damn. He scanned the sunny sky, finding the distant dot over the causeway. He could see it now on the Channel 6 Sky News broadcast across the country—Jared McCloud, comic artist, stranded on rooftop in nation's worst flooding since yadda yadda. His mother would be in hysterics—especially when she saw who he was with.

"Maybe we should go back in before we make a spectacle of ourselves," he said doubtfully, not really believing anyone would notice or care where he was. Of course, Tim knew, but he was probably on the other side of the Pacific somewhere and hadn't a clue. His agent knew, but he'd just curse and walk the floor and fret about the missing strips and the complaints pouring in from the newspaper syndicates.