McCloud's Woman Read online

  She glanced down at the cleavage exposed by her padded lace Wonderbra, wrinkled her nose, and debated. Her life had taken a 180-degree turn the day she’d shed her dowdy chrysalis and emerged as a glamorous butterfly.

  She’d worked on her image ever since. As Sid’s wife, she’d had a personal trainer, a make-up consultant, a hairdresser, and a wardrobe designer. After the divorce, she’d had to let all of them go but Constantina, the hairdresser the company paid. She’d had her own gym in Sid’s mansion, until she gambled her share of the house in exchange for half his shares of the studio. Beauty equated with power in her world.

  She examined the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and wondered if she ought to consider a face-lift. Shrugging, she reached for an electric blue silk shirt from the closet. With all her money tied up in the film, she was lucky to afford a hangnail clipper. She was too old for the ingenue parts she had taken when she’d first arrived in Hollywood. Her fledgling career had died an early death when she’d married Sid. Everyone made their fair share of mistakes. Why did hers have to be of such catastrophic quality?

  “Not the blue!” her hairdresser wailed, entering without knocking. “You’ll look like Dolly Parton.”

  “I should be so lucky,” Mara muttered, defiantly buttoning the shirt. She grabbed a pair of tailored jeans from the shelf. Once upon a time, she’d lived in jeans. Maybe TJ would recognize her if she reverted to form.

  “You’re too old to wear those,” Constantina declared ominously. “You might as well part your hair in the middle and let it hang down your back like a teenager.”

  Just what she didn’t need to hear with the upcoming meeting with TJ fraying her nerves. Mara narrowed her eyes at the reflection of her plump Italian hairdresser in the full-length mirror. “Tell me I’m old one more time, and you’re outta here. I ditched a rich husband for that.” A rich husband who had taught her to take the offensive when challenged.

  “You ditched Sid because you caught him humping starlets again,” Constantina said dismissively, accustomed to arguing with her Hollywood clientele. “It’s not your fault if he’s a few years short of a pedophile. But it is your fault if you go around looking like a derelict.”

  “Derelicts don’t wear three-hundred-dollar jeans.” Mara wriggled the denim over her long legs. This wasn’t Hollywood. She didn’t have to impress anyone—except TJ.

  She liked his new nickname. It suited that seething cauldron he disguised behind his mild-mannered Clark Kent routine.

  Constantina sniffed. “I thought you had a meeting with the mayor. Believe me, the town council’s wives don’t wear jeans.”

  “That’s because they’re fat and I’m not.”

  “That’s because you’re the next best thing to anorexic.”

  “I eat like a horse,” Mara shouted, tired of hearing about her faults. “I’m naturally thin. It goes with the height.”

  “That’s why you’re supposed to wear skirts.” Constantina gestured angrily. “You make men nervous when you tower over them and wear pants. They hide your femininity.”

  “Spoken like a short person.” Political correctness be damned. She didn’t even know the wives of the town council, and she hated them already. Shoving her bare feet into a pair of high-heeled snakeskin mules, Mara grabbed her portfolio off the dresser and headed for the door. She’d spent over half her life worrying about her looks. She was damned well tired of it.

  Constantina threw an Italian curse after her as Mara slammed the bedroom door. Nothing like a good fight to start the day—just like home.

  Clattering down the stairs of the antebellum B&B, Mara waved at Katy Richards, the proprietress, and hurried out the front door before being forced to indulge in chitchat. She’d rented the entire establishment for her staff so they wouldn’t have to run a gauntlet of sightseers every time they left their rooms.

  Leaning against the limo door, her driver snapped to attention at sight of her striding down the drive, but she waved him off.

  “I’m walking, Jim. I’ll call if I need you.”

  This wasn’t Hollywood. She didn’t need bodyguards. Striding briskly from beneath the elongated limbs of Spanish-moss-draped oaks, she donned her sunglasses and headed in the direction of TJ’s lab on the quaint street of old storefronts and new boutiques leading down to the harbor. Surely, they could reach some rational agreement. What were old friends for?

  Might depend on the definition of friends, she admitted. Sid had always said that the Hollywood kind of friends were good for publicity or parties or stabbing a person in the back. In that vein, she supposed the Brooklyn kind could be considered good for resentment and prejudice. TJ was from Long Island, but that didn’t mean he had a higher standard.

  So, all right, she didn’t have any real friends. Maybe only stupid, naïve people actually believed in friendship. She’d live. There were far worse things in the world than not having friends. Her mother was one of them.

  Wow, why did she keep heading down that tangled path? Had running into Tim reminded her too much of home? She shivered at the picture of her future in Brooklyn if she didn’t make this film work.

  Glancing in a darkened store window, Mara caught her blond reflection and let her mood swing upward again. For thirty-three, she looked damned good in jeans. Let’s see what her old teenage idol thought.

  Whistling, she swung around—and slammed straight into TJ McCloud’s impressive chest.

  Chapter Three

  Catching the long-legged femme fatale felt as familiar as looking at her. A memory tugged at the back of his mind, but TJ didn’t have time to pin it down. He had to conquer an armful of pliant female curves and a starving libido run amok.

  Slanted, cat green eyes peered up at him, and for one dread moment, he thought she purred.

  “Well, hello, handsome. Imagine running into you like this.” She didn’t immediately step back, but lightly rested her long fingers on his shoulders, and regained her balance with a little shimmy that brushed her breasts close enough to smoke his shirt buttons, and slid her feet more securely into her shoes. Then she released him but didn’t step away.

  The fragrance of gardenias lingered. The women TJ knew tended to smell of chalk dust or musty books or, in Cleo’s case, mechanic’s grease. Overseas, in the pits of hell he’d lived in, they tended to smell of sweat or fear. Gardenias were as foreign to him as wedding bouquets.

  “Excuse me,” he said politely, stepping to one side. If nothing else, he’d learned the value of self-discipline.

  “Excuse you for what? Living?” she teased, fluttering her lashes. “That’s probably an unpardonable sin, but I’m willing to overlook it.” She tilted her head, and a few silky curls fell from the stack. “Once upon a time, you had the vestige of a sense of humor. Did it all dry up?”

  His brothers had always called TJ the professor and swore he never laughed. In these past years he’d learned that humor and human remains didn’t mix well. If she wanted a comedian, he’d send her to Jared. Maybe his brother was the one who she was remembering. Jared had a way with women.

  TJ took another step away, diverting his gaze from tantalizing curves revealed by an open button on her blue shirt. “In my profession, humor tends toward the macabre, so if I was supposed to laugh, I apologize. If you would excuse me, I have to go to the office. I have no one answering the phone today.”

  “That’s why God invented answering machines.” She swung into step beside him.

  Her height and stride fit comfortably beside his. Reaching his office door, TJ unlocked but didn’t open it. “Are you applying for the job of my assistant?”

  “Do you think I’d look good in a lab coat?” She patted her blond upsweep and batted her long lashes outrageously. “What else is your assistant required to do?”

  “Work independently and leave me alone,” he answered gravely.

  An imp of interest played havoc with TJ’s restraint as she began whistling an inane song from an old television show while giving
him an appraising once-over as if he were a centerfold of Playgirl. The song rang clarion warnings in his mind, but her admiring stare was messing with his head, and he didn’t heed the alarm.

  “Honey, you’d better hire yourself a man if you want to be left alone. I don’t think you’d be safe even with a blind woman.” Her hand did an imitation of pitterpatter above her right breast, then transferred to repeat the gesture on his shirt pocket.

  TJ dodged her marauding fingers and shoved open the door. “If you’re not applying for the job, then I’ll leave you here. We’re not open to the public.” He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let her distract him.

  She leaned against the frame and crossed her arms, preventing him from closing the door. “I didn’t come out here for the pleasure of torturing you—although that holds a certain appeal. We need to talk.”

  Another piece of the puzzle popped from his memory. Patsy used to say that. Her worst arguments started with “We need to talk,” accompanied by exactly the same body language. Do-wa-diddy-diddy, that was how the song went. She used to wail it off-key at the top of her lungs when she followed him and Brad down the street.

  Patsy? TJ squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head to free the cobwebs. Why in hell had he thought of that skinny geek of a child when faced with this full-grown blond bombshell? Patsy had brown braids, thick glasses, and lurked a hundred years and a thousand miles in his past. She was probably a lawyer tackling the Supreme Court by now.

  Resolutely, TJ opened his eyes, determined to dismiss the puzzle and start sorting through the evidence boxes as he should have done when they’d arrived a few days ago.

  Green eyes stared back at him. Patsy had green eyes. They’d been her best feature, although no one had noticed them behind her cheap horn rims.

  “Timothy John, if you don’t quit looking at me like I’m a Martian invader, I’ll kick your shin.”

  Patsy. TJ closed his eyes again and shuddered. No way. Not now. Not here. Not looking like this. A voice from his past speaking through the luscious lips of a movie star had to be a hallucination. Maybe his crazed brain thought he needed a sharp jab in the eye to get him focused.

  The apparition caught his elbow and steered him inside, letting the door snap closed behind them. She was tall, reaching past his shoulder. He’d always liked that about Patsy—her height made him feel less awkward. He inhaled gardenias again and rejected the image. The Patsy he remembered had smelled of Tootsie Pops and cheap mouthwash and looked at him with adoration.

  Patsy had been sixteen the last time he’d seen her. She hadn’t smelled of Tootsie Pops then.

  “I’m really having fun with this charade, Tim, but I don’t have time to play anymore. Do you really need me to tell you who I am?” Impatience tinged her voice.

  With his eyes closed, he could hear his boyhood nemesis clearly enough. The New York accent had blurred over the years, but her clipped words defined it better than the sexy drawl she’d been using. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed...

  He opened them to narrow slits and studied the stunning woman propping her hands on her hips and glaring at him. The hair wasn’t Patsy’s. Neither was the nose. He cocked his head thoughtfully. He was a trained anthropologist, knew bone structure inside and out, and could identify sex, race, and age of a skeleton with relative accuracy at a glance. He just had some difficulty seeing bones through creamy skin and tempting curves.

  Right height, right limb proportions. Patsy had been as tall as her brother. She should have gone to a school with a woman’s basketball team, but her parents were fixated on sending Brad to an exclusive prep school that would prepare him for Harvard. They’d sent Patsy to the expensive school only because Brad had refused to go without her.

  Brad. Why did he have to be reminded of that tragic failure in judgment at a time when he had to make a worse choice involving another friend? TJ winced at the searing memory.

  “What the hell did you do to your hair?” With that gruff acceptance of the improbable, he stalked toward his lab, grabbing his white coat off a hook as he passed by. He’d never be able to concentrate now. He would have to do the mundane stuff—like answer unanswered phone calls.

  Mara breathed a sigh of mixed relief and trepidation at TJ’s recognition. So much for hoping for fond reminiscences. The arrogant jock still carried the burden of guilt.

  “Bleached it, like any sensible female,” she retorted, following him in. “Will you stop ignoring me and sit down and talk a minute?” she demanded when he reached for his box of slides and pulled his glasses out of his lab coat pocket. “Couldn’t we at least have a cup of coffee and get reacquainted?”

  “What do you want, Pats? I’m on a tight schedule and short an assistant, if you haven’t noticed.”

  Pats. It had been seventeen years since anyone had called her that. Her first husband had called her lots of names, but none of them as friendly as Pats. She’d dropped the whole ugly Patricia thing when she’d taken the job at Bloomingdale’s.

  She didn’t do trips down memory lane. She wasn’t into hair shirts either. “My schedule is not only tighter, but more expensive,” she answered angrily. “I have half a dozen high-priced, high-strung actors descending on this fair city in the next few weeks, and I need to get my scenes set.”

  The look he shot her from beneath those sexy eyebrows awakened every ounce of femininity in her. TJ McCloud had grown into a hunk with smoldering dark eyes and shoulders a linebacker would envy. Why in the name of heaven had she ever settled for a spineless worm like Irving and an aging roué like Sid when there were men like TJ available?

  Because men like TJ McCloud were never available to the Patsy Simonettis of the world. In a huff of impatience at that thought, Mara blew a straying curl off her forehead.

  “Then I advise you to go set scenes,” TJ answered, turning his back on her again to sit on his lab stool and pull his microscope from a cabinet.

  Mara thumped the back of his head with the rolled up newspaper she’d picked up at his door. “If you don’t start behaving, Timothy John, I’ll tell your mother on you!”

  He snorted something remarkably like laughter before swinging the stool around and propping his elbows against the battered wood counter behind him while he studied her from head to toe. His buttoned shirt strained across his chest and his too-knowing eyes stripped her of all disguise.

  “What did you do to your nose?” TJ demanded.

  “Cut it off,” she replied tartly. “It got in my way.”

  “I’m sorry to hear your parents are dead.”

  “My parents aren’t dead!” Damn, but he had her behaving just like the frustrated teenager she’d once been. She wanted to stamp her feet and pelt him with Milk Duds. “What in hell makes you think they are?”

  “I figured if they weren’t already rolling in their graves, they’d have dropped dead in shock when you came home like that.”

  Mara grabbed a book from the shelves behind her and started to fling it at his fat head. Something in TJ’s expression stopped her. Carefully setting the book down on a desk, she studied him. He almost looked disappointed that she hadn’t thrown it.

  “Obnoxious bastard,” she muttered. “You want to drive me away. That’s what you did to that idiot who flounced out of here yesterday, isn’t it? You got a thing against women, TJ?”

  “Not if they stay out of my way. I have work to do. What do you want, Patsy?”

  “It’s Mara now. Mara Simon now that I’ve got rid of the Rosenthal.”

  His crooked eyebrow raised. So he wasn’t completely oblivious after all. He’d heard of Sid, at least.

  She nodded at the assortment of bones and other relics scattered across the counter. “What are you working on?”

  “Not pirate bones,” he answered in satisfaction. “So if you want a PR break, you’ll not find it here.”

  She’d hoped the rumor of pirate remains had been true. It would have been great publicity, but she could survive without it. She couldn’t survive w
ithout that beach. “Unless you’ve uncovered one of the Lost Tribes, I hope you’ll cut me some slack and let me take my equipment through that access road you’re blocking.”

  “It’s private property, and I have federal permission to dig. I’ll be done in a few months. Come back then.” He remained immovable.

  Not totally immovable. She was aware of the way he studied her over the top of his half glasses. When his gaze dropped to her shirt, she realized she’d have to break the bad habit of leaving that extra button open. This wasn’t LA, and she didn’t need his attention on her breasts right now. “The weather won’t be as cooperative later. I have six months to complete this film, and I have to shoot these scenes now. We won’t disturb your excavations. We just need to take trucks past your fence.”

  “I can’t allow that dune to be destroyed by heavy vehicles any more than I can let you tear up the excavation until I’ve located all the remains. There are dead bodies buried there. You don’t drive through cemeteries in semis.”

  “I have a state permit to film there!” she shouted. “I can do anything I damned well want.”

  “Try it, and see what happens,” he said calmly.

  They were replaying adolescent roles. Mara knew the futility of arguing with Tim. He’d only fling her out. “I have a permit,” she replied in the same calm tones. “If we can’t work together, then I’ll go to a higher authority. Your choice.”

  “Pats, it isn’t going to work. I’m not Brad or whomever else you’ve learned to manipulate with that treacherous mind of yours. You can’t threaten me. I have a federal grant for this site, and I’m not budging until I’m finished. Find another beach.”

  “There’s a reason pirates used these beaches and not all the others.” Throwing things would be so much simpler than reasoning with the hardheaded rhino, but at least he remembered she had brains. “I’ve spent a fortune scouting this location. It’s too late to change.”

  “That’s ridiculous. The Carolina coast is littered with beaches. Or you can ship your stuff to the island. Be creative. I have to get back to work.” He stood up, apparently prepared to shove her out the door.