Imperfect Rebel (24 page)

He spotted a frizzy brownish-blond mop of curls behind a hedge at the same time as he noticed a burly man in a John Deere cap arguing with someone Jared assumed to be a teacher. The mop of curls dropped below the hedge as the cap turned in that direction, and he knew instantly what was happening.

Jerking the Jeep out of the line of cars and parking it in the grass, he sauntered casually toward the hedge. If he could act as cover, the kids could jump into the Jeep before Pervert could stop them. It might be a little tricky if Billy-Bob saw them and followed, but he'd kicked the guy in the balls once. He could do it again. Maybe.

Fist-fighting in front of the school—gee, that brought back old memories.

"Jared!" a familiar voice called from somewhere past the Pervert's cap. "You're just the one we need. Have you seen Gene and Kismet? They've disappeared."

Liz. Jared grimaced as Billy-Bob and the teacher turned in his direction. Liz was the queen of bad timing. He was afraid to look toward the kids and reveal their hiding place. What the hell did he do now? With everyone looking in this direction, the kids wouldn't dare run for the Jeep behind him.

"Haven't seen 'em," he called back. "Cleo was worried so I came to see that they got home safely."

"You keep your hands off them kids!" the capped bully shouted, fisting his fingers as he turned toward Jared and away from the teacher. "I'm their father, and you ain't got no right to do nothin' with them."

"Yeah, right." Jared rocked back on his heels and grinned, praying the kids could find some way of backtracking to the car. "And my old man is Ray Charles." He nodded at the worried teacher, then waited for Liz to reach them. "This jerk is an impostor. The kids are terrified of him. That's why you can't find them."

"He has a note from their mother," she said worriedly. "He's authorized to pick them up and you're not."

Shit and other more explicit epithets. How did he get around that one? Tell them their mother was a crackhead at best? That would go over swell. Well, he'd learned casual and unconcerned at his mother's knee. Stick with what he did best.

Stall. He shrugged and gave the creep the old once over. "Well, you do what you think's best, but he's already lied to you. Anyone would have to be blind to believe he's their father. Their mother is the blond one in the family, if you haven't noticed. You might want to ask why he would want to lie about something like that."

"Look, you shit-lickin' asshole..." Pervert took a step toward Jared. "Butt out. Them's my kids and none of yours. Want that nose of yours broke again?"

"Didn't break it last time, Perv. How are the family jewels doing today? Blue?"

Billy-Bob swung. His kind always did. Jared dodged neatly, but the teachers screamed anyway. From the direction of their gazes though, they weren't concerned with his welfare but had seen the kids. Multiple exclamation points and asterisks as the comics always said. He jerked around in time to see Kismet running for his Jeep.

"Guess we know who she's with, old boy. Good hitting at you." Avoiding another swinging fist, Jared dodged the crowd on the sidewalk while keeping an eye open for Gene, but Liz screamed, and he couldn't stay focused. He spun around again.

He almost didn't see that one coming. He ducked, and Billy-Bob swung off-balance trying to connect. Jared really wanted to plow his fist into the soft belly now at eye level, but maybe he had grown up a year or two. Fighting in front of the kids didn't seem like a wise choice.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a policeman hurrying in their direction. Double swell. Cleo would really light into him if he involved the law in this. She'd already read him that lecture. He stepped back out of the arc of the pervert's fighting arm, tried to catch a glimpse of Kismet, but the teachers and the policeman all flocked in at once.

"Them's my kids!" Pervert shouted, as if repetition would make it so. "Kismet, you get your hind end back in the truck where it belongs," he bellowed over everyone's heads.

"Can you have someone hauled in on assault and battery if they don't connect?" Jared asked thoughtfully as the policeman pulled out a notebook and looked confused.

Both teachers spoke at once, then diverted their topics as Gene reluctantly appeared from behind the hedge. The policeman now looked decidedly grim.

"Maybe I'd best haul all of you downtown until we get this straightened out," he decided, with the air of a man prepared to pass on all responsibility to a higher authority.

"I ain't goin' downtown." Gene stood belligerently at a distance from all of them.

Jared could see stalemate from a mile away. Catching the kid's eye, he nodded at Kismet who stood uncertainly beside his Jeep. "I'm going back to Cleo's. I'll be right behind you, all the way, okay?"

Gene shot the policeman a scowl, glanced half-heartedly at his mother's latest boyfriend, and nodded once. "I hear you. Cleo staying if there's a hurricane?"

"Looks like it." Jared had no idea what she'd planned, but if those kids were out there, he knew she would be there for them. He really had rocks in his head for becoming involved with another do-gooder. His mother made him crazy enough. "And you and Kismet know you can come to me. Just be careful."

Billy-Bob was too dense or too stoned to comprehend their cryptic conversation. He merely reached out to collar Gene and haul him toward a battered pick-up parked haphazardly half on the sidewalk. His curt gesture at Kismet indicated he thought he had the upper hand.

Both teachers watched worriedly as Kismet trailed after her brother.

"I think we better call Social Services," Liz murmured. "That man's not their father. Should we have detained them? He's endangering their lives taking them out there in this."

The policeman shrugged. "If the mother sent a note, you ain't got the right to stop him. It's a domestic problem. If you want to report abuse, then I can call in the department."

No one could report abuse but Jared, and he'd sworn to leave them alone. He lifted his hands helplessly. "I'm out of here, folks. I'm following them home. You do what you have to do."

He cursed Cleo, himself, and the heavens above all the way through town as he tracked the ramshackle truck through the intense traffic going in the opposite direction. He didn't want to be on an island in a hurricane. He didn't want to feel responsible for two kids he hadn't known existed a few weeks ago. Most of all, he didn't want to feel compelled to see Cleo again, to ask her what they should do, as if they were a couple who decided things together. He'd quit letting other people guide his life long, long ago. But he desperately needed Cleo's clear-eyed outlook right now.

As they reached the island, the truck shot ahead in the direction of the shack further inland. Jared slowed and turned down the lane toward Cleo's. Beating up Billy-Bob and rescuing the kids might satisfy his ego, but he doubted it would provide the kind of role model behavior he ought to present to teenagers.

Cleo hadn't bothered turning on her early warning system. No witch flashed across his windshield. No strobe light shot through the growing gloom of heavy clouds and spattering rain. With any other woman, he'd figure she'd had the sense to pack her valuables and be half way across the state by now. Not Cleo.

He found her heaving a squawking peacock into the shed and slamming the door after it. The truck sat in the drive unprotected, displaced by the menagerie.

Cleo wasn't wearing her tinted glasses as she swung in his direction, and he could see the storm clouding her eyes as he drove in without the kids.

"You couldn't find them," she said flatly as he climbed out.

"I found them, but the Perv was there first with a note from their mother."

Cleo scanned Jared's face, trying to read the message behind his strained tones and tense jaw. He radiated angry energy and a masculine charge that electrified every cell, drawing her like a paper clip to a powerful magnet. She stopped just short of reaching out to touch his shirt, and only then because she didn't know if she was comforting him or seeking it.

"What happened?" she demanded.

"A cop showed up, their teachers didn't know what to do, and I told Gene we'd be here. I think the kids will find some way of running. Maybe we can drive them inland once they show. Even if the hurricane strikes south of here, we're in for a bad blow."

All right, Cleo, don't panic, think straight, don't go after Linda with a hammer
. Cleo wrapped her arms around herself and tried to nod calmly. "Okay, that's the best we can do for now. Thank you for trying. You'd better take off before the storm hits. If you don't have a place to go, I can give you directions to my sister's place near Charlotte. They have loads of room."

Jared emitted a string of expletives she'd never heard him use. Before she knew what he intended, he caught her arm and all but hauled her toward the house.

"You dragged me into this; I'm staying. I still think we ought to call the cops, but they've got their hands full right now. So we wait. Unless you have a better idea of how we can go in there and pull them out."

Cleo attempted to shake free, but his anger had focused on her. She didn't think he realized his grip hurt. Watching this easy-going, always-laughing man turn into a grim savior of kids was fascinating and had her insides doing flip-flops, but she couldn't afford fascination. She wanted him out of here, now, if not sooner.

"There's no sense in both of us hanging around," she told him. "None of this is your concern. Get your computer and your work to someplace safe. I can look out for the kids." She jerked her arm from his grip as he reached for the door.

Brown eyes were supposed to be soft, but his hardened like lodestone. "I'm not leaving unless you call the cops."

No way was she involving the authorities, and the damned man knew it.

Chapter 20

Cleo shook her head and wished she had the strength of Hercules. She needed to throw something, and one Jared McCloud would make a good javelin.

She stalked into the shuttered front room as he opened the door. A gust of wind nearly hurled the door after them. "This isn't your fight, McCloud. Linda is beyond reasoning. Social Services is apparently threatening her welfare check, and she's blaming it on me. I'm the one standing to get hurt here. If you just mosey on out, we won't miss you."

Jared caught her wrist, turned her around, and hauled her against his chest so that her knees nearly buckled. She wanted to slide down and melt on the floor. She didn't like being manhandled like this. She didn't even like people touching her.

She wanted support so badly she wanted to wrap her fingers in his shirt and hang on for dear life.

"Don't lie to me, Cleo. You can be as honest as you like, and I won't run, but don't ever lie." Dark eyes bored holes right through her. "Tell me you know how to handle this. Tell me you really wish I was dead and gone, if that's the truth. But don't say it if you don't mean it."

Now was a fine time for the comic to turn into Stallone and get tough. She wanted to scream at him in rage, pound him with her fists, drive him out of her life so she could go back to her steady plodding method of picking out one step at a time. But who could fight Stallone?

Instead, she twisted free, dropped on the couch, and buried her face in her hands. Where was the black rage when she needed it? Only fear and worry and total uncertainty boiled up inside her.

"I can't think," she whispered. "I want to hit somebody. I want a smoke. I want oblivion. I want to tear Linda apart. But I can't
think
."

Jared stood uncertainly in front of her for half a minute, then dropping down on the couch, he pulled her hands from her face and held them. Cleo looked anywhere except at him, but the strength pouring from his tough, hard palms warmed her.

"You
can
think. That's your whole problem," he said steadily as she glared at the shuttered window. "You can think of too many things and none of them are good. Stop thinking for a minute. Just sit there and wipe the slate clean. I'll hold you, if that will help."

The strength for fighting was gone. Kismet had gone home with a rapist, and she was here dithering in fear. She needed a knife, not cosseting.

"All right, hit me," Jared said with a sigh, pulling her into his arms. "Get it out of your system.
Then
we'll talk."