McCloud's Woman Read Online Free Page B

city council members. They want this
film, they’ll have to earn it.”
    “Hire a secretary,” he growled, refusing the device.
    “Hire one for me,” she countered. That’s what she had
enjoyed most about being Sid’s wife—other people always did what she
couldn’t, or what she was afraid to try. All she’d ever had to do was
look good.
    Those days were over. Mara dropped the palm-sized computer
in Ian’s lap. “The council or a temp agency,” she ordered, returning
her attention to the maps and notes in her lap.
    She’d mourned her thirty-third birthday months ago. Time
was passing. If she couldn’t stand on her own two feet now, she never
would. She had to reverse a lifetime of habits in the next six months if
she wanted to survive.
    ***
    Having been humiliated the day before, Mara carefully
chose her clothing the next morning. TJ had nearly dropped his teeth
when he’d seen her yesterday. She wanted his attention today, but she
preferred he focus it on their discussion and not her boobs. That caused
something of a dilemma. She didn’t have much else in the way of
attention-getting assets.
    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