Imperfect Rebel by Patricia Rice Page A

Cleo, she would have taken his head off with hedge clippers, but she had a hard time remembering other people weren't like her. One of her less intelligent traits, along with prickly pride.
    She sat on a log, sipped her iced drink from a plastic cup, and listened to Gene chatter about the new wrestling coach they'd have next week. It had never occurred to her that she could simply walk into the school, give them money, and they'd buy equipment to start a team. There had to be more to it than that, but Jared had pulled it off. Maybe his famous name had helped, but she had to admire the guts and sense it took to go for it. So maybe she shouldn't be so hard on him. Just because he was handsome and rich and a jerk didn't mean he didn't have any redeeming qualities.
    She was going to have to break down and thank him.
    She postponed the inevitable by gesturing at Kismet's sketchpad. "What do the teachers at school say about your work?"
    She didn't know a thing about drawing, as her pitiful mechanical sketches proved, but maybe she ought to show Kismet's book to Jared, see if he could encourage the girl. Unfortunately, Kismet was dismally shy. She'd disappear into the ground if Cleo tried pushing her too far.
    Kismet shook her head, and smiled quietly as her fingers fluttered over the array of stubby pencils she'd collected over the years. Cleo had bought her an expensive art set for Christmas, but she'd never seen it again after Kismet took it home with her. Cleo didn't think Linda could pawn an art set, but she might have sold it to a friend desperate for a last-minute Christmas gift.
    There had been a time when she'd sold her own wedding ring and a birthday necklace from her sister to get a quick fix.
    She didn't like looking back at those times. She was getting better. She'd never be cured, but even if she couldn't change her nature, every step she took away from the stress and horror of her prior life took her further away from the evil temptations of her past. She had to believe that or kill herself.
    "You know Jared draws, don't you?" she asked, uncertain how much Kismet actually observed or understood.
    The girl nodded, and Gene wandered over to claim his share of the attention. "I showed her the cartoon in the newspaper," he boasted. "He does them on the computer, not on any silly piece of paper."
    "He does them on paper, too," Cleo said quietly. "I have one at the house. Remind me to show you when we go back."
    She didn't have time to register their reaction. The rustling of leaves warned someone approached, even if the peacock hadn't screamed an alarm. She hoped Jared's guests hadn't taken to straying this far inland.
    Knocking back a hanging honeysuckle vine, Linda emerged into the clearing. Beneath the brassy blonde of her thick hair, her dark roots showed, but Cleo assumed she must have been a natural blond once for the children to have the coloring they did. Succumbing to heaviness in the waist and hips as full-bosomed women often did, the kids' mother still maintained a figure that would stop men in their tracks, particularly in the tight capri pants and belly-revealing knit tops she favored.
    "I've been looking all over for you brats. Get on home now and quit pestering the neighbors."
    Cleo could smell the bourbon from here. Linda wasn't a polite drunk or a druggie who sprawled comatose in doorways. She could be belligerent and nasty-mouthed when under the influence.
    The children didn't immediately leap to their mother's command but looked to Cleo for a reassurance she didn't possess. "They're not bothering me, Linda," she said cautiously. "Want me to send them home in time for dinner?"
    Cleo didn't like thinking about how she had looked and behaved when strung out on whatever drug her ex had brought home, but she did have some memory of being steered by a careful choice of words. She figured she had a fifty-fifty chance of that succeeding with Linda now.
    Linda looked convincingly bewildered and disarmed enough to