Almost Perfect by Patricia Rice

4 STARS

Carolina/McCloud Brothers BOOK 1

Almost Perfect brings Cleo Alyssum from Impossible Dreams back and tells her story.
Cleo has moved to a Island she bought a hardware store and is fixing up houses. She wants
to be left alone. On her road she has warning signs then flying witch, a tape of police sirens,dogs barking. Other items that keep people away.

Jared liked the signs and other things. He wants to rent her beach house but Cleo does not want company near her. So she leaves and Jared follows in his fancy car. All of a sudden Jared feels something on his foot he sees a black snake and the snake starts to crawl up his pant leg. Jared loose control of his car and flips.

Cleo learns that he crashed and was out. He had no ID on him or the car. Cleo also learns that her neighbor teen put a snake in his car. Cleo feels paniced and wants to protect Gene so agrees to rent her beach house to Jared.

Cleo is trying to get custody of her son Matey. She has befriended two teenagers that mom has substance abuse. She does not want to turn the kids into social services because she was in the kids life and grew up in system and had bad experiences thier too.

I liked Almost Perfect and bought it on Amazon and bought the next book in the series.
Published February 4th 2009 by Ivy Books 368 pages ISBN 0449006034

Discription taken off Goodreads

Celebrated cartoonist Jared McCloud is plumb out of laughs. So he rents a secluded beach house for the fall to unblock his creative juices–and ends up falling for the reluctant landlady whose beautiful green-eyed glare reads like a “No Trespassing” sign against the world.

Cleo Alyssum isn’t exactly a recluse, though living on an island and avoiding people aren’t the actions of a social butterfly. Cleo simply has more important things to do than to chat with the sexy, artistic, impossibly bullheaded hunk living in her guest house. Yet somehow Jared and his devilish charm inch their way into her life, reaching the warm places her cold exterior cleverly hides. Will Cleo open her heart to a man who falls short of her expectations? After all, it wasn’t her intention to fall for someone who is almost perfect. . . .