Wild Child

by Suzanne Forster

  “Where are you going?” he called after her. “Cat! You can’t walk.”

  “I have no intention of walking! Carson’s market is down the street. I’ll call a taxi from there.”

  He breathed a word that made her nerves jump. Even from her distance she heard it. Cat didn’t turn back to see what he looked like, standing there on the dock, watching her storm out of his life. She didn’t have to. She could vividly imagine his eyes darkening, the silver flecks turning to black.

  Her heart was still racing as she reached the driveway that would take her off his property. Strands of flyaway hair clung damply to her cheek. As she brushed them away, a realization shocked her.

  If this was her secret dream—rejecting him, scorning him the way he’d scorned her—then why did it feel like a nightmare?

  Six

  “LET ME OUT—HERE!”

  The taxi screeched to a halt, and the driver—a grizzled veteran of many a crazy fare by the pained look on his face—turned to squint at Cat. “Sure, lady. You want out in the middle of nowhere, that’s your prerogative.”

  She paid him, probably too much, and got out in the middle of nowhere.

  The taxi rumbled away over the railroad tracks and Cat followed the tread of his tires to the first rail. There she stepped inside the dusty silver tracks and began to walk off her turmoil.

  She’d done the same thing as a child. Walking the tracks had been her escape from the difficulties at home. There’d been something soothing about the endless silver ribbons, something fluid and mysterious about the places they’d come from, and where they might be going. She had imagined following the tracks as Dorothy had the Yellow Brick Road, to somewhere magical.

  Unfortunately, today the old magic wasn’t working.

  The tracks weren’t soothing enough to stop her from kicking savagely at the protruding rocks she stumbled over. Or from demanding answers of herself.

  Nerves jolted up her spine as she glanced down at her blouse and saw that she hadn’t buttoned it up. Swell, she thought, fumbling the buttons back in place. The taxi driver must have thought he’d picked up a bimbo lunatic. She wanted to laugh, but the sound that escaped was a tight, shaking sigh. Frustration peaked inside her, fisting into a soft knot of anguish. She was a lunatic. Sane women didn’t make out on boat docks with men they had every reason to loathe!

  She had no acceptable explanation for her behavior at the moment except to put it back on Blake. He wasn’t a man, or a god. He was some kind of demon. He seemed to be able to reach past her anger and touch into tender feelings she couldn’t protect. He drew up longings and needs. Womanly needs. Physical longings. Even childlike yearnings for love and acceptance.

  Resentment pierced her. It filled her mouth with a sharp, metallic taste, as though she’d bitten down on a copper penny. The urge to thrash around in her own negativity was nearly irresistible. Anger was safe, it was cathartic, but she couldn’t indulge herself now. There were bigger questions. There was a man on the planet who seemed to have the power to override her will, and that, alone, was inconceivable to her. Cat D’Angelo’s will was no puny thing. She knew, she lived with it. How had he tamed the snarling beast when she could barely keep the cage door shut?

  His tenderness confounded her too. Why had he made the references to her sadness? Why the offers of help? What in the world did he want from her? The mere thought that it might be the sick triumph of seducing one of his victims made her queasy. Even Blake Wheeler wasn’t that depraved. It would make more sense if she could believe that he was afraid of losing Johnny Drescher as a witness. But that didn’t compute either. He’d hardly seemed that gung ho about winning the Skip Sinclair case. Truth be told, she’d had her doubts about whose side he was on.

  Her rapid steps were accentuated by the silence of the forest. The sylvan beauty of her surroundings went unnoticed as she pressed forward on her journey back to town. Gravel crunched beneath her shoes, and a gray squirrel darted from out of nowhere, skittering across the tracks. What you don’t see when you haven’t got a gun, Cat thought bitterly—and was appalled at herself. She loved animals! It was him she wanted to gun down.

  She sent another spray of pebbles flying over the rails. It was almost ludicrous that she’d once contemplated evening the score with Blake Wheeler. He’d be having a good laugh about that now if he knew. Necking on his boat dock?! Excellent strategy. Go get him, D’Angelo! Lord knew what she might have done if she’d liked the guy.

  A smooth rock the size of a tennis ball lay in Cat’s path. She kicked at it and connected with a solid thud.

  “Ahhhh!” Her cry of pain rocketed through the deep gully that bordered the tracks. Dropping into a crouch, she clutched her foot and let out a string of expletives blue enough to melt the railroad tracks to tinfoil.

  Tears blurred her vision as she sank to the ground, yanked off her shoe, and began to massage her throbbing foot. The pain was excruciating. Reverberations screamed in every nerve ending.

  As her vision cleared, she saw that it wasn’t a rock she’d kicked. It was a steel railroad spike! Her big toe was obviously broken. It was turning maroon before her eyes. She clenched her jaw, tears welling. “Dammit, Wheeler!” she cried. “Look what you made me do!”

  Shrill and petulant, her words rang down the gully like caroling bells. Massaging doggedly, Cat winced with every echo of her voice. Forced to listen to herself damning Wheeler ad infinitum, she realized how childish she sounded.

  Tears sprang to her eyes as she thought about the errors in judgment she’d made and the grief her trip-wire temper had brought her throughout her life. At sixteen, she could have been excused for some of the craziness, hormones and mothers being what they were. But even then she might have saved herself a lot of needless thrashing around if she had acknowledged her share of the responsibility for the events that led into the trial.

  Much as she might want to blame Blake for everything, including the famine in Africa, it was a perfectly absurd thing to do. At least in this case. Blake Wheeler hadn’t broken her toe. She had.

  Gradually, as the pain eased, she began to come to uneasy terms with whom she was really angry at. For the toe. Perhaps for all of it. Yours truly, she thought, grimacing. She’d spotted the enemy, and her name was Cat D’Angelo.

  The trip back to town went badly. Cat couldn’t get her foot back in her pump, and she knew very little about aerobic limping. She finally removed both shoes and set out to blaze her own path through the wild grass that blanketed the shoulder of the gully.

  Her family home came into view as she rounded the last in a series of curves the track took. Forlorn and deserted, the clapboard house looked ready for the wrecking ball. Still, the sight of it took her by storm. A heaviness descended on her, and her breath got trapped deep in her lungs. She hadn’t realized she was so close to the old neighborhood. She nodded at the sagging front porch quickly, as though acknowledging an adversary, then she kept on walking with every intention of passing the place by.

  A guilty glance over her shoulder brought her to a stop. Such a small, shabby place, she thought, saddening. And so empty now, with both of them gone.

  As Cat stared at the front door, her mother’s spotless housecleaning and unreachable standards came to mind. Her father’s forbearance. Their arguments over how to handle their impetuous daughter rang in Cat’s head. “She’s contrary and too willful for her own good,” her mother had insisted whenever Vince D’Angelo tried to defend his young daughter as high-spirited.

  Cat had been all of those things: high-spirited, contrary, and willful. She had complicated her parents’ lives immeasurably with her boundless curiosity and her misadventures. She’d skipped school regularly. She’d even stowed away on a bus to Portland once. Her mother had whipped her for that escapade and restricted her to the house for a month. Cat was always apologetic, always intending to make amends, but she never did change her impetuous ways. She couldn’t. Life called to her, seductive and exciting. Life was
good . . . until the tragedy struck.

  As she turned to face the house, she was hit forcefully by the impact of that tragedy. The world had gone dark when her father was killed. She closed her eyes a moment, remembering, and even as she opened them, another memory visited her, the strange event that took place shortly after her thirteenth birthday.

  Her father hadn’t been gone two weeks when a man showed up at their place. Cat didn’t recognize him when her mother opened the door. Sunlight poured into the room, shadowing his face and igniting his hair to liquid gold. Cat watched the man hand her mother a check, then she saw her mother shake and bend and cry. She’d never seen her mother cry before, even at the funeral.

  The man embraced her mother quickly, gently, and that’s when Cat had seen his face. The Wheeler boy. Lord, but he’d had such a strong, handsome face at twenty-two, sharp-boned and clean, lit with goodness, shaded with sincerity. For some reason that Cat didn’t understand, tears had filled her eyes. “A miracle,” she’d heard her mother whisper to him, “you’re a miracle sent by God.”

  Blake Wheeler had let some light into Cat’s life that day. In addition to offering them hope in the very tangible form of money, he was demonstrating that someone actually cared. Cat realized now that she’d taken the image of his handsome face into some secret part of her and held it there. Perhaps she’d even fallen a little bit in love.

  Turning away from the house, she started down the tracks again, laden with memories so bittersweet she wished she could erase them from her past. She’d been desperately needy at that tender age, lost without her doting father. Blake’s courage, his stand against his own parents and the negligence of the company they owned, his larger-than-life presence, would have turned any young girl’s head. Still, it embarrassed her now to admit that she’d been hopelessly infatuated with a man who probably didn’t know she existed.

  Three years later in a packed courtroom there was no question about who Cat D’Angelo was. Or that Blake Wheeler knew of her existence. She was the town’s bad girl. And he was its golden boy. Sworn to bring criminals to justice, even frightened sixteen-year-old girls who were half in love with him.

  Cat lifted her head, steeling herself against the emotion building inside. Tears misted her eyes, the angry, accusatory tears of her childhood. He had torn her heart out in that courtroom. If he knew she was Vince D’Angelo’s daughter, he’d never mentioned it, not once during the entire ordeal. Savaged pride had kept her from throwing herself on his mercy. That, and his ultimatum that she testify against her friend or be prosecuted, had convinced her that Blake Wheeler was a bastard who played at being a hero when it suited him. In her adolescent outrage she had prayed that someday he would hurt the way she hurt. And then she vowed to wipe his name from her memory.

  By the time Cat reached the street the center was on, she’d begun to appreciate the wisdom of adolescent outrage. It had been an honest response to a painful situation. At least she’d known what she felt and exactly where she stood. Now she was waffling all over the place, hating him, kissing him, needing him. “Oh, Lord.”

  Those were the words on her lips as she swung the center door open and saw Johnny Drescher slumped in one of the reception-area chairs, his hands fisted in his jeans pockets.

  Shoes in hand, Cat overshot the threshold slightly and pitched into the room. “Is something wrong?”

  He looked up at her and shrugged. “Not with me. You look pretty bummed, though.”

  She nodded at her throbbing foot and winced. “Broken toe. Kicked the football too hard, I guess.”

  He was trying to be cool, Cat knew, but his smile was big and goofy and heart-catching as he took in her condition. “Your football days are over.”

  She nodded. “Fix me an ice bag?”

  He heaved himself from the chair and shuffled off toward the kitchen. Cat smiled at his departing back. “You’re a prince,” she called after him.

  Moments later as they sat in her office, Johnny tilted back in his chair, Cat with her foot elevated, she came to a realization. Continuing to counsel Johnny meant dealing with Blake Wheeler. There would be more meetings, more tension and power-playing between the attorneys and their clients, the inevitable recriminations—and finally, a pretrial hearing.

  She’d been through it before—and that was reason enough to back out now. If she had any sense left at all, she’d find someone else to handle Johnny’s case.

  “How’s the toe?” he asked. “We could always amputate.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve grown attached to it.” Returning his crooked grin, Cat considered the pathetically thin, disheveled teenager across from her and suddenly backing out seemed inconceivable. He needed an ally. He needed her.

  Okay, she thought, conviction stirring, I can deal with Blake Wheeler if I have to. I can deal with anyone for this kid.

  “Juju gums? A mint patty? How about some cheese curls?” The drugstore clerk, a skinny, ponytailed teenager, snapped her gum and made a wrinkly triangle of her nose. “What’ll it be, huh?”

  Blake Wheeler shook his head. He had a craving for something decadent and loaded with food additives, only he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted. The girl’s gum popped like a cherry bomb. “Okay, give me the cheese curls,” he said.

  She obliged with a decided lack of enthusiasm.

  Out on the street Blake opened the bag and was flooded with the buttery, cheesy tang of Ackerman’s. He smiled at the familiar corkscrews of orange inside. How long had it been since he’d pigged out on cheese curls? High school?

  He took his time on the short walk back to the courthouse, his thoughts slowed and contemplative. He’d been drifting for a couple of days now, ever since the rendezvous with Cat on the dock. Forty-eight hours, more or less, and nothing had made sense since.

  He reached the courthouse with the awareness that the seasons had changed without his even knowing it. It was spring. Cherry trees were budding and the weather was unusually balmy. There wasn’t much point in his going back to the office, he realized. He hadn’t been worth a damn for the past two days, and today wasn’t going to be any different.

  He sat on the steps and finished off the cheese puffs, oblivious of the stares and the buzzing of passersby. His mind was elsewhere, floating on a sparkling bay of water. He crumpled the empty bag and watched it slowly spring back to life in his opening hand. The yellow cellophane glimmered like sunshine, and in the mist of his unfocused gaze, he saw a woman with a sad mouth and a lush body.

  Sad . . . lush . . . Lord, a man could go crazy.

  Breezes stirred, murmurous, cooling the warmth that rose from his skin. She invoked imperatives, that woman. A man had to touch her. He had to have her.

  Every aspect of her face drew attention to itself: dark eyebrows feathered with soft strokes of melancholy, sharp cheekbones, and red, ripe lips. She wasn’t beautiful. She was feral and haunted and agonizingly lovely. With one wistful glance she could break a mortal man’s heart and snuff out his spirit.

  Blake wasn’t sure when he realized what the woman in his fantasy was doing. Her eyes were hypnotically fixed on the glassy expanse of water, but her hands were performing a slow and lyrical striptease. Alone in the sunshine, luminous, she released one button after another, and each flick of her fingers took a lifetime.

  Her clothes drifted to her feet.

  Sunlight sheened her breasts.

  She dove into the bay, a silver missile streaming through the darkness. He reached out, and as she broke the water and touched his hand, he was naked too. Naked. Aroused. Instantly hard as the water took him into its depths. Achingly hard as she took him into her body. They rolled and spiraled together, and he moved powerfully inside her as the sea pommeled him and dragged at the rhythm of his thrusts.

  He would willingly have drowned in exchange for the ecstasy. She wanted it, too, deeper, harder, faster. Red fingernails raked his back as she whimpered in sweet agony . . .

  She invoked imperatives, that woman. A man
had to have her . . . even if it destroyed him.

  “Blake?”

  The woman called his name twice more before he looked up and saw Linda standing above him. For a minute he thought she was a figment of his imagination too.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, then she stepped back and scrutinized him. “Wait a minute. What’s wrong with this picture? I know, teacher! Blake Wheeler is daydreaming!” She frowned at him. “You are daydreaming, aren’t you?”

  Blake flipped the Ackerman’s bag into a nearby trash receptacle. “Call the guys with the butterfly nets. Wheeler’s daydreaming,” he said sarcastically.

  Linda ticked a finger at him, not about to be put off. “Do you have any idea how long you’ve been sitting on these steps staring off into space?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Well, I don’t either, but I’ve been watching you for at least five minutes. I couldn’t take my eyes off you, Blake. You looked like a fifteen-year-old kid with a bad case of spring fever.”

  “Or maybe a thirty-six-year-old DA?”

  She crouched and stared into his eyes. “Who is it? The hellcat?”

  Blake laughed. “I wouldn’t call her that to her face, if I were you.”

  “You’re not me, thank goodness. I wouldn’t do anything so foolish as falling in love with a high-strung ex-con.”

  “Linda.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t.”

  “Who said anything about love.”

  “What is it then? Lust?”

  Blake rose, mostly to take advantage of the fact that at six feet plus, he towered over his diminutive ex-wife. “Maybe it’s like, Linda. Maybe I like the woman.”

  “Umm, right, the way I like Patrick Swayze.” She stepped back to size him up. “What’s going on, Blake? What do you want from her? Because if it’s just sex, forget it. She’s not worth the risk to your career, or your political future.”

  Blake started down the steps.

  “Where are you going?” Linda called after him. “It’s not even noon yet.”