Wild Child

by Molly O'Keefe

  “I’m … not interested in anything more.” Was that how it was said?

  Dean blinked. “What … do you mean a relationship? Because I’m not either, but what happened—”

  “Won’t happen again. Surely, as CEO of Maybream it would be a conflict of interest, wouldn’t it? To have … something happen between us.”

  “It’s not like I intend to broadcast it to the world.” His voice was low, a murmur that made heat flare between her legs. She pulled her sunglasses over her eyes, wishing she had more to barricade herself from him. From the way he made her feel.

  “I understand, but this is a small town.” And it’s my world, and we probably just broadcast more than you know to everyone at Cora’s. “And I would hate … I would hate to jeopardize our position in this contest, over a … fling.”

  “Fine,” he muttered, “whatever … whatever you want. But you sure put on quite a show for a woman who isn’t interested.”

  She smiled, but her face was burning. Anger and a weird shame tied her in knots. Thirty-two years old and she’d never done this before. Sad. Sad. Sad. Other girls had had mapped out all the parameters of their sexual power by the time they were sixteen. But she’d been too busy praying when she was sixteen, forced on her knees to repent the most boring life ever lived by a teenager. Her father had been a zealot, unstable, and convinced of her sin.

  Dean lifted his hand as if to shake hands again and she lifted hers, but then he just waved, defeated. She dropped her hand.

  “Goodbye,” he said, laughter in his voice, and she couldn’t help but feel that he was laughing at her and she wanted to die, just die.

  This was why she kept herself hidden behind her teacher voice and emergency car kit. Because getting hurt, getting laughed at, being rejected even while rejecting someone else—it hurt. Diminished her in ways she didn’t need any help diminishing.

  Chapter 9

  Monica ignored Jackson as he slid into the booth across from her. First the Cracker dude and now Jackson. Good Lord, weren’t the headphones a giveaway? Did she need to make a Do Not Disturb sign? This was why she so rarely went to coffee shops to work, preferring her own company and her own music. But her hotel room was still haunted by her mother’s call.

  “What?” she snapped, pulling off her headphones.

  “Good morning to you, too.” His hair was all disorderly, falling over his forehead in a way that made her fingers itch to push it away.

  She frowned at him, just to let him know she wasn’t buying his smile this morning. His charm or floppy hair.

  “You met Dean?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry. I told him I wasn’t a part of Bishop’s ‘community.’” She put extra sarcasm into the air quotes, making them especially insufferable.

  He nodded and gave his sandwich a totally unnecessary and utterly telling quarter turn on his white plate, and she realized with a finely honed feminine instinct that he knew what she’d said to Dean about the contest.

  And he was over here for other reasons.

  “He wanted to talk about the new book,” she said. “Apparently he’s a big fan.”

  He groaned. “You said you wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “I didn’t. He did. I can’t help it that the Times picked up the Rolling Stone story.” He opened his mouth and she put up her hand. “Don’t worry, I told him my book didn’t have anything to do with Bishop or the contest.”

  “Did … did you get a hold of Sean’s dad?”

  She nodded. “I’m going to talk to him at his house on Tuesday. Discreetly.”

  His smile was a narrow flash and she was glad, in a way, that they could joke about it. Because honestly, she liked him. She did. And that was pretty damn rare in her life.

  A question blazed in Jackson’s eyes and she realized he wasn’t over here just because of the town. He might have told himself that when he walked over here, but there was another fuel in his engine.

  “He asked me out for a drink,” she told him, putting him out of his misery.

  At the very bottom of Monica’s life, when it was its darkest and most awful, she was dating the drummer for a famous rock band. The drummer, when he wasn’t drunk, was sweet. Well, sweet compared to when he was drunk, when he was a raving lunatic. His jealous tempers, the way he went after guys who looked at Monica too long, or asked her for a light or innocently inquired as to the location of a bathroom—she told herself, from her position in that dark dead end that her life had become, that it was flattering.

  That it was love.

  And when it became obvious that it wasn’t love, she told herself that it was just the way guys were. That they were jealous, irrational creatures.

  But watching Jackson absorb her words, she realized that he was jealous and totally rational. His eyes might have flickered out the window, his hands tightening on his coffee cup, but whatever dark instincts swirled in him, he resisted.

  How interesting, she thought, how infinitely more attractive his restraint was than her old boyfriend’s violent abandon.

  “Do you want to ask me if I’m going to go?” she asked, for no good reason.

  “Of course I do, Monica. But I also realize I have no right.”

  Oh. Such poetry!

  She sat taller in her seat. Damn straight, she thought.

  “He recognized you from the book,” he bit out, his eyes hot when they met hers. As hot as his hand had been on the back of her neck. “You know what he wants.”

  “Of course I know what he wants. And I can handle him. But he said something … useful to me.”

  Jackson reeled back. “Useful to you how?”

  “Apparently the producer America Today is using to tape all the town packages is freelance. And he offered to introduce me to her.”

  “Why would you care?”

  “Well, I …” Stupid. The words had just fallen out of her mouth, unchecked because she hadn’t had coffee and she’d been kept awake at night trying to figure out how to handle the effect this book about her dad was going to have on her life. “I had this idea of producing a documentary to coincide with my book. To help me control my message.”

  “Message?”

  She didn’t want to talk about this. Not in a coffee shop. Not with him. “Forget it, Jackson,” she murmured, and she lifted her hands to put her headphones back on. But he pressed down the top of her laptop—not all the way, just enough so they could see each other with nothing in the way.

  So minor, presumptuous really. But it made her realize how no one did that. No one made any effort to see her more clearly, literally or figuratively.

  You’re high on Shalimar, she told herself, but she dropped her hands anyway.

  “Tell me how he can help control your message,” he asked as if he cared. As if his motives had nothing to do with this town and its success in the contest. As if he cared about her.

  “Well, he can’t. He’s just a blowhard trying to get in my pants. But the freelance producer might be helpful.”

  “Explain it to me, Monica. I’m not judging you. I’m interested.”

  She couldn’t help but smile, flush with a strange tenderness for this man, for his innocence.

  Perhaps it was her mother’s call, the awfulness that Simone’s voice dredged up in her, but she realized in painful, heart-smashing clarity that no one, no one alive, really knew her anymore.

  Jenna, her best friend, the only person who had known her, warts and halos and everything in between, was gone. Gone.

  Friends are mirrors held up to remind us of who we really are, she thought.

  And she felt the lack, the terrible hole in her life, in a fresh and disturbing way. Without Jenna reminding her who she really was, she was in danger of losing herself to everyone’s expectations. To everyone’s opinion of her.

  But this man with his beautiful eyes and his hair and his fingers—he wanted to know her. And that was enough. Enough to make her unlock some of her secrets. To let down her guard to be more … h
erself.

  “Look, I wrote a book about the messed-up kid I was. I was brutally honest about the mistakes I made and what I learned from them. And then that book came out and … I’m grateful, I am, for its success. It has allowed me to do a lot of things I wouldn’t have been able to do.” She thought of Jenna and those bills, the pain her friend had been in. And how Monica having money made some of that pain go away. And that was worth a hundred books. “But people only want that messed-up, hypersexualized kid. They look at me and see the sixteen-year-old in the TV show. The twenty-year-old in the book. Men look at me and see the woman who had sex with famous rock stars. But it wasn’t sexy. Or exciting. It was sad, and needy. Scary sometimes.” He didn’t say anything, he just watched her without judgment. Another gift he seemed to give her without realizing how valuable it was. Jenna had done that too, and she marveled at the fact that Jenna had died and this man stepped into her life all in the same week. It was as if Jenna was looking out for her. And the thought, while crazy, was comforting. “And even though that was the way I wrote it in the book, the world saw it differently. Or at least most of the world. Every question I was asked by reporters, by talk show hosts, made it sound titillating and no matter what I said—”

  “They saw what they wanted to see.”

  She took a deep breath. “And with this next book, I want to be more than the child of a woman who killed her husband in self-defense.”

  “If you’re so worried about it, why write the book?”

  She bristled, recognizing his tone, his backward coercion. “You can’t convince me not to do it, Jackson.”

  “I’m not trying.”

  “Bullshit. And you know it.”

  They stared at each other, neither of them giving an inch. Why was that so attractive to her? Because you’re perverse and hungry and lonely, and getting a cup of coffee takes a million years in this place!

  “I want to understand why you’re putting yourself out there for the world to judge and get wrong. If it hurt so much the last time, why do it again?”

  “I don’t have a choice, Jackson. I …” She took a breath so deep it shook at the bottom. “I had a friend. My … my best friend, Jenna. And she had cervical cancer and no insurance. She was teaching music to low-income kids in Nashville. Her money was gone, and she couldn’t pay for treatment.”

  “Monica,” he sighed, the word loaded with pain and understanding.

  “So I paid Jenna’s medical bills.” The words flung themselves from her lips as though they couldn’t wait to taste freedom. “As much as I could, just to keep her comfortable. I mean, by the time I found out she was … well, it was bad. And before that,I took a hit with the stock market, a couple of them actually. And now I’m pretty damn broke and I took the advance for this book. And I can’t pay it back, so all I can do is write it. I have no choice. None. Not that I expect you to understand that.” She threw that last statement out there,in an effort to deflect his attention, to shift things into a more comfortable position.

  He was calm in the face of her incendiary words. But he didn’t respond; his blue eyes just watched her and that movie-star face of his changed, became … older, somehow.

  It shamed her, that face. Made her regret her small taunts, her even smaller motivations.

  She held her breath, waiting. Sensing the beautiful, golden Jackson Davies was about to reveal something tarnished. Something not a lot of people got to see. And she thought about how odd that was, how strange her life had become, that people didn’t reveal anything to her anymore. You didn’t realize how precious that was until it never happened anymore.

  “I haven’t had a choice since I was twenty-two and my parents died, and I moved back here to take care of my sister.”

  Oh. Oh no. She blinked. Stunned. Unsure of what to say, how to address all the potential pain in that sentence.

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” she whispered. She’s twelve years younger than me and when our mom and dad died, she was only eleven. Not that it’s ever a good age to lose your parents, but … it was rough. For her. For us.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, too. For Jenna.” His smile was weary, bone tired. “I moved back to Bishop because it was right, because there wasn’t a choice, really. But it doesn’t stop you from resenting it at times. Or being angry to have had the power taken away. Loving my sister with all my heart doesn’t make it so I don’t wish things were different. I had just started law school. There was even a girlfriend …” He stopped, his attention caught on the salt shaker as if he’d glimpsed something important, but then he looked back at her, his smile working so hard to convince her that the girlfriend, the life just beginning, it was all inconsequential. The smile didn’t succeed. No smile could have succeeded.

  “I … I didn’t know.”

  “I know.” He leaned forward, his hands flat against the white table with the red specks. She looked at his long, wide fingers and thought of their touch, one by one, on her neck. “I think there’s a lot about you I don’t know. And before you tell me to read the book, I need to tell you I won’t. Ever.”

  Why did that seem like a gift?

  Stupid Monica, putting all your gratitude on the stupid things.

  “But I also want to say that I feel like the first choice I’ve made that was mine, all mine, in a very, very long time was to kiss you the other night. Or maybe earlier, when I invited you in for dinner. Something so small and yet huge at the same time. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “No,” she breathed, because she understood down to her bones, down to her sinew and muscle, exactly what he meant. Because her life had gotten slightly off track when she’d accepted the invitation for dinner.

  Jackson heaved a big breath, tilting his head to look out the plate-glass window beside them. The sky was achingly blue, the street outside charming and totally worthy of being on television. He did that, she thought, seeing this town and the contest and all of his efforts differently at this moment.

  As noble, not silly.

  When he glanced up at her again, the weariness, that intriguing depth to his face, the difference in his eyes, was all gone and he was shiny again. He wore his public face. And she hated it, wanted to do something to make it go away.

  Kiss him. She wanted to kiss him again.

  “And that didn’t go so well. For either of us.”

  It was a mistake for me too. She remembered her words. So flip, so dismissive.

  “So perhaps it’s best that I’m not left to my own choices anymore.” Jackson tapped the table, then picked up his dishes to clear them himself because he was that kind of guy. “I’ll let you get back to work.”

  She didn’t stop him. She let him walk away even though part of her wanted to pull him back. To make him tell her more about his sister, and part of her … part of her wanted to tell him about Jenna. But in the end she watched him walk away. She put her headphones back on and opened up her computer and stared, unseeing, at a blank page.

  “What’s with you?” Gwen muttered Tuesday morning, giving Jackson the hairy eyeball over her cereal bowl. Apparently his whistling was an affront to her teenage grumpiness. She sat, slouched at the counter, her body a long curve. Her long blond hair hung across half her face. It was as if she were always hiding. From him.

  I’m not Dad, I know that, he thought but couldn’t say. But we used to be friends.

  “Optimism, Gwen. Optimism is what’s with me.” He didn’t wait for the coffee to finish brewing before pouring himself a cup and toasting his sister with it. If he were the singing type, he would have sung in the shower. He would have sung making breakfast. “Today is the first day of Bishop’s second life.”

  “As a Podunk town in the middle of nowhere?”

  “No,” he said carefully, refusing to let her kill his buzz. “That was its first life. Its second life is as a wholesome, forward-thinking community with opportunities for adults and children alike.”

  When he
’d memorized those words from America Today, he wasn’t sure. But they were running through his head like marathoners.

  Gwen blinked her heavily made-up eyes at him. The day was hot already, hazy with humidity, the sky outside nearly gray. He doubted anyone wanted to experience the 100-percent-humidity part of the Bishop story.

  “You really think we’re going to win this contest?” she asked, before tipping her cereal bowl to drain the milk into her mouth.

  “Yep,” he replied, leaning against the old butcher-block counters.

  Gwen shook the hair from her face.

  There you are, he thought with a piercing fondness.

  Her face was changing, slowly being carved out by maturity. Womanhood. The chipmunk cheeks were melting away, her jawline losing its little-girl roundness. Her blue eyes were so big even with that dark crap she wore around them. She was lovely, and if she would just smile more …

  “I forgot to ask, how did that thing go with Monica Appleby?” she asked.

  “What …?” The kiss. That was all he could think about at the mention of her name. The touch of her tongue against his.

  Nice, Jackson. So grown up. So fully adult.

  “At our house? The notes? Remember?”

  “Right.” He pushed aside thoughts of that kiss, reminding himself that it had been a mistake for both of them. “Actually, the notes were for Dean Jennings and the America Today producers.”

  “You … you just said someone not from around here.” She was so quick to be defensive. So quick to snap at him.

  “I know, Gwen, it’s no big deal. Don’t worry.”

  “So … did she come over?”

  “She did.”

  “And?”

  And I insulted her and then kissed her and then insulted her again. “She had some lemonade.”

  “Lemonade? Jackson … that’s so lame.”

  “She wanted it!” he cried in his own defense. “What was I supposed to give her? Heroin?”

  “So, is she like … coming over again?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “What did you do?”

  Jackson blinked, surprised by the viciousness of her tone. She’d been aloof, she’d been moderately disrespectful, but never mean. A thousand words, just as mean, just as vicious, came roaring up from his gut, but he swallowed them.