KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel

by Jackson, Meg

  “Naw,” Mayor Gunderson said. “Kim was there. She saw it too. I know, I got a bit riled up. It was just the shock of it. But, you know, I’ve done some thinking. Can’t really blame the sons for the sins of the father, can you?”

  “Tell that to old Hendrix,” Ed glowered. “He was just in here raising hell about sin.”

  “Oh, that old blowhard,” Mayor Gunderson grumbled.

  “He’s expecting a call,” Kim piped up. “Don’t imagine it will be a nice one.”

  Mayor Gunderson sighed and Kim felt sorry for what he’d have to deal with when he got the Pastor on the line. Their friendship was old but strong, and if Mayor Gunderson really had changed his tune on the matter, it might cause a rift between them.

  “You know, it hurt us all quite a bit back in the day,” Mayor Gunderson said, shaking his head. “Some of us more than others. I thought I had it bad, but Hendrix…well, he just about lost his mind. I was happy when he took to God instead of drinking. That man and the bottle don’t go well together.”

  Ed and Kim shared a momentary glance; the same could almost be said for Mayor Gunderson himself. Though he didn’t have the same temper as Pastor Hendrix, he certainly had a deep propensity for booze, and it sometimes got in the way of his best interests. The other night had been a good example of that.

  “Well, like I said, I just wanted to check in,” Ed said. “Glad to hear you’re gonna let sleeping dogs lie. Not gonna lie though, I do love the drama and intrigue of it all.”

  “And that’s why Kimmy here wanted you to get going, I bet,” Mayor Gunderson said with a chuckle. “Go on back to eavesdropping on your customers, will ya?”

  “Beats arguing with Demi Kilter over stocking more vegan cheese products,” Ed said, returning the Mayor’s pat on the back as he swiveled to leave the office. Mayor Gunderson rapped on the counter.

  “Anything besides Pastor Hendrix to take care of this afternoon?”

  “Not really,” Kim said. “But you really ought to look over some of those applications the Volanis’ brought in. I left copies on your desk.”

  “Will do, Kimmy,” he said before disappearing behind his door. Kim wondered at his change of heart, but truly wasn’t that surprised. Mayor Gunderson didn’t typically let much get to him. He was a roll with the punches kind of guy. That’s what made him such a dream to work for. And, in a way, he was a lot like the town that elected him term after term. There were the few bad seeds, like Pastor Hendrix and Bob Talkee, but as a whole they were good people who were willing to work with what they had to work with.

  She glanced at the clock. It was just past one. In four hours, she’d be closing up for the day. And then she’d be meeting Kennick Volanis for dinner. She’d already picked out what she was going to wear: a little black dress, something casual and light for the summer but which flattered her soft, curvy body. She hummed a bit as she shuffled mindlessly through the papers in front of her. A date with Kennick Volanis. Kimberly James was going on a date with a wild-haired, green-eyed, strong-bodied gypsy. It didn’t seem quite possible, or real.

  Give yourself a little credit, she thought, and it surprised her. She wasn’t used to giving herself any credit. But the way that man looked at her…well, it seemed like he was giving her an awful lot of credit. And she liked the way that felt. Liked it very, very much.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kim could smell the food even as she stood on the little cement steps. It smelled heavenly. But she could also hear something rather strange. An intense buzzing noise that reminded her of something that made her blush. Something she’d been given once as a joke gift, had used once or twice out of curiosity, and then stashed away in her lingerie drawer. Yes, it sounded exactly like that little vibrator.

  But for her to be able to hear it from outside must mean it wasn’t a very little vibrator at all.

  She considered turning on her heel and leaving; whatever was going on inside the trailer, it wasn’t something that she wanted to walk in on unannounced. Maybe she was early. Maybe he’d forgotten. But then why the smell of delicious food? She stood, feeling sillier and sillier with each second that she spent holding her fist inches away from the trailer door, debating what she was supposed to do in this situation.

  The question was decided for her when the door swung open, making her gasp and nearly fall backwards off the step.

  “Yes?” the man asked, his eyes lit with something like amusement. It was Damon, the brother who was shaped like a boxer but apparently had a penchant for cheeses. The smell of food was stronger with the door open…so was the buzzing sound. She saw, as she gazed up at his massive girth, that Damon was sporting a rather nasty, puke-yellow bruise over one eye and a painful-looking split in his lip. She wondered what had happened in the twenty or so hours since she’d last seen him, but it wasn’t really her place to ask. Not yet, at least.

  “I’m…I’m here for Kennick,” she said, gathering herself together. Damon smirked and stepped aside, allowing her entrance.

  Once more, she marveled at how the trailer opened up once you were inside. This one was even bigger on the inside than Ana’s had been. The buzzing sound came from a room on the left, and when Damon pointed in that direction, she shot him a curious look.

  “Go on,” he said, softly encouraging. Kim gulped, wondering what weird situation she was wandering into. As she stepped to the left, she peered around the small doorframe and immediately felt a mixture of relief and embarrassment.

  Kennick was laying, shirtless, on a sort of sofa chair. The room was clearly a bedroom, but it was currently being used as a tattoo parlor. Cristov was holding a tattoo gun to Kennick’s chiseled chest; Kim barely caught a glance at the design before she turned away, hand to her eyes, feeling that she had walked into a moment that was somehow more intimate than she’d feared. Laughter followed her abrupt turning.

  “You’re early,” Kennick’s voice came, loud and clear, as the buzzing paused.

  “How can I be early?” Kim asked, still averting her eyes from his bare upper body. “You told me to come whenever.”

  “Touché,” Kennick said. “Turn around, will you? I’m not naked, you know.”

  “You’re half naked,” Kim shot back, but she realized she was overreacting and turned around, knowing that much of her embarrassment was due to her burgeoning desire for the dark, handsome Rom.

  As her eyes fell to the work Cristov was doing on his chest, she gasped. It was beautiful. A huge, intricate, geometric design that reminded her of a mosque, with seemingly infinite detail. The overall shape was a five-pointed star, but the clean, steady lines burst outward in a dizzying array of curls and curves and points.

  “Oh, wow,” Kim said, stepping forward despite her earlier sense of shame. “That’s gorgeous.”

  Cristov grinned up at her, putting his tattoo gun down beside him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It would be better, but Cinderella over here turns into a mouse after about three hours of work. He starts whining and…”

  “Shut up, Cris,” Kennick said, but the smile on his face showed none of the irritation in his voice.

  Kennick’s body, which Kim now gave herself permission to admire in full, was as muscled and taut as it appeared under his clothes, his arms covered in similar designs. She felt heat rising in her cheeks as her eyes fell lower to the deep V that jutted from the top of his jeans, a smattering of hair like a trail leading downwards to…

  “My eyes are up here, lady,” Kennick called out, teasing, as Cristov rubbed some sort of lotion over the freshly worked area of his chest, then turned to pull off a sheet of saran wrap and fitting it smugly over the brilliant ink. Kim wanted to run away and tear all her clothes off all at the same time.

  “Listen, if I’m really too early, I can go and come back, or we can do this some other…” she said quickly, feeling overwhelmed by the desire that was coursing through her veins.

  “No, no,” Kennick said, jumping up and moving towards her. She really wis
hed he’d put a shirt on. Except she didn’t really wish that at all. “Smells like dinner’s nearly ready, anyway. And tonight’s a good night…these two will be out, so we can have the place to ourselves.”

  “Yeah, all to yourselves,” Cristov teased, making a smooching noise as he finished packing away his ink and tools. Kim turned to look at Damon, who was looking on in silent amusement. When she felt Kennick’s hand on her arm, she nearly jumped out of her skin, the flesh there burning.

  “Let me put on a clean shirt and I’ll set the table,” he said, moving past her through the cramped hall. She could feel the heat of him as he squeezed by and felt an inexplicable desire to lean forward and trace her tongue along his well-defined ribs.

  I’m losing it, she thought. I’m seriously, seriously losing it.

  “So, where are you two off to?” she asked, wanting to distract herself from the smooth, feral movement of Kennick across the trailer to his own room. She asked the question at Damon, but her eyes never left Kennick.

  “Movies,” he said. If it wasn’t for the burning intelligence in his eyes, you’d almost think he was a bit stupid, his responses always so simple.

  “Yeah, Damon just loves the movies,” Cristov said. “You should see him tear up at the end of Fargo. He gets all weepy ‘cause the sheriff loves her husband so much.”

  “It’s a beautiful moment in American cinema,” Damon said with a shrug, and Kim had to smile. She did love that movie, though it had never made her cry.

  “So what are you going to see tonight?” she asked, turning back to Cristov.

  “They’re playing Dog Day Afternoon at that art cinema a few towns over,” Damon said, apparently coming alive now that the subject had turned to something that interested him.

  “It’s a good compromise,” Cristov added. “Cause I like movies with lots of guns, and Lurch over there likes movies that…what did you say it has?”

  “Showcase the subtle ways that society can make a man deny what’s in his best interests, destroy his spirit, and drive him crazy,” Damon said, turning away. “I’ll be outside.”

  And with that, he was gone, the door slamming shut behind him. Kim turned back to Cristov wide-eyed.

  “I thought he was the silent one,” she said.

  “Sometimes I wish he were more silent,” Cristov joked, pulling on a light jacket. “Kennick cooked you some damn fine food, Little Mayor. Hope you enjoy it.”

  “Little Mayor?” Kim scoffed, wondering what the hell kind of nickname that was.

  “Well, ain’t you?” Cristov asked before following Damon outside. Kim didn’t know if he could possibly know how honest a nickname that was.

  “Tweedledee and Tweedledum gone?” Kennick’s voice surprised her as he emerged from his room, wearing a loose-fitting white undershirt, presumably to give the raw flesh underneath it some room to breathe.

  “Yeah,” Kim smiled. “Can I help set the table?”

  “Oh, I think I can handle it,” Kennick said, pulling some plates and utensils out. A bottle of wine – or, what Kim assumed to be wine, since it had no label – already sat in the center of the booth that served as the dining room table, and he poured out two glasses, bringing one over to where she stood. Kim momentarily questioned the safety of drinking strange, unmarked alcohol, but it smelled alright, if a little ripe. And she definitely needed some liquid courage for this date.

  The trailer had a similar set-up to Ana’s, except instead of having the living room on one side and the bedrooms on the other, there were two bedrooms on one side of the kitchen-slash-dining room, a living room on the other, with Kennick’s bedroom right beside the bathroom on the far end. Unlike Ana’s brilliantly decorated trailer, this one was very indicative of the men who occupied it. It was neat, but relatively bare, with only a few framed family photos on the walls and a huge, psychedelic print tapestry behind the couch in the wood-paneled living room.

  She’d gotten a quick peek into Cristov’s room and seen some bright, colorful prints on the walls, but hadn’t managed to study them at all. Kim was naturally sort of a nosy person, though in a far more subtle way than her sister. She secretly dreamed of being left alone in someone’s room to touch their belongings, examine their books and keepsakes, study the art they chose to hang. She was fascinated by the way the things people owned told you more about them than anything else.

  “So, I made mushroom risotto and warm kale salad,” Kennick said, starting to pull the fragrant dishes from the oven. Kim was a bit surprised; she hadn’t expected this smart, handsome, buff man to also be a good cook, but it was clear from the smell that he was. As he doled out two heaping portions, she slid herself into the booth, mouth watering. She hadn’t eaten much that day, not wanting to look bloated in her little black dress, but she was starting to regret that decision. The last thing she wanted was to look like a pig shoveling food into her mouth.

  “Where’d you learn to cook?” she asked, wide-eyeing the food as Kennick took his place opposite her.

  “Here and there,” he said, stabbing into his own plate. “Mostly there.”

  Kim studied him across the table. She firmly believed in the reality that when something seemed too good to be true, it usually was. She remembered the things she’d read that day, when she should have been working. She needed to know, before she got to talking to Kennick and liking him even more than she already did, what the hell was going on.

  Why had he invited her on this date? She knew it wasn’t customary for Rom to date non-Rom people. So was she just a quick lay? If she was, that wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing in the world. Especially not the way her body kept reminding her of that dream, and that she hadn’t been with a man in longer than she cared to remember. But she needed to know now, before she fell head-over-heels with someone ultimately unattainable.

  Kennick seemed to sense her question and he paused his chewing, narrowing his eyes at her.

  “You look a bit concerned,” he said. “Are you allergic to mushrooms?”

  “No,” Kim said quickly. “It’s not that. It’s…I just…I have some questions?”

  “Was that one of them?” he asked playfully. When she merely smiled in response, he let his fork fall back to the plate and leaned back. “Shoot.”

  “Well,” Kim said, spreading the paper napkin across her lap, eyes averted. “I mean, okay…I did some reading and, well, it seems like…”

  She was interrupted by his laugh, her eyes darting up towards his. He had his fork full once more, and it was raised halfway to his mouth, but he had his dancing gaze trained on her.

  “What sort of reading have you been doing, keshalyi? I can’t wait to hear.”

  Now, he did place the fork in his mouth, and chewing through his smile he waited patiently for the blush to recede from Kim’s cheeks. She couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Just…oh, it’s stupid, I know. I just looked online at some websites. I was curious, I guess,” she said, and took a modest bite of the food. It was as good as it smelled, and Kim’s stomach rumbled for more, but she took her time chewing.

  “Well, whatever you learned, I hope you take it with a grain of salt,” Kennick said, readying his fork with another heaping sampling of the rich risotto. “Hell, take it with the whole ocean.”

  “So what should I know?” Kim asked, taking a long swallow of the strange wine, her fork barren.

  “There’s not much you need to know,” Kennick said with a shrug between bites. “We follow some traditions – not others. The fun ones, we keep those. We like the fun ones. Parties and travel and feasts. Drinking and dancing. My cousin Tula, she’s a great drabarni. That means psychic, basically. We speak the old Romani, at least sometimes. But other than that…” he opened his palms, spreading them across the table, showing he had nothing to hide or hold back from her.

  “So you’re not…you’re not, like, only allowed to date other Rom? I’m not, like, stepping on some girls’ toes by being here?” Kim nibbled a bit more of th
e warm kale salad. It had a rich, smoky, aromatic flavor that made her mouth water for more. Kennick’s eyes watched her chewing and his brows furrowed slightly.

  “No,” he said, voice somewhat concerned. “Well, actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were stepping on someone’s toes. Call me the kumpania’s most eligible bachelor. But that’s no business of mine. Or yours. Gypsies adapt to what there is to adapt to. It’s what we’ve always done. We’re Americans now. We do as we please.”

  “Oh,” Kim said, somewhat relieved, though a little taken aback by Kennick’s boldness in declaring himself a catch. He leaned forward then, his eyes darting from her empty fork to her lips.

  “Why are you eating like that?” he asked, and Kim glanced down; her plate was still mostly full, while Kennick had made a considerable dent in his meal. She wondered if she was insulting him by eating in her usual demure matter. Was she expected to wolf her food down at the same rate as the massive man across from her? Her controlled manner of eating was something she’d perfected over a lifetime of worrying about her weight, about what someone would think of her if she dug right in to a meal like an animal. Like a man.