KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel

by Jackson, Meg

  To Kim, Tula sounded like she’d had a bit too much to drink. Kennick, however, groaned.

  “We know that, Tula,” he said with feigned impatience as his cousin crinkled her nose over a bemused smile. “Will you get out of there?”

  “Sorry,” she said with a giggle. “It’s hard to avoid with both of you sitting there.”

  Kim glanced at Kennick, confusion on her face. It was like they were speaking their Romani language, having a conversation she couldn’t hope to understand.

  “You are very in love, it’s true,” Tula mused, closing her eyes again and smiling. Now, Kim understood and blushed. Were they? It had certainly seemed like that’s what they were both saying just a little while ago, in the trailer.

  But to have someone else say it, based on seeing them together for approximately five minutes, was off-putting to say the least. Tula peeked at Kim, opening one eye and smirking. That smirk screamed Volanis just as much as her green eyes. “Fight it all you want, lady. Won’t help you any.”

  Kim buried her face in the mug, taking a huge sip to avoid blushing even further. Tula closed her eyes and resumed her rocking, the living room filling with the slight creaking of her chair. When she finally sighed, it felt like fifteen minutes had gone by. Tula opened her eyes and finally took a sip of her tea, then studying the contents of the mug for another intolerably long moment before drawing her attention back to Kim.

  “Hard to say,” she said with a shrug, her mannerisms and tones seeming entirely unbefitting the magic of being a psychic. “But Kennick’s right, in a way. There is something coming to you, soon. Something that will put you where you’d like to be, even if it’s not entirely the way you’d like to end up there.”

  Kim felt like she could have gotten just as much insight from a fortune cookie, but Kennick nudged her and when she turned to him, his smile was dazzling.

  “Told you so,” he said, and Kim held back the instinct to scoff. After all, she was a guest in Tula’s home, and she didn’t want to appear ungrateful.

  “I guess you did,” she said with a wan smile, wondering if she’d gotten herself all heart-sore over a man who had a few crossed wires in his head. Who doesn’t have a few eccentricities, she told herself, melting under his gaze for the thousandth time. If he can put up with mine….

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  On the morning that Ricky's article was published, Kim and Kennick woke up in her apartment, where they'd spent the better part of the night getting no sleep and talking themselves hoarse in between lusty wrestling matches. Kim yawned the last bit of sleep from her body as she turned over, watching his eyes move in a tight flutter behind his still-closed eyelids. He was dreaming. She wondered what he was dreaming of.

  For two and a half weeks they'd been working on whatever it was that called them to each other, that made their bodies fit like perfect parts of a yin-yang, that made them feel both vulnerable and strong. It scared Kim as much as it excited her. She’d never been much a fan of the idea of love at first sight; lust, sure. But, it seemed, lust at first sight could turn into love within 14 days, and wasn’t that something?

  Even then, after having spent the whole night in his arms, she wanted to stroke his stubbled cheeks and open her legs around his waist, to feel him hot and soft against her, to rub until he was hard and ready to enter her. But it was already late in the morning, and she had work to get to.

  Slipping from the bed, she threw on a robe as she entered the living room, where her cell phone waited on the coffee table in front of the sofa. That sofa had been the starting place of last night's adventure, and she felt the blush in her cheeks when she remembered how he'd pulled her onto his lap and kissed her so deep she felt like he was trying to tell her a story, a long and beautiful tale of lovers who would never be lonely again.

  Picking up her phone, she quickly checked for any new texts. She saw a message from Ricky that had been sent a half-hour earlier, and remembered what was so important about that day. Opening the front door yielded a copy of the Kingdom Times, and she carried it with her into the kitchen, reading it even as she distractedly began to brew a pot of coffee.

  The article wasn't front page news, a high school scandal involving stolen SAT tests having that distinction. It wasn't on the second page, either. Instead, Kim found it in the editorial section; that made sense, she supposed. It wasn't exactly hard hitting news, after all. But it wasn't really an editorial, either. Ricky introduced the facts but didn't offer her own interpretation of them. She asked questions but didn't answer them.

  As always, Kim was proud of her sister's writing. It was clean, clear, and consistent with journalistic ethics, but had a uniquely Ricky-esque flair that made it stand out from the usual dry tone of the newspaper. The editorial was a full page, and it included everything Kennick had discussed on the day Ricky had spoken to him, with Ricky's editorial eye dissecting all the possible angles. When Kim finished reading, the coffee had finished, and she read it once more as she sat sipping it.

  “I thought I smelled something good in here,” Kennick said, making Kim look up from the paper. He stood in the doorway, a tired smile on his face. “And you made coffee, too.”

  “Help yourself,” Kim said, gesturing to the extra mug she'd set out for him. “And then come read what my sister wrote about you.”

  Kennick's body tensed momentarily. He was naked except for his boxers, and when his body firmed Kim saw every muscle go taut, his strong arms bulging slightly. Then, he relaxed, crossing the room to look over Kim's shoulder.

  “New Light Shed on Thirty-Year-Old Case,” he read the headline aloud, then kissed Kim's neck before sliding into the seat beside her and taking the paper from his hands. As his eyes scoured the printed word, she rose and prepared his coffee, setting it down in front of him. The automatic intimacy of the moment struck her; the easy flow of the morning, as though they'd known each other for months instead of weeks. But when she glanced at the clock, she saw that she'd left herself barely enough time to get to work.

  “Shit,” she murmured, barely drawing Kennick's attention from the paper. “I gotta run. You stay, hang out, okay? Just lock the door behind you when you leave.”

  “Alright,” Kennick said, returning to the paper as she busied herself with getting ready for work. Shooting a quick text to Ricky to congratulate her on the article, she left Kennick with a kiss on the cheek and made her way to the Mayor's office.

  Kennick heard the click of the door as she left and tried to focus on the article. But he couldn’t. He’d been trying since he took the paper from her hands. Even though this was the whole reason he’d come to Kingdom, it couldn’t draw his attention away from the woman he’d woken up next to. They’d talked all night, like there was nothing that could dam the flow of conversation between them, like they’d never run out of things to say.

  She’d told him how, the very moment she heard about her father’s death, she’d been microwaving a bowl of tomato soup, something that her father had always made for her when she was sick, and that ever since she hadn’t been able to stomach it. She said she’d never told anyone that before, thinking it was so silly. He stroked her arm and told her it wasn’t.

  He’d told her about the time, as a child, when Damon had gotten so ill he’d slipped into a coma for a week, and the horrible limbo of grief and hope that had trapped him. That had been his first real hint at what loss could be, and every loss that came after had been tinged, in a way that felt selfish to him, with relief. At least it’s not my brothers or my sister, he’d always think. Even when his father died. Even when Baba died. He’d never told anyone that before, finding it shameful. She’d held his hand and told him it wasn’t.

  And then the funny stories, and the embarrassing stories. Teenage shames like unexpected boners and period-stained jeans. Childhood anecdotes like calling Baby Jesus “Baby Diseases” and bad haircuts administered by a reckless sister. Adult faux-pas like sneezing during oral sex and waking up after a night of dri
nking with half a barbecue sauce and butter sandwich in your hand.

  Even the boring stories, the ones you usually only told yourself because you’re sure no one else could ever care.

  He wished she hadn’t left. He wanted to talk to her more. He wanted to hear her voice, telling him about a dream or even just reading a grocery list aloud.

  Kennick Volanis was smitten, and he barely knew what to do about it.

  But he’d rolled with worse things before, and he could roll with this, too.

  Especially because he had a feeling this was the woman Baba Tayti had foreseen.

  And that made him very, very happy.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Mayor Gunderson wasn't in yet when Kim arrived at the office, which wasn't unusual in the least bit. In fact, Mayor Gunderson seemed to be spending less and less time in the office, and more time, Kim figured, in the bottle. She assumed this was a side effect of the growing ire of certain citizens regarding the gypsy's arrival and the proposed strip club. Mayor Gunderson wasn't the best at handling conflict, and preferred to avoid it whenever possible.

  A little after 10am, while Kim was scrolling through the Mayor's official e-mail, to which she had the password because she often wrote his replies for him, her phone rang. She recognized Ricky's extension on the caller ID. Just as she picked up, Mayor Gunderson arrived, looking under the weather and quite distraught. He barely waved at Kim as he disappeared into his back office.

  “You’re never going to guess who just called me, ranting and raving like I was Satan,” Ricky said in a hushed voice that indicated she was still in the office.

  “Who?” Kim asked, not in the mood to play Twenty Questions. She could hear Mayor Gunderson loudly slamming drawers in his office through the closed door.

  “Bob Talkee,” she said. “He is p-i-s-s-e-d. Says I ought to be exiled from the state!”

  Kim bit her lip. Bob had been rather unhappy when she’d seen him at the bar that night, but he had never struck her as the type to go off the rails that far. As one of Kingdom’s elected officials, losing a vote because he couldn’t keep his temper in check was a dreadful thing.

  “Did he say why? It was a pretty, I don’t know, objective piece. You weren’t really taking a side…”

  “Well, he didn’t say why,” Ricky gushed. “But I found out why. He and Rhonda used to date. Like, big time serious high school sweethearts. I guess before Pieter came and swept her off her feet.”

  “No kidding,” Kim said, a sick feeling in her stomach.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Ricky said. There was a pause. “Um, don’t you, like, hate that guy? I thought you’d find this a little more interesting…”

  “No, I do,” Kim said, sighing as she reminded herself she didn’t need to go around playing Sherlock. It wasn’t her place to try and solve a thirty-year-old murder, and just because Bob dated Rhonda meant nothing. “That sucks, sis. What did you say to him?”

  “I told him he lost my vote in the next election,” her sister said, her smirk clear in her voice. Kim smiled.

  “Hit ‘em where it hurts, huh?”

  “Right in the big, fat, tax-dollar paycheck,” Ricky said, unable to keep her voice hushed anymore.

  “Listen, thanks for calling, that’ll brighten up my day, but I really ought to go. Mayor’s in a tear right now,” Kim said, loathing the idea of going back into that office.

  “He mad about the article too?” Kim could hear Ricky’s smugness. It always got her sister’s motor running when she wrote something that pissed people off. It was just in her nature to cause trouble. Blame it on being the younger sibling.

  “I don’t even know,” Kim said, honestly. “He just stormed right past me.”

  “Heard he’s been on a bit of a bender,” Ricky confided. “Should the good people of Kingdom be worried?”

  “Nah,” Kim said. “I can handle him. The town is safe for another night of shots and pints at Sammy’s.”

  After hanging up with her sister, Kim listened for any more signs of distress from Mayor Gunderson's office. To her relief, he seemed to have calmed down; or, he was in the eye of the storm. Either way, she knew this would be a good time to poke her head in.

  “Mayor,” she asked, knocking gently before sliding the door open a bit. “Is everything alright?”

  He looked up at her and offered a wan smile. She wasn't entirely surprised to see that he had a copy of the day's paper open before him.

  “Everything’s fine,” he said, leaning back in his chair. His salt-and-pepper hair was slightly mussed and he ran his fingers through it, which really only served to emphasize the fact that his hair was truly not long for this world. “Long night is all.”

  He pointed down at the paper. Kim didn't need to approach him to figure out he was pointing at Ricky's article.

  “Your sister,” Mayor Gunderson continued, now leaning forward slightly and joining his two index fingers together under his nose in a sharp peak, “is a very, very good writer. And the story is...intriguing. You've read it, I'm sure?”

  Kim nodded. It was extremely well written. And extremely intriguing, despite her own personal investment in the manner. Kim thought “provocative” would also be a good way to describe it, but she didn't offer that suggestion to the mayor.

  “What do you think?” he asked. When he looked at her, she saw only curiosity.

  “Well, I mean, you know,” she said, “I'm not quite an unbiased reader. Not just because of Ricky...”

  Mayor Gunderson chuckled.

  “I suppose not,” he said, then sighed. “I wonder if there's something I missed all those years ago. You know, I was on this case. I never got over it. I went to high school with Rhonda. I was always fond of her. She was such a sweet girl. This article...it just makes me wonder if I could have seen something at the time...”

  “Oh,” Kim said, entering the office fully to take a seat in front of Mayor Gunderson. “I mean, you can't beat yourself up about the past like that. You were just one man. If Pieter Volanis didn't do it...I mean, even the detectives and lieutenants and stuff working the case overlooked things, then. And you were just an officer.”

  “I know, Kimmy, I know,” Mayor Gunderson said, his head still lowered. “It just makes a man wonder.”

  There was a moment of silence, broken only at the sharp ring of Mayor Gunderson's phone. He jumped, having been lost in his thoughts, and then let out a single hearty laugh.

  “Time moves on though, doesn't it, Kimmy? Gotta deal with the now, you know...now,” he said, and picked up the phone. His smile immediately turned into a grimace and Kim thought his eyes might actually roll back into his head. He waved his hand at her and she rose to leave.

  “Yeah, Hendrix, I've read it, of course I read it! I'm the damn Mayor, I always read the paper...”

  Kim bit back a smile; Pastor Hendrix was giving it good to Mayor Gunderson. She could hear his yowling even as he back to the door. Gunderson made a face at her to show his exasperation.

  “I'm a man of God, too, Dick...”

  She shut the door behind her, the smile turning to a grimace as she remembered Pastor Hendrix's anger, his cruel words. She didn't understand how Mayor Gunderson could abide a friendship with a man like that. But Pastor Hendrix held plenty of sway, and endorsed the incumbent Mayor every time an election came around. Kim's stomach clenched slightly. This was why she could never run for office: there was no amount of ballots that could inspire her to kiss up to a bigot.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ana clapped her hands once as she turned to give a last look over her shop. The grocery was fully stocked, but didn't look cluttered. The aisles were divided by product: coffee, tea, candies, packaged pastries in one aisle. Then the cured meats, jerkies and salamis and pickled fish and caviar in their elegant tin cans and glass jars, with fancy mustards and condiments mixed in. An aisle of redolent incense and curios from India and Eastern Europe.

  Refrigerators and freezers lining the walls held
imported ales and local ciders, ready-to-bake doughs, ice-packed wild-caught fish, ice creams and convenience meals that bore bright labels advertising their product in both the native language and English. The ad was in the paper, and the papers of the surrounding towns. It was opening day.

  Four members of the kumpania would work as managers and cashiers, and Ana had also hired a local woman to assist with inventory as well as a handful of local part-timers to stock shelves and man the registers. As she flipped the sign to Open for the first time, she opened the door as well. It wasn't wise to let the air conditioning run out into the July heat, but Ana knew that passers-by who were looking for respite from the oppressive humidity would be drawn to the cool air they felt as they strolled by the open door.

  “What's this?” Kim asked; Kennick stood just behind her, bemused by her boundless curiosity. She was holding a red jar he knew all too well, and that made him smile even wider.