Wild Child: A Novel

by Molly O'Keefe

  “No, actually. I’m looking for you.” He held out the white grease-stained bag and the paper coffee cup from Cora’s. “Here.”

  “Ooooh, coffee and …” She opened the bag. “Fritters? To what do I owe this honor? Oh, right.” She threw the towel over her shoulder and dug into her pocket. “The keys for the factory. I put them in my pocket and meant to run them by City Hall today.”

  Jackson pocketed the keys. “Thanks, but I’m not actually here for the keys.”

  Her brown eyes flared wide, and then she closed them. “Shit,” she whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  It was weird hearing Shelby swear, like catching your parent farting.

  “Dean told you?” she asked.

  He blinked. “Told me what?”

  “About us … about the side of the road.”

  All the apprehension he’d had about asking Shelby to take Monica on as a teacher got pushed aside as he remembered with very sharp clarity Shelby dropping her purse at the restaurant, and the way she and Dean looked at each other as if stunned to see the other—again.

  Jackson folded his arms across his chest. “He didn’t say anything.”

  “Oh …” It took her a second, and Jackson had to give her points for trying, but she smiled and managed to wave aside the whole conversation as if it were nothing. “Great, then. What do you need?”

  “I need you to tell me what happened on the side of the road with Dean.”

  “Jackson—”

  “He’s the CEO of Maybream, Shelby. If something happened that you think I should know about—”

  “No one needs to know about it,” she said, her cheeks red, her neck blotchy. “It was just … a thing.”

  “A thing?” Shelby wasn’t the kind of person who had “things.” And he couldn’t quite believe that she meant thing in the way that the rest of the world meant thing. Like, perhaps to her, she and Dean did her taxes on the side of the road and that was the “thing.” While … while he was imagining something totally different.

  “Yes.” She stood straight, aiming for prim, which usually came pretty naturally to her, but with the blushing it looked like a lie. “A thing.”

  “Like … a sexual thing?” He managed to say it with a straight face but she sensed his shock anyway, and he could tell by the way her shoulders fell that he’d embarrassed her. And that wasn’t his intention.

  “Shelb—” He reached for her, but she shifted away from the contact.

  “I didn’t know who he was at the time,” she said with stiff and painful forthrightness. “And I’ve made it clear that nothing else will happen between us.”

  “What happened?” he cried.

  “It’s none of your business, Jackson.” Her cool eyes shamed him and he held up his hands.

  “You’re right. But … are you okay?”

  “Except for this conversation, yes. I’m fine. Now, why are you here?” She put down the white bag and took the plastic lid off the coffee before taking a sip.

  While part of him was incredibly grateful to get out of this conversation, the other part of him was dying to press her for more bizarre details. But he knew it would only embarrass her further, and he didn’t want that.

  “I need to ask you a favor,” he said. “For the America Today thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re probably going to want to get a few more details before you agree.”

  “I know how important this is, Jackson. And I know the pressure you’re under. If there’s something I can do to help, I’m happy to.”

  He sighed. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard Monica Appleby is in town.”

  “That … reality TV woman?”

  “No. That’s her mother. Well, I guess it’s her, too. Monica is the writer. That book, Wild Child?”

  Shelby’s screwed-up nose gave a stunning literary critique of the book. “So why’s she in town?”

  “She’s writing a book about the night her mother killed her father.”

  Shelby shuddered and Jackson wasn’t sure which she found the most distasteful, the murder, the book about it, or Monica.

  “So, what does she have to do with me?”

  Jackson took a deep breath. “Just for this week, while the camera crew is in town, I’m wondering … hoping, actually … that you could find a way to incorporate her into the art camps.”

  “As what?”

  “As a teacher.”

  Shelby was blank-faced for a whole ten seconds before she started laughing. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “This … you … my camps have a reputation, Jackson. And they are successful because of that reputation. My faculty are professionals, they are respected and revered. They are not former reality TV stars and groupies with questionable backgrounds and morals! Oh my God, what parent is going to send their kid here if she’s on faculty?”

  “Shelby,” he snapped. “You’re not being fair.”

  “Me?” she asked. “That’s what the world thinks of her.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, but he wasn’t going to split hairs with Shelby. “Well, the world is wrong.”

  She crossed her arms, mutinous. Shelby would die if she knew that she looked exactly like her mother when she did that.

  “I don’t have a writing curriculum.”

  “I’m sure you can make one up.”

  “Right. Because that’s so easy?”

  “No. Of course not … but maybe she’ll have ideas.”

  “Does she have experience teaching?”

  Somehow Jackson doubted it, but that didn’t stop him from lying. “Of course. She’s a professional.”

  “Jackson, you sure she should be working with kids?”

  “Come on, Shelby. What’s she going to do? You’ll be like ten feet away the entire time.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll see if I can make it work.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.”

  He left without saying another word, stunned by the judgment in his old friend. Stunned by the ugliness of what the world thought of Monica.

  The humidity and sunlight were intense, and he put on his sunglasses as he headed back into town, making another quick stop at Cora’s before heading to the Peabody.

  One down, one to go. And if he thought Shelby was difficult to convince, Monica was going to be impossible.

  Chapter 10

  The pounding on the door startled Monica so much she jumped, smearing red toenail polish across her big toe.

  “Great,” she muttered, wiping it off with a piece of toilet paper.

  Again with the pounding. “Hold on a second!” she cried, pushing herself off the bed and hobbling across the floor, her feet flexed so her toenails didn’t touch anything.

  She yanked open the door only to find Jackson on the other side, holding a white bag and a cup of coffee.

  “Jeez, Jackson, where’s the fire?”

  “I thought you might like some coffee. And one of Cora’s muffins. Peach today, her best. She was out of fritters.”

  Men bearing gifts? Immediately she was suspicious.

  “Why are you smiling like a salesman?” She grabbed the coffee. Salesman or not, she’d take the coffee.

  “Can I come in?” His scales weren’t balanced today; he was more careful today than charming. More man than boy. Interesting. Letting him in would no doubt be a terrible mistake. But she had always been very good at those.

  “Give me the muffin,” she said and stepped aside so he could come in.

  Reba, sleeping on the edge of the bed, woke up when Jackson walked past, as if sensing someone new to show off for, and she leapt to her feet, shaking herself awake. Jackson patted the dog’s head and then gave her a good scratch under her ridiculous collar. Reba leaned into his big hand, sighing and wiggling.

  Do not, she told herself, be jealous of a dog.

  “It’s really tidy in here,” he said, looking around.

  “I have some experience liv
ing in hotels,” she said. “It’s a slippery slope from untidy to disaster zone.”

  “You live in hotels?”

  “It’s stranger to have a home with a name that your family has lived in since before the Civil War.”

  Jackson laughed in his throat. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “What are you doing here, Jackson?”

  He closed his eyes for a second and tidal waves of doubt rolled off him, as if all his dams and locks had been overrun and he could no longer hold back what he kept hidden from the world.

  Oh no, she thought. Don’t show me this stuff.

  It made her want to hug him. Tell him that whatever was putting those lines of stress between his eyes, it would be okay.

  “I have to … I have to ask a favor.”

  “A favor? This should be good.” She sat down on the edge of her bed again and took a bracing sip of her coffee before she set it down and grabbed her toenail polish. What this town needed was a decent manicure/pedicure spot.

  She was getting ready to go speak to Ed Baxter this afternoon, and having her toenails done felt like a crucial part of her armor. As she’d worked on the questions she had for Ed, it became increasingly clear that she was going to need armor for the interview. Her emotional distance seemed to shrink with every question she’d written down.

  Did JJ—my father—seem scared? Did he seem to know what was happening?

  The question had stopped her in her tracks. Sent her spinning.

  She didn’t doubt that she could do this—she’d done harder things. But she was keenly aware that asking these questions was going to cost her.

  Jackson cleared his throat and she gladly refocused on him. “I need you to teach, or at least pretend to teach, at a community art camp.”

  “Art camp?”

  “It’s quite cool, actually. Shelby Monroe teaches these camps in the summer—”

  “Why?” Monica put her foot down on the floor, the bottle of nail polish clenched in her hand.

  “Why does she teach? I suppose it’s a calling …”

  “Why do you want me to teach?”

  He opened his mouth. Closed it. Glanced out the window and then back at her. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. “For the show.”

  Monica howled. “Oh, that’s good, Jackson—”

  “I’m not joking. I’m … I’m very serious.”

  She shook her head, unable to connect the dots. “Spell it out for me, Jackson, because yesterday, yesterday you didn’t even want me speaking to Dean.”

  “Apparently, Bishop, as it stands, isn’t enough to beat this town in Alaska.”

  “So I’m going to tip the scales?”

  “You teaching at the camps will tip the scales, or at least, that’s what the producer seemed to think.”

  He was so pained, standing there, backlit by the sun coming in through the sheer curtains. His hands were in fists beside his khaki pants. He wore a white shirt and a red tie, something she’d never seen him in before. It didn’t quite make him look mayoral. He looked like a good southern boy on his way to church.

  “You’ll be lying?”

  “The ends justify the means, right? I mean, if we win, no one will care. I doubt people will care anyway.”

  “This Shelby woman probably cares.”

  “She’s agreed.” The way he said it implied it wasn’t easy, implied a whole lot of not really agreeing. For some reason, she immediately cast Shelby as a lonely old woman with a cat problem.

  She laughed, feeling small, a commodity. A chip moved around on a board. “No.”

  “No?” he gasped.

  “That’s what I said.” She lifted her heel up onto the edge of the bed again and unscrewed the top of the nail polish.

  “I need you, Monica,” he said.

  That was no way to win her over—she wasn’t big on being needed.

  “Why?” she asked, stroking red polish across her big toenail, using her pinky to clear the runoff. “It’s a show. A contest, Jackson. Probably—considering the way they’re talking about this town in Alaska—rigged.”

  Jackson hauled her desk chair over to the corner of the bed and sat, his legs, his hands, his body so close to hers that she dropped her foot in surprise and found herself staring at him.

  “When I took office this town was literally bankrupt. We couldn’t pay the pensions of retired employees. Garbagemen, policemen, firefighters, people who’d worked for this town in good faith their entire lives and we couldn’t pay them. That factory closed and one-third of the population moved away. The housing bubble burst and people were just abandoning their houses, just walking away rather than selling them. It was like the Depression around here.”

  Monica felt the hair on her neck stand up, something that always happened when she sensed people flirting with the edges of their control. It was a defense mechanism, a survival instinct, a warning of danger. And usually when all the hair on her neck stood up, she cleared out. She stayed far away from any emotional storm that wasn’t her own.

  But right now, looking at the pain in Jackson’s face, she couldn’t have walked away if she tried.

  “I did what I could, robbing Peter to pay Paul, but there’s nothing left. The city is out of money and if something doesn’t happen fast, we’re done. Bankrupt, and I will have failed everyone. Everyone.”

  “It’s not you, Jackson. It’s not your fault, or your responsibility to fix it.”

  “The hell it’s not, Monica. Whose else is it? Who else is standing here?”

  She could tell by the rock-hard way he held his body that she wasn’t going to convince him. He’d spent years telling himself this was his job.

  “So what’s the show going to do? If you win it?”

  “Maybream opens the factory. Moves its headquarters here. We’re talking about at least a hundred jobs. The city—and I’m not exaggerating—will be saved. And I will do anything to see that happen, Monica. Anything. I will lie, beg—”

  The nail polish fell to the floor and before she could stop herself, before she even realized what she was doing, she had his face, that strong jaw, those cheekbones, in her hands. His eyes, liquid and blue and beautiful, met hers.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?” He gripped his hands over hers. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. But I’m doing it my way, Jackson. I’m not causing a scene and I’m not feeding the gossip mill and I am definitely not teaching little kids. Or kids at all, really. It’s adults or nothing.”

  “Good. Yes. No problem.”

  She eyed him skeptically, pretty sure he was making promises he had no way of keeping. “And if this Shelby woman so much as looks at me funny, I’ll snatch her bald.”

  Laughter, deep and resonant, thundered out of his throat. “Deal. Thank you, Monica. Thank you.” He pulled her into his arms and perhaps she helped, perhaps she jumped when he pulled, but she ended up in his lap in the chair, their bodies flush. Their hearts pounding against each other.

  Slowly, carefully, as if there were trip wires all over them and any sudden movements would blow them up, he leaned back.

  “Are you always this good?” she asked. And as if she’d pulled one of those wires, his eyes went dark. And she knew what was coming; she knew this kiss in this hotel room wouldn’t be stopped by the police chief or Jackson or her. Despite knowing there was a good chance it would end badly—for both of them—this kiss was going to happen.

  It was fast, the kiss. Zero to sixty in no time. They went from lips, to careful breaths, to teeth and tongues and a deep, sawing need. A breaking pulse that hammered between them.

  Want. Want. Want.

  More and yes and there and now.

  Her heart pounded with excitement. The long, slow, delicious build started in her body, in her core, under her skin. Her body, untouched by anyone else for so long, woke up to pleasure, but her brain—always her reluctant brain—struggled to keep up. It kept pointing out the trapdoors, the pi
tfalls and dangers.

  He stood with her weight in his arms like it was nothing, and her panties were wet in a heartbeat. And while he crawled over the end of the bed she clung to him, her lips fused to his, her tongue memorizing the taste of him. Coffee and peaches and toothpaste. Honest tastes, real and good flavors.

  Don’t trust this, she thought, don’t get carried away.

  He broke the kiss, burying his face in her neck, where his breath feathered across soft and hidden places that carried the sensation all over her body, making connections in her hands and breasts and between her legs and on the bottoms of her feet.

  It’s not real, you know that; it’s desire and it fades. It vanishes.

  His hand slid from her waist to just under her breast, pausing as if to ask for permission. The gentleman. And she was suddenly furious with herself, furious with her apprehensions, all the rules that kept her alone and lonely because she was so scared of who she’d been.

  This feels so good and I am not that girl, she told herself, and she arched into his hand. Her nipple pebbled and his thumb found it, hard and waiting. Smart man, he wasted no time, rolling it between his fingers. His other hand burrowed under her tee shirt, and the touch of his fingers against the skin of her waist was fiery and ticklish all at the same time.

  She tried to pull his tie off and it got stuck, making both of them laugh as he made a strangling sound.

  “Hold on,” he breathed. No, she thought. No pausing. Pausing let in the cool air of doubt. And there was enough of it already, swirling around her.

  She pushed him away slightly, just enough so she could wiggle her arms and pull off her Green Day tee shirt. He forgot his own shirt, lost in the sight of her breasts in the red lace of her least favorite bra.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

  “You’re talking too much,” she said, and pulled him back down to kiss him.

  He came willingly, as she’d known he would. Those lips of his, as she suspected, were not nearly as stern as they’d initially seemed. They were full and sweet and they sipped at her lips, sucked at her tongue—ate at her as if he couldn’t get enough. As if she was all he needed.

  And that was really fucking sexy.