Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3)

by Judith Arnold

  Something weird. Something about the way they’d found each other during that song. Almost as if her gaze had been dancing with his. Almost as if their hearts had been synchronized, beating in time with the music.

  A submarine roll overflowing with lobster salad hadn’t been enough to cure him of his fixation.

  Maybe the woman was a witch, a sorceress, like one of the Haitian immigrants down in the Keys who practiced Voodoo or Santeria or some other mystical cult religion. Or maybe the bartender was the sorceress. Maybe she’d spiked his drink with a crazy-making drug. Wasn’t he near Salem, Massachusetts, the witch capital of North America?

  He laughed. He’d never had the world’s greatest imagination, but after a long solo sail, who knew where these ideas were coming from? He ought to go back to the boat and get some sleep. Tomorrow he’d wake up normal, and he’d go and rent a bike.

  He strolled back to Atlantic Avenue, figuring he was least likely to miss the turn-off to the marina if he stuck close to the ocean. The tide was low, the water calm. Hardly a breeze. He was lucky he’d sailed into port earlier, when a low but steady wind could power him in to the slip. The sky above the ocean was a deep blue, with thin purple clouds rippling through it like veins in marble.

  Yeah, he definitely needed a bike, or a car. His legs were feeling sluggish. The ground was too unyielding beneath them. His feet would hit the pavement and stop, no give beneath them, no play. His knees weren’t used to the lack of motion. If he couldn’t spend the night in the arms of the wild-thing woman, he needed to spend it cushioned by the ocean. The limbo of sailing—a world where the earth kept shifting, the wind ruled, and he had only himself for company—seemed a lot more reliable than the world of bars and booze and old jukeboxes.

  After a long half-hour, he spotted the turn-off to the North Cove Marina. A narrow asphalt lane sloped down to the east, spreading into the parking lot, which was mostly empty at this time of night. At the base of the parking lot was the building with the anchor painted onto it, beyond that a grid of docks extending out into the water. Just knowing he was only minutes away from the Freedom made him pick up speed. If he got to the boat, he could rid himself of visions of the woman and memories of the song. He could be himself again.

  He almost didn’t notice the pale gray lettering painted onto the darker gray sides of two large sedans parked nearest the dock where the Freedom was moored: Brogan’s Point Police.

  He slowed his pace slightly, wondering what was up. Coast Guard vehicles at a marina were rarely a good sign, but police cars?

  He ventured past the main building and started down the ridged ramp to the Freedom’s dock. And halted.

  Wayne MacArthur’s boat was where he’d left it, but it was surrounded by yellow police tape. Three men stood on the slip, which rocked gently beneath them. Even in silhouette, Ty could tell that two of them were uniformed officers and the third was in street clothes. In the stillness of the evening, their voices drifted across the water in an indecipherable murmur, accented by the metallic clanging of ropes and clamps against masts.

  Why were the police at Wayne’s boat? Why was the boat surrounded by “Do Not Cross” tape? What the fuck?

  Ty had two choices: continue down to the slip and find out what was going on, or make a U-turn head back to town.

  If he were a moral, upstanding grade-A citizen, he’d go down to the slip.

  But he was Ty Cronin. A carpenter. A marina rat. A guy who had thwarted death. A guy who didn’t trust authority figures. A guy who preferred motorcycles to cars, and sailboats to cruise ships. A guy who’d just gotten a cash influx of twenty thousand bucks into his bank account. A guy who trusted his instincts.

  His instincts told him to U-turn and walk away. Actually, they told him to run away, but that would draw unwanted attention. So he U-turned and walked.

  Chapter Three

  At the edge of the parking lot, he paused and gazed back at the dock. They were still there, two cops and the third man who, despite his lack of a uniform, looked even more formidable. And that bright yellow tape, marking the boat, cordoning it off.

  Ty had a really bad feeling about this.

  His stuff was on the boat: clothing, laptop, toothbrush. Fuck.

  He’d worry about his gear later. Right now, he needed a place to sleep. Exhaustion tugged at him like a riptide, threatening to drag him under. This day had been too long. Sailing. Docking. Drinking. The bar, the song, the woman. And now the police. Thoughts of voodoo and Salem witches pinballed inside his skull.

  All right. He’d get some sleep. In the morning, maybe things would make sense. Even better, he might wake up and discover that the world was once again the familiar place he knew, and he’d only just dreamed all this strange shit.

  He continued through the parking lot to the road, tapping his phone, searching for hotels and motels. A couple of places were located within a five-mile radius of Brogan’s Point, but they were all down on Route 1, where, according to the waitress at the bar, traffic was a bitch. And Route 1 was too damned far to walk.

  The only hotel less than a mile away was a place called the Ocean Bluff Inn. It was just up Atlantic Avenue a ways. Probably cost an arm and a leg, but he could afford it. His bank account had just increased by twenty thousand dollars.

  He hoped he could buy a toothbrush at the Ocean Bluff Inn.

  Following the map on his phone, he hiked in the direction of inn and tried to ignore the noise in his head. Cops. Wild Thing. The stacked woman trying to pick him up. The slender woman who’d fled from him—no, not from him. From the bar. From her friend. From the song.

  The Freedom gift-wrapped in a police-tape ribbon. Had someone boarded the boat while he was gone, and gotten injured? Or tried to steal something? They were welcome to his clothes, but his laptop… He’d locked it beneath the bench in the cabin. He hoped it was safe.

  Damn it, damn it, damn it.

  The entrance to the inn loomed ahead, screaming expensive. A picturesque gravel driveway bordered in white stones curved up from the road. Granite pillars stood on either side of it, illuminated with decorative lamps. Well groomed plantings flourished at the bases of the pillars. An elegant white sign read, “Ocean Bluff Inn.”

  More than expensive, the place looked like a destination, not a motel you’d stay at for a night while passing through town but a resort where you’d book a room for a week. He hoped the place wasn’t full. If it was, hell. He’d go make a bed for himself next to the ocean on the sand. And probably wind up arrested by those cops. Brogan’s Point seemed like the sort of town that would have ordinances against sleeping on the beach.

  He trudged up the driveway, hoping this inn had an available room that wouldn’t cost a major chunk of the money Wayne MacArthur had wired to Ty’s PayPal account. After about fifty yards of pretty drive and prettier landscaping, he reached a parking area surfaced in loose gravel and crushed shells. No more than a dozen cars were parked there. He might get lucky.

  His gaze journeyed from the lot to the building beside it—a grand four-story structure of white siding, an angular roof, and wide windows framed in black shutters. The building extended a good seventy feet from side to side and then spread back beyond the parking area. A broad porch with a white railing abutted the entire front of the building. Wooden Adirondack chairs and rockers lined the porch. One was occupied.

  By the slender woman with the dark hair and the darker eyes. The woman who’d gazed at him across the tavern and then run away.

  Wild Thing.

  She’d changed her clothes since he last saw her. Seated in an oversized Adirondack chair, she wore jeans, some sort of skimpy top and a hoodie over it, zipped partway up. Her bare feet were propped on the edge of the seat, her chin resting on her knees, her arms wrapped around her shins. Even in the dim amber light from the fixtures on either side of the double-width front door, he could tell that her toenails were painted red.

  He felt a stirring in his groin. Totally inappropriate. Lo
ts of women painted their toenails, and he’d wager a substantial proportion of them chose red polish.

  But this woman… There was some sort of weird vibe between him and her. He had no idea what it was. But given how strange the evening had become, he figured there was no point in questioning it.

  “You staying here?” he asked.

  “I live here.” Her voice was smooth and darkly sweet, like the bourbon he’d drunk earlier.

  He was so busy contemplating its kick, her words almost didn’t register on him. “You live here?”

  She nodded, not an easy maneuver with her chin resting on her knees.

  He had no idea what that meant, so he plowed ahead. “I need a room for the night. Do they have any vacancies?”

  She regarded him silently. A breeze rustled through the bushes surrounding the porch and ruffled her hair. “I know where you can stay,” she finally said. “Follow me.”

  Thoughts of the boat, the cops, every footstep and nautical mile, every drink and word and song that had carried him to this place, this moment, this woman… It all evaporated from his brain. She’d told him to follow her.

  So that was what he did.

  ***

  She was crazy. Absolutely. Certifiably.

  Or maybe she was just…wild.

  She’d thought leaving the Faulk Street Tavern might have been enough to shake off the spell that song had cast upon her, but it hadn’t. She’d returned to her tiny apartment at the back of the inn’s main building, changed from her work apparel into comfortable clothing that was as unsexy as possible, and tried to think about what she should eat despite having no appetite whatsoever. She wasn’t in the mood to cook anything, but if she moseyed over to the inn’s dining room, Jerry and the rest of the kitchen staff would either take offense or summon a doctor if she didn’t consume a proper meal.

  She’d opened a can of tomato soup, heated it in the microwave in her apartment’s closet-size kitchen, and forced it down, thinking about how much more delicious Jerry’s lobster bisque would taste—and how that sweet, subtle flavor would have been wasted on her if she’d gone to the dining room and asked for a bowl of it.

  She’d tried watching television. Had TV shows always been this stupid? Surely the news was worth watching…. No, it wasn’t. If watching meant she’d have to sit still, staring at the screen while a babble of voices and images of violence and people behaving badly assaulted her senses, she would not watch the news. Or anything else.

  Nor would she review the inn’s maintenance budget. Once Memorial Day arrived, the place would be full—bookings had been strong this year. For the past few weeks, the maintenance crew had been working from dawn to dusk, getting the place spruced up before the summer season began. Painting. Landscaping. Grooming the parking lots and the tennis court. Cleaning and filling the swimming pool. Moving all the pool patio furniture outdoors. Clearing the path down to the beach. The expenditures were high; most of the crew had put in overtime nearly every day. She needed to review the numbers.

  But when she turned on her laptop and opened the spread sheets, all she saw was a jumble. The data awaited her attention, but the Excel pages couldn’t pierce the fog that swaddled her brain. Random, meaningless numbers filled the monitor.

  Slamming her laptop shut, she’d tried to conjure Jimmy’s image in her mind. But she couldn’t. She’d been with him, on and off, for ten years, yet she couldn’t even picture him. Or remember how he sounded when he talked, when he laughed. Or how he smelled, how he felt. He was gone, deleted from her memory.

  All she could think of was the man on the bar stool, with his streaky blond hair and his scruffy day-old beard and his torn jeans, and his mesmerizing blue eyes. All she could think of was how absurdly attractive he’d been, like a black hole sucking her in.

  Too restless to remain cooped up in her apartment, she’d gone outside onto the porch. The inn was about half full—decent business for the third week in May—but the evening was cool enough that no one was relaxing on the veranda. She had it all to herself, the freshly scrubbed and painted chairs, the light from the lobby and front parlor spilling through the polished windows, the brighter light glowing through the beveled glass of the lamps that adorned the front entry. Curling up in one of the chairs, she gazed out at the parking lot, the shrubs beyond it, the marsh grass sloping down to the inn’s small private beach. The sky was dark and almost cloudless, sliced by a narrow curve of moon. The cool wind rolling up from the beach smelled rich and salty, the perfume of mermaids.

  And then he appeared, as if by magic, ambling up the driveway and across the lot, planting himself directly in front of her. How had he found her?

  What did it matter? He had found her. Fate had brought him here. Karma. The song from the jukebox at the Faulk Street Tavern.

  If she thought about it, she’d acknowledge that bringing him back to her apartment was an insane idea, possibly dangerous. She didn’t know who he was or what he could do. All she knew was the song, and the night, and the dazzling power of his eyes. Logic was beyond her.

  They walked the length of the veranda, around to the side of the main building and through the back door, which led to offices and a service elevator to the owners’ suite on the top floor, where her parents lived and she’d grown up. She and the man passed several platforms designed for truck deliveries and continued down the back hallway, beyond a few rooms where extra furniture was stored, beyond the room that contained the housekeeping carts and supplies, beyond the room stocked with toilet paper, soap, and miniature bottles of shampoo and moisturizing lotion, to her tiny apartment at the end of the hall.

  She unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped inside. He was right behind her.

  He didn’t speak. Evidently, he saw nothing odd in her having brought him to her cozy efficiency apartment rather than to the front desk, where she could have checked him into one of the empty guest rooms. He almost looked as if he’d expected her to bring him to her own room. His gaze swiftly circled the diminutive living area, which was separated from the sleeping area by a freestanding hinged screen of carved wood. She’d always been tidy; she’d folded her laptop shut once she’d given up on the spread sheets, and left it on the small writing table in one corner. Her soup bowl sat drying in the dish rack beside the sink. The floor lamp next to the love seat—the living area didn’t have enough space for a full-size couch—offered the only light, soft and golden.

  She turned to him, wondering what to say. Should she offer him a drink? Food? An explanation? She could provide the first two items on that list, but not the third.

  He didn’t give her a chance to speak. One long stride brought him close enough to gather her in his arms, and his mouth came down on hers, firm but not hard. Fierce but not forcing.

  In that strange, magical moment, kissing him made far more sense than talking would have. His mouth fit hers so perfectly, his lips persuasive, his tongue stroking deep, taking everything she was willing to give. His hands were large and warm, gliding over her shoulders to her back, pulling her against him.

  She knew this was wrong. Yet her intellect had disconnected, and her heart, her soul, the portion of her brain still functioning told her it was right. For this instant, she would have this man, this virile stranger who had been delivered to her by some inexplicable, mysterious force. Tomorrow she could be sane again, proper and tame. Tonight she would be a wild thing.

  She kissed him back. Kissed him hungrily. Kissed him wildly. Her hands slid across his chest, testing the sturdy muscles beneath the cotton knit of his shirt. She let him slide her hoodie down her arms and off, then wedge his hands under her camisole, exploring the curve of her back, the ridge of her spine, her shoulder blades. His touch made her hips grow heavy and her thighs clench. Oh, God, she wanted him, wanted him wildly.

  She pulled at his shirt. He freed his hands from beneath her camisole to yank the shirt over his head and off. She had barely a minute to admire his rugged shoulders and sleekly contoured ch
est before he had his hands back on her, lifting her camisole over her head and tossing it aside.

  They kissed again, this time touching skin as they did so. He cupped her breasts, caressed them, stroked his thumbs over her nipples until they burned with sensation. She wanted to climb onto him, rub against him, make him relieve the deep, delicious ache he’d ignited inside her. She wanted everything, now.

  She broke from him, caressing the length of his warm, sun-bronzed arm until she reached his hand, then slid her fingers through his and ushered him around the screen to her bed. Before she could drop onto it, he caught her by the waistband of her pants and eased them down over her bottom, drawing her panties down with them. She attacked the fly of his jeans, and as soon as he had her pants removed, he dispensed with his own.

  They tumbled onto the soft, down-filled duvet covering her bed. Her head sank into the pillows as he rose above her, his warmth blanketing her. He kissed her cheeks, her chin, her throat. He wedged one leg between hers and pressed his thigh against her crotch. He stroked her waist, her belly, her breasts. He was so big, his skin sun-darkened, his hair sun-bleached. A thin trail of tawny hair tapered from his belly downward, expanding into a nest of curls that framed his erection, displaying it as if it were a gift. She ran her index finger from its base to its tip and he groaned.

  Bowing, he nuzzled the skin between her breasts, then kissed each one, licked, sucked, made her sigh as the tension inside her increased. Even though she’d been with Jimmy forever, she’d always kept a stash of condoms in her night table for those occasions when they’d broken up. She’d never used them, but she’d left them in the bedside drawer, just in case someone came along to take Jimmy’s place.