by Toni Blake
One Reckless Summer
Toni Blake
This book is dedicated to the teachers
who most encouraged me to pursue
my dream of being a novelist:
Sandra Lillard Adams,
the late Dolly West,
and Dr. Peter Schiff.
Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Toni Blake
Copyright
About the Publisher
* * *
Prologue
Meow, pussycat.”
Jenny lay sleeping on a lounge chair in the sun when a warm male voice permeated her senses, making her feel hot and melty inside. Was she dreaming? It was the kind of voice that wrapped around her like a blanket and made her want to snuggle down into it, even on a sweltering summer day.
“Hey, wake up—rise and shine.”
Wait a minute. Different voice this time. More abrasive—and kind of menacing. Jenny flinched fully awake now, opening her eyes.
At the end of the small dock floated an old wooden rowboat with three guys inside, all of them ogling her in her new bikini. Oh God. Her stomach shriveled—they were older, rough-looking. Where on earth had they come from?
Then she recognized two of them—the Brody boys from across the lake. She’d just never seen them this close-up before.
She thought of replying, but how on earth did someone respond to “Meow, pussycat”? Her cat, Snowball, currently meandered across the dock, a few feet away, and in her sleepy haze, Jenny honestly wasn’t sure if the greeting had been for her or for Snowy.
“Cat got your tongue?” This came from Wayne Brody, the older of the brothers—he had to be at least twenty-one—and it turned out the abrasive voice belonged to him. And apparently the “Meow” had been for her, even if he hadn’t been the one to say it.
“What do you want?” she finally managed. She tried to sound mean, scary. But that was ridiculous, she realized as quickly as she spoke—how scary could a sixteen-year-old girl in a bikini be? Vulnerable was more like it. Yet attempting to sound mean was her only defense at the moment.
“What’s your name?” asked Mick Brody, and she realized he’d been the one to say, “Meow.” Now his voice poured over her, deep and enveloping, like a guy older than nineteen. But she still guessed that to be his age—he’d been a senior when she was a freshman. A senior who skipped class and got caught drinking and “raised every kind of hell there is to raise,” according to her father. Mick Brody held a beer can in his hand right now, and all three boys were smoking cigarettes.
She just sat there. She didn’t want to tell them her name, or let herself be pulled into conversation at all—somehow that would make her even more vulnerable. But her silence also made it seem like she was simply too frightened to talk. Her heart beat too hard.
“Fine,” Mick Brody said. “Guess I’ll just have to call you pussycat then.”
God, why did that make her pulse skitter? The word should have sounded dirty—a word you would see in pink neon outside a sleazy strip club or something—but instead it seemed to caress her skin. Or maybe that had to do with the way Mick Brody was looking at her right now. Everything about him made her feel threatened, yet at the same time his blue eyes shone on her like two shimmering stars in the night sky, captivating her. Yeesh.
Suddenly, she rethought the skimpiness of the bathing suit. She’d been comfortable in it with her friends, even with the guys in the group, when she’d worn it the other day—but she wasn’t comfortable now. Now she felt practically naked, like Mick Brody could see all of her.
Just then, Snowball padded to the end of the dock, where the boat had pulled up.
“Want something to drink, cat?” asked the third boy, who Jenny now recognized as Lucky Romo, a long-haired guy who frequently sped through town in his souped-up car. She happened to know her father had given him a ticket just last week.
Lucky leaned over to spill a puddle of foamy beer out onto the wood in front of the cat, and as Snowball bent to taste it, fresh anger surged through Jenny, pushing her to her feet to barrel toward the edge of the dock. “Leave my cat alone! Get out of here!”
The white cat darted away, clearly much more frightened of Jenny at the moment than of anyone else—while the boys in the rowboat laughed. Rage burned through her, and she wondered if they could see her face turning red beneath the color she’d acquired from the sun. She also wondered if her nipples showed through her bikini because of the weird way Mick Brody affected her. She crossed her arms, trying to cover her breasts, but instead only succeeded in heaving them higher. Ugh.
And Mick Brody continued to pin her in place with his dark, wicked grin. “Come a little closer, pussycat. Wanna go for a ride?”
Despite herself, she heard the sexual implication in the question, and even as it repulsed her, she couldn’t deny that it also aroused her. Oh God.
She took a deep breath, tried to act a little more cool than she’d managed so far, and rolled her eyes. “Um, no thanks.” Her tone implied that the very suggestion was ludicrous.
“Aw, come on, honey, we don’t bite,” Wayne Brody chimed in.
“Unless you want us to,” Mick added with raised eyebrows.
Dear God—why did that make her feel so warm in her bikini bottoms? He was…dangerous. A guy you stayed away from. It was one thing to be attracted to normal boys that way—Adam Becker from school, Jimmy Raines who worked up at the Whippy Dip. But this boy? Something must be wrong with her. “You heard me,” she said. “Go away.”
“Or what?” Lucky Romo replied. “You gonna sic your big bad daddy the cop on us?” All three boys broke up with still more laughter as if it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.
Jenny let out an irritated breath. “Fine. You won’t go away? Then I will.”
After all, she was pretty sure they were drunk. And from what she could tell, none of her neighbors along the lake were outside—she was alone here. Her father had always taught her: Get out of a potentially bad situation before it has the chance to escalate; it was better to be safe than sorry.
So she grabbed up her towel and swim bag, along with her Diet Coke, slipped on her flip-flops, and started away from the dock.
“Nice ass,” Mick Brody called, making her glad they couldn’t see her face anymore—since it was surely beet red after that. And she continued to feel the three boys’ stares on her rear all the way across the narrow road lining the lake and up the front walk to her house.
But especially Mick Brody’s.
* * *
She walks in beauty, like the night;
Of cloudless climes and starry skies.
Lord Byron
* * *
One
Fifteen years later
As dusk fell over Blue Valley Lake, creating texture and shadow in the air, Jenny Tolliver pushed the old green canoe from the grassy bank down into the water. Still in the summer skirt and cotton blouse she’d worn to Mrs. Kinman’s mah-jongg party, the only concessions she’d made for the lake excursion were trading in her slingback sandals for a pair of canvas tennis shoes and zipping her telescope and other equipment into a large waterproof bag.
As she climbed carefully into the cano
e, using the dock for balance, it felt like stepping back in time. She hadn’t crossed this lake in this canoe since she’d been eighteen years old, and back then she’d had Sue Ann for a companion. And Sue Ann probably would have left her mom’s party to come with her tonight if she’d asked, but her best friend had different obligations in life now—she had a husband and daughter to go home to.
Besides, Jenny had wanted to be alone. She’d wanted to…escape.
Good God—you’ve only been back in Destiny two short days and already you need to escape? Not a good sign.
But when people had said one too many nice things about her at the party, it had pushed her over the edge. Not that it made much sense to get upset over people being kind to her, but nothing about her life made sense lately.
When Rose Marie Keckley had seen the lemon bars Jenny had whipped up for the occasion, she’d said, “That was so nice of you, Jenny.” And when Jenny had refilled some iced tea glasses to keep Mrs. Kinman from getting up after just sitting down, LeeAnn Turner had said, “You’re so sweet.” Then Lettie Gale had added, “You’re so good, Jenny,” simply because she’d helped old Mrs. Lampton up from her chair. And that was it, the final straw—she’d had to get out of there.
Now the words echoed in her head, taunting her. You’re so good. You’re so good. Well, she was sick and tired of being good.
So what was she doing about it?
Canoeing across the lake.
Hardly a bold act of rebellion against society.
But at least it had gotten her away from the party and all those people she’d grown up with who thought she was so damn good. And now it was getting her away from her old family cottage just across the road, another place she wasn’t quite ready to go back to—at least not yet.
So despite knowing that paddling across a quiet lake as the sun set behind the trees wouldn’t take her any farther away from her problems than coming home to Destiny had, she pushed off from the dock anyway, dipping the oar in the water. And that old saying came back to her: Wherever you go, there you are. Meaning there really was no escape. Swell.
Then she knit her eyebrows. Stop it. This isn’t you. You’re the girl whose glass is always half-full, the girl who always has a smile for everyone she meets. Where’s your smile?
Glumly, she answered herself. Maybe I left it in Terrence’s classroom with the shattered heads of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The expensive ceramic ones she’d given him for their first anniversary. The same ones she’d sent crashing to the floor when she’d found him lip-locked with Kelsey, the twenty-one-year-old student teacher who’d been working in Jenny’s science classes all semester long.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” he’d said when she’d walked into the schoolroom late that March afternoon.
She’d just stared at him in disbelief. “Seriously?” she’d asked. “That’s seriously the route you want to go here?”
“We should talk someplace private, Jenny. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“Then maybe you should have, say, locked the door.” That’s when George had hit the floor. She didn’t exactly remember making the decision to pick up the bust and throw it—it had just happened, and pieces had flown everywhere.
“Jenny, you need to calm down,” he’d insisted, his eyes all aghast—like she was the one doing something reprehensible here.
“Let me get this straight. I walk into my husband’s classroom to bring him a piece of the vice principal’s birthday cake, and I find him making out with my student teacher, and he thinks I should be calm? Well, how’s this for calm?” That’s when Abe had bitten the dust, as well, crashing down to explode into a thousand shards.
It was the most uncharacteristic thing “good Jenny” had ever done. But cheating on her was the most out-of-character move Terrence had ever made, too. And it was that night at home, when the blind rage had passed, settling into a good old-fashioned gnawing ache, that she’d asked him the question, “Why? Just tell me why,” and Terrence had dealt the lowest blow of all. He’d told her she was the twenty-first century June Cleaver.
June Cleaver! Of all the cultural icons in all the world, he’d had to compare her to June Cleaver? Not that she had anything against June, but…she didn’t want to be her.
And it had grown even worse when he’d gotten down to the real heart of the matter. “It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s just that you’re too sweet to…well, to have the kind of sex I want. The kind I’ve been craving for years.”
It had been like a punch in the gut. “The kind you have with Kelsey, you mean.”
He’d looked down at the living room carpet they’d picked out together last year. “Well, yeah.”
Another punch. Since they hadn’t technically established, up to that point, that he was indeed having sex with Kelsey.
“You’re just…so good, Jenny,” he’d said, his voice pained. “Too good.” Ugh.
She didn’t bother reminding him that not once in all their years together had he let her know he desired anything different. And that he was the only guy she’d ever had sex with, so that everything she knew she’d learned from him. “So what is it you want exactly?” she’d snapped instead. “Whips and chains? Stripper poles in the bedroom? What?”
And just like earlier, he’d had the nerve to look at her like she was the crazy, unreasonable one. “It’s not about…props,” he’d said. “It’s about…heat. Passion.”
Since then, Sue Ann had taken to calling him a “rat bastard,” and what the term lacked in originality, Jenny felt it made up for in accuracy. Sue Ann also liked referring to Kelsey as “the chippy” and “the tart,” and in some odd, weak way, that helped ease a little of Jenny’s grief, too.
Although as she got far enough out into the lake to truly start feeling isolated, she suffered a blip of emotion—one that continued to hit her often. It was a fraction of a second when she remembered what life had felt like back when it was normal, back when she’d felt safe, happy, content.
Her life with Terrence had been simple but good—she wasn’t a woman who asked for the moon, even if she loved watching it through her telescope. They’d been together since college; they’d taught in the same middle school. He specialized in history, she in science. She’d once had aspirations of becoming an astronomer, working at NASA or doing research at a university, but Terrence had urged her to settle for teaching, and she’d discovered that when you’re young and in love, it was shockingly easy to agree to anything—even giving up your dream.
And so they’d taught. And they’d had dinner parties. They’d been active in the community. They’d never had children—she’d just never gotten pregnant—but they loved the kids in their classes, and they were the kind of stable, happy couple people envied. Or they had been. Before the tart.
Losing her marriage had been devastating. But the part that still seemed to hang over her now, every day, every hour, was that Terrence had betrayed her because he thought she was too sweet, too nice. The dreaded Catch–22: He loved her because she was a good girl, but he secretly desired a bad girl. She could never be everything he wanted.
So she’d pushed the divorce through quickly, and she’d quit her job—no longer willing to work so closely with Terrence, and now she suddenly found herself back in Destiny, Ohio, where her father was still the chief of police and where the old cottage by the lake on Blue Valley Road sat completely furnished but unlived in since he’d bought a small second home in town. And where she was still the perfect good girl. Like it or not.
She’d come home to think, and to heal. Just for the summer. Partially because her father had insisted, and partially because she hadn’t really had anyplace else to go when the bi-level she’d shared with Terrence had sold practically overnight. And she had big decisions to make over the next couple of months. Like where to live. And how to earn an income. And how to come out of this unscarred. Since people in Destiny didn’t get divorced. And good girls like Jenny didn�
�t, either.
Of course, when people had started asking at the party tonight what she was doing in town, she’d had to tell them. “Terrence and I have split up, so I’m spending the summer here to be closer to Dad.” That was how she and Sue Ann had decided it would be simplest to say it. And she’d left out the parts about the rat bastard, the chippy, and not really having anyplace else to go. But the whole time, she kept seeing a black-and-white version of June Cleaver’s body in her mind—with her head placed on top, and she’d felt just as monochromatic as ever.
And now she was canoeing across the lake of her youth, headed toward the darkness, toward the jagged, tangled woods on the other side because it was a clear enough night that she might be able to spot the Hercules Cluster with all its fine, glittering points of light. The skies, the heavens: one more form of escape.
She hadn’t been able to see much of anything through her telescope in Columbus—too much light pollution, and if she was honest with herself, Terrence had never encouraged her passion for astronomy any more than he’d encouraged her passion in bed—so that was one good thing about coming home. She could see the stars again.
Part of her couldn’t believe she was back here, in this precise spot on the globe. Crossing this lake without her father’s permission, usually with Sue Ann in tow, was the one rule Jenny had broken as a girl. Unlike her side of the lake, where well-kept cottages and bungalows lined the shore in pastel colors, the southern edge of Blue Valley Lake was rimmed with steep, rocky hills and untamed woods. No one had ever lived here but the Brodys—in a scary little shack—and back then, coming here had been trespassing, and it had felt wildly dangerous and freeing at the same time.
And maybe a little foolish, too, now that she thought back on it—but the property had possessed a hill with a wonderfully elevated rocky outcropping, perfect for climbing up on and stargazing. Given the proliferation of trees in her yard, some even big enough to shadow the dock—plus the fact that she’d probably been hoping to catch some brief glimpse of scary, hot Mick Brody back then—crossing the lake had seemed worth the risk.
