Nearly Wild

by Linda Seed

  “Good.” Lacy looked impressed. “That’s good. Most men would freak out and try to keep everything a secret, hoping it’ll all go away. You’ve got good instincts.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” He fiddled with his glasses and thought about what she’d said. “Does that mean I should tell Chris everything, too?”

  “Oh, God no. Maybe your instincts aren’t as good as I thought.”

  “But why? You just said—”

  “I said to tell Rose everything. Rose is inclined to believe you, because she cares about you, and because she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Melinda. But Chris is sleeping with Melinda, which gives her the edge with him. A pretty considerable edge.”

  “Ah.”

  They sat there and thought about his dilemma for a while. Jitters was mostly empty this time of day, so Lacy had the time.

  “Oh!” she said finally, sitting up straight in her chair.

  “What?”

  “I know! I know what you should do!”

  He hoped fervently that she had something, some idea for how to navigate this minefield of female competitiveness. “I really want that to be true.”

  “You use Daniel,” she said, a note of triumph in her voice.

  “Okay. How?”

  Lacy leaned forward, her elbows on the café table, apparently excited about her plan. “You get him to make a move on her at the wedding. It’s perfect. Think about it. A hot guy—an artist, which makes him more interesting—flirts with her, dances with her, maybe makes an overt pass at her. It’s going to distract her from you, and with luck, you’ll get through the wedding and reception without her making a scene. At least, one that involves you.” She screwed up her face in thought. “Actually, Jackson would be perfect for this. But he’s off the market now, so …”

  “I hate to do that to Daniel,” Will fretted. “I lose a crazy stalker but he gains one?”

  “Yeah, but he’s not in a relationship, so she can’t hurt him there. And he’s also not employed by Christopher Mills. She doesn’t have any ammunition against him.”

  What Lacy said was true. What could Melinda possibly do to Daniel if things went badly? Get him in trouble with his girlfriend? He didn’t have one. Cause problems with his employer? He didn’t have one of those, either. If Melinda were truly crazy, and presented some kind of physical risk, then the plan would be a no-go. But she wasn’t. At least, not as far as Will knew.

  “That could actually work,” he said.

  “Of course it could!” Lacy grinned.

  “Will he do it?” Will wondered.

  “Of course he will. Offer to buy him a beer or two.”

  Will thought that a favor of this magnitude might require more than a few beers. It might require a whole brewery.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “So, I need you to make a pass at my ex-girlfriend.”

  Will and Daniel were jogging on the Marine Terrace Trail at the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve. The morning was cool and mild, and the waist-high grass, growing golden with the late spring weather, undulated in the breeze. Wildflowers in purple and yellow dotted the landscape as the two of them ran side by side at an easy pace. They were both in pretty good shape, so they were sweating but not yet out of breath. Every now and then, a squirrel darted past on the path ahead of them.

  “Melinda? The nut job? What for?”

  Will explained Lacy’s suggestion that if Melinda were distracted by an attractive man, she might not have time to make trouble.

  “So, yeah. I wondered if you could flirt with her at the wedding. Just … you know. Keep her occupied. And keep her mind off me.”

  Will’s muscles felt pleasantly loose and warm as they ran. They passed an elderly couple with a cocker spaniel on a leash, and nodded their greetings.

  “Aw, man. That doesn’t sound like a very good deal for me,” Daniel said. “For one thing, if I’m busy chatting up your crazy ex, then I won’t be chatting up women I might actually like.”

  “That’s valid,” Will agreed.

  “And what if she likes me, and she’s as predatory as you say she is? What if I can’t get rid of her afterward? I mean, with my charm, how’s she gonna walk away?”

  Will grinned. “Somehow I doubt that’ll be an issue.”

  Daniel ignored that. “Plus, I’d feel like a gigolo.”

  Will scoffed at him. “I’m not asking you to sleep with her. I’m just asking you to lure her away from Chris and flirt with her. Make a pass. Dance with her. Offer her some champagne and cake. Women love champagne and cake.”

  “Everybody loves champagne and cake,” Daniel observed.

  “So it should be easy then.”

  They ran a few more yards as Daniel thought about it.

  “Man, I don’t know,” he said finally.

  “Look,” Will said. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this. I really wouldn’t. But she’s going to try … something. Her texts are all, ‘You can’t just ignore me,’ and, ‘You won’t get away with this.’ I just want you to distract her. Keep her busy, so she’s not thinking about me.”

  “Right,” Daniel said, panting a little with the exertion of the run. “Because you’re so irresistible women go crazy with lust when they’re around you.”

  “I guess so,” Will said. He grinned. “It’s not like I can control the magnetism.”

  Daniel shot him a wry look.

  “The way I see it,” Will continued, “the big hurdle will be, what if she’s not attracted to you?”

  “Impossible,” Daniel said.

  Will thought about that. Daniel was tall and handsome, with dark hair, a well-built physique, straight teeth, and nice hazel eyes. It seemed to him that women would like that sort of thing. But who knew what went on in women’s minds?

  “All the same …” Will began.

  “Look,” Daniel said as they crested a hill on the trail. “If my natural charisma doesn’t do the job, I’ll just suggest to her—subtly, of course—that you and I have a rivalry going on. That if she were to be seen playing footsie with me, it would drive you out of your mind with jealousy. That ought to do it. Of course, we both know that the kind of women I go for are way out of your league. But Melinda doesn’t have to know that.”

  “Rose is way out of my league,” Will offered. “But she likes me anyway.”

  “There’s that.”

  They ran another fifty yards or so and then flopped down on a bench, breathing hard, sweat glistening on their arms and faces. Dark circles of perspiration bloomed on Will’s T-shirt, under his arms and at his neckline.

  “You know, that rivalry angle could work,” Will said when his breathing slowed.

  “Of course it could.”

  He glanced at Daniel. “You’re kind of good at this. Which worries me.”

  Daniel raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you wanna malign my natural talents, or use them to your benefit?”

  “Use them. I want to use them.”

  “Fine then.” He smacked Will on the back companionably. “I’ll have her eating out of my hand. Maybe literally.”

  The idea was comforting, but on the other hand, Will thought that he’d do well to Melinda-proof his life, just as Lacy had suggested.

  And that started with Rose.

  Giving Rose an update on the Melinda situation served two purposes: It made him Melinda-proof—as Lacy had said, Melinda would have nothing she could use against him if he had no secrets from Rose—and it also gave him an excellent excuse for taking Rose out after work.

  Usually, when Will wanted to spend time with Rose, he had to expend a certain amount of effort talking her into it. But saying he needed to talk to her about Melinda made it hard for her to put up the usual resistance. That could have been because she thought Melinda might actually cause trouble, or it could have been the fact that relationship drama—especially when it involved an ex that wasn’t yours—was notoriously hard to resist.

  Either way, when Will showed up at De-Vine at seven p.m. on the Thu
rsday night before the wedding, Rose put up her hands to ward him off, opened her mouth to make some excuse or another—and then immediately dropped her defenses when Will told her they needed to talk about his crazy ex-girlfriend over dinner.

  “Why? What has she done now?” Rose wanted to know.

  “Ah … well, more of the same, mostly. But now I have a plan, and I thought you should know about it.”

  “Huh. Well, you could just tell me now. I don’t see why dinner has to be involved.”

  “Dinner has to be involved because I’m starving,” Will countered. And because a pregnant woman needs to have regular, nutritious meals. He didn’t say that last part, but it was on his mind all the same.

  She started to argue with him, and then threw up her hands. “Oh, hell. All right.”

  He would have liked to have taken her out to a restaurant, somewhere nice, maybe Neptune. But he’d been doing a lot of that lately, and his meager income wouldn’t support that kind of thing for any length of time. Instead, he took her back to his cottage on the Cooper House property, where he planned to make a meal for her. He’d gone to the market earlier that day in anticipation of her agreeing to come home with him. If she’d refused, he’d have had far too much food here for just himself.

  He brought her inside, gave her a glass of sparkling water (he knew better than to offer wine), and went into the tiny kitchen, where he got to work boiling water for pasta and chopping vegetables on a cutting board.

  “So, spill,” Rose said, leaning one hip against the counter as she watched him prepare the food. “What was it you wanted to tell me about Melinda?”

  He carefully sliced a zucchini into uniform rounds. “Well, she’s here, for one thing.”

  “Right.” Rose nodded. “You told me she was coming. Without her significant other.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Sure.” He continued to cut and chop. He gave her a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. “I also told you about her crazy texts.”

  “ ‘Oh, Will, why did you forsake me? One day you’ll see the error of your ways.’ Yadda, yadda, yadda,” she recited.

  “Pretty much,” he said, amused.

  “So, what’s the new headline?” she prompted him.

  “Lacy came up with a plan for how to manage her at the wedding,” Will told her.

  Rose’s eyebrow, the one pierced with a small, silver barbell, shot up. “Lacy did?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you talk to Lacy about this?”

  He stopped chopping and looked at her. “Do you want to know her plan, or do you want to know every detail of the conversation?”

  “Both,” Rose said. “Of course, both. But start with the plan.”

  He straightened from where he’d been bent over the cutting board. He put down the knife, leaned back against the counter, and folded his arms over his chest. “Daniel.”

  “Daniel,” Rose repeated.

  “Yep. He’s going to flirt with Melinda. Distract her. Maybe even hit on her. I assume he’ll stop short of actually having sex with her. But, you know. That’s his call.”

  Rose’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”

  “No. Lacy suggested it, and I asked him, and he said he’d do it. He’s just got to keep her busy until it’s time for her to go home. Which is the day after the wedding. So … it could work.”

  “Huh,” Rose said.

  “I just hope she’s attracted to him,” Will said.

  “Oh, she will be.” The answer was immediate and definite.

  “What makes you say that?” Will wanted to know.

  Rose waved her arms to emphasize how obvious the answer was. “Because he’s Daniel. With the body, and the eyes, and the …” She gestured vaguely.

  “Oh.” Will was a little stung. He doubted that women would take his own attractiveness as glaringly apparent. He pushed his glasses up on his nose to reseat them.

  “Aww.” Rose grinned at him and stroked his shoulder. “You’re jealous.”

  “Well, a little.”

  “Don’t be. I would never go for a guy like Daniel.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because I’m done with all of that. For one thing.”

  “Yeah?” He could hear the defensiveness in his own voice. “What’s the other thing?”

  “The other thing is, if I weren’t done—which I am—he’s not the one I’d go for.”

  He looked at her, and all at once something honest and vulnerable passed across her face. A look, a blink, a sudden, subtle moment when her façade was gone and he could see her—the real her—standing there wanting to be loved.

  He crossed the room to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her.

  She seemed to melt beneath him as a moan escaped her throat.

  “Oh, God, Will,” she murmured against his cheek. “Please … don’t hurt me.” She pulled back from him just a little and looked into his eyes. “Because you could. I just … I’m trying so hard to be safe, to be smart, but I can’t—”

  “You don’t have to try so hard,” he whispered to her. “Not with me.”

  He kissed her again, tasting her, gathering her to him, and he thought that neither of them would ever have to try, not at this, not at being together. Because it was so, so very easy.

  Rose seemed to have lost control of the situation. What little control she’d had, anyway.

  Why was she kissing him—again? Why was she dissolving under his touch? Why couldn’t she do this one simple thing: keep her heart safe for herself and for her unborn child?

  No, this wasn’t the first time she’d given in, wasn’t the first time she’d agreed to see him against her better judgment and then had succumbed to his advances. Because, damn it, she just felt so good when she was with him, and it always seemed like her man moratorium could be continued another day.

  But this was worse. This time, she’d let him know that she had feelings—tender, delicate feelings that he could use against her at his will. And that was unforgiveable, because if he knew, if he realized the power he had over her, then what might he do with it? He could destroy her if he chose. He could leave her shattered.

  Somehow, though, the fear was secondary to the need. Something inside her was empty, and she didn’t feel empty when she was with him. She felt full and right, and complete in a way she couldn’t ever remember feeling before.

  What if this was a mistake, and she ended up broken in a way that couldn’t be repaired?

  And what if it wasn’t? What if pushing him away was the unfixable error?

  She didn’t know what to do, but it seemed that her body did. As all rational thought was pushed out of her brain by the feel of his hands, his mouth, the warmth of his skin, her body knew how to respond without having to consult her rational mind. She kissed him back, touched him back. She threw her head back as he ran his tongue down the delicate line of her jaw.

  “Water’s boiling,” he murmured.

  She reached over, fumbling, and turned off the burner while he continued to slowly devour the hollow of her throat.

  They could always eat later.

  In retrospect, bringing Rose to the Cooper House property while Melinda was in residence probably wasn’t a good idea. Will wasn’t sure how Melinda knew that Rose was there—whether she’d been watching out a window when they’d driven up, or if she knew by some other means—but somehow, she timed it so that she was pounding on Will’s door just as he and Rose were about to take their makeout session to its logical conclusion.

  They were both in various states of undress—Rose wrapped in a blanket she’d pulled off the bed, Will hastily getting into a pair of sweatpants—as they came out into the living room to see what the noise was all about.

  Will looked out through the peephole in his front door while tying the drawstring on his pants. “Oh, God. It’s Melinda.”

  Rose pulled the blanket more tightly around herself. “What the hell does she want?” Will couldn’t imag
ine the answer to that question, so he opened the door to find out.

  “Melinda,” he said. He’d opened the door only a crack, but before he knew what was happening, she was pushing her way past him and into the house.

  When Melinda saw Rose standing there wearing nothing but a blanket and a blush, the lack of surprise on her face told Will she’d already known Rose was here, and that she’d guessed what they were up to before she’d even knocked on the door. That answered the question: She was here to interrupt them. Mission accomplished.

  “Oh. Hello,” Melinda said coldly to Rose.

  “Something we can do for you?” Rose asked, her tone similarly icy.

  “Well, there’s certainly nothing you can do,” Melinda responded. “But I need Will.”

  There were several ways one could take that comment, and none of them appealed to him.

  “Melinda. What is this about?” he prompted her.

  When she answered, she was speaking to Will, but her eyes were fixed on Rose. “The observatory roof won’t open. There’s a meteor shower tonight. I need you to fix it. It can’t wait.”

  Will wasn’t wearing his glasses, so he grabbed them off the table next to the sofa and put them on. “Ah … Melinda, I usually call a guy in for that sort of thing. I don’t really—”

  “Then call the guy in.” Her voice carried some kind of threat—of what, Will wasn’t sure.

  “Well, I—”

  “Will. You are in charge of this property when Chris isn’t here. And Chris isn’t here. This is your job. I expect you to do it.” She turned and left the cottage, going down the front walk and toward the main house.

  When she was gone, Will closed the door and turned to Rose. “I’m sorry.”

  “But you’re not going to go, right?” she said.

  As he watched her standing there wearing nothing but a blanket, her colorful hair mussed from their lovemaking and the blush of passion still on her cheeks, leaving her was the last thing he wanted to do. But, as Melinda had said, taking care of the property was his job. And if he didn’t do it, he might find himself without an income and without a place to live.

  “I have to,” he said, and added, “If I don’t, she’s just going to come back.”