Bad Boy Romance Collection: The Volanis Brothers Trilogy

by Meg Jackson

  “I'm serious,” she said, looking up at him from her place on his chest. He smiled down at her, petting her hair gently.

  “Me too,” he said. “We only work in herbs. I swear it.”

  “Good,” she sighed. “Maybe you can lend me some. If I could get Mayor Gunderson hooked on pot instead of booze we'd all be better off...”

  Kennick smiled, but when he saw that she hadn't really been joking, his brow furrowed. He stroked her arm.

  “What's on your mind?” he asked, sure that there was something more brewing behind those bright blue eyes. Kim shook her head but kept her gaze on the ceiling, her jaw moving slightly as she worked out what she wanted to say.

  “I love Mayor Gunderson,” she finally said. “He's a lovely man, a good boss, he's very nice and sweet. Treats me well, with bonuses on Christmas and my birthday and all those good things. But he's not...he'd just not the kind of man who should be in charge of a town. I just wish he would retire, gracefully. Not run again next election, you know?”

  “Well,” Kennick said with a quick bark. “Wish with one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. If you want a better leader for Kingdom, do something about it. Run against him.”

  Kim shook her head. It wasn't that easy.

  “They would never vote a woman into office,” she said. “And I couldn't very well keep my job as his assistant if I ran against him, so once he won I'd be out of a job and have spent all my money on a campaign.”

  “Who's they?” Kennick argued, his hand running lower to graze her side. Kim looked at him then, and was taken aback. His eyes on her weren't just lusty. They were searching, and confident.

  “They. The people. People like Bob Talkee and Pastor Hendrix,” she said, looking down now to avoid the determined way he looked at her. She'd told Kennick all about her experiences with the two men who most agitated her.

  “Screw them,” Kennick said, suddenly rising from the bed and pulling his clothes on in a hurried rush. “You'd be a damn good leader. You've got twice the head on your shoulders as your drunk boss. No offense, I know you like him, but come on, Kim. You do all the work there anyway.”

  Kim raised herself onto her elbows, watching him cover his strong torso with no small disappointment; she was a big fan of those tattoos across his chest and biceps, and being able to see them and stroke her fingers over them and kiss them and...

  “Get dressed,” he said, throwing her discarded dress onto the bed so that it fell across her lap. “We're going to see Tula.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Tula? Your cousin? The fortune...”

  “Not a fortune teller,” Kennick interrupted. “Fortune tellers are hacks. Tula is a drabarni. The real deal.”

  “You know, Kennick, on our first date when you talked about fariries, it was cute. And I like all your stories. But I'm sorry – no matter how much I love you...”

  At that, she clapped a hand across her mouth.

  She'd actually said that.

  Casual as could be, she'd just dropped the L word.

  She hadn't even known that she felt that way, but as soon as the words left her mouth, it felt right.

  And it also felt embarrassing as hell.

  Until she saw the smile on Kennick's face, and he sat down, slow and meaningful, on the edge of the bed. He took her hand away from her mouth, bringing it to his lips and kissing the now-clammy palm. Kim's heart was racing, but as she looked into his confident eyes, she felt a warmth spreading through her body.

  “Ah, beautiful, what're you embarrassed for? There's nothing shameful about love. If there was, I'd be blushing too, every second that I spent with you,” he said, giving her back her hand. She took it in her other hand, as though it had come back to her different than it was when he'd taken it. “Come on. Let's go.”

  Kim found Tula Volanis’ trailer the strangest of the few she’d been in so far, because for someone who was supposed to be a seer, and connected to the stranger things in life, it was rather barren. The interior was plain wood and the walls painted a pale yellow. Some family photos dotted the walls, but there were no hanging dreamcatchers, tapestries, artwork, or anything else to distinguish the small living room.

  She’d half expected to find a circular table with an elaborate scarf draped over it and a crystal ball in the center. Instead, there was a plain black sofa and a small TV on a stand, a rocking chair in the corner, and a plain wooden coffee table. The kitchen had held some strange jars of mushrooms and herbs and vials of unidentifiable liquid, but that was the only evidence of anything paranormal in the whole place.

  As Tula, a slight girl who looked to be in her early twenties, brought in three steaming mugs of tea on a tray, Kim admired her green eyes, which seemed to be the calling card of the Volanis family. Her brown hair was plain and thin but sleek and rich-colored, and she had straight bangs covering her forehead, a button nose dotted with freckles, and a mouth so small and pink it could have belonged on a cat’s muzzle. Everything about Tula seemed vaguely feline.

  “So,” Tula said, settling herself into the rocking chair with the fragrant mug of tea under her nose, “to what do I owe the honor?”

  Kim sniffed at the tea as Kennick clasped his hands in his lap and smiled broadly at his cousin. The tea wasn’t anything she could recognize, extremely herbaceous and slightly woodsy. She took a sip and felt the warmth flood through her, calming her down to her marrow.

  “Kim here would like to know if you see anything in her future,” Kennick offered with a gesture to the woman beside him, who shot him a deathly glare.

  “Actually,” Kim interrupted, “Kennick dragged me here because he thinks you’ll see me being elected mayor of Kingdom next election.”

  Tula hummed in amusement and closed her eyes. For a long moment, she just sat there, rocking back and forth in her chair, the tea clasped in her two tiny hands under her nose. Kim glanced at Kennick with her eyebrows raised. Was this is? She’d expected to have to her palm read, or her blood drawn and thrown into a bowl of corn or something. When Tula opened her eyes again, it was with a sort of jealous admiration.

  “This is beautiful,” she said, her voice thick and heavy, like a person just coming out of sleep. Despite her disbelief, Kim leaned forward, captivated by the dazed look in Tula’s eyes as she studied Kim from across the room. “You are both so beautiful.”

  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….

  26

  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 drinking 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.

  27

  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.