KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel (19 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

Ana clapped her hands once as she turned to give a
last look over her shop. The grocery was fully stocked, but didn't look
cluttered. The aisles were divided by product: coffee, tea, candies, packaged
pastries in one aisle. Then the cured meats, jerkies and salamis and pickled
fish and caviar in their elegant tin cans and glass jars, with fancy mustards
and condiments mixed in. An aisle of redolent incense and curios from India and
Eastern Europe.

Refrigerators and freezers lining the walls held
imported ales and local ciders, ready-to-bake doughs, ice-packed wild-caught
fish, ice creams and convenience meals that bore bright labels advertising
their product in both the native language and English. The ad was in the paper,
and the papers of the surrounding towns. It was opening day.

Four members of the
kumpania
would work as managers and cashiers, and Ana had also
hired a local woman to assist with inventory as well as a handful of local
part-timers to stock shelves and man the registers. As she flipped the sign to
Open
for the first time, she opened the
door as well. It wasn't wise to let the air conditioning run out into the July
heat, but Ana knew that passers-by who were looking for respite from the
oppressive humidity would be drawn to the cool air they felt as they strolled
by the open door.

“What's
this?
”
Kim asked; Kennick stood just behind her, bemused by her boundless curiosity.
She was holding a red jar he knew
 
all too well, and that made him smile even wider.

“Surströmming,” he said, taking the jar from her hand.
He remembered, vividly, the one time he'd been cajoled into trying it. “It's
rancid pickled fish from Sweden.”

Kim raised an eyebrow, studying him for signs that he
was joking.

“I'm serious,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “It
smells like death and tastes even worse. Not for the faint of heart.”

“Why is your aunt selling rancid fish?” Kim asked in a
low voice, glancing over Kennick's shoulder as Ana stood by the window, looking
out at the early morning activity on Main Street. It was opening day for most
of the new businesses, except the hair salon and the gentleman's club. The hair
salon was delayed by a late shipment of the salon's hairdryers. The gentleman’s
club was tabled indefinitely as war continued to rage in Town Hall over the
moral fiber of Kingdom's citizens versus their rapidly emptying wallets.

The veterinary practice had actually opened a week
earlier, and was slowly but steadily building a clientele of pet-owners and
farmers alike. Cristov's tattoo parlor already had a few appointments that day,
thanks to the wonders of social media. His talent, and his ability to choose likewise
talented artists, had attracted a decent amount of attention on Instagram and
Facebook.

Damon's cheese shop was across the street and a few
doors down from Ana's store, and Kim had already seen a few cars slow down as
they passed the new storefront. Again, social media was on their side, and Let
It Brie had garnered an impressive amount of “likes” on Facebook.

Kim had gawked when she'd heard that stiff-lipped
Damon actually called his cheese shop Let It Brie, but when he saw her face he
just laughed. She remembered that day as she examined the neatly-stacked tin
cans on the shelves.

She had gone to the trailer that day looking for
Kennick, who'd agreed to let her pick their date that night, but found Damon
working on his laptop on the kitchen table.

“Kennick'll be back soon,” he'd said, glancing up at
her when she entered. “He's off trying to keep some cousins from tearing
each
 
other apart.”

She'd felt comfortable settling in across from Damon
at the table, and could hear Cristov's music playing gently from his room.
Damon had another mysterious bruise on his face, but while Kim felt comfortable
around Kennick's brothers she felt that Damon's scars and marks were
off-limits. No one had to tell her that, she just picked up on it.

“What're you working on?” she'd asked, and when Damon
had turned the computer around to show her, she'd been impressed by the
professional-looking Facebook page he was building...and the name of the cheese
shop, of course.

“What?” he'd said, eyes holding a rare sparkle. “It's
a gouda name.”

Cristov's groan had crossed the length of the trailer.

“I never knew you were such a fan of puns,” Kim said,
shaking her head in wonder.

“I like them mostly because Cristov hates them,” Damon
had said in a low voice before calling out loudly: “graters gonna grate!”

Cristov's responding howl held a soul-searing pain
that made Kim laugh until her ribs hurt.

This had all happened a week after the article had
appeared. Much, though not all, of the fervor surrounding the article had died
off by then. What hadn’t yet died off were the growing rumors about Kim, one of
Kingdom’s own, being intimate with Kennick, one of the “others.” Most people
kept their feelings to themselves, good
or
bad.

Some less tactful acquaintances wanted all the gritty
details about what “they” were like (on more than one occasion, a well-meaning
schoolmate from Kim’s class at Kingdom High wanted to know if the sex was as
good as they imagined). And a few, Pastor Hendrix and Bob Talkee among them,
made no small effort to sneer and grumble at Kim every chance they got.

But none of that mattered to Kim; she only cared about
Kennick, and the way he made her feel like twice the woman a man would ever
need, made her anxiety take a backseat to her confidence, and looked at her
with nothing but love.

And she'd become increasingly fond of Damon and
Cristov as well. On the nights that Kennick brought Kim back to the trailer
instead of going to her apartment, they were usually around, often surrounded
by friends and kin from the
kumpania.
There
was a clear and obvious closeness between all the gypsies, but Damon, Cristov,
and Kennick had a special bond, shared by their sister Mina, though Kim saw
less of her because she didn't live in the trailer.

And Kim could appreciate the seamless way Kennick's
brothers and sister accepted her into the fold, even if that meant she got an
earful in the morning from Cristov about how she and Kennick had kept him up
all night. She appreciated even less the constant questions about Ricky; for
two people who ostensibly hated each other, both Cristov and Ricky were
extremely interested in the other's life. Kim heard it from her sister whenever
she saw her, and from Cristov whenever she saw him. The questions were always
the same: “how's that snappy sister of yours?” or “how's that cocky brother of
his?”. It was the frequency that gave both wonderers away.

That day, when Kennick had come in to find Kim in
tears and Cristov standing in the doorway of his room trying to look angry but
clearly fighting a smile, he'd looked happier than she could almost ever
remember seeing him. She knew how important it was that she accept his family,
and that his family accept her.

“Laughing behind my back?” he said jokingly, reaching
over the top of the booth to put his hands on Kim's shoulders and kiss her
cheek. “Not very nice, Little Mayor.”

“Not everything is about you,” Damon said
good-naturedly and slipped a sly glance in Cristov's direction. “Curd you be
anymore vain?”

Cristov fell to the ground with a dramatic wail,
feigning a seizure as his brothers laughed.

Kim was shaken from the memory as Ana's voice filled
the store.

“Welcome!”

Kim and Kennick turned; the first customer to Seven
Seas World Market had arrived, and Ana was beaming like a proud mother.

“Hey, Jimmy!” Kim waved, a bit surprised to see her friend
on the force in an exotic grocery, but happy nonetheless. Kennick stiffened
almost imperceptibly beside her, but when she twined her fingers between his,
he forced his spine to relax.

“Kim,” Jimmy said, approached with his ever-friendly
smile. “Nice to see you. And nice to see you again, too, man.”

The smile Jimmy offered was so guileless, so friendly
and unthreatening, that Kim was surprised that Kennick didn't return it
immediately. But her heart lifted when he finally did offer a smile – true, it
was
 
a ghost of the warm-hearted
smile he saved for the
kumpania
and
Kim, but it was a far sight better than his face had looked last time he had
met Jimmy. The fact that Jimmy was in plainclothes instead of a uniform
probably helped.

“Same,” Kennick offered, and then stuck his hand out.
Jimmy's grin widened as he gripped it in his. Kim felt surprisingly proud and
pleased; her man was making an effort. And she knew it was only for her
benefit. Just as she needed to accept and be accepted by his family, Kennick
needed to accept and be accepted by Kim's town, its people. Of course, some
would never accept him, a thought which pained her heart more than she cared to
admit, but the good ones...those were the important ones, anyway.

“What's brought you in here?” Kim asked.

“Just looks like an interesting place every time I go
by,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “Wanted to see what sorta stuff they sell. What's
that?”

He pointed to the can Kim still held in her hand. She
grimaced and replaced it on the shelf.

“You don't want to know,” she said. “Come here though.
If I remember correctly, you're a fiend for ice cream. You should see the stuff
in the freezer, it's from all over. They've got this cardamom ice cream from
Israel, and this whiskey ice cream from Australia...”

As Kim led her friend towards the freezer, chatting
about ice cream flavors and which one would best appease Jimmy's PMS-ing
girlfriend, Kennick moved towards his aunt.

“She is a good saleslady,” Ana noted, watching Kim
point out all the flavors on display. “Any chance she wants to quit her job and
work here?”

Kennick laughed.

“Not a chance, Beebi,” he said. She studied him with a
slight smile on her lips.

“You've got a strong ken for that girl, don't you?”

He was bashful when he met her eyes.

“When Baba Tayti was leaving us, she foretold
something great in my love life,” he said. “She said it would be the kind of
thing that comes on so quick you can barely tell it's happening until you're
neck-deep in it. I think she might have been seeing Kim.”

Ana nodded.

“After bad luck comes good fortune,” she said. “Losing
Pieter and Baba was your bad luck. You're due for some good fortune.”

He sighed as Kim's laugh, strong but silvery, like
wind chimes blown by a strong gust, filled the store. He loved that sound.
 
With every beat of his heart, he loved
it. He loved
her.

“You think it's alright, Beebi?” he asked. “To love a
girl like that? She's not one of us. I don't know if she ever could be. And she
loves this town, even though...well, you know why that's hard.”

“You know, I'm a bit more traditional than you,
Kennick,” Ana said with a slight shrug, her green eyes open and honest. “I'd
rather you find a nice Rom girl to marry. I think that's the right thing.
 
But a good horse can't be of a bad color.
I don't think any love is ever wrong.
 
Even your damned uncle...well, I love him, and that's alright. And she's
bound to do you far less harm than your uncle does me.”

“Uncle Nevimos say when he's coming back yet?”

Ana scoffed.

“Your uncle will show up when he gets lonely or runs
out of money. Thinks this magician thing is going to hit big and he'll put us
all on the map. Bring glory back to the name of gypsy. The world is a ladder,
in which some go up and others go down. Your uncle has been heading down for a
long, long time
.
”

Kim turned mid-sentence, and caught Kennick's eye. He
winked at her and she blushed before resuming her conversation with Jimmy, who
noted the red on her cheeks and smiled broadly.

“Who would have thought,” Jimmy said in a lower voice
than they'd been using previously, “that Kim James would wind up in a gypsy's
arms. I always thought you were so sensible...”