Wild Child (40 page)

Simone shook her head. “Not today, thank you.”

And then the bell was ringing as they left.

Monica looked at Jackson, unsure of how to process what Simone had just done, but he seemed equally surprised. Floored. But when she stood up ready to follow her, Jackson was right behind her.

And she was glad. So glad.

“Simone,” she said, as she walked out onto the sidewalk. Simone and Charles had just crossed the street to the square, where the remnants of the street fair were being taken down. “Wait a second.” Monica jogged across the road.

“I’m sorry I’m not stopping the show,” Simone said, opening her purse and pulling out a big pair of sunglasses. When she put them on, they obscured half her face. “But I thought this town was important to you.”

“It is … it’s … you’re doing this for me?”

“Who else would I do it for?” she asked, looking regal and imperial and like she just didn’t give a shit, at total odds with her words. If Jackson tried to control things, and Monica tried to make jokes, then Simone pretended she just didn’t give a shit.

“I may not be here,” Monica said. “I mean, if you’re doing this so you can have that big on-air reunion, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“I didn’t expect that,” she said, sniffing. “I didn’t expect anything.”

“I’m still going to write the book. About Dad.”

Simone was silent, her hand reaching out for Charles’s just as Jackson’s hand curved over Monica’s shoulder.

Love was a powerful support.

“Thank you,” Monica said. “For doing it.”

“I’m sorry I don’t remember Greece,” Simone said, and Monica squeezed Jackson’s hand, so hard she heard him whimper. “I realize I can’t take that year away from you. But I want you to know … I’m sorry. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to go make some phone calls.”

“Sure,” she whispered, and then Simone and Charles, hand in hand, were gone.

Jackson was silent, as if he understood that there was nothing he could say that would change the bittersweet nature of what had happened. Instead, he just pulled
her against his chest, into his arms. He rested his chin on her head.

“I love you,” he said, and she let the words wash over her, a balm to all the old wounds. “I love your bravery and your heart. I love the mistakes you made, because they made you the woman you are now. I love your fierceness and your fear.”

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“And I am so proud of the way you just handled that with Simone.”

She kissed his hand, the broken one that rested beneath her chin.

“I just …” he whispered. “I just want to be the man you love. The man who deserves you.”

Her eyes closed at his words, the damage he’d done repaired.

“I’m sorry I didn’t stand up for you earlier,” he said. “I’m sorry I used you.”

“I thought you didn’t
not
use me.” Forgiveness was easy when faced with so much love and support. Everyone was entitled to a misstep. Lord knows she’d made plenty and would probably make more. “Big difference, buddy.”

“I get that I might have blown it, and that I might be too late, and I screwed up with the camera crew, and you can give me shit for that for the rest of our lives together—”

“You’re damn straight I will.”

He paused, and she felt him lift his head. “You … will?” He sounded so hopeful, so surprised.

“You didn’t blow it.”

“I didn’t?”

“It was close,” she said, pursing her lips, because she knew how he felt about her lips. “But then you broke Dean’s nose.”

He grinned, this handsome, caring man with the beautiful
wild streak that no one got to see but her. “I could also punch Sean, if you like that sort of thing. It’s long overdue.”

She touched his chest, ran her hands up over his shoulders, and it felt like she was gathering him up, putting him back together but in a new order, a new way. The way he’d done to her.
Mine
, she thought, attaching neck to body, face to neck. “I love you, Jackson Davies.”

His eyes fluttered, not quite shut. “Say it again,” he whispered.

“I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. I’ll love you forever.”

The hug was a blessing. The kiss was a promise; the future glittered around them.

At the sound of another footstep on the pavement, Monica and Jackson turned as one to see Gwen beside them, wearing her mother’s formal gown and flip-flops. Monica smiled at just the sight of her.

“Everyone okay?” Gwen asked, her anxious eyes looking from Monica to Jackson.

“Yes and no,” Monica sighed.

“You know what you need?” Gwen said, taking another step and then another until she was close enough to touch. Jackson, who had clearly decided not to waste any more precious time with his sister, hooked Gwen around the neck, pulling her into his arms too.

“What do I need?” Monica asked, hugging the girl and the man as hard as she could.

“A road trip. Have you ever seen the Grand Canyon?” Gwen asked, and Jackson pressed a kiss to Gwen’s head—perhaps the first time he’d ever kissed his sister, because they both looked slightly shocked.

“No,” Monica answered. “I’ve never been.”

“Well, we’re going,” Gwen said. “And you should come with us.”

“Is that an invitation?” Monica turned slightly to face Jackson.

“Wherever I go, I want you with me, Monica.”

It was the most profoundly beautiful and simple thing anyone had ever said to her.

“How can I say no?”

“And after that, I want to finish law school,” he said.

She smiled, eager to support him in that. “I want to write fiction books for teenagers.” She didn’t realize the words were going to come out of her mouth, but once they did, she recognized them as the truth.

“Cool,” Gwen breathed. Someone across the square called her name, and Gwen eased away from the group hug. “This is nice and all,” she said, “but I gotta go.”

“What if … what if I want to come back here sometimes?” she asked, as they watched Gwen run across the grass. Monica thought of Shelby and Cora. Sean.

“To Bishop?” Jackson asked. She nodded.

“It’s just a town, Jackson. Not innately evil or innately good. It’s not going to save us or ruin us. It’s where our friends live, that’s all. We can live anywhere, Jackson. But I’m going to want to come back here sometimes.”

“Then we come back,” Jackson said. “You’re all I need. You’re every daydream and fantasy I’ve ever had. You’re my home.”

He pulled her into his arms, and in front of the town and the fountain and every single face pressed to Cora’s front window, the mayor kissed her. And the Wild Child kissed him back.

After a thousand wrong turns and near misses, Monica had managed to find her way back to herself, to the person she was supposed to be.

And the man she was supposed to be with.

She’d found her way home.

To everyone who has faked it … whatever “it” is

B
ANTAM
B
OOKS BY
M
OLLY
O’K
EEFE

Can’t Buy Me Love
Can’t Hurry Love
Crazy Thing Called Love
Wild Child

There’s plenty of heat to go around
in Bishop, Arkansas,
as the characters in Molly O’Keefe’s next novel
are about to find out.

Read on for an exclusive sneak peek at
NEVER BEEN KISSED

Chapter 1

Cook’s Bay, Moorea, Polynesian Islands
September 3, 2013
    

For a man of few words Brody Baxter hated silence. Watching the waves crash on the beach, he wished his brother was there. Sean’s chatter would make him focus.

At this point, the third hour in a four-hour shift with nothing but moonlight and dolphins in the ocean in front of the villa, Brody prayed for a three-man paramilitary attack from the water but would settle for camera-wielding paparazzi jumping out from the Tiare bush to his left.

Anything to break up the monotony.

Funny, but at one time he’d thought guarding shady politicians would be more exciting than guarding the earnest ones, but the years had taught him otherwise.

The screen door behind him slid open with a gasp and a swish. The short hair on his neck prickled in warning, but he didn’t turn around. It was the woman Senator Rawlings had brought. The smell of sweat over perfume preceded her.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice gaspy and breathy. “I forgot you were out here.”

That’s the idea
, he thought and stepped further into the shadows of the balcony.

Perhaps knowing he was out here, she’d have second thoughts about enjoying the view from the balcony.

But no, the woman came to lean against the railing overlooking the bay. Her robe, barely tied at her waist, looked like a dark oil spill over her body. The color blended with her hair. The night sky behind her.

Quickly, he glanced away. She’d been loud in that villa. Lots of
Oh Daddy
’s.

“Is all this really necessary?” she asked, waving her hand around to indicate him and the other members of the team, silently guarding the senator and by proximity, her. Her accent was nearly nonexistent, but the alleys of Cairo clung to her vowels.

She’d come into the Senator’s life suddenly. A friend of a friend of an aide at some political fund-raiser in D.C. Brody didn’t particularly like how much they didn’t know about her.

Choosing not to answer, Brody scanned the edge of the cliff to his left. If Brody was lucky, Senator Rawlings’s wife would come rappelling over the edge with a submachine gun and he wouldn’t have to engage in this conversation.

There were days he really missed the Marine Corp.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her run her fingers over the silk edge of that robe, revealing her collarbone, the gravity defying inside curve of her breast.

“Maybe Doug gave himself the death threats, just so he could take me someplace.”

Doubtful. Brody’s team didn’t come cheap. And Cook’s Bay was a lot of effort for a woman who probably would have put on the very same show at The Four Seasons in Washington D.C.

“Does it bother you? Listening to us?” She tipped her head, her oil-spill hair falling down her neck. “Knowing he has a wife. A family. That he’s cheating? Lying?” Her eyes glowed with a certain avarice. Obviously, it turned her on. The dirty illicitness of it. Of her role in it. It explained why she was putting on a show for a man twice
her age, three times her weight and with the morality of a shark.

For a moment he thought about telling her she was the cleanest thing in Senator Rawlings’s life. That the death threats could have come from the full spectrum of extremist groups, the product of a lifetime of double dealing and lying in the name of politics.

But, lately, he was pissing off the Syrian Ba’ath party in vocal support of the rebels.

He didn’t bother explaining any of this to her, because he doubted she cared. Instead, he looked back over the ocean. The dolphins, the moonlight.
Bother him?
As a rule, Brody didn’t get bothered.

“Gina?” The senator yelled from inside the door.

She shrugged, her lips twisted in some kind of coy regret.

“Duty calls,” she whispered and vanished back into the villa.

The world issued an open invitation to humanity to fail itself. To be selfish and small. Mean, even evil at times. And most people, in Brody’s experience, found it impossible to turn down that invitation.

The Senator and his lies were just another example in a long line.

His ear piece buzzed in the split second before he heard Colin’s voice. “Brody? Bill is coming up on your six. You have a visitor at HQ.”

A visitor? Here?

Suddenly he thought of Ed, sick and alone in that house. Too stubborn to ask for help if he needed it.

Christ.

He and Sean should have gotten him a nurse. They’d been talking about it, but Ed was so stubborn and Brody, in the end, didn’t know how to fight him. Or maybe he just didn’t care enough.

But Sean didn’t know where Brody was, or how to find him.

So, not Ed.

His diaphragm relaxed.

Bill, a thick squat man Brody had worked with for years and managed to know nothing about, came up through the shadows. They nodded at each other and Brody slipped down the path through the ferns and wild banana trees to the guest house where the team had set up headquarters.

Tropical bugs hovered around the light of the guest house veranda. To the left of the light and the cloud of bugs stood a man sweating through an expensive white button-down shirt, his suit jacket was tossed over the railing. Brody couldn’t get a good look at the guy’s face, because his head was bent as he rolled his sleeves.

The intricate warning system of adrenaline, Brody’s gut and the hair on the back of his neck began to buzz. Whoever this guy was, he’d gone to great lengths to find him.

And people didn’t work so hard to bring good news.

“You’re here for me?” Brody asked, stepping to the edge of the light, but no further.

“Brody Baxter?” the man asked, peering into the shadows where Brody blended into the darkness.

Something niggled in the back of his head. A memory. This guy wasn’t a stranger. His All-American, confident-of-his-place-in-the-world looks were familiar.

“Yes,” Brody answered.

“You’re not an easy man to find.”

Once again, that is sort of the idea
. Brody cut through the bullshit. “Who are you?”

The guy smiled, wearily. Whatever had brought him to the islands of Polynesia to find Brody, it wasn’t anything good.

“It’s been a few years,” the man said and held out his hand. “I’m Harrison Montgomery.”

Brody felt deep ripples of recognition, memories of
this guy and his kid sister came running from the corners where he’d shoved them years ago.

Ashley.

Brody shook Harrison’s hand. Last time Brody saw him he was an eighteen-year-old asshole. Almost as bad as his father, but miles away from his mother’s very special brand of asshole.