Wild Child (7 page)

She turned toward the bar, smiling.

When Monica walked into the empty bar, the atmosphere changed. As if a storm were approaching, all the hair on Jackson’s arms stood up. He was always a little loose at poker night and tonight more so than usual, because no one else had come out for it. So it was just him and his friends—Brody was in town, on a brief layover between security jobs—and the mood was so easy, he’d had two pints of beer.

Well
, he corrected, glancing down at his half-empty glass,
two and a half
.

And looking at Monica—wearing those tight black workout pants women seemed to wear all the time now, and a loose green shirt that slipped over one shoulder revealing her collarbone, the delicate curve of her neck—he was fully aware that he needed to apologize for his behavior yesterday, and also painfully, completely aware that before he’d blown it, she’d been flirting with him. And he’d been flirting back, and the yard had been ripe with the kind of sexual awareness he’d practically forgotten about.

I want her. And before I acted like an idiot, she wanted me, too. Or at least was interested in wanting me
.

“Hello, boys,” she said, her voice like scotch, rough and smooth all at once.

The rat at the end of her leash barked.

“What the hell is that thing?” Jackson asked.

“Reba’s my Seeing Eye dog,” Monica said. “Who runs this place?” she asked.

“I do.” Sean stood as if he’d been called out by the principal.

“You did all this?” She twirled her finger around the room.

Sean glanced behind him at Jackson and Brody. “I.… ah … had help.”

Damn right you did
. Jackson and Brody shared a manly fist-bump.

“Well, you did an incredible job.” Her smile, without a word of exaggeration, was like the sun coming out from behind clouds.

“Thanks,” Sean said, standing a little straighter. “I … 
we
 … worked hard on it.” He hustled behind the bar, remembering his role as bartender. “You’re Monica Appleby, aren’t you?”

“I am.” Again that smile, and Sean paused, mid-step. Jackson knew exactly what was happening to his old friend. The way his brain was struggling to catalog all her beauty in one go.

Sean leaned over the bar toward Monica as if they were Cosmo-drinking girlfriends. “I loved your book.”

“I’m so glad.”

“He only read the sex parts,” Jackson said.

“Don’t listen to him. I read it cover to cover. Though I might have reread the sex parts a couple of times.”

“You’re only human.” She said it as if she were flirting, but he knew when Monica Appleby was flirting; he’d been the recipient of those sideways glances, the blush on
her cheeks, the nervous dance of her fingers over her glass. This wasn’t that. This seemed … practiced. Careful. Brittle. And he realized, watching her, how skilled she was at letting people think they were getting close while in reality she was keeping them at arm’s length.

Something prickly ran up his neck, an awareness.

I do that, too
.

Or maybe he was just experiencing some beer wisdom. Or maybe he just wanted that connection he felt to her to mean something. To mean he was special.

“So, can I get you something to drink?” Sean asked, slapping the bar. “I can make a Cosmo, or one of them froufrou drinks. I got some of those umbrellas around here. Or maybe you’d like something more rock star?”

“Soda water with lime.”

Sean nodded sagely. “Very rock star.”

Monica sat down on one of the stools, crossing her legs. The small rat/dog at the end of her leash curled up under her stool. Her shirt dipped farther down her arm, revealing the bronze sheen to her skin, the small dent of her muscle.

“Are you here for my world-famous Pour House poker night?” Sean asked, and Monica took a long, slow glance around the empty bar. “Well, usually we’re a little more full, but Jackson’s scared everyone away with reminders of all the freaking yard work they need to do.” Sean shot him a disgusted look.

“It’s important, Sean,” Jackson repeated for about the hundredth time tonight.

“Hardly more important than community togetherness, not more important than tradition.”

“I’m with Sean,” Monica said, swiveling around to face him. Flirting again, or just angry? It was hard to say with that gleam in her eye, but the smart money was on angry. “Community togetherness is way more important than yard work.”

“Luckily, authors just passing through don’t get a vote,” Jackson said.

“Too bad,” Monica pouted, and Jackson shifted in his seat. There was something really obscene about how he reacted to that mouth of hers. “Why the yard work?”

“Haven’t you heard?” Sean wiped down his bar like it was a vintage Mustang convertible. “We’re going to be saved by a TV show.” He raised his hands to the ceiling. “Saved!”

“Calm down, Sean,” Brody said. His deep voice made Monica turn around.

She slipped off the stool and approached, her hand held out to Brody. “I’m Monica.”

Brody stood. As all six feet four inches of him came up out of his chair, he had to duck under the low light over the table. Sean’s parents hadn’t been able to have kids, so they adopted Brody when he was six, but three months later they were pregnant with Sean—their miracle baby. Sean inherited all of his mother’s Irish looks, but Brody had Filipino and African American bloodlines. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and something wild simmering just under a calm surface. He didn’t smile at Monica; not that it was anything personal. Brody was just really an unsmiling kind of guy. Part of his job, Jackson supposed. Bodyguards didn’t do a lot of smiling.

“Brody Baxter.” Even his voice was badass.

“I like your mom’s show,” Sean said, pulling Monica’s attention away from Brody. “
What Simone Wants
.”

“And I will try not to hold it against you.” Monica said it like a joke, but it rang with bitter truth.

“I liked the show you did with your mom like fifteen years ago. Remember that one?” Sean asked and whistled. “You were like the original Kardashians.”

Jackson was watching Monica, unable to take his eyes off her, so he saw the small muscles around her lips
flinch, as if just the memory of the show had the power to wound her.

“What was it called again?” Sean asked, obviously unaware that Monica was not enjoying this train of conversation.

“
Mommy Dearest
,” Monica joked, deadpan.

“No, that wasn’t it,” Sean said, oblivious. “You must remember, you were on the damn thing.”

Jackson stood and walked behind the bar, compelled to stop this conversation, all because of a lip twitch.

Sean let him back there with only a scowl; part of Jackson’s payment for the blood, sweat, and tears he’d put into the bar was free beer. And Jackson liked to work the taps.

“So what brings you to town?” Sean asked, distracted from trying to remember the name of Monica’s reality TV show.

“Working on a book,” she said.

“More sex, drugs, and rock and roll?” Sean asked, his eyebrows wiggling.

“No. I’m going to write about my father’s murder.”

The buzz of the neon signs in the windows was suddenly deafening.

“Really?” Sean practically squeaked in surprise. He jerked his thumb at Jackson. “Stalin here is letting you walk around asking questions about your dad’s murder?”

“I am … in fact.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a notebook. Jackson gaped at her audacity. “I was hoping to ask your father a few questions. He ran the bar then, didn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he here?”

Was she nuts?
She couldn’t walk into this bar, with him in it, and just start asking questions.
No way
. When
Sean glanced sideways at Jackson, Jackson didn’t even feel bad about shaking his head.

Monica saw it and jumped like she’d been bitten on the butt. “Jackson doesn’t have anything to do with this. And I certainly don’t need his permission to ask your father a couple of questions about that night.”

“No, but you do need mine.” Sean grabbed a napkin and a pen from behind the bar. “Here,” he said. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow morning. You call him around noon, before he starts watching the baseball game.”

Sean slid the napkin across the bar toward her.

“Thanks,” she said, folding the napkin and tucking it in her bag. “I don’t suppose you remember anything from that night?”

“I was only five,” Sean said, running a hand through his hair. Of course he had memories of that night. The whole town did. Jackson did. There had been camera crews, coroners, jazz music fans wailing in the street for a week after the murder. “But I remember all the cops around the kitchen table the next morning. My mom freaking out. I remember Dad was covered in blood when he got home.”

Jackson got a crippling vision of how this week would go if Monica was able to walk around asking questions. People would line up to tell her their memories of that night. And he just couldn’t have this town distracted from the vision they were trying to create—the “story” they were trying to tell, which was the polar opposite of the story
she
was trying to tell.

Jackson cleared his throat, and Sean got the message.

“That’s … that’s all I remember. Really.” He pulled himself a beer and walked back to the table. No doubt, Jackson would hear about Sean’s restraint tomorrow.

Monica whirled to face him, her eyes shooting daggers. “What the hell, Jackson?”

“I could say the same, Monica.” Jackson poured himself
another beer. Probably a mistake, but he was kind of in the mood to make a mistake. It was Monica’s influence. “You said you’d be discreet,” he reminded her. “Walking into The Pour House on Saturday night is not discreet.”

She twisted her lips, which he translated as a concession. “Fine,” she snapped. “Perhaps … I was not the most subtle.”

“So, we’re both sorry.”

“That’s a stretch.”

He smiled, unable to help himself.

She frowned at him, which didn’t do a single thing to kill his smile.

“Are you going to warn the whole town to stay away from me?”

“No. Just the ones you want to talk to in public about the murder.”

“What about telling people to do yard work on a Saturday night?”

“I didn’t tell them anything. Truth is, poker night is pretty much a dismal failure. Two people came in, took one look at me, and left.”

“I can understand the inclination.” Irresistibly, she was both sweet and spicy at once. And as he was getting excited, she was relaxing, he could tell, the curve of those shoulders easing from indignant to … reserved.

“I can’t imagine it will be a good time writing that book,” he said. Thinking of the kind of scab that would grow over a wound like that and the pain involved in ripping it off for the world to see. Or … maybe he had it wrong. Maybe she’d had years of counseling and was totally at peace with it.

“It’s not supposed to be a good time,” she said. “It’s a job.”

“Do you like being a writer?” He reached over and topped up her glass. Gave her a fresh lime. Maybe when
he left town he’d go to Mexico, get a job on a beach somewhere as a bartender. He had a knack.

“Sure.” She tucked her chin, her fingers tracing the grain on the wood. Her fingers were long, pretty. The nails were naked, but pink and short. Looking at them felt intimate, as if he were seeing something he shouldn’t through the crack in a door.

Everything about her felt that way. Illicit and naughty. Forbidden.

“Do you like being mayor?”

He laughed once, and it burned in his chest. “No. I don’t.” Surprised at his honesty, he took a sip of beer to keep his mouth busy so he didn’t go spilling any more of his secrets.

“Then why do it?”

“A man’s gotta eat.” Not at all the real answer, but he’d already been more honest than he’d intended. “Why are you writing a book you aren’t excited about?” As soon as he said it, he remembered once, when he was a kid, daring Sean to touch the electrified fence around the railroad switch south of town. Sean didn’t do it; he was dumb, but not stupid. But the two of them had stood close enough to feel the current, the energy coming off the wires.

That was how she seemed now; it was as if he’d stepped too close to the wires around her.

“That’s hardly any of your business,” she snapped.

“I disagree,” he snapped right back. This wasn’t what he wanted; he wanted to look at her naked fingers, try to see down her shirt, but he couldn’t stop this terrible energy. “This is my town and you’re about to go yanking our skeletons out of their closets.”

“Why don’t you want me to write this book?” she asked, leaning in, sending his equilibrium spinning. He took another sip of beer. It was as if his friends were on
the far side of the moon; it was just him and Monica. And the language of her body.

“It’s the past,” he said, wiping his mouth. “We’re looking toward the future.”

“We?”

“Bishop.”
Me. Me most of all. The wide-open future
.

“Right,” she said, her expression close to a sneer. “The TV show. The yard work.”

Now he stiffened, everything set alight by her disdain. Her sarcasm fed his doubts, watered his worry.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s very …” she pretended to mull it over “… polite.” She dropped her voice, leaned in close. “And you know how I feel about polite.”

There was something about her smart mouth, her irreverence, that made him want to bite her. It was a fire in his blood—a swift and sudden obsession. He’d start with that small, delicate cup of skin supported by bone and sinew right there under her ear. He wanted that flesh in his mouth, the heat and softness of her. And then he’d move on to the fat center of her bottom lip, so lush, so erotic. He wanted to suck that.

“You think it’s bullshit,” he said.

She touched her nose, smiling.

“You know what I think is bullshit?”

“I can hardly wait to hear.”

“Writing a book about a man who nearly killed his wife with his bare hands, a woman you clearly don’t like, and a past you put yourself in jeopardy to run from.”