KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel (13 page)

Chapter
Eighteen

Watching Ricky and Cristov spar was like watching a
tennis match.

“Are you going to let me write one thing down this
whole interview, you kindergarten drop-out?”

“I'd love to, I'm just making sure you don't
accidentally write down my name over and over again instead of his answers.”

Ricky snarled before turning back to Kennick.

“So, your father bought this a few days before she was
murdered?”

It had been easy to convince Ricky to take on the
assignment. In fact, Kim hadn't had to convince her at all. The night after
Kennick had invited Kim over for dinner, she'd called her sister with a brief
description of what she'd learned that afternoon.

“Oh my God,” Ricky had squealed over the phone, her
voice high and excited. “You are officially the best sister of all time. This
is like, serious juice. Like Tropicana, not from concentrate.”

Kim smiled. Ricky was a sucker for mysteries. Ludlum,
Carver, and Christie littered her bookshelves. And she was always complaining
about the lack of newsworthy stories in Kingdom.

“Are you sure Don will be okay with you writing
something so…scandalous?”

“Don can suck my big fat dick,” Ricky snorted. “I’m
the only writer worth a damn on the whole staff. I write what I want. When can
I meet him? I mean, you know, I wanted to interview one of the new business
owners, anyway, you know, for a profile, but this is
way
better.”

“Um,” Kim said, suddenly realizing that Ricky meeting
Kennick could be a bit awkward. Not for any reason she could pinpoint but….

Don’t lie
to yourself,
Kim said.
You know
exactly why it will be awkward.

It was true. Kim didn’t like the idea of Ricky meeting
Kennick because Ricky had an awful habit of being completely oblivious to Kim’s
crushes, and stealing them away for a two-week affair, rendering them utterly
un-dateable for Kim. Guys responded to Ricky’s flirtatious nature, her spontaneity,
the sense of excitement and rushing she brought to the table. Kim had a much
slower, subtler approach;
too
subtle,
if you asked Ricky.

“I didn’t know you liked him!” her sister would cry
when the truth came out, usually months after the man in question had flown the
coop. “You need to tell me these things! Or, you know, actually
act
on your desires, for once.”

But Kennick, somehow, seemed like he might be the kind
to be impervious to Ricky’s charms. Kim didn’t know why, but something about
him was different. Not easily swayed by a charming giggle and a bouncy
ponytail, Ricky’s trademarks.

“I’m seeing him tomorrow,” Kim said. “I’ll ask him.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“Seeing him or…
seeing
him?” Ricky asked, pointedly. Kim bit back a smile.

“
Seeing
him,”
she said and held the phone away from her ear as Ricky squealed again. The girl
had the squealing powers of a piglet.

“Kim’s got a date with a gypsy.” Ricky said, talking
to someone else on the other end of the line when Kim put the phone back to her
ear.

“Who’re you with?” Kim asked

“Tricia’s here,” Ricky answered. “We’re coming over.
Right, Trish?”

“Comin’ over!” called a second voice, somewhat
muffled. Kim could tell her best friend had gotten into the wine, and hoped her
sister was sober enough to drive.

Kim and Ricky had grown up next door to Tricia, and
they’d been best friends since they were little. The three girls had spent that
night talking about what Kim would wear, what it would be like to date a Rom,
and watching
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
online.

Now, as Kim and Ricky sat in the Volanis' trailer,
with Cristov and Kennick sitting opposite them across the table, Ricky was
scribbling furiously in her notebook as Kennick laid out his manilla folder of
evidence. Kim was impressed with the straightforward, emotionless way Kennick
answered Ricky's probing questions, and the way he abided his brother's
infuriating method of flirting.

“Pretty impressive little scoop, huh? Bet it's got
your reporter senses all tingly,” Cristov said, interrupting the flow of the
interview, eyes twinkling. Kim noted the way Ricky determinedly bit back her
smile.

“You know, being a member of the press, I can always
tell when someone's hiding something,” Ricky shot back. “And when a guy talks a
game like you, he's usually hiding something pretty tiny.”

“Tiny? Oh, honey, there's nothing I love more than
exceeding expectations,” Cristov shot back. “Come on, let me prove you wrong.”

“Fat chance, cockroach-dick,” Ricky said before
turning back to Kennick, who effortlessly returned the conversation to the
matter at hand. After another hour and a half of the same thing, the
conversation constantly being derailed by Cristov's innuendos and Ricky's
rebuffs, she closed her notebook, tucking her pen into the pages with a humming
sigh.

“This is gonna be good,” she said, smiling at Kim with
gratitude.

“Thank you for speaking with us,” Kennick said,
offering his hand across the table. Ricky took it, giving it a professional
shake. “Do you have plans tonight? Either of you? We're having a party, I'd
love to give you a chance to meet some of our people.”

He had directed the question at Ricky, but it was
clearly more aimed at Kim. Ricky smiled as she shook her head and slipped Kim
an expectant glance.

“I can't,” she said. “Want to start working on this.”

“Kim?” Kennick asked, finally turning to her with a
smile on his face.

“I can stick around for a while,” she said, her cheeks
warming as her sister not-so-subtly pushed against her shoulder. “Let me walk
you to your car, Ricky.”

Outside, the afternoon had turned to evening.

“Holy. Shit,” Ricky said as she paused, half-entering
the driver's side of her car. “I can't believe
that's
your gypsy man. I mean, Kim...way to effin
go!”

Kim blushed at her sister's reaction, a twinkling of
pride inside her heart. For once, Ricky was impressed by Kim's love life.

“He's a good guy, too,” Kim offered bashfully. Ricky
rolled her eyes as she plopped the rest of her body into the seat.

“I don't care if he eats puppies,” Ricky said. “You
better work that body as much as you can, for the sake of all us women who
can't.”

Kim was left laughing as Ricky pulled her door closed
and drove off, honking a few times on her way out and brandishing a hand out
the window to wave goodbye. When Kim turned around, she saw Kennick leaning
against the door, watching her.

“So, this party?” Kim asked as she approached. He
merely laughed, which she’d come to expect as a normal reaction to her
questions, and took her hand.

Chapter
Nineteen

He hadn’t been lying when he said that a gypsy party
was a sight to behold. The party was held outdoors, in the rows between the
trailers and on the “porches”, where people set up makeshift bars, barbecues,
and long tables of food. There was enough booze to slake the thirst of a hundred
sailors on shore leave, and enough food to sober them up enough to drink some
more.

Music mingled and mixed from where it played through
open trailer windows or on tiny radios, much of it shimmering, incandescent,
and exotic to Kim’s ears. Children and adults alike twisted and turned under
Christmas lights strewn from trailer to trailer, dancing wild and free in the
cool summer air.

Damon, who’d been absent when Ricky was talking to
Kennick, appeared during the party with a guitar, settling down at the far end
of trailers and strumming some simple folk songs that people intermittently
sang along to.

Kim had started out the night feeling on edge; parties
had never been her forte, and especially amongst this crowd of strangers who
looked at her as an outsider, she felt out of place and judged. But as she
helped set up, drifting from family to family at Kennick’s side, the wondering
looks turned to warm acceptance. She felt the enormous amount of liquor that
the gypsies seemed to drink helped that, but then so did her association with
Kennick, whom they trusted implicitly, it seemed.

Now, she was nestled under Kennick’s arm, holding a
beer in one hand and a shot glass of clear, strong-smelling vodka in the other,
near where Damon strummed out a beautifully lonesome tune. Three old men, whose
names she
thought
were Dago, Turk,
and James, though it was hard to remember considering how many names had
already been thrown at her that night, were trying to one-up each other with
fantastic tales.

Some were uproariously funny, some tinged with a kind
of horrible awe or aching loss. All the same, each story blended into the next
one regardless of subject or tone, synchronized with the familiarity of
retelling, sharing the same practiced beauty that comes from years of details
perfected and refined.

“That’s nothing,” the man Kim thought of as Turk said,
taking a sip from the shot glass he held, which was a sign for everyone
gathered to do the same. “Let me tell you about this woman I worked for back in
’83.

I was tarring her roof all summer, got to know her
pretty good. She was a real sweetheart, and not stingy with the lemonade. Had
two pretty daughters and a husband who, I guess, was never around too much. I
barely ever saw him, anyway. The girls were in school, and I guess I was her
only company, and with me on the roof knee-deep in tar, I wasn’t much for
conversation.

So she goes and gets herself a parrot. Real pretty
thing, all bright green and blue. She got it for a steal, too, and she didn’t
figure out
why
until the damn bird
started talking. Best we could figure, the last place that bird hung out was a
bordello. ‘Cause when he talked, it was all pretty filthy.

First time she brings the bird in, I’m in the shitter,
and when I come out I hear him squawking. He looks around, he goes, ‘new house,
new madam.’ We didn’t thinking nothing of that ‘til he looked at me and says,
‘new house, new madam, new john.’ That got us thinking. And then later, when
the girls, they were teenagers anyway, come home from school, the parrot gave
‘em a good look and said, ‘new house, new madam, new john, new whores.’ And
that’s when we knew.

I was laughin’ all the way home, and pretty damn well
into the next day. ‘Cept when I get there, I realize half the shit in the house
is layin’ out on the lawn. So I say, ‘what’s this?’ and the lady, all
red-faced, says ‘I’m kicking the hubby out!’.

That’s a pretty damn rash thing to do, and she always
seemed like such a sweet lady, so I ask what it is he did to deserve it. And
she points to the parrot. She goes, ‘last night when John came home, that damn
bird said: new house, new madam, new whores, old friends! Hi George!’”

Laughter erupted as Turk broke into a smile. Mina,
who’d come up to witness the storytelling marathon, nudged Kim in the ribs.

“I bought him the joke book
that
one came out of,” she said with half a smile on her face.
Overhearing her, Turk puffed his chest out and pretended to take offense.

“You callin’ me a liar, Mina Volanis?”

“I’m calling you a funny man, Turk,” Mina answered
sweetly.

“How about this one?” Dago asked, pointing to Kim
across the circle with a glint in his eye. “Looks like she has some good
stories.”

“Me?” Kim asked, suddenly feeling that old roar of
anxiety rushing up her throat, threatening to expel all the liquid courage
she’d taken in so far. She looked to Kennick for support, but found only a
bemused, expectant smile on his face. She swallowed hard. Her mind went blank.
“I’m really not…I’m quite boring, actually…”

The booing sound that surrounded her was almost worse
than the prospect of having to tell a story that would match the yarns the old
men had been spinning. Kennick moved closer, tightening his grip around her
shoulders. Her brain raced, trying to think of something – anything – to say.

“There was a flood once,” she said, still staring into
Kennick’s green eyes. She could pretend they were in bed, like they had been
the night before, conversation flowing free and easy and unencumbered by shame.
“In the 60’s. My father was young – maybe 19? It was a massive flood, though.
It almost washed the town away.”

As Kim spoke, she slowly tore her eyes from Kennick’s
and, finding herself the center of attention, stalled out. Her mind blanked.
And then he squeezed her again, and more words tumbled out of her, surprising
her entirely.

“My father worked for a stained-glass factory. He had
a friend there named Rodney, a much older man with no wife or kids. But he had
a dog, Abe. He was really big, like, a Rottweiler. I think it was a Rottweiler.
But it was huge, anyway, but it was sweet. So sweet, like, wouldn’t hurt a fly.
But right before the rains began, Abe ran away, and Rodney was heartbroken. He
was sure that Abe was dead, drowned or whatever.”

She moved her gaze down to her shot glass and, without
thinking, downed the remainder of the liquid. As it burned down her throat, she
closed her eyes and remembered her father telling her the story as a girl.
She’d loved it. She hoped she did it justice.

“But then, on the first day the waters went down, they
found Abe. Somehow, he’d gotten himself stuck on top of a Coke machine in the
back of the library. The dog was almost as big as the machine itself, but there
he was, sitting on top of it. I guess – well, my father and Rodney and a few
other folks were there, and they couldn’t really call the fire department
because they were a little busy taking care of the rest of the town, you know?
But none of the men were big enough to go get Abe down with a ladder. He would
have broken anyone’s back trying to lift him.

So they think – they go get a trampoline. You know,
one of those little ones? I guess one of the guy’s wife had one for exercise,
so they go get it and bring it back, but they can’t get Abe down. He’s too
scared to jump, he doesn’t know the trampoline will catch him or anything. So
Rodney says – go get some pineapple. And everyone’s like, ‘pineapple? What the
hell is pineapple gonna do?’ Well, Abe has one weakness, and that’s pineapple.
Loves it. This big burly Rottweiler, and he goes nuts over pineapple.

So they go and get a can and bring it back, put the
pineapple on a plate, and they hold it up, let him smell it, and then put it
down in front of the trampoline. And poor Abe is up there, whimpering and
whining because he wants that pineapple so bad, and Rodney’s saying, ‘c’mere
boy, c’mere,’ until eventually, the dog just goes for it. Leaps off the top of
the Coke machine and lands dead center on the trampoline.

But my Dad had some bad luck that day, and he was
standing right in front of the trajectory when Abe bounced off, and here comes
100 pounds of startled, confused, scared-ass Rottweiler right into his chest
and face, and they both go down hard, knocks the wind right out of Dad and the
damn dog ends up pissing all over his shirt. But as Dad’s lying there, on his
back, hurting, Abe looks down at him and gives him one big, good lick right
from his chin to his hairline. And, well…I mean, that’s it. That’s the story. I
guess…it might not even be true but…”

Kim felt her cheeks turning red as she realized there
was no punchline to the joke, no real point to the story, just a funny picture
in her mind of a Rottweiler bouncing off a trampoline into her father’s arms.
She could, in that moment, heartily empathize with a bad stand-up comedian with
an audience of expectant drunks, and shame ran down her spine in an awful wave.

“Well, he never did eat pineapple after that,” she
finally offered with a shrug. One loud cackle of laughter called her attention
away from the beer she’d been staring into, and she saw with surprise that the
old men were beaming at her, clearly tickled. Kennick leaned down and kissed
the top of her head.

“All stories are true if you tell them right,” he
said. Kim didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but she liked the way he
was looking at her, like he wanted her to keep telling stories, all night long.