Wild Child (11 page)

“More,” he told her and she did exactly what he said, unable to think of a reason not to. Wind blew past them, under her skirt, against the dampness he’d created.

His hand slipped up under her skirt, his fingers under the elastic edge of her underwear, until he cupped her ass in his hand, his fingertips just at the edge of the valley between her cheeks.

“Oh,” she gasped, breaking their kiss but not flinching
as his fingers traced that valley, curling deeper. It was dark and exciting, and she couldn’t breathe for the pleasure of his touch.

No one had ever touched her there. She was sure of it. Something like this a girl would remember.

And then he found the electric center of her body where she was wet and hot and dying for him. Dying for him to slide inside of her.

“What—” She gulped air, unsure of what she was going to ask.
What are you doing to me? What are we doing?

“Shhhh,” he whispered, calming her. His eyes, sleepy and sexual, blazing beneath his lowered eyelids.

His other hand traced the front of her underwear, finding her clitoris through the silk, and it was erotic. His bare hand, the silk, the silence surrounding them.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “So in control. You scared me, you know.” He was teasing her. Making fun of her, and she didn’t care. Was too far gone.

“Please,” she gasped and he smiled, so wicked, so knowingly wicked.

His finger from behind sank deep inside of her and his other hand picked up a heady, demanding rhythm.

This. This was happening. This man … this handsome stranger so far beyond her reach, her world, was going to make her come on the side of the road and she was doing nothing to stop it. She had started it!

“Yes,” she sighed, pressing her forehead against his shoulder; the scent of him, sexy and sweaty and warm and real, was too much, and the world started to go fuzzy. As her body coiled and burned, she opened her mouth and bit that shoulder muscle.

He jerked against her and swore, his hands getting rougher. Another finger joined the first and he picked up the pace and she clutched at him, wrapping her arms around him, the only thing solid in a world flying apart.

“Come on,” he groaned in her ear and she clenched hard, her body one giant spasm of pleasure, lifting her up and away from herself.

Her eyes blinked open only to find him still watching her, his wicked grin softened into something kind. Human. And that humanity suddenly embarrassed her. The dampness between her legs suddenly embarrassed her and she had to look away.

“Wow,” she breathed and he chuckled, warm and low. His fingers, slowly, as if savoring her, slipped away from her body and his hands patted down her skirt, fixed the crooked hem of her shirt.

Considering she had started this little bit of exhibitionist behavior, her sudden shyness seemed ludicrous. He stood up from the car and she stumbled away, the distance between them clearing her head.

Oh
. Oh God, what had she done? It was just an emergency kit. She looked at it a million times a day; why had she lost her mind now?

She put her face in her hands, horrified on a molecular level.

His chuckle only made things worse. “Don’t,” he said, his fingers stroking her face. “Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t … you’re beautiful. Sexy.”

Ludicrous. His words were outrageous flattery. Lies. She wasn’t sexy. She was an art teacher who lived with her mother. Despite the thong, despite what just happened, she was the opposite of sexy.

Sad. That’s what she was. Bordering on pathetic.

She opened her eyes only to see his erection making a mess of the front of his khaki pants. And the sight, the thought of it, just destroyed her. What did he think was going to happen next? What did
she
think was next? That they would just climb in the back of the Cadillac, or,
oh my God
, was she supposed to do the same thing to him, out here? In the open?

I’m not this person
, she thought.
What the hell am I doing?

“I have to go,” she blurted.

“What … now?”

“Yep. Yes. I’m … ah … I’m late. So. You’ll be fine.” She grabbed the water from the ground and poured it into the radiator. Water splashed everywhere. “Just keep an eye on the heat gauge and the car will be fine. I mean … and I suppose—” she gestured toward the erection, because she was that stupid. “You … ah … will be too. I guess.” Oh my God, where was an earthquake, a flash flood when you needed it?

“Is this a joke?” he laughed, but there was an edge to it. He was getting angry.

She nearly ran, embarrassed, and her thong was unpleasantly wet and uncomfortable and her pride all worn and ratty. The door of the car slammed shut, sealing her into its familiar blandness, its safety ratings and good gas mileage.
Yes
. This was right. Even the emergency kit in the backseat made her feel better.

She drove away in a plume of dust, not even lifting her hand in a wave. Not even honking.

It didn’t happen
, she told herself, turning up the radio, brushing her blond hair out of her eyes.
None of that happened
.

Chapter 8

Jackson braced his head in his hands and wondered why he scheduled budget meetings on Monday morning. It was like taking a sledgehammer to the day. To his own head.

“I thought … I thought we’d dodged the bankruptcy bullet,” Jackson said. “We were in the clear.”

“It’s not bankruptcy, Jackson. Not exactly. It’s just … reality. Look, you’ve done a great job, son,” Brian Andersen, the city treasurer and undoubtedly the next mayor of Bishop, took off his half-glasses and folded them up as if he were ready to throw in the towel. “You cleared up the pension mess you inherited. I thought for sure that would ruin us. Frankly, we’ve held on longer than I thought we would.”

“Let’s walk backward,” Jackson said, leaning back in the chair behind his desk. His hair was still damp from his morning swim, his body loose and boneless, his muscles unable to muster up a twinge despite the conversation. On a purely selfish note, thank God he’d managed to keep the pool open. Without his grueling workouts, there was no telling what would happen at these budget meetings.

He imagined turning into The Hulk and smashing desks.

With a sigh, Brian put his glasses back on. Gray was smattered through his dark black curls, and wrinkles creased his ebony skin—this job had aged him.

“Without a change in the tax base, next year we either
close the library or we pay the fire chief’s salary,” he said.

“We can’t not have a fire chief.”

“Then we close the library.”

“We can’t close the library! What about volunteers? If we just have volunteers run it?”

“And how do we pay the utilities? Taxes? It’s one of the biggest buildings in the city—”

“Okay. Okay.” Jackson looked out the window and wondered, just briefly, what was happening in Rio de Janeiro at this moment. Dancing, probably. That hipswervy Latin stuff. He wasn’t much of a dancer but if he moved to Rio, he’d learn. He was probably great at it and just didn’t know it.

“The contest—”

“We can’t bank on the contest, Jackson. We can’t.”

Jackson knew that, he did, but he
wanted
to bank on it. He wanted to put aside all this anxiety over the town and start looking forward to the next part of his life. He wanted to move on.

“Two more months,” he said. “Two more months before we make these big decisions.”

“Jackson.” Brian’s sigh reeked of disappointment and censure, and Jackson bristled. “What happens if we don’t win? This town needs to restructure. It’s not the town it was before the recession, which doesn’t have to be a tragedy. But I think if we really looked at reality—”

“You can restructure when
you’re
mayor.” As soon as the words were out, he regretted them. Brian didn’t deserve that, but Jackson had started down this road and he couldn’t change direction now. He was swinging for the fences here, damn it! “How are the Okra Festival plans going?”

“Great. We’ve made a little money on the parade permits. The street-fair vendor licenses are all sold—people seem to be excited.”

“Good. That’s … good.” Good, but not enough. Not nearly enough and they both knew it.

Brian closed his books, which was the universal signal that the meeting was over. He stood and collected his stuff, and Jackson had to admire the guy. Considering they were the only two people with all their fingers in the dam, Brian kept his cool. Brian could quit, as he’d no doubt been tempted to do once he realized the mess they were in—Lord knows Jackson had been—yet he’d stayed.

They might not always agree, but he showed up at these meetings every week with ideas, ready to try.

“You’ll be a good mayor,” Jackson said.

“The election isn’t for another three months,” Brian said, smiling over his shoulder as he headed for the door.

“No one is running against you, Brian. Everyone knows you’ll be good for Bishop.”

Brian stopped at the door, his hand on the knob. “I won’t have a magic contest to help this town out.”

That felt like hard censure, and Jackson’s back rose. “Should I have sat back and not tried?”

“No, but … not everything needs to be fixed. Some things just … are.”

Jackson shrugged, angry and at a loss, because he didn’t understand what Brian was talking about.
Some things just are? What things?
Everything was changeable; he knew that better than anyone. One minute a guy could have a life, a girlfriend, plans for the future, and the next that could all be gone. People could change—he had big plans in that department. And everything … everything could be fixed.

Brian shook his head and left, closing the door behind him with a definitive click.

Jackson stared at the intricately carved door of his office.
Honestly
, he thought, apropos of nothing,
who carves a door like that? What is the point of a door like that?

Something restless roared through him and he wanted, ferociously, to see Monica. To bury his discontent in her discontent. To find, in all the expectations that the world seemed to have about them, the truth, as only they could define it.

But then the moment was over, and he got up and walked to the door.

One thing he had learned coming back to this town was that when things were really bad, when he wanted to close his eyes and drown in the problems that rose around him, nothing worked like movement. Forward motion. Not always the best thing, but sometimes the only thing.

Ms. Watson—not Pam, not Pamela, but Ms. Watson—the secretary who came with his job, who had worked at the desk on the other side of that stupid door through the terms of four mayors including his father, looked up expectantly.

“I’m going to go to Cora’s,” he said. “You want something?”

Ms. Watson declined; Ms. Watson always declined. Jackson shrugged. “I have my cell if anyone needs me.”

Ten minutes later, as he crossed the street to Cora’s, the front door to the café opened and Cora stood there, her eyes wide and lit with manic excitement. No scarf in her hair today, and she wore chef whites. Very professional. Something was up.

“He’s here,” she said.

“Who is here?”

“The cracker guy.”

“He is?” He glanced through the plate-glass window. Inside, the café seemed filled with regulars. But all the regulars were staring at the corner booth, obscured by the door.

He followed Cora into the restaurant, and the expectations he’d felt on Friday were doubled at least. It was like walking into a giant web.

“Coffee, Cora?” he said, and she walked away nodding. He took a deep breath and turned to face the man in the corner booth. Dean Jennings, in the flesh, wearing an ordinary summer-weight suit and button-down shirt, but somehow making it look glamorous.

“Hi,” Jackson said as he approached the tall blond man. “I’m Jackson Davies, mayor of Bishop.”

“Oh, right.” The man stood partially and shook Jackson’s hand. “I was going to make my way over to your office in a bit. Dean Jennings, CEO of—”

“Maybream Crackers, of course. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dean.” The man’s handshake was firm and swift.
Chalk another point up for Dean
, Jackson thought.

“Well, I don’t want to interrupt your breakfast—” He let it dangle, banking on the man’s manners being as powerful as his own.

“No, please join me. I was getting a bit wigged out with all of these people staring at me while I ate.”

Jackson sat. “You get used to it.”

“I’m not sure why I would want to.”

It seemed those moments that just put a pin in the way his life was lived here were coming in fast succession. Those things he took for granted as immoveable realities just got kicked aside by other people, as if they were nothing.

Why get used to people watching you eat, indeed?

“It’s sort of a small-town thing.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Dean looked back at the people staring at him, as if they were the ones in the zoo. It was effective; most people looked away.

“Where are you from?” Jackson asked.

“New York, born and raised.”

The words came with a cool breeze, a whiff of the exotic.
Skyscrapers and counterculture coffee shops. Good pizza on every corner, music spilling out of grungy clubs. A city that never sleeps. He imagined himself there in one of those slick skinny suits, going to art galleries with fashion-model girlfriends.

Cora arrived with his cup of coffee. “Usual?” she asked Jackson but stared at Dean.

“That would be great, thank you, Cora.”

“And you?” she asked Dean.

“I’m fine,” he said, and she left. Rather slowly, truth be told.

“When does the
America Today
crew get in?” Jackson asked, getting comfortable.

“Tomorrow. They’re finishing up the shoot in Alaska.”

“Alaska?”

“One of the semifinalists. I arrived yesterday, drove in from Little Rock.”

Jackson burned to ask about the town in Alaska but refrained. “Well, I hope everything has been satisfactory so far?”