Wild Child (15 page)

Competitive. Very competitive
. That had to be enough.

Dean shut his notebook. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

The film crew filed out, discussing with excitement their morning at Cora’s. Apparently she was making her pecan pie cake and her brisket with fried green tomato relish.

“Your life is going to change,” he told them, standing at the door as they walked through. Smiling as hard as he could while his stomach tied itself in knots.

“When can I get a look at that factory?” Dean asked at the door.

“This afternoon,” he said. “Let me just clear a few things off my desk.”

Once they were gone he closed the door, bracing himself against it.

Carefully, he lifted his head and thunked it against the intricate carving.

What a mess!

Nothing to do, he told himself, but fix it.

This was going to require the big guns. He hoped Cora made fritters this morning.

Jackson, after stopping at Cora’s, walked past downtown toward the dusty outskirts where Shelby lived. Her family owned an old farm, though no one had farmed the land for years. When Shelby and Jackson were kids, her father used the barn for a church of his own creation. Half salesman, half crackpot, her father had been a difficult burden for Shelby until he died. Probably still was, though Shelby never talked about it.

Through her mom’s side, Shelby’s family had managed the canning factory for generations. Her mom ran that place like a family business until Del Monte finally pulled the plug, and she’d been slipping—mentally and physically—ever since.

Though when they’d gone through the factory cleaning
it up for the
America Today
application photos, she’d perked right up. Still, she’d insisted on keeping the keys again when they shut the doors that night, eyeing Jackson as if he were a vandal she’d caught sleeping in the factory.

Across the road from Shelby’s, a white moving van sat in the dirt driveway of the Halarens’ old place. The farmhouse had been for sale for years, but with the bad economy and the housing situation it hadn’t moved. But now the sign was gone and the van was there.

The doors were all shut and there didn’t seem to be any movement, but obviously someone had either bought or rented the Halarens’ place.

I’m going to take that as a sign that things are looking up
.

He bypassed Shelby’s house altogether and went out toward the back, where the barns were. Five years ago Shelby got a grant from the state for the money to fix up the barns, one as a studio and the other as a dormitory. Using profits from the camps, she’d made the smokehouse into a kiln a few years ago, and now she had plans to turn the chicken coops into a woodworking workshop.

“Hello?” he called, stepping into the barn. Long tables were set up along one half of the big room, along with small burners for the glass classes. There were pottery wheels in the corner, and easels surrounded a raised dais on the other side of the barn. In the middle were shelves and shelves and shelves of supplies. Paper, paint, turpentine. Buckets of brushes and pencils. Long, thin cases filled with watercolors and chalk.

It smelled both sharp and soft in the barn. The paint and turpentine stung his nose, but then they were quickly followed by the sweet smell of hay that couldn’t be renovated away. Swallows still lived in the rafters, refusing to leave while work was done to the building. Occasionally
one of the birds dive-bombed an artist’s head, which sent the kids into hysterics.

Shelby affectionately named the swallows “the critics.”

“Anyone home?” he called, and for a moment only the swallows answered.

“Hey.” Shelby came around from the sinks and bathroom she had built into the far corner. Behind that, down a long hallway, was her office. She was drying off her hands. “If you’re looking for Gwen, she’s not here yet. Camp doesn’t start for another hour.”

“No, actually. I’m looking for you.” He held out the white grease-stained bag and the paper coffee cup from Cora’s. “Here.”

“Ooooh, coffee and …” She opened the bag. “Fritters? To what do I owe this honor? Oh, right.” She threw the towel over her shoulder and dug into her pocket. “The keys for the factory. I put them in my pocket and meant to run them by City Hall today.”

Jackson pocketed the keys. “Thanks, but I’m not actually here for the keys.”

Her brown eyes flared wide, and then she closed them. “Shit,” she whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

It was weird hearing Shelby swear, like catching your parent farting.

“Dean told you?” she asked.

He blinked. “Told me what?”

“About us … about the side of the road.”

All the apprehension he’d had about asking Shelby to take Monica on as a teacher got pushed aside as he remembered with very sharp clarity Shelby dropping her purse at the restaurant, and the way she and Dean looked at each other as if stunned to see the other—again.

Jackson folded his arms across his chest. “He didn’t say anything.”

“Oh …” It took her a second, and Jackson had to
give her points for trying, but she smiled and managed to wave aside the whole conversation as if it were nothing. “Great, then. What do you need?”

“I need you to tell me what happened on the side of the road with Dean.”

“Jackson—”

“He’s the CEO of Maybream, Shelby. If something happened that you think I should know about—”

“No one needs to know about it,” she said, her cheeks red, her neck blotchy. “It was just … a
thing
.”

“A thing?” Shelby wasn’t the kind of person who had “things.” And he couldn’t quite believe that she meant
thing
in the way that the rest of the world meant
thing
. Like, perhaps to her, she and Dean did her taxes on the side of the road and that was the “thing.” While … while he was imagining something totally different.

“Yes.” She stood straight, aiming for prim, which usually came pretty naturally to her, but with the blushing it looked like a lie. “A thing.”

“Like … a sexual thing?” He managed to say it with a straight face but she sensed his shock anyway, and he could tell by the way her shoulders fell that he’d embarrassed her. And that wasn’t his intention.

“Shelb—” He reached for her, but she shifted away from the contact.

“I didn’t know who he was at the time,” she said with stiff and painful forthrightness. “And I’ve made it clear that nothing else will happen between us.”

“What happened?” he cried.

“It’s none of your business, Jackson.” Her cool eyes shamed him and he held up his hands.

“You’re right. But … are you okay?”

“Except for this conversation, yes. I’m fine. Now, why are you here?” She put down the white bag and took the plastic lid off the coffee before taking a sip.

While part of him was incredibly grateful to get out
of this conversation, the other part of him was dying to press her for more bizarre details. But he knew it would only embarrass her further, and he didn’t want that.

“I need to ask you a favor,” he said. “For the
America Today
thing?”

“Sure.”

“You’re probably going to want to get a few more details before you agree.”

“I know how important this is, Jackson. And I know the pressure you’re under. If there’s something I can do to help, I’m happy to.”

He sighed. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard Monica Appleby is in town.”

“That … reality TV woman?”

“No. That’s her mother. Well, I guess it’s her, too. Monica is the writer. That book,
Wild Child
?”

Shelby’s screwed-up nose gave a stunning literary critique of the book. “So why’s she in town?”

“She’s writing a book about the night her mother killed her father.”

Shelby shuddered and Jackson wasn’t sure which she found the most distasteful, the murder, the book about it, or Monica.

“So, what does she have to do with me?”

Jackson took a deep breath. “Just for this week, while the camera crew is in town, I’m wondering … hoping, actually … that you could find a way to incorporate her into the art camps.”

“As what?”

“As a teacher.”

Shelby was blank-faced for a whole ten seconds before she started laughing. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“This … you … my camps have a reputation, Jackson. And they are successful because of that reputation. My faculty are professionals, they are respected and revered.
They are not former reality TV stars and groupies with questionable backgrounds and morals! Oh my God, what parent is going to send their kid here if she’s on faculty?”

“Shelby,” he snapped. “You’re not being fair.”

“Me?” she asked. “That’s what the world thinks of her.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but he wasn’t going to split hairs with Shelby. “Well, the world is wrong.”

She crossed her arms, mutinous. Shelby would die if she knew that she looked exactly like her mother when she did that.

“I don’t have a writing curriculum.”

“I’m sure you can make one up.”

“Right. Because that’s so easy?”

“No. Of course not … but maybe she’ll have ideas.”

“Does she have experience teaching?”

Somehow Jackson doubted it, but that didn’t stop him from lying. “Of course. She’s a professional.”

“Jackson, you sure she should be working with kids?”

“Come on, Shelby. What’s she going to do? You’ll be like ten feet away the entire time.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see if I can make it work.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

He left without saying another word, stunned by the judgment in his old friend. Stunned by the ugliness of what the world thought of Monica.

The humidity and sunlight were intense, and he put on his sunglasses as he headed back into town, making another quick stop at Cora’s before heading to the Peabody.

One down, one to go. And if he thought Shelby was difficult to convince, Monica was going to be impossible.

Chapter 10

The pounding on the door startled Monica so much she jumped, smearing red toenail polish across her big toe.

“Great,” she muttered, wiping it off with a piece of toilet paper.

Again with the pounding. “Hold on a second!” she cried, pushing herself off the bed and hobbling across the floor, her feet flexed so her toenails didn’t touch anything.

She yanked open the door only to find Jackson on the other side, holding a white bag and a cup of coffee.

“Jeez, Jackson, where’s the fire?”

“I thought you might like some coffee. And one of Cora’s muffins. Peach today, her best. She was out of fritters.”

Men bearing gifts? Immediately she was suspicious.

“Why are you smiling like a salesman?” She grabbed the coffee. Salesman or not, she’d take the coffee.

“Can I come in?” His scales weren’t balanced today; he was more careful today than charming. More man than boy.
Interesting
. Letting him in would no doubt be a terrible mistake. But she had always been very good at those.

“Give me the muffin,” she said and stepped aside so he could come in.

Reba, sleeping on the edge of the bed, woke up when Jackson walked past, as if sensing someone new to show off for, and she leapt to her feet, shaking herself awake.
Jackson patted the dog’s head and then gave her a good scratch under her ridiculous collar. Reba leaned into his big hand, sighing and wiggling.

Do not
, she told herself,
be jealous of a dog
.

“It’s really tidy in here,” he said, looking around.

“I have some experience living in hotels,” she said. “It’s a slippery slope from untidy to disaster zone.”

“You live in hotels?”

“It’s stranger to have a home with a name that your family has lived in since before the Civil War.”

Jackson laughed in his throat. “I suppose you’re right.”

“What are you doing here, Jackson?”

He closed his eyes for a second and tidal waves of doubt rolled off him, as if all his dams and locks had been overrun and he could no longer hold back what he kept hidden from the world.

Oh no
, she thought.
Don’t show me this stuff
.

It made her want to hug him. Tell him that whatever was putting those lines of stress between his eyes, it would be okay.

“I have to … I have to ask a favor.”

“A favor? This should be good.” She sat down on the edge of her bed again and took a bracing sip of her coffee before she set it down and grabbed her toenail polish. What this town needed was a decent manicure/pedicure spot.

She was getting ready to go speak to Ed Baxter this afternoon, and having her toenails done felt like a crucial part of her armor. As she’d worked on the questions she had for Ed, it became increasingly clear that she was going to need armor for the interview. Her emotional distance seemed to shrink with every question she’d written down.

Did JJ—my father—seem scared? Did he seem to know what was happening?

The question had stopped her in her tracks. Sent her spinning.

She didn’t doubt that she could do this—she’d done harder things. But she was keenly aware that asking these questions was going to cost her.

Jackson cleared his throat and she gladly refocused on him. “I need you to teach, or at least pretend to teach, at a community art camp.”

“Art camp?”

“It’s quite cool, actually. Shelby Monroe teaches these camps in the summer—”

“Why?” Monica put her foot down on the floor, the bottle of nail polish clenched in her hand.

“Why does she teach? I suppose it’s a calling …”

“Why do you want
me
to teach?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Glanced out the window and then back at her. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. “For the show.”

Monica howled. “Oh, that’s good, Jackson—”

“I’m not joking. I’m … I’m very serious.”

She shook her head, unable to connect the dots. “Spell it out for me, Jackson, because yesterday,
yesterday
you didn’t even want me speaking to Dean.”

“Apparently, Bishop, as it stands, isn’t enough to beat this town in Alaska.”