Wild Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

with duty and years of respectability, and immediately it was new.
    As she walked by him, he caught the smell of something feminine and complicated.
    The delicious aroma of trouble.
*   *   *
    It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the interior. But once they did, she felt as if she’d stepped into someplace familiar. As lovely as the Peabody was, there was something very … staged about it. A beautiful girl who knew her appeal.
    But Jackson’s house, as grand in scale as the Peabody, was a home, filled with the lovely and worn things that made it one. It reminded her, not in layout or scope, but in detail and feel, of Jenna’s mom’s house outside Nashville, where Monica had spent the last two months with her dying friend.
    Growing up as she had, rootless and wandering, Monica had made a study of homes. And the difference between a house and a home wasn’t anything you could point at; it was a feeling. A sense of a group of lives lived together, in tandem and opposition, messy and sweet and complicated.
    She sighed, some of her tension dissipating.
    From the hallway, there were two doorways on either side of her. Through the door to her left, she glimpsed a deep couch, squishy embroidered pillows tossed in its corners like spare change. One of the pillows declared “Family is Forever.”
    Hmmmm … a promise, or a threat?
    Through the other door was a large walnut dining-room table, a bowl of humble pink tea roses at its center. A black dog, white around the muzzle, wandered through from the dining room into the hall. It brushed against her legs once, a warm hello, and then headed into the sitting room, where it sighed and flopped onto the hardwood floor in front of the couch. Its collar jangled as it settled.
    “We’re set up in the back,” Jackson said.
    His voice was masculine and low, the sound of dark chocolate with a hint of spice, of a California Syrah aged just right. It touched her spine, that voice, brushed across the nape of her neck, reminding her briefly that there was still pleasure in this world.
    Everything about Jackson seemed built for pleasure. For elegance. He was lean, but broad in all the right places. His linen jacket looked tailored to fit his shoulders, and when he smiled at her, she couldn’t help but frown.
    It wasn’t just his looks; she’d had a surplus of hot men in her life. Her mother, after all, was Simone Appleby. Simone, before the reality show—probably what led to the reality show—had become notorious for dating famous men. Sports stars, rock stars, actors. The only things required from them were good looks and an increasing fan base.
    Monica had learned that good looks were a trap for the unwary.
    And she had become very, very wary.
    But still, even with handsome men, she could put forth the smile they expected.
    Not with this man. He was disconcerting with all his contradictions. His lovely light eyes were shadowed by stern eyebrows. His lips—the top one sculpted, the bottom one lush—were held in a firm line. His blond hair curved away from his face as if scared to droop over that long forehead.
    He managed to be both stern and beautiful.
    And the twinkle in his eyes was utterly boyish.
    “Is something wrong?” he asked in that voice that made her want to curl against it.
    “No.” She waved her hand, forced a smile. “Your house is lovely.”
    “It’s been in my family since before the Civil War.”
    “Oh, then it must have a name, right? All the good southern manors do.”
    He blushed slightly, and she laughed. “It does! Spill it.”
    “They … I mean, it’s always been called the Big House.”
    “That is astonishingly unimaginative.”
    “I agree.”
    She pointed toward the elegant wooden staircase that curved from the main floor up to a wide landing on the second. “Is Scarlett O’Hara going to make an appearance?”
    “There are some days I wouldn’t be surprised.”
    “Are you … do you live here alone?” she asked,