Wild Girl: A Cowboy Romance Trilogy (Wild Men Texas Book 3) Read online

  I fidget.

  “You’d be protecting Mr. Wild again you know. But this time, you’d be losing him forever in the process. And if you refuse, you protect yourself and potentially get what you want, which is a breakup between Gigi and Logan.”

  I know. But I also know that I care about Logan far too much to ever sell him out or let him take the fall for pictures that nobody else would understand. Logan didn’t cheat on Gigi. And I would never ruin their relationship by letting those photos go public.

  “I won’t discuss my father’s drinking, any of my siblings’ personal lives at all, or my parents’ relationship. I will talk only about myself and my life. And I will give you Vivian’s diary under one condition—that I sit next to you the entire time you read it. It never leaves my sight.”

  “Good enough. Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’ll grant you the interview.”

  Chapter Ten

  Skip pumps his fist. “Awesome!” Then he pauses. “You know, I have to admit I’m surprised. With the way you look at Mr. Wild, I thought maybe you’d want the chance to see him single again.”

  I just shake my head in disgust and give my last stipulation. “No cameras, no Jon, just you. You can interview me tonight, and tomorrow you come by The Cowherd, and I’ll give you Vivian’s diary.” Minus the torn-out page, because once Mama tore that out, she and I agreed it was no longer public history but had become a private matter. And private matters are best left private.

  Skip tells Jon he can go home, and we watch him disappear up the hill and into his car. I take three deep breaths to center myself and lead Skip down to the fishing hole.

  He hurries next to me along the edge of the woods toward the one section of the creek that empties into the lake. The moon is barely visible tonight, but the stars are out.

  “This is real small town, huh?” Skip says in a hushed voice. “It’s so quiet and dark.”

  That’s why I love it here. And why you are ruining the peace.

  I head quickly in the direction of laughter and voices, and the darkness is broken by a bonfire and fishing poles.

  Down by the water, Logan’s teaching Gigi how to fish. He has his hands around her pole from behind, a sight I would rather not have seen. Her sisters are giggling and pointing at the creek like they’ve never seen natural water before.

  I go sit down on the grass with Ginny, Dave, and Blake, and Skip joins us.

  “You should see this,” Ginny whispers to me. “Gigi and her sisters are acting like they didn’t know where fish come from—it’s like they think all food just magically appears on your table.”

  “Hi, Macey!” Gigi drops her pole to wave. “Your blueberry pie looks so delicious!”

  I smile. “Have as much as y’all want.”

  “Gosh, I hate cooking,” Gigi says. “I don’t know how you stand it, Macey.”

  “Macey’s an amazing cook,” Logan says.

  Ginny clears her throat and jabs my side with her elbow.

  “Not me.” Gigi giggles. “My mother always orders out. It tastes just as good as homemade if you ask me.”

  “Well, that’s because you haven’t had Texas barbecue before.” Blake stands up and goes to check on the grill. “Just about ready, folks. Come eat up.”

  “Hey, what’s he doing here?” Logan stares at Skip, who’s stuck to my side like an appendage.

  “Are you still helping him with the Darcy Legend?” Ginny says. “Doesn’t he know enough by now?”

  “Apparently not. Skip, help yourself to some food.” I grab some chicken and a bun, slather on barbecue sauce and some onions, and then sit back down on the grass.

  Skip plops down next to me and Ginny and rambles on about how much he loves a good barbecue. I try to ignore him by staring out at the flowing water and cypress trees leaning over the creek.

  Gigi plunks her ass down right in front of Ginny and me and looks at us intently.

  Does she expect us to initiate girl talk or something?

  I look back at her in silence and try to think of something to say but come up empty.

  “Gigi, are you ready for your big day?” Ginny finally asks politely.

  Gigi closes down her expression, and I look at her in surprise.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  She whips her head over to me, and that girlish enthusiasm returns to her expression. “Oh, yes, I’m very okay. In fact, Logan and I are going to have a big pre-wedding party at Brick’s Barbecue the night before our wedding here. My mom and I think it will be so quaint.”

  “I don’t think Brick’s is quaint,” I say, not able to keep my mouth shut.

  Ginny freezes next to me.

  After it pops out of my mouth, I worry Logan will tell me off, so I’m surprised when he starts to laugh. Dave and Blake laugh, too, and Gigi glares at all of them.

  “It is too quaint!” she says. “What would you call it, Macey?”

  “I’d call it country. Yeah, it’s a little old-fashioned, a little redneck. But it’s not something you can point at from a distance and judge, Gigi.”

  Logan stops laughing, and his eyes blaze into mine intently.

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” Gigi says. “I don’t judge Darcy. And neither does my mom. She was here a few years ago, and…”

  Logan kicks his tackle box so hard the sound reverberates off the water.

  And Gigi shuts up.

  I look between her and Logan.

  What the hell is going on?

  Beside me, Skip’s attention is piqued. He sits up straighter and stares at Logan.

  Gigi clears her throat. She almost looks like she’s trembling.

  “Anyway, I have nothing against Darcy. I think it’s…”

  “Quaint,” I repeat. “I know. You’ve said it a bunch of times. But it’s where we live. It’s not a dollhouse or the place of the month. It’s home.”

  Gigi looks to Logan for help, but he’s watching me. His gaze is smoldering, and I can practically feel Skip’s mind churning.

  I turn away awkwardly and comment on the starry sky. Ginny agrees it’s beautiful, and the moment passes.

  Chapter Eleven

  While Skip helps himself to pie, I take off my shoes and socks and walk down to the water.

  “Eeewww, your poor feet are so close to all that mud,” says Gigi’s sister, Miranda. “Do you do that for the pores?”

  “Huh?”

  “Like at the spas? A mud bath.”

  “Not exactly.”

  I leave the water and walk over to the cooler to get a beer, but Miranda and Corey follow me.

  I glance from one concerned-looking sister to the other as I pop open a beer.

  Miranda lowers her voice. “Gigi told us why you don’t want to get married. Again,” she adds with raised eyebrows.

  I tilt my head, and Corey leans in conspiratorially. “She said you and your mother are unnaturally obsessed with Jane Austen and that your dream since you were a little girl was to be just like Jane when you grew up.”

  O-ka-ay.

  “Being a famous novelist would leave you no time for domestic things like taking care of a home and kids. So marriage was out for you.”

  “Ri-ight. I guess.” I tilt my head back and empty about half a bottle of Lone Star down my throat.

  “And you wanted to try marriage out the way most people try on a prom dress. Just for a night, right? With sex, of course.” Miranda laughs. “Marriage would suck without sex. But so would a prom. I mean, what’s the point?”

  I drop my bottle and watch the rest of the beer pour out onto the grass.

  “Is Logan good in bed?” Corey whispers to me. “I mean, I always had a cowboy fantasy, and Logan’s forearms sure are muscular. Not to mention the way he fills out those jeans. Did he—you know—satisfy you? Because Gigi’s waiting until marriage to find out.”

  She’s what??!

  I jerk my head toward Logan and Gigi by the water.

  They are
n’t having sex? So that means Logan hasn’t had sex since Vegas—with me.

  I suck in my breath. “A lady never tells.” I grab a fresh beer from the cooler. “Excuse me.”

  Not knowing what else to do, I decide I might as well get my interview over with. I motion to Skip to follow me over to the lone picnic table up on the bank.

  “Okay,” I say once we sit down, and he’s still staring down at the creek. His gaze is trained on Gigi’s ass. “Eyes back in your head.”

  Skip drags his gaze back to me. “Do you think all New York City girls look like that family?”

  “I would imagine not. But who knows?”

  I take a few sips of my beer. Okay, more like several really big gulps. Now the bottle’s half-empty. Skip watches me as he matches my gulps with one small one.

  “Boy, that was amazing pie, Macey. You made it?”

  When I nod, he sighs. “The best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Quit the flattery. You already have the interview. See, maybe you should have tried complimenting me instead of blackmailing me.”

  He takes out his phone and readies his iPad. “I’m going to record your words on my phone, and I’ll be typing into the pad. But I can pause the recording anytime you say ‘off the record,’ okay? First let’s start with something easy. Your opinion on why the legend is so popular here. Is it all because of Jane Austen or something else? You start whenever you’re ready.”

  He presses record as I watch Gigi laughing at something Logan said. I take several more large sips of beer.

  “I can’t remember a time when my mother wasn’t consumed by her.” My gaze passes over Skip to the dark woods behind him. “By a ghost, for God sakes. Because Mama used to say Jane never asked to be Queen. ‘A true heroine never does, Macey. A true heroine just is. And Jane Austen’s ghost certainly never asked to be jailed against her will and kept apart from her soul mate.’ But whether the whole thing is true or not, one thing I know for sure—the spirit of Jane Austen is no ordinary ghost. And my position at The Cowherd is no ordinary bar job. As my daddy once said to me, ‘Darlin’, running The Cowherd Whiskey Saloon & Chapel isn’t like running your normal, run-of-the-mill bar. It’s like adding gasoline to whiskey and praying it doesn’t catch fire.’”

  Skip nods solemnly as he pushes the phone closer to my mouth and types vigorously into his iPad.

  And I keep talking. “But the legend of Darcy, Texas didn’t begin here. It started all the way across the Atlantic where town founder and first mayor Frederick Woodholm Haskins was still living in England with his new bride, Vivian Elmstock Haskins. That’s when Frederick strayed with another woman. And that’s when the facts get fuzzy and the legend gets deeper. It’s widely believed that an outraged and humiliated Vivian agreed to still sail with him across the Atlantic, and settle in the Texas Hill Country part of America he’d visited and fallen in love with two years prior, on one condition—that he name their landing place after the author who wrote about romance and that he kidnap that same author’s spirit from her peaceful resting place in the north aisle of Winchester Cathedral and bring her to Texas. Jane Austen wasn’t even that famous yet, but literary people already respected her writings. And of course, soon she would become known the world over.”

  “What about Pride and Prejudice?” Skip asks. “How did the greatest love story ever written play a role?”

  “One evening,” I say, “Vivian found an open copy of the novel alongside an unknown bottle of perfume in her husband’s private study, and she put two and two together. Rumor has it there was hell to pay when he returned home from the local bar. But Vivian didn’t just yell at her husband—she also picked up that copy of Pride and Prejudice and read it cover to cover. And she decided Jane Austen’s romantic touch must have been the X factor in her husband choosing another woman over her.”

  “The X factor.” Skip nods vigorously and continues typing. “Of course.”

  “Desperate to keep her affection, her husband agreed to her terms. He hired a witch to cast a spell to draw Jane’s spirit out from the grave and trap her in ghost form. The witch gave the ghost to Frederick in a bottle, to be opened inside jail cell number one in the Darcy Jail, a cell that the founder was to instruct no one ever to use. But even if the cell were opened with a key, Jane’s ghost would still be trapped because the witch had cast a spell befitting Jane: only when she is witness to the coming together of true soul mates will the spell be broken and will Jane return to Great Britain so she can be with her true love.”

  More beer. My eyes focus below the cypress tree where Dave puts his arm around Ginny’s shoulders as she leans her head against him. Maybe they will make it. Maybe Dave really will grow up.

  “But what came of Vivian through all of this?” Skip asks me. “Why did she get even more embittered?”

  “Vivian became obsessed with Jane Austen’s message of love, but as hard as she tried, she was never able to rekindle that former magic with her husband.” I turn to face Skip. “The way I see the legend is as a parable. Vivian was trying to hold onto something she’d lost—her husband’s love—by holding onto Jane Austen’s ghost as a symbol of true love.”

  I gulp down the rest of my beer and Skip does the same with his.

  “This is heavy,” he says. “So Vivian never had the happy ending she craved.”

  I shake my head and glance back toward Logan.

  I can’t believe he hasn’t had sex with Gigi.

  I literally can’t stop thinking about it.

  “Both of these couples have a shot to make history.” Skip glances at Logan and Gigi and then over at Ginny and Dave.

  “That’s true.”

  I look for an extra beat at Logan.

  “It’s never as easy as boy meets girl, is it?” Skip says. “No matter what century.”

  I guess not.

  “Over to you now, Macey.” He returns to his iPad. “Why did you vow to never marry?”

  I let out a long breath. “You know, Mama was obsessed—obsessed—with Pride and Prejudice. Calls it her Love Bible. And she means it.”

  “It’s the greatest romance novel ever written,” Skip concurs.

  “And my mother used it for all it was worth. Even made me memorize the most important parts. Like when Darcy tells Elizabeth, ‘You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.’”

  Skip sighs ecstatically.

  “Mama would sigh just like you’re doing now.” I smile despite myself. “‘Would you listen to that?’ she’d say. ‘That is true love. That is a man showing real love and respect for a woman.’”

  “So you’ve been sitting around waiting for your Mr. Darcy to show up in Texas?” Skip asks me.

  I never should have had a beer. I certainly shouldn’t have practically chugged it. I already had that half a bottle by the cooler, and I’m not a drinker. One drink is enough to loosen my tongue. It always has been.

  “No. Maybe when I was little. But once I became a teenager, I knew that marriage just wasn’t for me. Relationships aren’t for me.”

  “Why not? What makes you different than anyone else?”

  Again, maybe if I’d stayed completely sober, I wouldn’t have answered Skip’s question with—

  “Love is always hard, but when you’re supposedly cursed, it throws a whole new wrinkle into it. I’d always vowed to be the opposite of my mother in romantic relationships—you know, I never wanted to lose myself in a man and in needing that man to be my everything. I didn’t want the world to go cold if he wasn’t there to keep me warm.”

  “Beautifully said.” Skip types hastily. “But what do you mean—cursed? That sounds serious.”

  “My mother’s word. She thinks I’m cursed.” I hold out my arm and show him the inside of my wrist. “A freak accident that gave my mother proof I’m destined to share the ghost of Jane Austen’s fate. Unless the soul mates free the ghost, Austen Macey Henwood’s heart will stay locked up as well.”

  “And she bel
ieves this why? Sounds like she’s a bit theatrical.”

  “She is. Who else would steal a page out of Vivian’s diary and make her oldest daughter hide it for fear of the town finding out she’s jinxed? Yeah, sure, the page says something about the eldest daughter of the jail keeper and a scar she bears, but so what? The whole thing’s stupid.”

  Skip drops his phone onto the table. Unfortunately, it stays intact because I’ve just realized what I gave him. The hook of all hooks for a hungry reporter looking for a story.

  “Oh, no.” I put my head in my hands.

  “Oh, yes,” Skip’s excited voice says next to me.

  Chapter Twelve

  I end the interview right away, but I’m well aware it’s too late. My scar is going to be talked about by the entire town, possibly the state, as soon as Skip’s story is published on the first of July.

  And Mama will absolutely have my head when she finds out. Luckily, Ginny’s wedding will have already happened, so if I need to hide from the public eye, I can.

  I drift into a fitful sleep filled with lots of strange dreams—about catfish, a giant microphone in my face, and Skip floating face down in the creek.

  Then I have a different kind of dream. A sex dream. About Logan and me. And it’s not for kids’ ears.

  As soon as I wake up, I go to The Cowherd to give Ben the heads up on Skip coming by later, and then I stop by Ginny’s before she leaves for work. I tell her what’s going on with Skip, and I confess my dream.

  “How X-rated was it?” she asks breathlessly.

  I rock back and forth where we’re sitting on her porch swing. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing those jail cell bars are made of steel. Because I was holding onto them pretty good while Logan…” The image of Logan naked and driving into me from behind while I gripped the bars with both hands is too much to repeat. I stop talking as my face heats.

  “Wow. That sounds like quite a dream.” Ginny looks at me. “Are you gonna tell Logan about it?”

  “What? Of course not!” I lightly swat at her knee. “Why would I do that?”