Wilde Forever (Wilde Women Book 1) (3 page)

But Roger always came crawling back with a convincing story and an iron-clad promise to never step out of line again. They got married because that was what you did after being together for a few years and having reached the point of either breaking up or getting a marriage license. What an idiot she’d been to imagine that a piece of paper was somehow going to make them different people.

Their wedding had been a cut and dried affair at the county courthouse with a bland and boring lunch afterward at a run-of-the-mill restaurant. Rhiann had been apoplectic, declaring Brynn’s refusal to play the bride a foreshadowing of a dismal future. The only rationale she could come up with to defend her actions came from one of the countless lists she made.

Brynn was known for her crazy lists. Hell, she was working off a daily agenda right this moment. It was how she kept her world in perfect operating order. Ever since she’d been old enough to write, she kept a running ‘to do’ list. And not just for her, but for her sisters as well. Drove them crazy but as the oldest, she figured it was her job to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. Over time, her lists had become legendary and included a long range ‘idea’ list, shopping lists, chore lists, a list of everything in her closet—color coded by season of course—lists of books to read, and even a list spelling out the conditions needed for when she and her husband could be intimate. The wedding list had been short, not very sweet, and brutal in its practicality. She couldn’t see spending a shit ton of money on what was essentially a party and the idea of shelling out beaucoup bucks on a tacky honeymoon never even
made
the list. A romantic she was not. Well, maybe at one time she could have been, but Roger was more or less a flat-line in that department so she’d never had a chance to even try.

When he wasn’t preening in front of a mirror, her boyfriend-slash-husband proved to be not much of a planner, preferring to fly by the seat of his pants, so Brynn had been the practical one. If it weren’t for her organizational skills and dead-eye focus on priorities, well…she didn’t know what would have happened.

Married life had turned out to be kind of
meh
. While Brynn commuted each day and worked her ass off at a financial firm in the city, Roger strayed no distance at all from the scenes of his childhood, moving them to his hometown and taking over the running of his family’s hardware store. It was a recipe for disaster that she hadn’t seen at the time.

They’d been married for a little over a year when, coming down with a bad case of the flu, Brynn returned home early one day and walked in on her lying, cheating, shithead of a husband poking the butt of a cashier from the hardware store. Not only was he cheating on Brynn with a cigarette smoking, fake tittied suburban slut, he was ass fucking that bitch in their bed. Who
did
that?

Unfortunately, the ensuing divorce turned painfully ridiculous. Brynn just wanted out, but Fake Fun Bag Betty, as she liked to call Roger’s anal whore, needed to legitimize the extra-marital romp. She went on a slash-and-burn campaign against her, painting Brynn as an outsider, someone frigid and cold consumed by her career and only interested in money and status. The small town mindset eventually won—even though it was Brynn who had been cheated on, the general consensus was that she got what she deserved for being an ice queen.

Humiliated and depressed, Brynn took an enormous settlement once all their marital possessions and home had been liquidated and moved on. Her six figure job had pretty much paid for their lifestyle anyway, so it wasn’t like she walked away with anything that wasn’t already technically hers by right.

That was how she ended up on her Nana’s old farm in a quaint touristy hamlet in the corner of upstate Pennsylvania. She put her divorce settlement to good use, by first restoring and updating the old cookhouse for a quaint bakery shop. The Wilde Bakery had opened to great acclaim. Brynn held a special talent when it came to the kitchen arts, and before she knew it, a food channel had filmed a segment featuring her business. Shortly thereafter, she took on renovating the attached barn, transforming it into a tearoom. The rustic appeal of Baron’s Tea Room and its homey, comfortable vibe made it a popular stopping off point for locals and tourists.

Right now, it was very good to be her. She lived in Nana’s charming Queen Anne style home situated behind a line of trees separating the house from the business, giving her the benefit of privacy and proximity all rolled into one. Why Nana wanted to mess with the successful life she’d fashioned for herself, Brynn just couldn’t fathom.

Talking about it with her parents would likely get her nowhere. Her mom, in particular, had gotten quite vocal lately bemoaning Brynn’s so-called lonely and isolated life. As far as Darcy Baron-Wilde was concerned, Brynn’s reluctance and downright refusal to look for a man was only making her life more difficult. For a staunch feminist who had raised three smart, talented daughters, Brynn was mystified by her mother’s position.

Dear old dad was no better. He’d side with Nana of course. Plus, he just wanted his girls to be happy. He thought that pushing them to be as fulfilled and satisfied by marriage as he and their mother had been was the answer. Oh yeah, and they both wanted grandchildren, and they wanted them
now
. Three unmarried daughters just weren’t cutting it as far as their retirement plan went.

All these thoughts were tying her up in knots so she did what she always did when life got weird—she retreated to the refuge of her kitchen. This was where Brynn let the magic flow, a thought that always brought a smile. She didn’t believe in magic per se, that was Charlie’s quirk, but there was a special energy involved in her baking. The synergy of the ingredients, how they worked separately and blended, and the atmosphere when working the dough or batter, even her frame of mind—all those things came into play. It was a unique symphony with Brynn as conductor and lead soloist.

She loved coming up with new items, experimenting with flavors and techniques. That was how she’d created an outrageously decadent lemon plum tart that was practically responsible for all her success. The barren wasteland of her post-divorce life hadn’t been all bad. During one of her baking frenzies she’d played around with the recipe until the perfect balance of tart and sweet, soft and crumbly, velvety and dense was achieved. On a whim, she’d entered a regional bake-off where the tart had earned high scores and the attention of the baking world. It was all uphill from there.

Pushing Nana’s meddling to the back of her mind, Brynn gathered what she needed to finish off a batch of sweetened challah bread that was a big hit on the menu in the tearoom. Needing this part of the process the most right now, she uncovered a huge bowl containing a gigantic lump of dough that had been rising, and vigorously punched it down. She enjoyed the way her fist sank into the warm mass and then hefted the heavy stoneware to turn the dough onto the wood work surface. This was what she loved, getting her hands into the act, kneading and working the pasty blob, eventually rolling out long snakes of dough that she firmly braided into the loaf shape.

When she was finished with the entire batch and they’d had a chance to rise again, Brynn admired her handiwork and forgot all about her troubles. Seeing the beautiful braided loaves with the shiny egg bath brushed over the top ready to slide into the oven was just the Zen she needed to bring everything back into focus.

Nana wanted her married? Well then
fine
, she snorted. Two can play that game. She knew a whole bunch of gay chefs just waiting for a contracted beard who would be more than willing to help Brynn out. There were worse things than a fake marriage although right this minute she didn’t know what those things might be.

Neither Rhiann, her silly sister with a head full of romantic rubbish, nor Charlie, who insisted lighting candles and carrying crystals would one day lead to the appearance of a soul mate, would ever understand Brynn’s reluctance to let a man anywhere near her. She knew staying emotionally detached was best—for her, anyway.

She didn’t like mess or chaos, hence the lists. Glancing around her meticulous, well-ordered kitchen emphasized that point. Relationships were almost always a shit show. Avoiding the pitfalls was a much smarter way to go. If she couldn’t find a way to wiggle around Nana’s ridiculous power play, she’d simply apply the Kobayashi Maru Principle and change the rules of the game in her favor.
Laugh all you want
, chided the impish voice of her conscience. A good
Star Trek
reference always came in handy, and in this case offered a perfect solution.

There was no way on God’s green earth that she would allow her asshole of a cousin, the unctuous Seth Colton, to get his greasy paws on this property. Knowing him the way she did, he’d either throw her and the business out completely, or gouge her unmercifully with lease costs. If she had to resort to a rent-a-husband to stop that from happening, she would. And Nana could eat her hat.

Noting the time, Brynn consulted the checklist of what still needed to be done before the end of the day. Keeping her modest bakery stocked was one thing, but lately she’d been taking on special orders for decorative cakes, shower treats, and birthday goodies. It was becoming too much. Pretty soon she’d have to hire a bakery helper just to keep up. Yet another example of why she didn’t have the time to pursue the sort of relationship that would lead to marriage. She was just too damn busy.

E
VEN THOUGH HE WAS BENT out of shape and exasperated, Jax had to admire the scenery around him. Off on a fool’s errand in order to get his father off his back, he was traveling the highways and back roads nestled along the banks of the Delaware River in the scenic countryside of upstate Pennsylvania on his way to fulfill a promise that wasn’t his to keep. He growled a frustrated sigh and squeezed the steering wheel with a death grip.

His father was up to something, he could feel it, and it was annoying the piss out of him that he couldn’t get a handle on just what was really going on. It wasn’t like Dad to interfere in his life, and he wasn’t quite sure what there would be to meddle in anyway. There were a lot of blank pages and empty spaces in Jax’s story. Considering what was written on some of the full pages though, he wasn’t surprised by the missing pieces.

The shorthand code for the
Life of Jax
would go something like this:
Jackson Merrill. Son of Adam and Kate Merrill. Brother to Caleb. Football Star. Homecoming King. New York University – Pre Med. Enlisted in the Army Medical Corps after 9-11. Iraq Veteran. Contractor. Restoration Specialist. Survivor. Loner.

Yep. That pretty much summed him up. Typical All-American boy with a big man on campus attitude and a preference during his college days for anything wild and adventurous. All that young and carefree shit came to a dead halt for him on September 11
th
. He was just a few days into his junior year at NYU with the whole wide world and a bright future opening up before him when the rude wake-up call from the air changed everything. Born and raised in Virginia, the crossroads of Yankee aplomb and southern charm, he’d become a diehard New Yorker after spending several years in the Big Apple at the university. There was something about hiking out of the city and crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on foot that awful day which sobered him up big time. After graduating with honors, he enlisted in the medical corps a few months later.

Jax shipped out to Iraq not too long after the war started. Four years later he was more than happy to leave the military behind. In the time since, he’d found a healing Zen-like quality in the work he was doing. It took a long time to get his shit together after a couple of tours in a war zone, and expecting him to walk away from his military experiences unscathed and simply finish his medical school training was insane. That bridge got burned along with a lot of other stuff in the hellfire of war, which explained the blank pages.

Working with his hands let him focus—be totally in the moment. Not a lot of room for the mind to roam. There was something freeing about being so involved and immersed in work. He had a particular feel for renovation and restorations and got into the research aspect paying close attention to even the tiniest detail. As a result, he’d built an exclusive clientele that led to an attention-getting article in an architecture magazine.

These days he could pick and choose his work projects, which was part of why he was torqued with his dad for sending him off to do a personal favor at a time when Jax had scheduled a much-needed break from work. After several intensive back-to-back assignments, he was feeling burned out and edgy. Without any discernible social life, something nearly impossible to achieve when you moved around for business, Jax was resigned to his loner lifestyle. But that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

All that shit, when rolled together, was why Adam Merrill had no problem asking his oldest son to make good on a decades old promise. His dad had caught up with him a few nights ago and told him some crazy fucking story about a fraternity friend from his college days who was searching for a restoration specialist to help out the man’s kid with an unusual project. Jax had called bullshit on his dad’s rambling explanation within a minute of hearing it but what was a son to do? It wasn’t like he could say no. So far the only good thing he could come up with as he drove along a rolling country road was the magnificence of the scenery.