On the Wilde Side (In Wilde Country 0.5)

You could style her hair, put her in a Chanel gown and she’d still look like what she was, a woman who adored sex.

Sex with him.

Besides, the bottom line was that the relationship was temporary.

She understood that.

How could she not?

Except in bed, they were like two people from different planets.

On day three, Angelica showed up at the door with a string bag that held some clothes.

“I am going to stay with you, Gianni,” she said happily.

It worried him that she’d done it without him asking.

It delighted him that she wanted to be with him.

“Won’t your grandmother ask questions?” he said, and she assured him that nonna believed she was spending the week in Palermo with a girlfriend.

It worried him a little, but what the hell, why not enjoy their time together without interruption?

The days sped by and then, one morning, it was time for him to leave.

He had told Angelica about it. Still, she wept as he packed his small suitcase and when he came to the bed to kiss her goodbye, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tried to drag him onto the mattress beside her.

“Baby,” he said, “ I can’t. I have a plane to catch…”

She kissed him. Sank her teeth lightly into his bottom lip. Unzipped his fly, put her hand inside and clasped his penis.

“Angelica,” he said, and then he groaned, pushed away her hand, parted her thighs and buried himself inside her.

“When will you return to me?” she said when they were done.

He rose, wiped himself off and zipped up.

“When I can.”

“When, Gianni? When?” Her tone of voice was half demand, half plea, and he felt the first nagging suspicion that he might have made a mistake in getting himself so involved.

On the plane heading for Paris, which was where his general was now located, he thought of two other things.

One was that he hadn’t used a condom that first time on the beach.

The second was that he hadn’t used one this morning, either.

* * * *

Work consumed him.

The general was posted from Paris to Geneva. John, of course, went with him.

Angelica slipped to the back of his thoughts and slipped further when the general called him to his office one morning and held out a telegram.

“I’m so sorry, John,” he said.

Amos Wilde was dead.

John didn’t feel much of anything, but he nodded and said all the necessary things, and flew home to Wilde’s Crossing.

Most of the town turned out for the funeral.

John shook hands, accepted words of comfort, returned to the big house at El Sueño, where the housekeeper had had the presence of mind to prepare and lay out a funeral feast. He thanked her; he sure as hell hadn’t thought of planning anything.

He shook more hands, accepted more condolences and, after a while, had to fight against telling the lawyers, the doctors, the shopkeepers and the endless stream of politicos that there was no need to tell him how sorry they were that his old man was gone when the truth was that Amos had pretty much always been gone from his life.

The gathering took on the kind of party atmosphere such things generally did.

Johnny poured his third or maybe his fourth Jack Daniel’s and wandered away from the crowd. He walked through the rooms and looked at them through the eyes of a stranger. There were few good memories, and little of his childhood. His old bedroom had become a guest room. As if this enormous house needed yet another guest room, he thought as he let the warmth of the whiskey slip down his throat.

The old football posters were gone. So were his helmet, his awards and trophies.

Johnny Wilde might never have lived here.

It was different when he went across the hall and opened the door to what had been Alden’s room.

The hair rose on the nape of his neck.

Here, time had stopped.

Alden’s clothes hung in the closet. His framed academic awards were on display. There was a neat stack of textbooks on his desk. A framed photo of the parade grounds at West Point hung over it; there was a smaller photo next to it, taken when Amos and Alden had made a visit to the Point during Alden’s freshman year in high school.

The picture was of Alden standing next to the famed Sedgwick Monument.

Legend had it that if a cadet was in danger of failing a final exam and went to the monument at midnight in full dress uniform, he’d pass the exam if he spun the moveable spurs on Sedgwick’s horse.

John smiled.

He had a picture of himself beside the same statue, moldering in a box somewhere…

Christ.

His smile faded.

Had he ever had a life of his own? Had he been destined to take Alden’s place not only from the day of the accident but from the day of his birth?

It was a stupid thought. A chilling thought. And, shit, what was he doing here? His father was dead. Who gave a damn? They had never loved each other. And he hated this place, hated the memories, hated who he was or who he might have been, because when he let himself think about it, his life was like—it was like those nested Russian dolls. Halvorson had bought one for his niece when they’d been in Moscow a year or so ago. They’d chuckled at how one doll had stacked within the other so that you never actually knew if you’d reached the final one…

“John?”

Johnny swung around and saw Connie Grimes standing in the open doorway.

“Connie. What are you doing here?”

She cleared her throat. “I was at the funeral and I came here to, you know, pay my respects… I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“No,” he said quickly, “you aren’t intruding at all. I’m just—I’m surprised to see you, that’s all.”

“I’m sorry about—”

“Yeah. Sure.” He paused. “So, how’ve you been?”

“Good. Fine. I’m an OR nurse at Madison General.”

“Hey. That’s great.”

“I hear that you’re a major now. Is that right?” She smiled; her smile was as unchanged as the rest of her, pure Connie, a little shy, a little hesitant, but honest and warm. “I’m not very good at reading those stripes or bars or whatever you call them.”

“A major, yes. That’s me. Crazy, right?” He lifted the glass, swallowed the rest of the whiskey in one gulp. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s nice to see you again, too.”

“Yeah. About that.” John licked his lips. “I should have been in touch. I meant to, but—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“But I do. That—that last time we saw each other—”

Her face reddened.

“I didn’t expect anything more than that night, John.” She gulped in a breath of air. “I loved being with you. It was—it was—it was very nice.”

“Very nice,” he said solemnly.

The color in her face deepened.

“What I meant is—”

He grinned. “What I hope you meant is that it was fantastic.”

Could she blush any harder?

“It was. You know that it was. For me, anyway.”

John put down the empty whiskey glass. Teasing her was fun—he got a kick out of all that sweet innocence—but she deserved better.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

“Oh, I’m not hungry. I mean, everything in the dining room looks wonderful, but—”

“Not here.” He strolled toward her and reached for her hand. “I noticed a new restaurant in town. Bailey’s Something.”

“Bailey’s Barbecue.”

“Right. Just what Texas needs. Another barbecue joint.”

Connie looked up at him and laughed. It was the same old laugh he remembered, as honest and open and warm as everything else about her.

“There’s another

new place a couple of miles outside of town, but I don’t know if you’d like it.”

“Just tell me it isn’t all about quiche.”

She laughed again. Something seemed to melt around his heart and he laced their fingers together.

“Well, I can’t do that. They do serve quiche. And salads. And—”

“And there are ferns sprouting from the walls. What the hell. I’ve always liked barbecue.”

“Me, too,” she said.

Half an hour later, they were eating ribs and coleslaw. And sharing memories of the town and of their high school years.

An hour after that, she was in the car, waiting for him while he made a quick stop at the drugstore, and then they were in her bed, having the kind of plain-vanilla sex that he had not had with Angelica, and why in hell was he thinking about Angelica now?

These were two very different women and he was a very different man with each of them.

This time, when he left town for Geneva, where he and Halvorson were now posted, he kissed Connie goodbye and said he’d keep in touch. She said that would be lovely, but she said it in a way that told him she wasn’t counting on it.

* * * *

He meant to phone or at least write, but when he got to Geneva, half a dozen things were happening at once. The primary one was that Halvorson’s staff was relocating to the Netherlands for a few months. Half a dozen junior officers and another half dozen civilian clerks reported directly to John; there was no time to do anything except to start organizing his people and files.

He thought of Connie often.

He thought of Angelica, too.

He cared about both women; each, in her own way, meant something to him, but he knew he’d made a mistake with Angelica, letting her all but move into his place in Sicily, and a mistake with Connie, making love to her again after so much time had passed.

Women could be strange creatures. What if one or the other or, God help him, both of them overestimated their places in his life?