Sweet & Wild

  Sweet & Wild

  Canton, Book 2

  Viv Daniels

  Word for Word

  Copyright © 2018 by Viv Daniels

  Cover design: Okay Creations

  Cover photo: @

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Kyla

  who keeps believing in me

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Three Years Later

  From Viv

  About the Author

  One

  INT: Father’s Office. The room is dark and filled with sinister shadows. Rich paneling and old-money details line the walls. A massive, ornate desk with a leather top sits like a throne at the far side of the room. The leather chair behind the desk is turned away from the door.

  * * *

  HAILEY approaches the desk slowly.

  HAILEY

  Father?

  * * *

  There is no response. She comes closer, clearly not wanting to spin the chair around but knowing she must do so. She reaches for the chair and turns it.

  * * *

  CLOSE UP a body burnt to a crisp, the blackened skull’s mouth open in a silent scream.

  * * *

  This was so stupid. The script pages slipped into my lap and I let my head drop back against the canvas cushion of the deck lounger. The sun beat down on the smooth white surface of the patio and soaked into every inch of my skin not covered by my bikini.

  Whatever. It was just for fun, anyway. And besides, what had I been thinking, trying to write a screenplay while lounging poolside?

  Especially not when there were so many distractions out here.

  The hammering next door started up again.

  I adjusted my oversized sunglasses on the bridge of my nose and cast a furtive glance over the elegant, wrought iron fence toward the rooftop of our next-door neighbors. I had no idea where Mrs. Gardner had found her repairman, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the listing in the phonebook read Handyman, Hot.

  He was tall and built, and seemed to be allergic to shirts. At least, he never wore any when he was working on the back and side of the house, turning what used to be a dated, enclosed porch into a gorgeous, modern outdoor kitchen and patio area my mother had already made several envious comments about. Me, I just envied whoever got a glimpse of the handyman without the fence in the way.

  I’d been watching him work on a regular basis since getting back from Europe last month, and I’d yet to see so much as a T-shirt cover up his broad shoulders and washboard abs. There was a tattoo of some kind of sunburst design high up on one muscled arm, and I’d caught glimpses of another—writing I couldn’t quite read—down near his waistline. His hair was cropped so short I couldn’t tell if it was brown or blond, and he was too far away to make out eye color, but his smile, when he showed it, was almost blinding. You could see it from space.

  He caught me staring. He smiled. Somewhere, no doubt, a satellite fell from the sky.

  I rolled my eyes and put my sunglasses to the side. Showtime. I sat up and released the clip holding my long, blonde hair off my neck. I shook my hair out and stretched, feeling the movement tug at the material of my bikini top. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the Gardners’ roofline.

  Hot Handyman had leaned back to watch, his shapely arms draped casually across his knees.

  I rose from the chair and walked—no, I can be honest—strutted across the patio. When I reached the deep end, I put my hands up over my head in a pose perfected over years of swim lessons, and entered the water with a dive so smooth it barely splashed. When we’d put in the pool, Dad had paid a veritable fortune for the dark glass tiles that covered every inch. He said it looked more elegant. I knew what I looked like against this backdrop, too, a glimmer of sun-drenched hair and skin covered with a two scraps of white and green fabric. Let’s face it: the pool was probably best observed from a nearby roof, so at least I was giving Hot Handyman something pretty to look at.

  One lap down, one lap back, and my lungs began to burn. Once more down the pool, and then I surfaced in the shallow end to take a breath and slick my hair back. I checked out the audience.

  He mimed a golf clap and went back to work.

  So I’m hot. That and twelve-fifty will get you a ticket at the movies.

  I did twenty more laps—freestyle down, backstroke back—then twenty butterfly-breaststroke combos. My form was as perfect as the tiles. Dad’s money had paid for that, too. It didn’t take as much time as I would have liked, and by the time I looked again, the handyman was gone, which made hanging out at the pool much less entertaining.

  Back at my chair, some breeze had come by and scattered the script pages onto the ground and into a puddle. Now there was a sign. Garbage. Just like everything else I tried to do. Dylan, my sister, Europe…you’d think I’d have gotten the message by now, right?

  I gathered the ruined pages in a clump, chucked them into the recycling bin, and headed inside to take a shower. Once I was dried and dressed, I checked my phone. No new texts, no new social media notifications. There were two emails from Canton officials about back to school activities in August, and one from a high school friend about a pool party with our old classmates before everyone left town again for Durham or Cambridge or Palo Alto. A party where they’d all talk about summer internships and graduate school applications and LSAT courses. A party where everyone would ask me How was Europe? and What happened to that cute boyfriend of yours? and Have you picked a major yet?

  I didn’t even want to answer the standard “what did you do on your summer vacation?” Because all I could say was that I sat around my backyard pool and flirted with the neighbors’ handyman through the fence.

  Sighing, I checked my other email. Twenty-six new messages. Most were the usual replies to my latest post: agreements, arguments, one pointed comment about how I should be raped and murdered for daring to have an opinion while being a girl. I zapped it and blocked the IP. Probably some stupid 14-year-old boy who’d just found the blog for the first time. That kind of thing used to bother me a lot, but apparently, all female bloggers who attempt to play in the boys’ sandbox get this sort of feedback. If I’d had to do it over again, I probably would have picked a gender-neutral pen name. Oh well, live and learn.

  I was doing a lot of that lately.

  One of the emails looked interesting. I clicked through to see an invitation to an advanced screening of a small-budget horror movie, Render. Ooh, good title. I read the description, which was typically vague, but the comparisons to Triangle had me intrigued. One of the screening locations listed was DC. Tomorrow.

  What the hell. I RSVP’d. It wasn’t like I had some packed social schedule to keep. I could drive up to DC.

  “Hannah?” My mom’s voice floated down the wide, empty hallways to my room. �
��I’m home!”

  I went out to meet her. She was back from her trainer, green smoothie in one hand, Coach bag in the other. Not a hair on her head seemed out of place and sweat stains wouldn’t dare make an appearance even on her workout clothes. She frowned at me.

  “You’re getting tan. You should stay out of the sun in the afternoon.”

  “Probably.” I shrugged.

  “You’ll thank me for this advice when you’re forty, sweetie. Sun is bad for your skin. It’s great that you swim, but you should do it in the morning before the sun gets too high in the sky.”

  That would detract from my valuable sleeping-in-and-doing-nothing time, though.

  “Maybe you could work out with me in the gym instead. Remember that trainer we got you last winter when you first got your diagnosis?”

  Yes, when Mom’s greatest fear was that my malfunctioning thyroid would make me put on weight. The trainer had given me some workout and diet tips that went right out the window the second I’d discovered French pastry in Paris. But I did stay active, like my doctor and the physical trainer had advised. And I hadn’t needed any adjustment to my thyroid medication in months.

  Mom was checking out the fridge now. I grabbed an apple from the basket on our white marble kitchen island. It was bright green and blemish-free, of course.

  “Oh, I saw Mary Beth Connell at the gym,” my mother said, emerging from the fridge with a packet of salmon and a replacement apple. She laid the latter gently on top of the perfect pile on the basket, moved it a half-inch to the right, and smiled at the result.

  I crunched loudly. “Yeah?” I mumbled around Granny Smith.

  She ignored my rude manners and assembled the ingredients for her marinade. “Yes. And she says her son Jeffrey finished up his internship and will be in Canton for a few more weeks before he goes back to law school. Do you remember Jeffrey Connell?”

  “Vaguely.” Another boy from the country club. I may have partnered with him at cotillion at some point. “Red hair?”

  “Not red red,” she replied. “It’s a nice auburn.”

  Too bad. I liked gingers. I’d made out with at least three of them while I’d been in Scotland last spring. I liked that they called them gingers over there—made them sound like tomcats. Not that I’d managed to take it any farther than “snogging,” as they called it. The boys had been willing. I, apparently, had been more interested in learning the slang of the British Isles than in going through with crazy European vacation one-night stands.

  “Plus, he’s at Yale. Did you know that?”

  “Nope.” Uh-oh. Another setup.

  “Anyway, he’s home and I was thinking maybe you two could go out some time.”

  “Mom,” I said, trying not to whine. She hated whining. “I don’t think I’m up for more blind dates this summer.”

  “And I think that’s precisely the wrong attitude, Hannah. You need to get out there. Meet some nice guys. Quality guys.”

  “I dated a quality guy. He dumped me.” For my sister, I added internally.

  “Well, I never was sure about that Dylan. I mean, we don’t know anything about his family. But Jeffrey Connell…” she shrugged. “Think about it. You know, when I was your age, I would have killed to date a Yale man.”

  Why hadn’t she? Instead, she’d married a Canton man, my father, and settled down here. Maybe a Yale man wouldn’t have done what Dad did. Or maybe all men were pigs.

  Mom looked down at the cut of fish. “By the way, it’s just us for dinner tonight. Dad’s staying out at the yacht club. He’s got another business meeting first thing.”

  I could count on one hand the number of times Dad had deigned to dine with us since I’d been home from Europe. And then I could use the other hand to count the number of sentences he’d said to me. Not that I was surprised. During our last real conversation, I’d essentially threatened him. Blackmailed him? Did it count as blackmail if the money wasn’t going to you? If you were just forcing your dad to pay your sister’s college bills?

  It was the right thing to do. It was.

  “Well, I won’t be around tomorrow night,” I replied. “I’m driving up to DC for an event.” Maybe Dad would come home if I was gone.

  “What kind of event?”

  “Canton poli-sci career mixer,” I lied. I hadn’t been a poli-sci major for a year. “It’ll probably be a bunch of Hill staffers and stuff.”

  “Oh?” Mom brightened. “That’s nice.”

  I took another bite of my apple. Yes, it was nice. And, for my mom, as long as things were nice, as long as they were smooth and neat and blemish-free, all was well with the world.

  I was twenty years old when I found out my father had another family, and it almost ruined my life.

  Two

  What did you wear to a horror movie screening? I stared at the contents of my closet, utterly lost. Thanks to my mother, I knew precisely what to wear for almost every social occasion. I knew the difference between cocktail, black tie, and white tie attire, and I had outfits for every category. But my debutante classes had not prepared me for this.

  I tried a sundress, but then took it off. I looked young, like I was going to a church picnic. I looked like the kind of girl you usually saw drenched in blood on the movie posters, not like a person who’d be in the audience. A little black dress and high heels. But what if everyone else was casual? This was a screening, not a premiere. I bet it would be a bunch of film majors and reporters. I tried a pair of skinny jeans, sparkly sandals, and a silky, draped top. Date clothes, as long as the date wasn’t at the country club.

  I rolled my eyes and fluffed my blonde hair in the mirror. Speaking of the country club, I was going to have to go out with Jeffrey Connell. Mom would nag me until I did. Plenty of fish in the sea, Hannah. You’re never going to look better than you do now, Hannah. He’s a very promising young man, Hannah.

  The promising ones were the worst. All they managed to do was remind me how very promising I wasn’t.

  I checked out my reflection in the mirror one more time. Maybe I was making too big a deal of this. Probably everyone else there went to an advanced screening or two each week. And it wasn’t like they’d know who I was. No one knew who The Final Girl was. I didn’t have a picture up on the site, and I’d RSVP’d to the event as Hannah Swift. As far as they knew, I might be reviewing the thing for a Canton College paper, though I hadn’t been a journalism major for fifteen months.

  But I was still my mother’s daughter, and I’d never leave the house without my hair and my clothes and my makeup just so. Everything right and perfect.

  What bullshit.

  I’d worried the lipstick off my bottom lip twice by the time I grabbed my keys and my purse and forced myself to walk out the front door. I had a couple of hours in the car to fret about this. I should save all my anxiety for that.

  Across the lawn, I saw the handyman standing near his truck in the Gardners’ driveway.

  “Hey, you,” he said as I approached my silver BMW convertible. “Where are you going?”

  I blinked in surprise. All those days on the deck, and we’d never actually exchanged words. “What?” I said stupidly.

  He tapped his wrist like he was wearing a watch. “We have an appointment at three o’clock.”

  An appointment? Warmth flooded through my body as he shot me that killer grin. That whole shirt off, bikini strut, mutual admiration routine we’d been playing at for a week was an appointment now? “I’m going to the movies,” I said, and clicked the unlock button on my keys.

  “Alone?”

  Was he asking if I had a date? “Yep,” I said lightly. “My girlfriends don’t like the kind of films I do.” Why had I said girlfriends? It wasn’t like I was subtly trying to indicate my single status to him. I didn’t want to date the neighbors’ handyman!

  “Oh yeah?” he asked. He really ought to get a license for that smile of his. This guy was wasted as a handyman. He should be a model. Or a gigolo. Hell, maybe he
was a gigolo, like that old cliché about the pool boys servicing bored housewives. Maybe fixing the roof wasn’t all he was doing at the Gardners’ house. After all, if my dad could sleep with other people, then why couldn’t everyone on the block do it, too? “What kind of movies do you like?”

  I climbed into the driver’s seat, inserted the key in the ignition and winked at him. “Bloody ones.”

  * * *

  Render was pretty good. Scary, trippy, and not too obsessed with torturing women for kicks. I hate those kind of movies. The entire cast was made up of three people, but two of them were women, and I definitely jumped out of my seat a few times. The effects could probably have used a little work, but I revised my opinion entirely when I saw on the info sheet that the entire production had cost fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars? I could become a movie producer at those rates. And for that price, the effects were phenomenal.

  After the screening, we were invited to a “chat” with the screenwriter-director, who looked about twenty-four. A more robust production would probably have called it a “reception” and served wine and canapes, but soda and chips were all that Render and its fifty thousand bucks could afford.

  I stood in the corner with a Diet Coke and watched the other attendees. Some wore business suits—I wondered if they were producers or distribution guys looking to buy the rights. The film critic from the Washington Post was there—I recognized his face. Most of the other people were younger, like me, and I was pleased to note they were all in jeans.