The Wild One Read online

  The Wild One

  By

  Vanessa Miller

  SMASHWORDS EDITION

  *****

  Published by:

  BFP Publishing

  The Wild One

  Copyright © 2011 by Vanessa Miller

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Other Books by Vanessa Miller

  Long Time Coming

  A Promise of Forever Love

  A Love for Tomorrow

  Yesterday’s Promise

  Forgiven

  Forsaken

  Through the Storm

  Rain Storm

  Latter Rain

  Abundant Rain

  Former Rain

  Anthologies (Editor)

  Keeping the Faith

  Have A Little Faith

  This Far by Faith

  EBOOKS

  Love Isn’t Enough

  A Mighty Love

  The Blessed One (Blessed and Highly Favored series)

  The Wild One (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  Chapter One

  "Leaving me isn’t going to be as easy as you think. I’m not like the others."

  Dee Dee Morrison-Wilcox-Johnson-Sooner-Milner rolled her eyes as she read the email. She didn’t recognize the email address of the sender, but she knew it was Drake Milner, her soon-to-be ex-husband. Drake was husband number four. When they’d first gotten married, Dee Dee thought that Drake was the love of her life and all those other marriages had been foolish interruptions, on her way to happy land. But Drake was too much like Dee Dee’s father, the great, Joel Morrison. She would have divorced him already if it wasn’t for sweet little Natua.

  Before Natua had turned two, she’d lost both her parents. Then Dee Dee’s sister Elaine, who had been a missionary in Uganda, began helping the girl's grandmother take care of her. Elaine had fallen in love with the little girl, and Natua loved her also. So, Elaine had wanted to adopt her, but then Elaine found out that she had ovarian cancer. Now Dee Dee’s little sister was in a fight to save her own life. But before she embarked on that journey, she’d asked Dee Dee to adopt Natua.

  Drake had agreed to help her with the child, and so far their arrangement was working out just fine. Drake kept Natua three days a week—Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday—the days that Dee Dee was needed on the set of the sitcom she was currently in.

  When Elaine had first asked her to take on this responsibility, Dee Dee had worried that raising a child would hurt her career. But Hollywood was full of actresses who adopted underprivileged children from other countries. Her agent and the producers on her sitcom had congratulated her. They’d even offered to do a press release about the adoption. But Dee Dee had said no to the press release, because she didn’t want any reporters getting wind of Elaine’s illness and then tracking her down in Mexico where she was currently seeking treatment.

  Dee Dee and Drake had agreed that he should stay at the house on the days he was responsible for Natua, because of all the changes Natua had to endure in her young life. That didn’t bother Dee Dee, because she left the house at five in the morning on the days she was needed on set and didn’t return home until nightfall. But these love notes Drake kept sending her were really beginning to bug her.

  She turned off her computer and walked into Natua’s room. “You ready, kiddo?”

  “Will Daddy be here this morning to tie my shoes?” Natua asked, as she slipped on her pink tennis shoes.

  “No honey, remember, Drake likes to stay at his apartment on Thursdays.”

  “Oh yeah.” Natua looked as if she’d just remembered something. “And on Saturday, Sunday and Monday too. Daddy likes being alone a lot.”

  It bugged Dee Dee that after three months, Natua thought of Drake as Daddy, but still couldn’t bring herself to call Dee Dee, Mom. But Dee Dee also realized that Natua had thought of Elaine as her new mommy and had expected to live with her, until Dee Dee showed up. Elaine had not been married, so Natua hadn’t become accustomed to thinking of another man as Dad, so it was easier for her to attach herself to Drake. Dee Dee’s head knew this, but her heart was having a hard time accepting it. Especially since she had begun thinking of Natua as her very own child and wouldn’t dream of giving her up, not even to Elaine, once she pulled through her illness.

  Dee Dee smiled at the innocent little girl and simply said, “Let me tie your shoes so we can get going.”

  Dee Dee didn’t need to be on the set today, but she had a meeting with her agent about a movie role she was interested in. The role she would be playing was very different from the Pollyanna, good-girl roles she had been typecast into. At first, Dee Dee hadn’t minded doing family-oriented movies. Her father had made his money by starring in family friendly movies. But the Hollywood of today was very different from the days when Joel Morrison had become a star.

  Dee Dee was a c-list star, reduced to playing secondary characters on sitcoms because she hadn’t had enough guts to take a few risks with her career. But this new script would bring Pollyanna out of the box and catapult her career in viewer-discretion-advised arenas…and that would be huge.

  Natua jumped up, put her hands on the hem of her terry cloth dress and asked, “What ya’ think?”

  This had become their daily ritual. Natua wanted to know how she looked in all of her pretty new clothes. Smiling down at the precious child in front of her, Dee Dee said, “I think you’re beautiful. Lime green is definitely your color.”

  “O-tay, I ready.” Natua grabbed Dee Dee’s hand, then hopped and bounced all the way out the door.

  After Dee Dee dropped Natua off at the daycare, she headed to Toscana to meet her agent, Nick Rosenthal, for lunch. As she walked toward their table, Dee Dee was reminded of just how gorgeous her agent was. But even with that, Nick didn’t stand out in the crowd. The city of LA was full of blond white men with plastic smiles.

  Nick stood up and kissed Dee Dee on both cheeks. “Beautiful as ever,” he said, as they both took their seats.

  “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

  “Not at all,” Nick said, with that famous plastic smile. “I already ordered for us, so I hope you don’t mind.”

  “What did you get me?”

  “The grilled pacific sea bass.”

  “Perfect.”

  The waitress arrived at the table with a mineral water for Dee Dee and an iced tea for Nick. “Your lunches will be out in a few minutes,” she told them, as she strolled away from their table.

  “So, tell me everything,” Dee Dee began excitedly. “Has Michael Mavs decided on the actor who’ll be playing my love interest yet?”

  Nick nodded as he took a sip of his tea.

  “Well, spill it. Did he choose Jarrod Lovett like I suggested?”

  “He sure did.”

  Now Dee Dee was smiling. “I’m absolutely thrilled. Jarrod and I will smoke up the screen. We’ve always had great chemistry, even though the roles we played didn’t allow us to show it.”

  Nick put his elbows on the table and leaned in closer to Dee Dee. “That’s just it…"His words trailed off as the waitress arrived at the table with their food.

  She put the plates in front of them and said, “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  Dee Dee took a bite of her fish and closed her eyes as she savored the flavors th
at exploded on her tongue. She hated that she was so predictable with her food choices, even her agent knew what to order for her at each restaurant. But hey, she liked what she liked. “This is de-lish.”

  “I knew you’d like it.” Nick drummed his fingers on the table, and then said, “About Jarrod Lovett. The producers liked him for the male lead. But here’s the problem—”

  Dee Dee was happily eating her fish, half listening to Nick until now. She looked up from her plate. “Problem. What problem?”

  “You know that chemistry you and Jarrod have?”

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “He’s not so sure. Jarrod has only seen you in very chaste roles, and he doesn’t think you can pull off an R-rated film.”

  Dee Dee’s fork clanged against her plate as it fell from her hand. “No, that little ingrate didn’t. If it wasn’t for me, he never would have gotten the role in the last film we appeared in together. And then, I practically gift wrap this role for him by bragging about him to Michael Mavs like an idiot, and then he goes and stabs me in the back.”

  Nick held up a hand to silence Dee Dee. “It sounded like Jarrod was more concerned about you and your career after doing a move like this.”

  Dee Dee slung her hair back and with a haughty air, said, “My career is just fine.”

  “Jarrod seems to believe that you have acquired a niche audience over the years. And those viewers don’t expect to see Dee Dee Morrison in a skin flick. And to be honest with you, I can’t say that I disagree with him. Your regular audience will be disappointed by this role, and if the film flops, your career could be over.”

  “But if the film is a success, I could be looking at an Oscar. Then directors will offer me bigger roles than these choir singing do-gooders I’ve been playing my whole career.”

  “That is true. But I do think this new role deserves a second thought. I mean, are you really comfortable with doing nude scenes? Can you really live with the backlash you’ll receive from doing this film?”

  After wiping her mouth, Dee Dee threw down her napkin. “Are you my agent or my priest? It’s not your job to question what roles might be good for my soul. You are supposed to get me the roles I want. That’s it and that’s all.”

  “Hey, you are absolutely right. And that is why I got you a meeting with Michael and Jarrod. They want to speak with you personally and run a couple of lines.”

  Dee Dee practically spat, “I have to audition for this role?”

  Nick squirmed in his seat. “Consider it more like a friendly meet-and-greet.”

  “I already know Michael and Jarrod, and I really don’t feel like greeting either one of them right now.”

  “They want to meet with you at eleven tomorrow morning. Go to the meeting and hear them out. Blow them away with your skillful performance as you read the lines. Hey, take off your clothes if you want, show them how comfortable you are with being nude.”

  Dee Dee balked. “I wouldn’t lower myself to undress for either of those animals. My fans love me. And Michael and Jarrod need to recognize that I have box office success because my audience follows me from movie to movie.” She stood up and shoved her chair against the table and then told Nick. “I’ll go to that meeting tomorrow, but you let them know that I am not auditioning for anything. You tell them that if they want this film to succeed, then they need to recognize that Dee Dee Morrison is the woman who can make that happen.” With that she turned and strutted out of the restaurant.

  Chapter two

  After her meeting with Nick, Dee Dee was so angry that she needed some mall therapy. She shopped for hours. She'd intended to shop for herself, but in each store she'd entered, Dee Dee would end up in the kid’s zone purchasing a dress, a pair of jeans, or an entire outfit for Natua.

  She packed her shopping bags into her Mercedes and drove to the daycare to pick up her little princess.

  Natua ran to Dee Dee and gave her a big hug.

  “What happened to you,” Dee Dee asked, as she noted dirty smudges all over Natua's dress.

  “She got a little dirty while we were on the playground today,” Natua’s teacher told Dee Dee.

  The first week of school, Natua had gotten a pretty pink shirt that Dee Dee had purchased for Natua at an expensive little boutique dirty during play time. Dee Dee had gone ballistic. The teacher had tried to explain to her that when children play, they often get a little dirty, but Dee Dee hadn’t been convinced. She just knew there had to be a way to keep dirt away from children, even on a playground. But in the months that followed, she had come to accept that children not only attract dirt, they like it.

  Sometimes Natua’s antics would remind Dee Dee of the fun she and Elaine had as children. And how they drove their mother crazy when she couldn’t get dirt spots out of their clothes. Thinking of those times always put a smile on Dee Dee’s face. She often found herself wondering why she'd spent so much time resenting Elaine, when she should have just enjoyed the fact that she had a sister. Nothing like an illness in the family to bring perspective.

  When they arrived at home, Natua was so excited about her new clothes that she wanted to try everything on as soon as they walked in the door.

  “Not so fast, little one. First you need to eat.” Dee Dee instructed Natua to have a seat at the table while she fixed her a sandwich.

  “Okay, Dee Dee, but hurry.” Natua jumped in her seat as if her pants were on fire, and she was trying to squelch the flames.

  Shaking her head as she laughed out loud, Dee Dee walked to the fridge and pulled out some lunch meat, cheese and mustard. She then got out a skillet, sprayed it with Pam and commenced to putting ham and cheese on whole wheat bread and then frying it in the skillet. Natua liked her ham and cheese sandwiches to be made like grilled cheese— something Drake had started for the child—and not to be outdone, Dee Dee also fixed the sandwich exactly the way Natua liked it.

  “Here you go, honey. Eat up and then we’ll go try on all your new clothes.” Dee Dee put the sandwich in front of Natua.

  She then put the lunch meat and mustard back inside the refrigerator and grabbed a juicy drink. She turned toward Natua, preparing to take the juice to her. But out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a piece of paper fall off the refrigerator door.

  That was odd, because she never tacked things on her refrigerator. She thought that people who did things like that were just plain tacky themselves. She picked up the paper to read it and became immediately annoyed. The note said:

  I don’t like Natua in green. She should always wear pink. Make sure she wears the dress I laid on her bed to school tomorrow.

  That settled it. Dee Dee was changing the locks on her doors, and Drake would just have to babysit Natua at his own apartment. Who did he think he was anyway? Barging into her house, leaving notes on the refrigerator and clothes on Natua’s bed. Drake Milner had lost the right to insert himself into her life when he'd started acting too much like her father, with all of his Bible reading and praying at the drop of a hat. And she was going to tell him just that as soon as she put Natua to bed.

  “You done with your sandwich?”

  Natua swallowed, wiped her hands, and then said, “Yep.”

  Dee Dee handed her the juice. “Drink up so we can go upstairs and try on your new clothes.”

  Natua did as she was told, and then jumped out of her seat and ran up the stairs.

  Laughing again, Dee Dee followed the child. Natua wasn’t her natural born child, but day by day, she was acting more like her than Dee Dee cared to admit. “Slow down, girl, you’re going to fall up the stairs.”

  Natua hollered back, “Hurry up, Dee Dee, I want to see what you bought me.”

  Dee Dee held up the bags. “I have the stuff in my hands. You won’t see it until I get there, so you might as well wait for me.”

  But Dee Dee’s logic fell on deaf ears, as Natua took the last step and then raced to her room, giggling all the way. When Natua reached her room, she swung the door open a
nd then stopped.

  “Oh, so now you want to wait for me, huh?”

  Natua turned around and ran toward Dee Dee. She wrapped her arms around Dee Dee’s waist and clung to her. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Natua pointed toward her room. “It’s broken.”

  “Huh? What’s broken?” Although Dee Dee was trying, she still had a lot of problems with three-year-old speak.

  “My room,” Natua screamed. “Somebody tore it up.”

  Dee Dee plied Natua’s hands from around her waist as she rushed down the hall toward the little girl’s room. When she reached the door, Dee Dee was startled by what she saw. Clothes were strewn all over the floor. Certain items had been ripped apart and others were almost shredded. She dropped the bags as she put her hand over mouth and stepped into the room. Who would do something like this? She bent down and started picking up torn dresses and shirts.

  “Don’t be sad, Dee Dee,” Natua said, as she came into the room and picked up a few shirts off the floor. “Look, my pink shirts are fine.”

  Dee Dee’s head popped up as Natua held out the pink shirts to her. Then she remembered the note on her refrigerator and turned toward Natua’s bed. There it was…a pink shirt and a pair of pants lay on top of the bedspread. Dee Dee straightened up and grabbed Natua’s hand, pulling her out of the room. “Let’s go back downstairs.”

  Natua pulled back, grabbed one of the bags that Dee Dee had dropped in front of the bedroom door. “Don’t forget my new clothes, Dee Dee. They might get torn up too.”

  Dee Dee grabbed the other bags and then ushered the little girl back downstairs. She grabbed her purse and car keys, and rushed out of the house with Natua and her new clothes. Someone had been in her house, and Dee Dee now knew that it wasn’t Drake. Her faithful Christian husband would never do something so cruel to a little girl as sweet as Natua.