Wanderlove - Rachel Blaufeld Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Books by Rachel Blaufeld

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Stand Alone Titles

  Break Point

  To See You

  Heart Stronger

  Hot for His Girl

  Wanderlove

  Love at Center Court Series

  Vérité

  Dolce

  The Electric Tunnel Series

  Electrified

  Smoldered

  Tinged

  Crossroads Series

  Redemption Lane

  Absolution Road

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  Sick of living under her dad’s rules, Emerson Bender bolts when she’s eighteen. On her own for the first time, she heads to the only place her mom ever lived—New York City—desperate to find the woman who dropped her off on her dad’s doorstep.

  Content to spend the rest of his life in Small Town, Pennsylvania, Price Barnes is plucked out of his idyllic life by his estranged father. Missing his mom and stepfather, he’s dropped in New York City to attend college and live an all-expenses-paid lifestyle. Cushy, right? But not the life he wanted.

  She’s looking to fill a hole in her heart, and he’s looking to forget the man who disrupted his life. Together, they’re both wandering, looking for acceptance and hoping to forget the rejection.

  This one is for my beagles—Cadillac and Cruise.

  Yep, that’s right. By my side, day or night, snoring and supporting.

  They don’t know how to make coffee or proofread, but they sure know how to make a gal feel loved.

  And for Cassius, my big, beautiful, gentle, kind Lab, who crossed over the Rainbow Bridge a few moons ago. I miss you, good buddy. This book’s got a Labrador just for you.

  Emerson

  “Emerson! Stop. Don’t do this! Emerson, please don’t do this. I didn’t mean it. Please, Emmy . . .”

  His words echoed in my head but didn’t stop me. I slammed the car door right in my dad’s face, shutting him up in mid-plea.

  I couldn’t listen to him.

  Didn’t dare.

  Not for one second longer.

  Not this time.

  Not even when he called me Emmy.

  We’d had this fight before—a million and two times. Each time, I gave in and did it his way. Our fights always ended with me crying on his shoulder, and him rubbing my back, shushing me and telling me to let it go.

  Just the thought of it made me grit my teeth.

  The last time, I’d sworn to never bring her up again, and he’d said the same. It was a mutual decision. Yet, I was the one to break our promise. I was the one who dared speak her name aloud.

  Five stupid letters, P-A-U-L-A, came tumbling from my lips, inside the four walls of our house, the exact place where I’d promised not to say it.

  Paula had always been and continued to be a curse word between us—worse than fuck. Her name was only brought out when the big guns were needed, or when the most painful wound needed to be inflicted. The mere mention of her name left a gaping gash in us that no superglue or stitches would easily remedy.

  Which is why he’d spent my whole life convincing me she needed to stay where she’d always been—deep in my past.

  Although I tried not to bring her up in regular conversation, Paula haunted my dreams and waking hours in equal measure. Dad was the better person, and only spoke of her when I was bold enough to say her name first.

  Except this time, I wasn’t full of piss and vinegar and false threats.

  Boldly, I’d said her name loud and proud. For once in my short life, I took him to task. I was determined to find her, and he wasn’t going to stop me. He was squeezing the life out of me with his rules and curfews.

  Yeah, I was all he had, and he’d been a single dad since I was born, but fuck it. The man had been my rock, but he was also a major pain in my ass.

  Like right now, waving his hands in the air, begging me to stop.

  Not gonna do it, Dad.

  This time, he’d gone too far. He had no right to tell me I couldn’t date Robby Williams. Actually, dating I could do. It was the other stuff Dad wouldn’t allow.

  So what if I wanted to stay out with Robby . . . all night? I was eighteen, had just graduated from high school, and would be off to school in the fall. I could do whatever I wanted, even if I still lived at home. Right?

  “Paula would let me do it.” Tired of always giving in, this time I’d held my ground, threatening him with the only thing I knew would hurt. It wouldn’t just sting; it would bite like a samurai sword slicing through raw flesh. Any other threat would have cut like a butter knife.

  He stared at me, taking in my angry face and heaving chest before boldly daring me. “Fine, Emerson, be my guest. Go find your long-lost mommy and see if she cares.”

  As soon as he’d said it, he broke down and cupped my cheeks, his calloused palms gentle on my skin. “I didn’t mean it, honey, I swear. This is hard. I can’t always be the perfect mom and dad, all at the same time.”

  With what I was certain had to be a thousand red splotches creeping up my neck, I decided to go for it. Take him up on his challenge and go look for Paula. After all, in three short months, I’d be gone anyway. What’s wrong with setting out a little early?

  Somehow, I reversed out of the driveway without hitting anything and threw the car in drive, watching with one eye as my dad’s silhouette disappeared in the rearview mirror.

  With the windows down, my long hair blowing behind me, I cranked up the radio. It didn’t escape me that I didn’t have a clue where I was going or who I was even looking for, but that was me. Impulsive, determined, misguided—a dangerous combination—but me, nonetheless.

  With a few thousand dollars saved up from working every weekend, and a nice savings bond left me in my grandpap’s will, I decided I was actually doing it. I was going to find my mom and bring her back.

  Period.

  At the very least, I was going to ask her why she left.

  “I’m eighteen,” I mumbled to myself as I drove on. “Anyway, what does he know about being a woman . . . a grown woman? Plus, I’m perfectly capable of driving. Legally, I am a grown woman, right?”

  A long, drawn-out string of nonsensical words spun from my mouth as I drove on, even though no one sat in the passenger seat to hear them. But it didn’t seem to bother
me.

  I was on my own for the first time in my life, and it felt good. Exciting. Freeing.

  When I got my driver’s license at sixteen, my dad had been by my side, but there was no party or fun dinner at a restaurant to celebrate. Although, he did buy me a used Toyota to overcompensate for his blundering through my first period and puberty.

  It had been just my dad and me for my whole life, so I didn’t really know he was blundering anything until much later, when my friends and I got to talking. I guess I could have gone to one of their moms with my questions, but to be honest, most of my friends were boys.

  “Platonic, of course,” I mumbled to myself.

  It was no shock that most of my friends were boys. After all, I was raised by a single dad and grew up speaking “male.” That didn’t mean I wasn’t desperate for a woman’s touch, soft murmurings from a mom I never knew, secret chats and pillow talk—some semblance of what I’d seen portrayed on TV and in the movies.

  The thing was, my reality was a far cry from the movies. My mom, Paula Dubois, was a real class act—in her own mind. She’d come from some hoity-toity, rich-ass, snobby family, according to my grandpap. She’d never had a hard day in her life except when she went slumming with my dad, and subsequently, nine months later. Also my grandpap’s words.

  I stole a quick glance at my jet-black hair in the rearview mirror—compliments of Paula, I was told. My dad was all blond hair and blue eyes. Too bad his recessive genes didn’t duke it out hard enough. My coloring was a constant reminder of Paula for him with my dark hair and green eyes. Except when it came to my facial features . . . then I was a female version of him.

  When my parents met, my dad was no more than the son of a seaside construction worker. Paula had been vacationing near the beach town where he’d lived his whole life. Sea Isle City, New Jersey, was all my dad had known.

  The story went something like this . . .

  Paula went to Atlantic City for a bachelorette weekend. She’d been sitting in the bar, sipping on a glass of bubbly, when my dad and some buddies made their way into the lounge. They were already half-drunk on cheap beer and high on playing poker when they bellied up to the bar. According to my dad, Billy Bender—or Bend, as his friends liked to call him—my mom eyed him up immediately. He ditched his friends that night, warming the sheets of Paula’s luxury hotel bed. The next morning, she rode back to Sea Isle with him and spent a month shacked up in his run-down beach bungalow.

  She’d been twenty-one and he’d been twenty-five. Paula was on the brink of everything. My dad had close to nothing on the horizon, “Other than a ready woman and an ice-cold beer at the end of the day,” according to my dad.

  My mom sunbathed, applying a healthy dose of expensive-as-shit oils on her silky skin—at least that’s what I’d always envisioned—while Bend worked. When he got home at the end of the day, they went at it like rabbits, drinking wine on the back deck, and then stronger coffee in the morning. The latter I also knew, compliments of Pap.

  “Hey, I’m eighteen. I know where babies come from. That’s how I came to be—the going-at-it-like-rabbits part.”

  Embarrassed at talking to myself again, I turned up the radio. Lush green trees and large fields of crops I couldn’t name blurred past the car windows as I sped down the highway. Yet, nothing could distract me from the story in my head . . .

  When the month was up, Paula was already bored and went back to her uppity college in New York City. Apparently, my grandpap had predicted this.

  Abandoned, my lonely dad hunkered down for the fall and winter in his little beach town, picking up the odd construction job and rehabbing houses, and forgot about the fiery city girl who had warmed his bed.

  Then, come spring, Paula showed up one afternoon with a snarky, sure-of-herself friend on her left and a baby carrier on her right.

  That would have been me.

  She’d said, “Here. You left me with a little souvenir of Sea Isle. I wasn’t so fond of this place to begin with . . . so, here it is.”

  It! Not her. Not she. No name, nothing. All per my grandpap. My dad tried to sugarcoat the story, but there wasn’t much to work with.

  With my mom standing on the porch, baby in tow, my dad apparently went mute. He tried to form words, but he couldn’t.

  “I just couldn’t stop staring at you. The most precious baby girl I’d ever seen.”

  I’d finally pulled the truth out of him when I was around twelve or thirteen with constant prodding for more information.

  Like his dad, he embellished. “I suppose it’s because you were so beautiful, sitting there in your carrier, all pretty in purple.”

  I’d tried to tell him over and over again . . . “Dad, the expression is pink. Pretty in pink, not purple.”

  But he always insisted that’s why he’d gone mute. My prettiness.

  I’d believed him until I was around sixteen.

  Anyway, my mom had added insult to my dad’s bruised ego, saying, “By the time I figured out what the hell was wrong with my body, it was too late to do anything about it. I thought it was all the cheap beer making me fat, but it wasn’t. It was this girl. So, she’s all yours.”

  She sat my carrier down on the porch with a white patent leather diaper bag (he still had it when I was a teen) and turned to leave, her friend never saying a word.

  “What’s her name?” my dad had called after them.

  “Whatever the hell you want,” Paula had said over her shoulder as she left.

  I’d been five days old, according to my birth certificate.

  My dad said his life changed forever that day. He’d loved me the instant he set eyes on me, and he didn’t regret a moment of raising me himself.

  Other than when I was desperate to spend the night with Robby. After all, a girl couldn’t go off to college without her V-card punched. I deserved a night or two with my high school love.

  My poor dad. I was a pain in the ass, always looking for a little mischief, and he never was able to have any fun or fuck like rabbits anymore.

  But at least he kept me.

  Oh, and about my name. I was named Emerson, after my grandfather, who used to bounce me on his knee and hide eggs at Easter for me.

  My dad will never admit it, but the P in my middle name, Paige, was meant for my mom, who he seemed to want to honor in some way.

  “She gave me you, Emerson,” he always used to tell me.

  And in turn, I gave you grief, Dad.

  Price

  I didn’t care what anyone else said . . . New York City was a shithole. It was almost as if the air hung heavy with wasted money and expensive booze. I could barely breathe there.

  Give me Main Street, USA, over this cranky city, any day of the week, and I’d be good to go.

  My feet pounded the sidewalk for a run at dawn, the dirty, murky, disease-infested water rushing down the gutter splashing my ankles. People said they loved this place, but I didn’t believe them.

  It wasn’t even light out yet, and this place was so fucking noisy and busy. Horns and ambulances blared all around me. Clubbers and drag queens walked home, laughing in the twilight.

  Welcome to the Big Rotten Apple.

  After I’d lapped the entirety of Central Park, savoring the briefest moments of quiet on the back side, I made my way home. To my apartment in the looming building on Central Park South. Yep, you heard me right.

  I’d recently come into some money.

  In fact, I was like a pig in shit, practically rolling in it.

  Problem was, the money had strings, and I didn’t like them all too much. I’d rather be covered in hay and dirt, wearing ripped jeans, my hair too long, my nose sunburned and my hands blistered from a hard day’s work outside.

  “Morning, Rudy,” I said to the doorman as I wiped my feet on the entryway carpet. I wasn’t raised in a barn—it had been a nice-size farmhouse—and I knew better than to track my wet feet all over the lobby.

  “Good morning, Mr. Barnes. Ready
for the weekend?”

  Poor guy, he startled hard when I slapped my hand on the counter in front of him.

  “Cut it out, Rudy. It’s Price. Barnes is his last name. Price is all me, only me, even if I do share his last name.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, Mr. Price. Did you have a good run?”

  “Price. Just Price. Didn’t get far enough, only chased a few demons this morning. Too many left to slay for a lonely day in the big city.”

  Rudy probably knew me better than anyone here. I hadn’t made many friends since I’d been brought to this godforsaken urban mecca a month ago. Sometimes, I carried a beer down and sat with Rudy, rambling about how much I missed home. He was there the day I arrived with shitkickers on my feet, nothing but a T-shirt and a flannel on my back, my dark hair wild and unruly—like my heart.

  I couldn’t help the smug smirk on my face. How a good ole boy from Central Pennsylvania ended up in this sea of vapidness was as big a mystery to me as it was to him. One minute I’d been sitting on top of the water tower, looking out at the fields in front of me, and the next, I’d been in the back of a shiny black town car, on my way to New York City.

  I was making the most of it. Free education, lazy and willing women, a few good drinks here and there, and . . . I guess there wasn’t much else to write home about.

  Three days later, I rode in the back of another town car—of course, it was provided for me—down to my summer class.

  Johnny, my driver, pulled up in front of the building housing my first class for the day, and I swung my Adidas-clad feet out into the bright sunshine. The buildings weren’t as tall in the Village, allowing some sunlight to sneak inside the shady city. It made living here somewhat tolerable.

  Standing tall outside the car and hoisting my backpack over my shoulder, I allowed myself a moment to think of home. It was early summer—the sun would be burning hot, the crops tall, the trees lush and green. The dogs would have the opposite of spring fever, lazing in the shade around the pond in the heat of the day, and Moira and I would get lost in each other at night in the bed of my pickup truck, underneath the stars, kissing and touching and fucking.