Feisty Read online

  FEISTY

  Julia Kent

  Copyright © 2020 by Julia Kent

  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.

  Contents

  Feisty

  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

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Julia Kent

  About the Author

  Feisty

  I’m not too proud to admit that finding Mr. Right involves swiping right. Right? Welcome to dating in avocado toastland.

  Here I am, on my first blind date, ever, courtesy of a smartphone app and my two annoying best friends.

  So what is Chris “Fletch” Fletcher doing, walking across the room, looking at his phone like he’s pattern matching a picture to find a real person he’s never met before?

  Oh.

  Oh, no.

  The guy I drop-kicked in seventh grade cannot be my blind date. The guy who earned me this infernal nickname.

  That’s right.

  Feisty.

  It was bad enough that last month all my old kickboxing training came in handy when a disgruntled noncustodial dad invaded my preschool class and tried to take one of my kids without permission.

  That ended with news coverage of the closed-circuit video that parents saw in real time as I beat him up and pinned his neck to the ground while waiting for police to respond.

  We won’t mention the part where I thrust my arm into the air in a power stance and, uh…

  Roared.

  Hey. HEY! Don’t judge me. I protected those kids. And the kid most in danger was Fletch’s nephew.

  The same Fletch who just now noticed me sitting here.

  Being noticed is bad.

  Being his dating app match is even worse.

  Why?

  Because no matter how hard I’ve tried to avoid him since high school, every time I see him I have the same reaction.

  I wish I’d never kicked him.

  I wish, instead, that I’d let him kiss me.

  Which it looks like he’s trying to do.

  Right now.

  * * *

  More from New York Times bestselling author Julia Kent as Fiona “Feisty” Gaskill gets her chance at love - drop-kick included.

  * * *

  Listen to the audiobook, narrated by the amazing Erin Mallon!

  Chapter 1

  “Miss Fiona, Jahra picked her nose and fed it to the hamster.”

  Mattie Fletcher-Lingoni’s voice is even, calm, and perfectly blunt as he accurately recounts what I, too, just witnessed. No one in my master's program in child development ever explained the proper procedure for handling preschool-aged children who feed boogers to classroom pets.

  “Did not!” Jahra tries to bend reality.

  “Did too.” Mattie is undeterred.

  Jahra fails.

  “And you didn’t even wash your hands after. We’re s’posed to wash our hands so the germs don’t kill us,” Mattie declares.

  “Germs don’t kill us.” Jahra uses a time-honored tactic: Initiate conflict as a way to deflect.

  “Do too! My daddy says germs are silent killers. They kill you without screaming!”

  “Bad guys scream. Bad guys don’t stay quiet,” Jahra argues. “They scream when they kill you in the movies.”

  I make a mental note to tactfully ask Jahra's parents what she's been watching on Netflix lately.

  “Jahra is a bad guy for feeding poor Piggly her booger! Boogers are not food,” Janelle pipes up, her rainbow ombré the kind of cute touch on a little kid that is also a visual reminder of parents who can afford the elaborate hair treatment and a kid who will sit still for long enough to have it done.

  “Boogers are not food!” Mattie echoes.

  Jahra bursts into tears. Wet, sloppy, snotty, wailing tears.

  Welcome to my classroom.

  Twenty students age four or so, me, two assistants, and a hamster named Piggly, who now, apparently, has eaten the first-ever all-booger breakfast.

  Scratch that.

  I’m sure that at some point in the five years since I started teaching, one of my students had the first all-booger breakfast.

  Piggly isn’t all that original.

  “Jahra,” I say, giving her a hug as she sniffles and hitches her breath. “Please don’t feed Piggly snacks from your nose.”

  “But... but he wanted it.”

  “He did?”

  “He said so!”

  “Piggly talks to you?” Mattie asks with the kind of skepticism that makes me just know he’ll grow up to be an accountant. I taught his cousin, Max, two years ago, and his dad is an accountant, so maybe it'll run in the family.

  I know the Fletcher family all too well.

  I catch Michelle’s eye. My twenty-one-year-old intern teacher gives me a smile that is more knowing than it should be. She’s a natural with four year olds.

  I smile back.

  We’re twelve minutes into the start of our day.

  It’s going to be one with a great story I can tell people.

  Teaching preschool may not pay well, but the extras are soooo worth it. I'm blessed with stories.

  Booger tales.

  We-don't-eat-charging-cables tales.

  Don't-use-tampons-for-craft-time-when-you-sub tales.

  Wait. That one's for my best friend, Perky. She will never be subbing in my class again.

  Ever.

  “Piggly whispers to me,” Jahra tells Mattie, eyes shifty. When four-year-olds are learning how to lie, they start in really obvious ways. “He told me he likes how boogers taste. Giving Piggly some of my boogers was being kind.” Dark eyes framed by long, curled-up eyelashes meet mine. “Miss Fiona always tells us it's important to be kind.”

  “Boogers are kind?” Janelle asks, clearly doubtful. She's a lawyer's kid, so the sneer comes naturally. “I don't think so. Who shares boogers and the person likes them?”

  Michelle bites her lips to stop from laughing. We have plenty of students who like to dine on their own nose cuisine. Her toes curl up in her slippers, all of us wearing them, the change from street shoes to quiet, contemplative footwear part of the morning ritual.

  What comes next is anything but routine.

  The energy in the room changes before the sound hits our ears.

  Squealing tires outside make me turn instinctively, the booger conversation on the back burner for a split second as protective instinct draws me away.

  Our school is in a small strip mall. We're on the end, with a fenced playground off the back, the edge of the fencing touching thick woods with trails that are maintained by the town. The conservation land helps to make the school feel less strip-mall-ish. Unfortunately, sharing a parking lot with a coffee shop, a convenience store, a consignment shop, an insurance agency, and a women's fitness center means there's more car traffic than we'd like.

  The front door is locked. Back door, too. Windows are latched but can be opened for quick evacuation.

  Inventorying this takes a split second.

  What feels like a century is my own awareness that a wave of bad energy is coming.

  And
I can't stop it.

  “What was that?” Janelle asks, craning her neck around me to look at the front door, which is glass. You can see the parking lot between the painted flowers on the door.

  “Just a driver going a little too fast,” I say, hoping I'm right, knowing I'm not.

  “Like Mommy when we're late for gymnastics?” she asks sweetly.

  Mental note number two: Don't ask Janelle's mom to be a driver for our next field trip.

  Our preschool has two big rooms with a single door connecting them. Two offices and two bathrooms are carved out of the space in the back. A small mudroom, made of a tiny greenhouse structure, is where we store boots and coats for recess time. Half the kids are in here with Michelle and me, while the other–I do a head count, nine–are with Ani, our other aide.

  Bam bam bam.

  Instantly, my eyes jump to the four cameras in the room, fisheye lenses strategically placed for maximum coverage. There are four in the other room, too, and two on the playground. Parents can watch everything we do via webcam, all day.

  It makes separation anxiety so much easier.

  The parents take longer to recover than you'd think.

  I turn toward the banging to find Rico Lingoni, Mattie's dad, standing on the other side of the door, hands on his hips, chest rising and falling with huffing, angry breaths.

  “Oh, boy,” Michelle says, suddenly at my side, the two of us moving toward the door to act as a shield. “Candi warned us about this.”

  Candi Fletcher-Lingoni is Mattie's mom and Rico's soon-to-be ex-wife. Last week, she showed us a protection from abuse order, a new custody order for Mattie, and even asked the local police to keep an eye on Mattie's school and their home, in case Rico did, in her words, Something worse.

  Without moving my mouth, I say softly, “Get the kids in the other room, get them all in the back office and evacuate if you can. Do it quietly and call 911. He wants Mattie.” The words are surreal but they have to be precise.

  “But Fiona, I–”

  “Now.”

  As if they pick up on the change in energy–because, of course, they do–every child in the classrooms looks up at us.

  And Mattie's face lights up as he looks at the glass door.

  “Daddy!” he shouts, fingers still on the small sticks he's arranging for his project, eyes bouncing between the door and his work. “Why is my daddy here so early?”

  Bam bam bam.

  Joy turns to terror on Mattie's face, color draining from him.

  No four year old should ever, ever have that expression.

  Any other intern teacher would panic. Any other intern teacher would clap her hands loudly, or call out an announcement. But Michelle isn't just any intern.

  She's an intern who survived a shooting at her high school when she was fourteen.

  So Michelle moves quickly, softly, and nearly silently. Like an Australian shepherd, she herds the children into the other room by circling in a wide arc, only Mattie left with me as she gets everyone in with Ani, whose worried eyes meet mine for a split second, her frown so deep her glasses slide lower on her nose, short brown hair curling over the tips of her ears.

  Rico smacks a paper against the door. “Today's supposed to be my day, Fiona. I got papers that say so.”

  I smile at him, nodding, holding up one finger to buy time. “Just a minute.”

  A tinkling sound, like small pieces of metal dropping on ice, comes into my consciousness as I put my hands on Mattie's shoulders. His neck is twisted, body facing away from his dad, eyes unable to not look.

  “Sweetie? Go with Ani and Michelle.”

  “But–”

  The metallic sounds get louder, and then I remember what Rico Lingoni does for a living.

  He's a locksmith.

  Normally, I turn off my phone during work cycles with the children, but we're not even twenty minutes into the morning. Our days have a rhythm and the rhythm has been interrupted, so as I hear notifications pinging in the air, I realize they'll only increase in intensity.

  Because we’re on camera, being watched by parents.

  “Mattie. GO!” I hiss, his face crumpling as Miss Fiona turns from fairy-light goodness to firm, tense protector, his body ushered by my hands, my urgency vibrating out of my skin.

  Michelle takes him in her arms just as Rico breaks into the school, a long pick in one hand, brandished as a weapon.

  “You give him to me, Fiona. You give him to me now. Candi can't do this. She lied to that dumbass judge and you know it. He's mine and no stupid bullshit restraining ordah is gonna split up my family. I'm heah to take what's mine.” A thick Boston accent punctuates his words. Bloodshot eyes with bags underneath and the bloat of a bender radiate danger.

  Rico's past the point of no return.

  Nothing in my child development classes prepared me for this.

  But something much deeper in my past did.

  Every second I buy means a greater chance that no one gets hurt. Hopefully, Michelle and Ani are leading the children out the back door, the police on their way, their response time swift because nothing bad ever really happens in Anderhill, Massachusetts, bedroom community to Boston, home of the Dance and Dairy festival every August.

  A place where people send their four year olds to a tiny strip-mall preschool because it's safe.

  Why wouldn't it be?

  “You're right, Rico,” I tell him, soothe him, pretend and friend him. That's what we do, right? When we're in danger? We say whatever it takes to defuse.

  “I am?” His neck jerks back. He's expecting a fight. Boozy eyes, dark and oily, meet mine. Rico hasn't showered in days, I suspect, a heady, sour scent emanating from him as he takes his free hand and shoves his hair off his face, the other hand clutching the lock pick.

  “Sure.” My agreement makes him move closer, looking over my shoulder at the open door between the rooms.

  “Then get Mattie ovah heah.”

  “I will.”

  More notifications ping ping ping through the air like bullets whizzing by. My eyes take in his body. The old jean jacket over a hoodie could hide anything.

  It could be hiding a gun.

  A phone in the office rings.

  “Ignore it. Mattie.” Rico jumps forward, the lunge setting my blood to nothing but electric current, shooting through me in a spray of shock. “Now!”

  The texts and phone ringing blur out another sound, footsteps.

  Little footsteps.

  “Daddy!” Mattie shouts from the other room, out of sight behind the closed door but audible. “Don't hurt Miss Fiona! Not like Mommy! Please, Daddy!”

  And then he’s suddenly quiet, hopefully pulled to safety.

  “You bitches,” Rico screams as he points the long, thin lock pick–the kind that could skewer a heart or a throat with one careful plunge–right at me.

  As he charges.

  Sirens, dim and too distant to help me right now, turn into my own heartbeat as the thick, sour stench of alcohol and a primitive bloodlust assault my nostrils, Rico so close that the tip of his lock pick grazes my arm. He's taller, bigger, more muscular, and on a mission to harm.

  In hand-to-hand combat, I'm not going to win, but if he breaks loose and chases after Michelle for Mattie, he's capable of anything.

  Which means I have to be capable of more.

  Until the police arrive and save us.

  Please save us.

  I pull back. He grabs for me, missing my arm but fisting the long, diaphanous sleeve of my dress. It billows in strips of purple, white, and silver, a beautiful style until it becomes a point of leverage for a man who wants nothing more than to push several inches of steel into my flesh so he can kidnap his own son.

  I can't get away, can't escape his grasp. The fabric tears as I try, his hold resolute, his huff a grunt of victory.

  “You bitches always think ya so smaht,” he mutters as the fabric bares my shoulder, a burst of stardust on my skin from one of my fairy tatto
os sending me a sign, a message – encouragement.

  And so I drop.

  The change in weight distribution shifts his center of gravity. His grip is strong, but the fabric gives enough, and the laws of physics make him lean over me. My hip rotates, muscle memory grooved into my bones so deep that it's become marrow. My knee stabilizes, psoas muscle curling, the gyroscopic twist of all that I am centralizing in one motion, one choreographed move, one full-body prayer.

  I kick up.

  I kick out.

  I kick all.

  He takes it square on his diaphragm, my slippered feet less effective than they would be with soled shoes, but the impact is enough. If righteous fury counted as force, he'd be hanging from the moon right now.

  Instead, he's just dazed, on the ground, the lock pick across the room, under the Peace Table.

  Blue and red lights flash through the windows facing the road, but I know how the stoplight works on Stately Road, and even blowing through it means the entrance to the building is still a full minute away for the police.

  Sixty seconds.

  I just need my higher self to carve out sixty more seconds to survive until they're here.

  Leaping to my feet, I find myself facing him. His arms are spread, muscles straining against his jacket as he swells up, pumped by my kick, eyes murderous.

  He rushes me.

  Oddly, it's what I smell that strikes me most: the scent of bleach, coffee from the back room, a slight hint of crayons and markers. Instinct has turned me into a kinetic mass with a purpose buried so deep in my brain stem, it’s like my core being is emerging through a fog to lead an army of truth. Without the time to ask for divine intervention, I process flashes of reality, the tree-like pattern of red vessels in Rico's eye, the grease in the cuticles of his right hand. He backs toward the closed door where we last heard Mattie’s voice.