Whispers and Wishes (Untouchable Book 4)

by Heather Long

  Something had been distracting Archie all week. They might be looking after me, but it was up to me to look after them, too.

  She made a face. “Do I have to say something nice tonight?”

  “Maybe. To one of them?”

  “To one of them? Hmm…do I get to pick which one?”

  “Nope.” I reached for my soda.

  “Fine,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ll say something nice to one of them. Your choice.”

  “Thank you, Rachel.”

  “You’re welcome.” She sobered, then nudged my plate. “You need to eat.”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “See, now I know something is wrong. You always eat.”

  My appetite had its ups and downs.

  “Talk to me?” Rachel said. “Or I can… you know, give you all the gossip. Tell you dirty stories. Ooo. I know, we can mock that truly hideous fucking dress the troll was wearing today. Though I’m pretty sure that Peppermint Patty was really trying to top her.”

  Had I even seen Sharon today? “I must have missed it.”

  The very real shock on Rachel’s face was near comical as she pulled out her phone and flipped it to her Instagram account, then held it over for me to see.

  The dress was yellow, which in and of itself was not a crime. However, it had… “Is that gingham?” I hadn’t seen a yellow checked dress except on television in forever.

  “Right?” She widened her eyes, almost goggling. “Hold on to your boy shorts.” She swiped to the next picture. Patty was dressed in some hideous orange thing.

  “Did they lose a bet?”

  In all the years I’d gone to school with them, I could honestly say they had fashion sense and taste. Both of them. But…

  Suddenly, Rachel smirked.

  “Oh my god, they lost a bet.”

  “Maybe,” she answered, all innocence now.

  “What did you do?” I demanded.

  She nudged my plate. “Eat and I’ll tell you.”

  “Fine,” I stabbed a piece of fish and stuffed it in my mouth. It had tasted divine earlier, but my lack of appetite wasn’t thrilled with the effort.

  “And I bet them on who would be voted off of the Disguised Vocalist this week. They lost.”

  “Seriously?”

  She shrugged. I was behind. “Hey, I can recognize talent, and they were basing it on costume.”

  “I can’t believe they took that bet.”

  “Sucks to be them. Personally, I enjoyed watching them walk around all day like that. Couldn’t happen to a pair of nicer bitches. Besides, I could have done a whole lot worse. But I was all nice and shit.”

  I snorted. But when she grinned, I laughed and shook my head. “Remind me never to bet you on anything.”

  “You never have. But then, I wouldn’t do something like that to you. Even when you’re oblivious, you’re not rude.”

  Yeah. That was something, I supposed. Then she showed me the pictures again, and we both laughed.

  I managed to eat about half the food before we circled back to Cheryl. “I don’t know what to tell you,” Rachel said. “I don’t want to think she was involved.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “But I’ll fucking ask her.”

  “Rachel…”

  “No, I like her. I always thought she was too ditzy to do a terrible thing, but…I don’t see Mitch drugging her either. They were crazy about each other.” Then she grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about that jackass, and to think I actually liked the son of a bitch. I guess my taste is questionable.”

  “I still don’t…” I didn’t want to finish that thought.

  “You still don’t what?”

  “Don’t know why he did it.”

  “Because he’s an asshole.”

  “But why? He’s good-looking, right? He had a girlfriend.”

  “Assholes don’t always need a reason to be an asshole, Frankie. It might be a mistake to look for one, too.”

  I sighed.

  “You done?” She motioned to my food, and I nodded. When I would have cleaned up, she smacked my left hand lightly and stacked everything on her tray. After she disposed of it, we headed out to her car. It was still cloudy and damp, though it hadn’t rained, and the temperature was chilly enough to make me glad Jake had dumped his letterman’s jacket on me earlier in the day.

  Thankfully, Rachel only teased me a little bit about it when she picked me up. Once we were in her car, she asked, “Where to?”

  I checked my phone. No message from Coop. Or Archie. So I texted Archie. “One sec?”

  “Sure.”

  Me: You make it to my place yet?

  Archie: Sorry, babe. Still at the house. Might be a bit.

  Me: Mind if I have Rachel drop me there?

  I could just drop in on him. But I didn’t want to intrude. His mom might be there, and that was not a position I wanted to put Archie into.

  The three dots indicating he was responding seemed to take forever before his message came through.

  Archie: You never have to ask. You on your way now?

  “Can you drop me at Archie’s?”

  “Yep,” she said, pulling out.

  Me: OMW now. Yes.

  Archie: I’ll be here.

  “So,” Rachel said as she drove. “I have to say something nice to rich boy?”

  I bit back a smile. “Well, we are going to his house.”

  “Yeah, but I’m verifying that I have to say something nice to him, ’cause it might take me the whole drive to come up with something.”

  “Then you should probably practice.”

  She let out a groan. “The things I do for you.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  “You’re welcome,” she answered in the same tone. “Now…while I think about what I can say to the entitled…” She paused, then made a face like it actually killed her to say, “…misunderstood rich kid, tell me what else you’re doing that I can maybe help with?”

  “You’re already doing a lot.”

  “Pfft. Give me more work to do, woman. Make me your slave.” She gave me a playful leer at the light.

  “Save the dirty stuff for Skylar. Besides, you’d like being my slave too much.”

  “Yes, I would,” she admitted. “Trust me, I’d make sure you enjoyed it, too.”

  The funny thing about it? She was probably right. “You free next Wednesday at lunch?” I’d been sitting on this one all day.

  “I can be. Whatcha need?”

  “A ride.”

  “Tell me more…”

  She didn’t interrupt me once all the way to Archie’s. “I can do that,” she promised as we pulled in. She took me all the way up to the house, and Archie came out to meet us. “One sec,” she said to me. “I have to do my nice thing.”

  I bit my lip as she rolled my window down, since Archie was on my side of the car.

  “Hey, Archie,” she called.

  “Hey, Rachel,” he said, and his sudden wariness at the appearance of Rachel’s smile nearly made me laugh aloud.

  “I’ve been meaning to give you a few pointers on the best way to use your tongue so it’s really nice for Frankie…”

  Oh.

  My.

  God.

  Rachel grinned at me. “See, I can be nice.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Just Like Him

  I stole a look at Archie as Rachel waved to us before she pulled down the driveway. His mouth had twisted into a half-grimace, half-smile, even as he suppressed his laughter.

  “She means well,” I said, trying not to laugh myself. My face was hot, because Rachel hadn’t been kidding about her “nice” advice.

  “Yeah,” he said slowly, then gave me a measuring look. “There something you want to tell me about my tongue?”

  If not for the barest hint of a twitch to his lips, I might have died of mortification right then. My shoulders began to shake as the laughter escaped, and I
shook my head. “I’m good,” I said. “I promise.”

  “Uh huh.” The light in his eyes made me smile wider. The last couple of weeks had been tough, and they’d all focused on me, a lot. “You know, you can tell me if there’s something to what she was saying. I’m always willing to test theories.”

  When he held out his hand, I slid my palm across his and pressed my forehead to his arm as I laughed. “Your tongue is just fine. As I recall, you use it quite well.” If it were possible to get heatstroke from embarrassment, I was well on my way.

  “Hmm,” he murmured, then pressed a kiss to the top of my head. Glancing up, I studied him. While they had been focused on looking after me, I’d tried to pay attention to them, to what was going on, and the last few days, Archie had been distracted.

  He had been since Monday, really, and the appearance of our parents at school. Whatever distracted him, he’d been keeping to himself—to protect me, most likely. I hoped he talked to the guys, even if he wasn’t confiding in me. But that was why I had Rachel bring me here in the first place. I adored him for wanting to take care of me, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted to take care of him, too.

  All of them.

  “C’mon,” he murmured. “Jeremy is probably fixing something for you right now since I mentioned you were coming this way.”

  “I just had dinner,” I reminded him, and Archie chuckled.

  “When has that ever stopped Jeremy? Besides, it might be something with ice cream and cake.”

  I groaned.

  “Or maybe it was brownies.” The sidelong look he sent me told me he knew exactly what Jeremy had fixed and he was just teasing me.

  “I’ll do my best to make sure I don’t disappoint him.” Once we were inside, he helped me take Jake’s jacket off.

  “You could never disappoint him,” he reminded me. The foyer, with its wide open space and vaulted ceilings leading to the stairs that angled up and then deeper to the larger living and sitting rooms on either side, seemed bigger somehow. “While I wasn’t expecting you to come here tonight,” he continued. “I’m glad you did.”

  “Yeah?” Some of my surprise must have shown, not that I hadn’t expected to be welcomed, but Archie had said he’d be back at the apartment tonight. In fact, they’d probably all be over after Jake and Ian’s game.

  “Of course,” he said, frowning a bit. “Did something happen?”

  “No, I’ve just been worried about you.”

  That truly seemed to catch him off guard. He held Jake’s jacket by two fingers, even as he caught my left hand in his again. “Worried about me? Babe, I’m fine.”

  “No,” I said quietly, meeting his brown-eyed gaze with a little sigh. “You’re not. I saw your face when Mr. Standish and Maddy were at the school on Monday.”

  “And I saw yours,” he reminded me.

  “And clearly, we know I’m not all right.” He frowned at the comment, but I pressed on, “And you’ve been…kind of distant. I know I’ve been preoccupied but—”

  “First,” he cut me off with a firm look. “You have every right to be preoccupied. There’s a lot going on for you, and you come first.”

  Yeah. That didn’t work for me, but I pressed my lips together because he wasn’t done.

  “Second, I’ve been working on some things that I wanted to tell you about after I lined it up.”

  “Lined it up?” Line what up?

  “I think what my grandson is trying to say, and rather indelicately if I might add, Sprout,” a new voice announced in a gravelly tone a moment ahead of a tall, steel-gray haired man’s approach, “is that he needed to get in touch with me and make sure I could get here. Edward Standish, Sr.” He extended his hand. “But you can call me Ted, or Grandpa like Sprout here does.”

  Sprout.

  I glanced from Archie to his grandfather and back. The resemblance was definitely there. Just like the resemblance to “Eddie,” but with Ted, at least there was something genial and warm, rather than slick and kind of skeezy. Loosening my grip from Archie’s, I took Ted’s hand. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to mind shaking my left hand. Some people thought it was weird, even if my right arm sported the splint.

  “Frankie Curtis, sir. It’s very nice to meet you.” Stunning really. Archie had called his grandfather? I stared at him as Archie shuffled from one foot to the other and rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.

  He looked almost sheepish. “Yeah, Frankie, this is my grandpa. He left me a message yesterday that he would be getting in today.”

  The last I’d heard, there’d been some falling out with his grandparents, but I wasn’t going to ask. “Well, it’s really good to meet you,” I reiterated. At least Archie’s distraction was a good one, right?

  “And it’s lovely to meet you.” He patted my hand once before he let it go. “Sprout was just telling me about you, though he left out some key details. Like how pretty you are.” With a wink, the older man clapped Archie on the shoulder.

  “Grandpa,” Archie groaned. “I told you she was brilliant, funny, and very important to me.”

  “You did, didn’t you?” Ted grinned again, then beckoned to me. “Come on, Frankie. Jeremy was just putting together these hot fudge cake things with brownies. It looks absolutely sinful, and I need to see someone eat it, since my doctors would probably all have a coronaries if I ate that much sugar.”

  I chuckled.

  “Grandpa, if you had a single doctor willing to argue with you, I’d be shocked,” Archie countered.

  “I didn’t say they’d argue, Sprout, I said they’d have coronaries.” The older man’s humor proved contagious, because even Archie laughed as we headed for the sitting room rather than the dining room. “And I’d say we go eat in the kitchen, but then Jeremy would have an apoplectic fit.”

  “I do not have apoplectic fits, Mr. Ted,” Jeremy said in the primmest tone I’d ever heard out of him. “I do, however, scold quite firmly.”

  “That’s what you kids are calling it these days,” Ted said with a smirk so reminiscent of Archie, I had to a hard time not laughing. The older man took a seat in one of the wing-backed chairs while grinning at Jeremy. I got the impression this was not a new argument for them.

  “No, sir, it is what you oldsters used to refer to as decorous behavior,” Jeremy corrected him, and I smothered another laugh.

  Archie caught my hand and drew me over to the loveseat. He tossed the jacket over another chair before sitting down next to me.

  Ted snorted, but Jeremy set a cup of coffee down next to him, even as he skipped his gaze to me. “Miss Frankie, it is lovely to see you. I was very glad when Mr. Archie said you were coming over.”

  “Hi, Jeremy, thank you. Thank you for everything the last couple of weeks, you’ve been a lifesaver.”

  “Truly, my pleasure,” he insisted. “I have coffee for you, but I could be persuaded to make some hot cocoa. Though the brownies are just out of the oven, and I’ll have the hot fudge cake sundaes you so enjoy ready in a moment.”

  Sometimes, I couldn’t get over this man. “The coffee would be great.” It wasn’t like I had school the next day. Or work yet. “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble.”

  “No trouble at all.” He set a cup of coffee down on the low table right in front of me. “I also have the room next to Archie’s all set up should you decide to take us up on our invitation to stay.” The last he said with a firm look at Archie, who raised both of his hands.

  “We’ve talked about this, Jeremy.”

  “Yes, Mr. Archie, we have.” With that less than subtle reminder, he set Archie’s coffee down and then withdrew.

  I bit my lip and stole a look at Archie’s grandfather, who wore a bit of a bemused expression as he sipped his coffee. “Sprout, would you like me to excuse myself for the evening? Or did you want to continue our conversation?”

  Archie shot me a look, then glanced at his grandfather. “After Jeremy brings the sundae, Grandpa, I’d like to cont
inue it, and Frankie can be here for that if she doesn’t mind. It involves her, too.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt…”

  “You didn’t,” Archie assured me. “Like I said, I wanted to make sure it could happen before I told you, but this really does involve you.” After a beat, he frowned. “You still good? You comfortable? I should have asked that when you got here…”

  “I’m fine, I’m sore and achy, but not hurting.” That said, however, I shifted to sit sideways. “But I can call Coop to come and pick me up, or get Jake to swing by after the game. I don’t want to interrupt your reunion.”

  “No,” Archie said firmly. “If you need to go somewhere, I’ll take you, and you’re not interrupting.”

  He paused on his next words as Jeremy re-entered, and I goggled a little at the tray he carried. I had to shift again so he could place the tray over my lap and present me with the hot fudge cake sundae that had my mouth watering from the smell.

  “Jeremy…this looks awesome.” In addition to the hot brownie square on the bottom and what looked like actual hot fudge poured over a hefty scoop of ice cream, he’d crowned it with whip cream, nuts, and two cherries. There were also two spoons on the tray—thankfully, ’cause no way could I eat all of this on my own.

  Well, I could, but I probably shouldn’t.

  “Enjoy it, Miss Frankie. Mr. Archie may join in when you’ve had enough.”

  I wasn’t the only one hiding a smile at Jeremy’s ‘instructions.’

  “Can I get you anything else?” Jeremy checked with all of us.

  “Thanks Jere,” Archie answered. “We’re good.”

  “Feel free to buzz for me if you require anything further.” Then he exited as smoothly as he arrived. Even after four years, it was still weird that Jeremy, a butler-cook-house manager and general good guy, seemed always prepared to wait on us.

  “Go on,” Archie nudged me with an indulgent grin. “Take a bite. I can wait for your chocolate-gasm to dive back in.”