by Heather Long
“Damn, Bubba. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Yeah. I didn’t know it either. “She’s the second worst mistake I ever made.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Letting Frankie think I didn’t care was the worst.”
“Dude, you can still fix it.”
I intended to.
Rachel had the right idea. I pulled my phone out and switched it off from recording, then tapped the file to send it to Archie. “Think we got it?”
“I know we did.” Jake slapped my back. “She isn’t going to know what hit her. Besides, she made such a scene, everyone was checking it out and filming it.”
I snorted. “I thought that was Frankie’s slap getting their interest.”
“Oh, that definitely earned some play. How’s the face?”
“Hurts.”
“Good,” he said with a grin.
“Ass.”
“Definitely. But you deserved it.”
Yeah. I really had. “Fuck, I hope this works.”
On all counts.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sleeping Arrangements
Archie
Soon as Bubba and Jake stalked off from Sharon, I looped my arm through Frankie’s. “Time to go.”
“I should have slapped her.” The hostility edging Frankie’s voice was pretty damn sexy. More telling was the possessiveness in her voice.
“You can slap her later,” Coop promised, and I shot a look at him. The very last thing Frankie needed was to be getting in a fight. She still had a damn broken wrist. “C’mon, we need to grab food.”
She made a scoffing noise.
“And we need to work on the rest of this,” I said, hoping the verbal nudge would get her moving. It worked. We split up at the cars, Coop heading for his while Frankie climbed into the Ferrari with me. Thankfully, she was inside the car and didn’t see Sharon glaring after her. But I did.
I made sure the bitch knew I saw her. She better remember where she was and who I was before she started something up with me. After one last filthy glare, she cut away and headed across the parking lot. Coop swung past my spot, the lot had emptied pretty rapidly, and he rolled down his window.
“What are you doing?”
“Just keeping an eye on her.”
“Yeah yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I snorted. Coop had always been the cooler of the heads among us, and he’d always been the most relaxed. Today, he’d also been the most in charge, and the fact that he got Jake to calm the fuck down and listen was a minor miracle. “Sure thing.”
Inside, I glanced at Frankie, who stared through the windshield toward the stadium. “Hey,” I told her, reaching over to clasp her left hand. “Bubba’s fine. He knew what he needed to do, and he did it.”
“I know,” she admitted. “But how much of a hypocrite am I that watching that, even knowing what I knew, pissed me off because I didn’t want her touching him? Particularly when he didn’t want her touching him.”
Lifting her hand, I press my lips to her knuckles. “I ever tell you that your left is almost as powerful as that right you can throw?”
The distraction worked, she glared at me. Hey, I’d take what I could get. “You’re not funny.”
“You wound me.”
The corners of her mouth gave the barest of twitches. “You’re impossible to wound. You have a magnificent ego.”
“I do, don’t I?” I winked at her. At least some of her scowl had diminished. Starting the car, I backed out and spotted Coop waiting for us. He’d given me time to settle her. Five bucks said he was aware of how uneasy that whole scenario would have left Frankie.
Part of that was why we hadn’t wanted her involved in the first place.
She sighed.
“Talk to me?”
“About what?”
“Anything,” I said. “Do you want to tell me how the appointment went? How are classes going? Do you want to see if you can record the classes, or are you getting the notes and stuff from the teachers? Halloween would be good. Anything you want to talk about, babe.”
“How is this going to work exactly? Rachel made a recording, you did, Jake did, and I know Bubba was recording it, too, right?”
Okay. So we would talk about how it would work. I diverted toward Starbuck’s. Conversation like this required coffee or liquor. With the pain meds she had, no liquor needed to be involved. Behind us, Coop followed right into the drive-thru line. I waved at him and he shot me the bird.
Aww, poor Coop. Stuck without Frankie in his car. I should shed a tear.
“You’re smirking.”
“I am. But I’m picking on Coop in my head, and it’s really funny.”
She snorted.
“As for how it will work, let me order the coffee and I’ll walk you through it again.” I thumb nailed it down to the bullet points. “Step one—Rachel already happened. Step two—with Bubba we just witnessed.”
“And participated in,” Frankie pointed out. “I hope I didn’t hurt him.”
I did not laugh. I deserved a medal for not laughing. “Bubba can take a hit. Besides, if you’d really wanted to hurt him, all you had to do was have Jake pop him.”
“Jake has already hit him. A lot.”
True. “So, see, if you’d really wanted to hurt him, you wouldn’t have been the one hitting him. At least not bare-handed. I’ve seen your golf swing. You can do serious damage.”
She laughed.
It was like winning the pennant race. “Okay, point taken. So step three is splicing all the recordings together?”
“Yup,” I said. “I’ll work on that once we’re back. I may need to head over to my place, but I’ll try it on the laptop first.”
“Are you sleeping over there?”
“Why?” I teased. “Going to come with me?”
“Yes.”
Oh.
Well, hell yes.
“Frankie…”
“Don’t say if you’re ready,” she mused. “Someone told me my left is pretty mean, and it’s almost over the slap I gave Ian.”
“Noted.” I slid a sideways look at her. “Babe, if you coming over means you’re just sleeping in my bed with me, that’s fine. If we’re doing anything else in that bed, that’s fine, too. I’m not telling you no.”
“But you’re worried about me.”
“I am. Kind of comes with the title.” I pulled into a parking spot and eyed her. “Not going to ask me what title?”
“You’re my boyfriend,” she murmured, then lifted her eyes to meet my gaze. “I worry about you, too.”
“Comes with the title,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Coop opened her door. “And what are we doing in here?”
She smiled at me. “Discussing titles.”
“I’m partial to Master of the Universe.” The easy smile on Coop’s face and the softer tone relaxed some of the tension right out of her. “What do you think, Queen of the Cats? Or Feline Woman?”
“Feline Woman?”
Yeah, I was with Frankie on that one. That sounded terrible. “Dude, no. Catwoman.”
That might have been a mistake, because as we slid out of the car, I found myself imagining her in a slinky black bodysuit. Leather.
Oh. Yeah.
My gaze collided with Coop’s as he licked his lips. Okay, I was down with sharing that fantasy. “We still need to pick out some Halloween costumes.”
She hesitated, glancing from me to Coop and then back. “I am not dressing up as Catwoman, you dirty, dirty boys.”
“Aww,” Coop groaned. “But you would be in all that leather and have a whip.”
She rolled her eyes. “No.”
“Not even if one of us dresses up as Batman?” I offered, and she strode away from me, laughing.
“Not even.”
“We’ll work on that,” Coop said, and we both grinned.
While I downloaded the files that Bubba, Rachel, and Coop s
ent over, and Frankie took care of the cats with Coop before putting some things together.
“You going over to Archie’s tonight?” he asked. I was in the living room, but they weren’t exactly being quiet about the conversation.
“Maybe,” she told him, and I smiled. “If he has to go over there to work on this project, I’m going with him.” There was a beat. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Well, I kind of like sleeping here with you, but we can give Archie a night if he has to go back to the big lonely mansion without you. He’s had a few nights away, seems only fair.”
I smirked and called, “Your benevolence knows no bounds.”
“I know, right?” he answered, then his voice dropped to a more normal tone. “And no, I don’t mind, Frankie. You guys can stay here if you want, we can all make ourselves scarce and let you have an evening to yourself. Or at least part of it, and I can always come sneak back in after you’re all warm and naked and sleepy.”
“Subtle, man. Real subtle.”
“Not even trying to be subtle. I like sleeping with her.”
Who didn’t? Whatever Frankie answered, I didn’t catch, but I managed to get all the clips downloaded and laid out in the video program one after the other. It would take some time to play them all.
“I also don’t mind sharing her,” Coop pointed out as he wandered back into the living room. I glanced past him but didn’t see Frankie.
“Jake called,” he said. “So she’s talking to him. I think he needed to know she was okay after all of that.”
I nodded. Made sense to me.
“How’s she look to you?”
“I think that was harder on her than she cares to admit.”
Yeah, I got that, too.
“Well, this better work, ’cause if Sharon comes after her again, I don’t know what I’m going to do exactly, but it won’t be pretty.” I’d already decided I could reach out to my grandfather. Ted Standish knew exactly how to deal with people who did him dirty. Maybe I could get Sharon’s parents transferred to the ass-end of New Mexico or something.
That would be a feat.
No Sharon, no problem, right?
“If this doesn’t work and Sharon goes after her again, we might need bail money for Jake and Bubba.” Coop tugged at his lower lip, and I eyed him.
“Bubba’s not going to snap.” Jake? Yes. Three weeks of anger management did not a solution make.
“I don’t know about that. Did you look at his face when he was talking to her?”
It hadn’t been that bad. Had it? “Not really, I was focused more on making sure we had a good angle to catch her face.” That and keeping an eye on Frankie. She’d done an admirable job of a poker face. Too admirable. Maybe a result of having to cover for her mother all these years.
Shit. Her mother.
I pulled my phone out and looked at it. Sure enough, there were several messages from Maddy waiting for me.
“We’ll keep an eye on Bubba,” I said. “Hopefully, some of this is catharsis for him.”
“Put the past to rest?” Coop mused.
“Something like that.” While I hadn’t had this conversation with any of them, I was pretty sure the real problem was Bubba built Sharon up to be someone else in his mind. Another blonde we all had a thing for. Unfortunately, she had never been Frankie. Never could be her. I’d steered away from most blondes, to be honest. None of them were Frankie.
Jake and Coop? Eh, if they’d dated any, it hadn’t lasted more than once or twice. Made sense, ’cause they weren’t Frankie. Not Bubba. Sharon had paid him all the attention in the ways Frankie hadn’t, and the sap had soaked it up but it hadn’t been enough, and I doubted he’d seen it himself.
But he’d been getting an eyeful of the real her now.
Unknown: I don’t expect you to understand.
Unknown: I also don’t expect you to take my side.
Unknown: However, it’s in Frankie’s best interests that we smooth this over. You know how your father is.
Oh, I knew exactly how Edward was.
Unknown: Can we meet?
I stared at that last line and shook my head.
“Problem?” Coop asked.
“Maybe.” I closed the messages without answering. I needed to think about that and talk to Frankie before I took a single step. Personally, I wanted nothing to do with that crazy bat and her idiot choices. She was putting Edward before Frankie, and only an idiot would do that.
“Need help?”
“Not yet.”
And I wanted to talk to Frankie about it before I brought it up to the guys. Right now, we had enough crap on Frankie’s plate. Wittaker deserved a damn raise for the efforts he was putting out there to block her mother. The emergency order had been a great first step.
Frankie emerged from the hallway with her phone in hand.
“Hey, babe,” I greeted her with a smile. The endearment had stuck. I loved her name, but I liked that she was my babe, too.
“Hey,” she said, crossing over to collapse on the sofa right between me and Coop. “How’s it going?”
“Got them all,” I said, motioning to the screen. “Everything good with Jake?”
“Yeah, he was worried about me.” She chewed at her lower lip, and Coop nudged her until she moved and then sat with her back against his chest and he could wrap his arms around her. I envied him the position, but I could still see her at least, and that was something. “Can you do the thing here?”
“Gonna try,” I told her, and I had to admit, when a flicker of disappointment crossed her face, it boosted my ego. “But we can still go back to my place if you want that time.”
“Or I can take off,” Coop offered easily. “I can also text the boys and tell them to take a powder for the night.” He rubbed his chin against her hair.
She frowned. “I hate asking you to do that.”
I met Coop’s gaze and caught the concern in his eyes. Yeah. I heard the waver in her voice, too.
“You’re not asking,” Coop said firmly. “I’m offering. We all need our alone time. You two haven’t had much, and neither of you have complained.”
“Oh my hand has complained,” I interjected. “But he’s not used to the quality time with me anymore.”
Frankie gaped at me, mouth forming a cute little ‘o’.
“What?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “Babe, I told you before. Wanting you has never been a problem. I’m pretty sure Coop’s been looking after you, and I’d bet Jake, too.” The sudden flush to her cheeks confirmed it. While I might be envious of the time, I wasn’t jealous. Go figure. “Good. ’Cause you can’t hang out with Rosie Thumb and her four sisters while in that cast. Arguably, you could do it left-handed I suppose…”
Her sudden peal of laughter pierced through the gloomy little cloud hanging around her. Achievement unlocked. Go me.
“I’d like an evening with you, but I should call Ian before we go to bed. I want to make sure he’s okay.”
Sounded like a plan to me. I looked at Coop. “Get out.”
Frankie gaped again, and Coop snorted with laughter.
“Archie!”
“What?” I played innocent. “You said you couldn’t ask him. So we didn’t ask. I just told him to beat it.”
“It’s cool,” Coop said, eyes laughing. “Besides, I can probably squeeze in a shift and check on Sis before I go.”
Ugh. Sisters. That whole thing the other day had been uncomfortable as fuck. When I met his sister, she’d been in braces and elementary school. Now she was talking about dating someone at the same school as us? Never had I been so happy to be an only child.
Well maybe when I thought of Edward and Muriel as parents. Anyway.
I went back to looking at the tracks as Frankie walked Coop out, and I didn’t even gawk at them as Coop pinned her to the wall and kissed the hell out of her. At least he wasn’t noisy like Jake. Damn, no way to miss what Jake was doing to her, even if I wasn’t looking.
&n
bsp; Not that it wasn’t hot, but I still needed to splice the video, and the fact that Frankie wanted to just hang with me tonight already had me semi-hard. Video. Feed her. Help with homework. Then play.
When the door closed, I glanced up to find her watching me. The flush to her cheeks, brighter eyes, and wet lips began to chip away at all my good intentions. There wasn’t anything wrong with dessert before dinner, right?
“Archie, am I hypocrite?”
“No, we covered this already.”
“But…I didn’t want Sharon touching Ian. I mean, it physically repulsed me that she’d put her hands on him, and I’m with you and Coop and Jake, and I just asked Coop to leave so we could be alone. That’s hypocritical.”
“No,” I told her slowly. “It’s not. One, we all know about each other and we’re all in agreement that we’re sharing.” Granted, the implied until Frankie chose had been there. But I didn’t mind the guys. Not even Bubba, granted he’d been an idiot, but he was still one of us. Just without all the benefits.
For the moment.
Frankie settled back on the sofa next to me, and I snaked an arm around her to pull her close. “Listen, you were mad at Sharon touching him because you care about him. That hasn’t gone away. Caring is a good thing. It means there’s still hope for you two, and I for one will be glad as fuck when it gets sorted out if it makes you both happy. You also didn’t like her touching him because you knew he didn’t want it.”
The light bulb clicked in me.
Fuck. I was an idiot. She’d just been assaulted. Of course she’d react to someone forcing their touch on someone else. No matter the circumstance.
“Frankie, I’m sorry, babe. I wasn’t even thinking.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I wasn’t either, not until toward the end when I got a good look at his eyes. He hated every moment of it, and he did that for me.”
“Yeah, he did. The difference between what happened to you and what Bubba did? Bubba chose to do that because it was important to him to take care of this for you.” Respect, man. I needed to tell him that. “It wouldn’t have been my first choice to do, but if I’d had to endure it so we could get what we needed to slap her down? Yeah, I’d probably have done it, too. I get it.”
