Burning Down the Spouse

by Dakota Cassidy

  Jasmine was instantly between Frankie and the tall, lean man who had her arm, placing her hand on his wide shoulder to give it a light shove. “Hey! Back off, pal.”

  He gave Jasmine a wobbly nudge, pushing her out of the way and redirecting his glare at Frankie. A glare filled with distinct malice. “I said, are you Frankie Bennett?” His words washed over her in an alcohol-soaked breath so sharp, Frankie had to fight to keep from gagging.

  Her head shot back as she took in the face looming before her. A nice enough face attached to a man whose red and black striped tie was askew and whose rumpled brown suit looked like it had forgotten dry cleaners weren’t extinct.

  Paparazzi maybe? Damn them. Her first night out of the cave, and already someone had found her. How was it possible in nowhere Riverbend? Frankie stared up into the stranger’s bleary, aquamarine eyes lined with red rims, and fought to keep her calm.

  She held up a warning hand in Jasmine’s direction when her feet shuffled toward them. “Look, if you’re hoping to dig up some gossip on me so you can write a story that’s almost ninety percent bullshit, blow, buddy. There’s nothing here to see, and if you don’t let go of me, I’ll pull a Mitch in the Kitchen repeat performance, the likes of which you’ve never seen!” Frankie tried to re-create that out-of-control lunacy she’d experienced when she’d trashed Mitch’s set. The one that made her eyes wide and buggy.

  But to no avail. Clearly her threats meant nothing to him. Instead, he gathered her up by her shoulders, his long fingers digging into her flesh and asked again, “Are you Frankie Bennett?”

  “That’s it!” Jasmine yelled, winding up her arm to clock him in his curly head of dark brown hair. She hit the perp’s head with such force, the snap of Jasmine’s plether bag made a thwacking noise.

  The man’s head snapped back, but he didn’t let Frankie go. Rather, he dragged her backward with him, toppling chairs to the tune of yelping, astonished customers and the shattering of glass.

  Just as Frankie saw the floor rushing toward her face, another hand reached from behind her, grabbing her around the waist to haul her upward and push her out of the way while the man fell to the floor as though a lumberjack had taken him out at the knees, his back hitting the tile with a crack of bones and the raucous skitter of chairs.

  “Marco! What the hell are you doing?” Nikos roared, pushing his way through the toppled bar stools to hover over him.

  A small, round man with a black dinner jacket scurried toward the group, but Nikos held up his hand. “I got it, Anthony. Just give me a minute, and send me the bill, okay?”

  The man bowed out in quiet submission, his moon-shaped face full of concern, as though this kind of thing happened with Nikos and whoever Marco was all the time.

  Frankie pushed her tousled hair out of her eyes, gasping for breath as Jasmine rushed up behind her, pulling her back away from the debris.

  Simon was right behind Jasmine, finding her elbow with his hand. “Marco? What the hell are you doing? Has he been drinking, Nikos?” His nostrils flared. “Never mind. I can smell the Jack on him from here. Marco, my friend, you know what this means, don’t you? Intervention, pal.”

  Nikos hauled Marco up off the floor with a rough jerk, setting him hard against the bar. The two standing but an inch apart in height, Nikos grabbed his jaw, giving his cheek a light cuff with the back of his hand. “Marco? What are you doing here? I thought you were in Botswana where they don’t have phones or running water?”

  “Who the hell is he?” Jasmine whispered to Simon.

  “Thass her, Nik. Thass her, God damn it!” Marco shouted, his words blending together when he pointed an accusatory finger in Frankie’s direction, slamming his forearm into Nikos’s shoulder to break free of his grip.

  Frankie cringed. Indeed. It was her. She was never sorrier it was her than she was right now. She turned to Simon when she caught her breath. “You know him?”

  Simon clucked his tongue in Marco’s direction while Nikos fought to keep him in check. “Yeahhhh. We know him. That’s our other best friend, Dr. Marco Sabatini, DDS.”

  Jasmine snorted with a dry comment. “What a trio you men make. The obnoxious, the drunk, and the Greek. Nice manners, too. Kudos.”

  Marco began to barrel toward Frankie again, his eyes filled with not only the glassy effects of the booze he’d so undoubtedly consumed, but also something else she couldn’t get a feel for. If she had to guess, she’d call it sorrow, deep and cutting. “Okay, so if he’s not the paparazzi fishing for a story, how does he know me? I mean, I’ve had a rude comment or two from the male persuasion in Mitch’s defense, calling me a ball buster for threatening his . . . well, his—”

  “Junk,” Jasmine offered with a snicker.

  Frankie nodded her agreement. “Right. Junk. But no one’s ever reacted like this. He’s really a little over-the-top outraged on behalf of men caught cheating, don’t you think?”

  Simon blew out a breath of air. “Oh, if you only knew. Excuse me while I go put myself in the line of fire, ladies. Marco would never hit a blind man. I hope,” he muttered, using his cane to find his way to the bar, narrowly avoiding a shattered brandy glass.

  “Marco, my man! S’up, buddy?”

  Marco reached upward to cup Simon’s face. “Thass her, Simon. I seed—saaaw her in the paper. I haf to talk to her,” he shouted on a wobble of very large feet.

  Simon poked him in the stomach with his cane. “You’ll do no such thing, pal. You leave Frankie alone and come home with me. Gimme your keys, and don’t make me fish in your pants for ’em. People’ll talk.”

  Marco shook his head with vigor, the curls on his head violently shuddering. “No. No. No. I haf to know if she’s seen Carrie. I’m no—not leafin’ ’til she tellss me.”

  “Marco—if you don’t take your ass outta here, I’ll haul you out myself,” Nikos grated with a harsh growl. “Carrie’s back where she belongs. In Idaho with her family. Frankie doesn’t even know Carrie. Now knock this shit off now and go home with Simon.”

  Nikos pulled his cell phone from his pocket with a snap, using his thumb to scroll through it until he located the number he needed. “Win? It’s Nik. Sorry to interrupt, but we need reinforcements.” He frowned while he listened and nodded his head. “No, no. It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. Stay where you are. I’ll call you.”

  By now Marco had slumped against Simon’s shoulder, his mouth open and slack against the burgundy sweater Simon wore. Simon hoisted him up, letting his friend lean his back into the bar for support.

  Frankie finally found her words. Who was Carrie and why did this Marco think she knew her? Her eyes narrowed when she approached Nikos and tapped him on the shoulder. “Who’s Carrie?”

  “Marco’s ex-wife,” he muttered, avoiding meeting her gaze by focusing on Simon’s back.

  Aha. “And why would I know her?”

  “He’s drunk, Frankie,” was the impatient answer. “When he’s drunk, he thinks everyone knows where Carrie is.”

  “Well, then maybe you might consider AA so he doesn’t accost the wrong person on his hunt for the elusive Carrie?”

  Marco’s head reared up at the sound of her voice. “Your husband . . . He stoled my wife!”

  Frankie heard Jasmine’s sharp intake of breath and felt her own leave her lungs in simultaneous surprise.

  “Ask Nik. Go ahead and asssk him!” Marco yelped with a weak struggle against Simon.

  Nikos’s sigh was ragged when he ran his hand through his thick head of hair.

  “Shit,” Simon spewed, clapping Marco on the back. “Just shut up, Marco. Shut up and put your head down so you don’t hurl all over my sweater. The last time you did that, I had to throw the frickin’ thing out.”

  Jasmine was instantly at Frankie’s side, throwing a hand around her shoulder to lead her out of the restaurant, but Frankie shrugged her off. “Hold up! Did I just hear him right?”

  Nikos finally turned to her, his beautiful face full of concern
, his response slow. “Unfortunately, yeah. You did.”

  “Care to explain?”

  Jasmine shook her head, giving Nikos a warning look Frankie didn’t miss, one very similar to the girlfriend glare but not. “Forget it, honey. Let’s just go and forget this ever happened, okay? Who cares what Mitch did? He’s an asshole.”

  Frankie’s blood boiled. “No, Jasmine. I care what Mitch did. You know why I care? Because apparently Nikos knew Mitch did something and didn’t bother to tell me—which would have been the courteous thing to do, seeing as his friend clearly wants my blood for it. Not to mention the fact that Nikos is friends with someone who could’ve shown up at the diner at any time to read me the riot act, and I wouldn’t know why. Now wouldn’t that have been awkward?” she ranted, glaring at Nikos. “So pony up, Antonakas!” she demanded, jabbing a finger into his chest, forgetting all about the fact that he signed her paychecks.

  He grabbed at it, pulling her hand into his. “You’re right, I should have told you, but you were so—so . . .”

  Frankie’s eyebrow rose when he stalled. “Pathetic. You can say it. Go ahead. Pathetic and fragile, and you were afraid to tell me whatever this is about for fear I might take a swing at your man parts, too, right?”

  Simon barked a laugh from the bar.

  Nikos frowned. “No. Yes. No . . . Okay, yes. You were in a bad space when I hired you, Frankie. Marco was off in Botswana, licking his wounds and fixing underprivileged kids’ smiles. Obviously, he didn’t lick long enough to make him stop this ridiculous bullshit over a woman who doesn’t deserve to be the shit on his shoe. He wasn’t supposed to be back until the spring. Either way, I figured you deserved a little time to adjust to being out in the real world again, get your feet under you, so to speak. But I really was going to tell you . . . given some time.”

  “Just not until you, Dr. Nikos, thought poor, unstable Frankie was capable of dealing with it without going into an uncontrollable fit of woman rage, right?”

  Nikos sighed, yet he still held her hand. “Sort of. No. Look, Marco’s had a shitty time of it. I’m sorry for his behavior. Tomorrow, when he’s sober, he’ll feel like an asshole. I promise he’ll be begging for your forgiveness.”

  Frankie shook her head, tugging her hand out of Nikos’s, refusing to mourn the loss of the steadfast warmth it brought. “I don’t want him to apologize. I want to know what the shit he means when he says Mitch stole his wife. Mitch was boinking Bamby With A ‘Y’ last I heard. How exactly does a Carrie fit into all of this?”

  Nikos’s eyes hardened for a moment, before softening, going dark with sympathy. “I guess before Bamby, well, there was Carrie—Marco’s wife.”

  She shouldn’t be stunned that Mitch had been unfaithful on more than one occasion. But here she was. Stunned. “So Mitch slept with Marco’s wife?” As if saying it out loud would give it more clarity.

  Nikos nodded his head with a wince. “Twice, I think. No, wait. Three times—”

  “Shut uuuup, you dipshit!” Simon yelled at Nikos in disgust. “Christ, you’re a Neanderthal, Nik!”

  Huh, of all the coinky-dinks.

  Nikos was best friends with a man who’d also been, in an indirect way, hurt by Mitch’s ever-randy, heat-seeking missile of love.

  Frankie couldn’t move for the one song that kept running through her brain.

  It really was “A Small World After All.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  From the journal of Frankie Bennett: I’m not at all reluctant when I write, Nikos Antonakas is infuriating on more levels than Donkey Kong has! He’d better color himself lucky I’ve retired my crazy, and that he’s so damned gorgeous. Oh, God. Must. Resist. The. Cute. It threatens my pissed-off and, more importantly, my last tenuous hope of keeping myself from begging him to take me heaving-bosomed-slash-rakish-Lord style. That’s right. I wrote it.

  Frankie didn’t bother to look back at the three men, nor did she bat an eye when she made her way to their table, throwing enough cash on it to cover her and Jasmine’s bill.

  Tears didn’t sting her eyes until she hit the sidewalk outside the restaurant, for which she wanted to beat her chest in pride. Jasmine crashed into her, grabbing at her arm to steady herself on heels that scraped against the patches of icy pavement. “Frankie, honey, I’m sorry.”

  She let her chin fall to her chest, leaning against the lamppost festively wrapped with silver garland. “Is there a vagina on the planet that hasn’t slept with Mitch?” she mused with dismal humiliation.

  Jasmine tightened her scarf around her neck, then squeezed Frankie’s hand in her now gloved one. “What upsets you more? The fact that Mitch did this more than once, or the fact that he had you so completely fooled you thought he only did it once?”

  Yes. By hell, yes. The latter, not the former, was undoubtedly what made her want to yark. “Jesus! If Bamby wasn’t the first, how many others do you suppose there were, Jasmine? How could I have been so completely blind?”

  Her shoulders lifted when she brushed Frankie’s hair from her face, wincing at the brutal wind. “Who knows, Frankie? But ask yourself this—who cares? Do you really care anymore? What Mitch did is done. There’s no changing it.”

  Frankie shook her head, her chest so tight she feared it would explode from the weight of her naïveté. “I care, Jasmine. I care because it goes to what a total idiot I am. Nikos and what he knew all along aside, I care that everyone must have thought I was such a blind fool. How many people in Mitch’s entourage knew what was going on? People who said they were my friends. People who never once called to see if I was okay after I was tossed out on my ass. What really kills me is while I was slaving away, working my ass off night and day to create new recipes for him, keep his entire world on track for that roving penis of his, Mitch was off banging who knows how many women! What does that say about my womanly intuition?”

  “You’re not gonna like this, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think it says that maybe you weren’t all that interested in what Mitch did with his free time, honey. I don’t mean he should have spent it rediscovering his youth in a barely legal vagina. That you’d obviously drifted apart is absolutely no excuse for him to stick his junk where it didn’t belong, but I bet you didn’t really want to know, or you’d have made it your mission to rekindle your relationship. I think you fell out of love, Francis, and you didn’t know it until long after it happened. So you buried yourself in things that kept your mind busy and out of Mitch’s line of fire.”

  A revelation clapped her in the head as sure as thunder had struck. She was dizzy from the knowledge.

  Frankie spun around in a circle, pointing her finger to punctuate her realization. “You know what, you’re right! I found Mitch less and less appealing in the last years of our marriage. As a matter of fact, I did whatever I could to be anywhere but where he was. If he was coming, I made it a point to be going. My marriage should have ended a long time ago. When I outgrew him. When I no longer needed a father figure. I just didn’t know marriage wasn’t supposed to be the way ours was. So I let it ride.”

  “Oh, I get complacency, my friend. I know exactly where you’re coming from. It wasn’t the money with Ashton. I won’t tell you I minded all the luxuries his big bucks brought, that wouldn’t be entirely true. But I let Ashton use me as much as I used him—because he was comfortable, and even though I’d fallen out of love, I grew lazy. I knew the score with Ashton until he found a new scorekeeper.”

  “And look at us now,” Frankie commented wryly.

  Jasmine smiled into the cold night, her grin filled with mischief. “Yeah. Ain’t it a bitch when you find yourself after your life’s already half over?”

  “I think I’m still in the finding process.”

  “Well, hurry up. It’s damned cold out here.” Jasmine rubbed her hands along her arms to emphasize the raw wind blowing down the cheerfully decorated sidewalk.

  Yet, discovering she’d subconsciously avoided Mitch, thus totally blocking out
any sign of his extracurricular activities when, had she been more interested, she might have been more aware, brought with it the sting of Nikos’s admission. “Nikos should have told me.”

  “Yeah, but he’s a man. He wasn’t thinking long-term repercussions. Hence teenage pregnancy and the clap.”

  Frankie giggled at Jasmine’s joke. “He sucks.”

  “I don’t either,” Nikos denied, hauling a limp, passed-out Marco out the restaurant door. “I just wasn’t thinking ahead.”

  “Because you didn’t think you had to,” Jasmine shot back. “You were procrastinating. Very typical. I’m disappointed.”

  “Grrrrrr,” Simon purred, pulling up the rear behind his friends. “I love it when you’re saucy.”

  The roll of Jasmine’s eyes was meant to show Simon her irritation, but there was also something in them that said Simon didn’t trouble her nearly as much as she’d have everyone believe.

  “I promise to bow and scrape accordingly, but first, we have a problem,” Nikos stated.

  “Oh, you bet you do, Antonakas,” Frankie muttered.

  Nikos ignored Frankie’s comment. “We need a lift, ladies. I walked from the diner. Simon has no wheels, and Marco isn’t going anywhere unless it’s to detox. Plus, we can’t find his car keys, just the keys to his apartment. Can you give your boss a lift? Marco doesn’t live far.”

  “You mean the boss who potentially could have created more drama for me and my fragile instability?” Frankie asked, all sweetness and light.

  He rolled his tongue in his cheek in impatience, but his expression turned sheepish. “Yes. That’s the one.”

  Jasmine sought Frankie with her eyes, sending another girlfriend question.

  Frankie nodded her head. “Fine. But I want next Tuesday off to Christmas shop, and there better not be a single joke about kelp wraps and seaweed facials or it’s on.”