“For some women? Definitely.”
Frankie pursed her lips at him, placing her hands on her hips. “Well, maybe I’m not some women. Look, no matter what happens with me, you, us dating or not dating at all, Mitch and I are done, and I don’t care what he says. I’m sorry that he’s so sick, but I don’t love him anymore. I don’t wish him ill, even after what happened between us, but we’re never getting back together. If that’s not enough for you, then I don’t have whatever it is you seem to need.”
He grabbed her hand, caressing the soft skin he’d luxuriated in just a few of hours ago. “Look, here’s the thing. Anita wasn’t completely over her ex-husband. She said she was, but if she’d been over him, she wouldn’t have run like a marathoner doing the 5K every time he called. It was always little things like he needed help with something at his hip new bachelor pad or he couldn’t remember the phone number of a friend they’d had as a couple. Fredrick, her ex, cheated on her, too, but sometimes that’s not enough hurt to stop someone from going back for more.”
Frankie cocked her head, the fall of her silky auburn hair catching the light in the kitchen, making her more irresistible than ever.
“I guess you can’t always help who you love. It’s sad but true.”
“Yeah, well, you’d think the ultimate betrayal in a marriage would cinch the deal, but Anita didn’t seem to feel the same way.”
“Did she cheat on you with her ex?”
Another question he’d battled with and had to eventually let go of without a clear answer.
Nikos shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. She said she didn’t, but doesn’t everyone who gets caught deny it at first? When I say I understand what you’ve been through, I do to a degree. The thing with Anita left me pretty raw and definitely overly suspicious. I’m admitting this up front—I can’t promise I won’t have irrational moments of manly stupidity. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Anita’s back with Fredrick and it’s over.”
No one understood irrational better than she did. “How long has it been over?”
“Two years.”
Frankie’s head fell back when she laughed, the column of her throat enticing and creamy. She cracked her knuckles.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light, but wow. You’re way worse off than I am, Antonakas. I’ve only been divorced seven months now, and I’m not nearly as trashed as you are, and we know for sure Mitch cheated on me. Not to mention, I was married for eighteen years.”
“I have a hot temper sometimes. I react before I think. I’ll work on it.”
“Like I’m one to talk. I’ve been known to react,” she said on a grin.
Nikos pulled her against him, inhaling the scent of her perfume and the remainder of their lovemaking still clinging to her skin. “Is this a competition? Who can take the most pain?”
Her arms slid around his neck, a gesture of such ease and innocence, it made his gut clench. “Oh, I know I can take more. I’m a woman. It goes without saying we’re made of tougher stuff. We bear children. You lot just put them in us.” She smiled, infectiously, flirtatiously, surprising him.
“Speaking of children. Why didn’t you and Mitch have any?”
“Mitch wouldn’t have made a great father. I realized that early on, and I’m pretty glad I did after hearing Maxine’s story, but I’m also infertile.”
He gazed into her face, waiting to see a flash of pain over revealing something so personal, but he didn’t find any. “And you’re okay with that?”
Frankie paused for a moment, making Nikos wonder if she was as okay as she’d first appeared to be. “I really wanted children. I had a great mother. She raised me alone after my father left us, and with the occasional support of my Aunt Gail. We were really close, but she died just after I met Mitch. I wanted to be a great mother, too. It just didn’t work out. Something about my fallopian tubes and sperm and all sorts of complicated mumbo-jumbo we didn’t look into further because Mitch didn’t really want children—he just couldn’t say it. Some days, like the day I found out he was doing Bamby, I’m glad. Mitch was a lot of work—adding a child to that would have tipped me right over the edge.”
Nikos felt a shift in his chest, a hard jolt of remorse. “But you wanted them?”
She looked over his shoulder. “Yep. At one time, I did. What about you? Did you want children?”
He smiled. “Yeah. I did.”
“And no one ponied up to ride the Antonakas train of love? No one? What has this world come to? Madness surely,” she teased with a grin. One that had different components to it he hadn’t seen till just now.
“Let’s just say, I spent the early part of my adult life going nowhere, thought I’d found out where I was going, then changed directions. I didn’t date anyone seriously again until Anita.”
Her eyebrow rose. “Again?”
Nikos winced. Yes. Again. He’d done the rebound thing not once, but twice. Which made Frankie number three. Christ, it had to be a charm.
“Yep.”
“Are there more love misdemeanors I’m blissfully ignorant about, but am sure to be blamed in the name of?” she asked sweetly.
“There was one in college. But in my defense, she’d broken up with her boyfriend back home in wherever she was from. Nebraska, I think. Anyway, they’d broken up until he showed up in his beat-up old Ford pickup with a bouquet of handpicked daisies and a guitar. The very guitar he used to sing a love song he’d written just for her—below my dorm room window.”
She laughed again, the sound rich and inviting to his ears. “Oh, that’s priceless. Crappy, but priceless. How long did you date her?”
“The last year of college. I was going to ask her to marry me.”
“Ah, but you didn’t have a guitar and daisies, now did you?” she joked.
He took a nip of her lips, now bare of the shiny gloss she’d had on earlier. “Uh, no. Just some meatloaf and gravy.”
She tilted her head back. “You know what this sounds like? It sounds like you’re a ‘damsel in distress’ kind of guy. Always rescuing someone. But I don’t need to be rescued, Nikos. Just some honesty and some respect will do.”
He was a “damsel in distress” guy. Simon said it was because he was a bleeding heart. Stray animals, kids, women—God save him from the women. “I’m definitely much better at respect and honesty than I am at squishy, girlie feelings.”
“Hey,” she chided, “if feelings were squishy and girlie, you wouldn’t be saving women from their nefarious exes.”
“You have a point.” She had too many, but still, she was right.
“And for what it’s worth, I love meatloaf and gravy, especially Voula’s, but I’d kill for peanut butter and jelly at this point. So feed me, Antonakas. Before I keel over. It’s been a busy day that began at eight this morning for me. That’s how long it takes to put on false eyelashes.”
He winked down at her, marveling at this carefree side to her. “Right. Food. So are we done with the caring is sharing? Or do you want to wring more embarrassing relationship disasters out of me?”
She chuckled, tugging at the collar of his sweater. “You can’t ever top mine, buddy. I own humiliation and made embarrassing my bitch. But yeah, for now I guess we are. Just do me a favor from here on out?”
Reaching around her, he gave the stuffing one last toss and turned off the stove, still meshing their bodies together, reluctant to let her go. “Name it.”
Those amber eyes, once so dull, gleamed with determination. “Don’t skirt things that are important to you and get angry with me for something I have no idea about. You’re not allowed to be sullen and pouty and not tell me why. If we’re going to give this a test run, it’s a real sticking point for me. After Mitch, I think you should be able to see why honesty and telling me what’s going on is something I’d want. No amount of charm’s going to keep it from eventually coming between us. If Mitch had told me he was unhappy, or for that matter, if
I’d told him I was unhappy, he still would have been a lying shithead, but maybe I could’ve saved myself a run in the tabloids. See where I’m going?”
His spine stiffened. “I’m nothing like Mitch.”
Yet hers relaxed against his hands. “And I’m nothing like Anita and Miss Nebraska.”
“Deanne and touché.”
“I’m over Mitch.”
“I’m over Anita.”
“Then we’re all about the over, aren’t we? So we understand each other?”
“We do. Want me to show you I understand?” he teased, skimming his tongue over her lips, hoping to drag her back to his place for just a little while longer.
She groaned, low and sexy, making his body respond with a fierce spike of electricity flooding his veins. “Not before you feed me like you promised. I’d never make another round if I don’t eat. Now give me the food or suffer the wrath of my discontent.”
Keeping one arm around her, Nikos reached up and grabbed a plate and some silverware from the overhead shelf, then scooped some stuffing up and dumped it onto the white surface.
Frankie looked at the plate. “That’s it? After all that, this is all I get?”
Nikos chuckled, leaving her to move toward the fridge. He propped it open with his foot. “How about some cold ham and maybe some cold cuts and cheese?”
Frankie dropped the plate to the counter, digging in with zeal. “Bring it all.”
“Wow. What a change from a month ago when getting you to eat was like asking for an exorcism from the Catholic Church.” He dragged out several plastic-wrapped platters, depositing them in front of her with a pleased smile.
She shoveled a heaping forkful of stuffing in her mouth while grabbing for a roll of salami and provolone. “It was all that baggage unloading. Makes a girl ravenous.”
Nikos pulled up a stool next to Frankie, content.
Really content.
For the first time in a long time.
A sense of peace stole over Nikos as they talked while Frankie ate and Christmas lights twinkled outside the diner. The kind of peace he wasn’t quite sure he’d ever experienced in exactly this way before. Not with Deanne and not with Anita.
Not ever.
Whoa and wow.
In that order.
“All I wanna hear you say, sassafras, is Nikos is a good boy and he wrapped his willy. Then I can go back to bed.”
Frankie’s cheeks flamed, her hand self-consciously reaching for her crazy, messed-up hair as she made her way into the living room to find Gail and Kiki curled up on her aunt’s favorite chair. So much for the hope of not having to explain.
“Aunt Gail! Shame on you. How do you know anything other than decking the halls went down?”
Gail set Kiki on the floor and shoved her hands into her quilted green bathrobe pockets. “Nothing to be ashamed of. I make Garner wrap his, and you decked something, but it wasn’t a hall, that’s for sure. Good on you for gettin’ your spunk back, toots. Your uncle and I might not have had any children, but I know the look of a night in the sack. Your old Aunt Gail’s no dummy.”
Frankie winced, dropping her coat to the couch and leaning down to rub Kiki’s head. “Well, here’s what one of those kids would have said to you if you’d had one. TMI. As in—”
“Too much information. I know what it means, girlie. I watch the TV. I know all you kids think we seniors don’t have it in us, but I’m here to tell you, hoo boy, can we—”
“Nooo!” Frankie held up a hand, covering her eyes with the other, giggling. “I don’t doubt you have it in you. Not for a second. I just don’t want to know about it—hear about it. Visualize it,” she said on a rough chuckle. “So how about we just conclude, I was as safe as any good adult should be and call it a night?”
Gail laughed with a throaty chuckle. “Aha, somebody had a Merry Christmas. Can’t say’s I’m surprised or unhappy about it. Nikos deserves a nice girl like you after that last round he had with Whatserface.”
Frankie frowned, still troubled by Nikos’s admission. “Are we talking about Anita?”
“Not sure of her name. I don’t think Voula ever mentioned it. I just know she was upset about his troubles at our bridge games about two summers ago.”
Nikos was turning out to be one revelation after the next. He’d been hurt just like her. Yet, she’d learned from Maxine’s nutty theories, the key to finding happiness was in dealing with what went wrong and letting it go in favor of getting a grip and not repeating past mistakes. How odd that she wasn’t the only one who needed to do that.
That she was taking the sensible approach to a new relationship venture left her feeling very proud of herself. Nikos had a way about him, one that could distract her from almost anything with his delicious kisses and disarming grin. Yet, she couldn’t afford to budge. No, she wouldn’t budge. The instant she’d made her demands clear to Nikos was the instant she knew trust and honesty were two things she wouldn’t go without again.
Frankie rubbed her aunt’s shoulder with an affectionate hand, in need of some time to herself to think. “You go to bed, Aunt Gail, and get some sleep. I’m cooking tomorrow. Oh, and you’ll be tickled all shades of the rainbow to know, I invited Nikos over for dessert. How’s that pin-curl your hair?”
Gail chuckled, cupping Frankie’s jaw, sweeping a kiss over her cheek. “You’re a good girl, Frankie. A good girl who’s moving on. Your mother’d be so proud.”
The long events of the night, the turmoil over Mitch, making spectacular love with Nikos, topped with Christmas, made her long to talk with her mother. “I hope so, Aunt Gail. I hope that’s true.”
“You can bet your bippy on it. I’m off to bed now. Night, honey, and Merry Christmas.” She gave Frankie a squeeze before trotting off to her room.
Frankie flopped back on the edge of the couch in front of the small Christmas tree, staring at the lights draped over gold and silver ornaments, and kicked off her shoes.
Tired. Euphoric. Afraid. Excited.
Afraid.
She was back in the dating pool—a pool she’d spent not nearly enough time swimming in to begin with before she’d committed her life to a man she outgrew.
Yet, here she was, hot-man nabber of the year, all getting involved and setting records straight like she knew what she was doing.
Frankie smiled secretively.
Yeah. She didn’t just have a fantasy man, she’d scored one.
And she was terrified.
“Merry Christmas, crabby,” Simon crowed. Pleased with himself and the gift he’d bought Jasmine.
He heard the crinkle of the envelope as Jasmine took his gift. He also knew the look that flashed across her face was akin to what one might expect had he given her something he’d dug out of a Jersey landfill. The breeze of her waving it under his nose sent her perfume to settle in his nostrils. He grinned. She was pissed. He loved when she was pissed because it gave him the opportunity to prove her wrong.
He loved proving Jasmine wrong because it only strengthened his case that they should be a couple. Permanently.
“So go on, open it.”
“I thought we weren’t exchanging Christmas gifts. In fact, I remember expressly telling you no gifts. I can’t afford gifts. I can barely afford to pay my rent and keep you in Cheetos.”
He rubbed his chest with the palm of his hand, preparing for battle. “I offered to buy my own game-time snacks. You refused, Independent Woman of the World. Just open the damned thing and quit complaining, honey.”
He’d never tell her, but he loved to hear her complain. He loved to hear her, period. Simonides Rhadamanthus Jones was in love. Whether Jasmine liked it or not.
She shifted in the bed, moving away from him. “Didn’t your mother teach you any manners at all? Giving someone a gift who can’t afford to give you one back makes that someone uncomfortable.”
“My mother is too busy enjoying marriage number two in Saint Moritz to teach me anything. Didn’t your mother teach you
to be gracious?”
“My mother was a tough broad who didn’t take any crap from anyone right up until the day she died. You leave my mother out of this.”
Simon let his hand stray along the sheets until he located her knee, giving it an affectionate squeeze. “Well, at least now I know where you got your balls. Now open the present, honey.”
Jasmine flicked his hand away with one of her pretend irritated gestures, but he knew her vibe, and while she was playing like he’d given her the gift of chlamydia, she was actually pleased. He sensed it in the unbidden sigh escaping her full, soft lips. He sensed it in the way she leaned toward him and in her overall body language.
“Fine. I’m opening, but if you think you can buy me with jewelry and trips to exotic locales, you’re wrong. I’ve been everywhere, and I’ve had all the trinkets I can pawn. So don’t go thinking . . .”
The way she drifted off in the midst of her hundredth saucy rant told him she’d sliced open the envelope.
“Oh, Simon.”
Yeah.
Simon folded his arms behind his head, pleased when he heard Jasmine sniffle.
“You bought me a six-month supply of cat food and a year’s worth of veterinary care for Gary…”
“Yeah, because I’m like that. I know how much you love Gary and worry you won’t be able to afford his shots. A healthy Gary is a happy Jasmine. But there’s more,” he prompted.
She giggled, the sound warm and slipping into his ears like soothing oil being poured over him. The rustle of the envelope indicated she was still digging into it.
“Gift certificates to McDonald’s. You’re determined to find a way to make me let you pay for dinner, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t want you to have to cook.” Actually, after the can of SpaghettiOs she’d burned, he’d prefer she never touch another utensil again. “So how can you be mad at that? Because if there’s a way, you’ll find it,” he teased.
She was silent for a moment, and he knew when he slid a hand to her cheek, it would be moist from the tears she was trying not to shed. “No one’s…no man’s…ever given me a gift so…so thoughtful.”
Burning Down The Spouse (Ex-Trophy Wives Book 2) Page 24