Frankie scooted forward in her chair, imploring him to look at her. Her pulse crashed in her ears and her stomach heaved. “Yes, but it’s not what you think. They’re making it look like something it wasn’t, Nikos!”
If Mitch wasn’t dying, he would be when she got her hands on him. He’d never looked more youthful and glowing than he had in that clip from Access Entertainment.
The idea that she’d been had made her want to vomit.
“Don’t insult me by lying, for Christ’s sake!” he roared, making even a deaf Kiki jump. “You did just see what we all saw, didn’t you, Frankie! God damn it, they have video of you and Mitch at his house with the clothes you had on last night. You sure as hell didn’t look like you were reluctant to have his hands all over you.”
No, no, no. She would not let this slip away. Not when she was so close. Her eyes remained pleading, but her resolve was unshakable. “Whoa, hold on there, knuckle-dragger! Do you have any idea the way the tabloids twist things to make it look like something it isn’t? That video’s been edited to hell and back!”
Nikos scraped his chair back, his body rigid with his palpable anger. His black eyes grew hard like two onyx stones, but his voice, Jesus, his voice was eerily together and ominous.
“I might not be Cordon Bleu–educated like Mitch, but I’m not an idiot, Frankie. It doesn’t change the fact that his hands were all over you. I saw it with my own eyes, and you didn’t look unhappy about it.”
“Right, but the part of our conversation you didn’t see was the part where I told him if he didn’t take his hands off my ass, I’d remind him how stealthy I am with a wooden spoon! You’re jumping to conclusions again, Nikos—you’re sentencing me without giving me a fair trial!” she shouted, jumping up and sloshing her soup to the floor with trembling hands.
But he was in a zone Frankie knew all too well. It was painfully obvious in his stance and by the tightening of his jaw he couldn’t hear her anymore.
“I knew it,” Nikos said with so much disgust in his voice, it left the marrow in her bones aching. He dragged a hand through his hair. “I knew something was going on, but I swore to myself I’d trust you. You can’t deny what I just saw, Frankie, so don’t you throw Anita at me. Don’t. I ignored that little voice in my head that said you wouldn’t ever go back to a piece of shit like him—”
“Nikos Antonakas!” Barnabas shouted, popping up from his chair to stand in front of his son. “You do not use this language with our Frankie no matter what. You will be a gentleman!” he commanded in a tone of force Frankie would never have guessed he possessed.
Frankie’s heart raced when Nikos’s eyes scanned her in distaste. “Don’t worry, Papa. It won’t ever happen again. Get the hell out, Frankie.”
Voula’s cry from outside the door preempted any further explanation, leaving everyone assholes and elbows to see what was going on.
Nikos was first to her side, Kiki still tucked under his arm, blissfully unaware of the newest commotion. “Mama? What’s wrong?”
Her round face held disbelief. “My recipe for the meatloaf. It’s—it’s—gone!”
Cosmos bolted through the doors of the kitchen and took hold of Voula’s shoulders. “Did I just hear you right?”
Tears streamed from Voula’s always cheerful face. “It’s gone, Cosmos! I know where I put. Every night I put it away because I need the next day. My memory is so bad. I must look always to be sure I make it right. It’s not there,” she sobbed.
The few remaining lunch customers in the diner sat in stunned silence just as Simon burst through the diner doors with Jasmine literally flying behind him. The clickety-clack of his cane led him to where they all stood. From where Frankie was positioned, she noted Simon looked deeply troubled.
“Nikos? We need to talk, champ. Now.”
“Not now, Simon,” Nikos said with clipped words.
Voula leaned against Cosmos, her eyes reddening by the second. “We must find the recipe! I cannot make meatloaf for the customers.”
“I’ll help,” Frankie finally chimed in, her chest tight. “C’mon, Voula. Let’s double-check.”
Simon blocked her from moving toward Voula. “I wouldn’t do that, Frankie.”
Her heart began a hard rhythm in her chest. “What?”
“I said, don’t bother. I know who took Voula’s recipe.”
Oh, thank Jesus and all twelve, Frankie thought. She sighed her relief, ignoring Jasmine and the wave of her hands from behind Simon. She was doing the girlfriend thing again, but Frankie was too tired to figure out what she could possibly be warning her about.
“I think it was Frankie.”
Note to self: When your girlfriend sends you the girlfriend signal, no joke—at all costs, heed.
Chapter Sixteen
From the journal of the “right back where she started from” still ex-trophy wife Frankie Bennett: All I want to know is this—why is it that when Mitch dumped me, I slept like a newborn in my cocoon-like cave of despair, but when Nikos Antonakas did it, I couldn’t catch some shut eye if the Sandman and every last one of his merry band of Sandettes combined hurled all the sand from the Jersey Shore at me? Thoughts? Bueller?
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Simon? Who the hell do you think you are?” Jasmine demanded as they pushed their way out of the diner and headed for the parking lot.
During her lunch break at Fluffy’s, she and Simon had both been witness to the TV footage of Mitch and Frankie. Jasmine had seen and Simon had heard that stuffy, snarky bitch of a reporter take pleasure in exploiting Frankie.
Instantly, Simon had put his idea of two and two irrational thoughts together, formulated Frankie’s alleged deceit, and sentenced her.
It had taken Simon all of two seconds to demand Win drive him to the diner to share his thoughts with Nikos. Jasmine had followed behind in her car, alternating between worried for her friend, sick that she’d momentarily considered Frankie would have anything to do with Mitch’s stealing the meatloaf recipe, and furious that Simon wouldn’t listen to a single word she spoke in defense of Frankie.
The hell she’d let Simon accuse her friend before she had the chance to defend herself.
Simon’s face was pained in the harsh light of the mid-afternoon sun. “You didn’t really think I wasn’t going to tell Nikos what I heard, did you? Not on my watch. I know she’s your friend, if that’s how friends roll these days, but Nikos is mine, and I’ll look out for him whether you like it or not.”
She rounded on him, almost wishing he could actually see the fire she knew flamed in her eyes. “That son of a douchebag stole the recipe for Mama Voula’s meatloaf, Simon. I don’t know how, but he did it. You heard what that gossip show said just like I did. Mitch suddenly has some secret that involves meatloaf? Meatloaf? What kind of goddamned chef brags about meatloaf? I know it was him. I know it in my bones. I don’t know what he’s planning to do with it, but it can’t be good.”
“How do you suppose Mitch got a hold of it to begin with, Jas? And why wouldn’t he just take a picture of it with his phone and leave it alone? That brings me to, who else would give it to him? Who else works that closely with both Mitch and Mama V? Look, I just laid it out there. They can do with it what they will.” He cracked his jaw, wincing against the harsh wind that stung them both with icy whips of air.
Shit. There was that. Shit, shit, shit. Yet, Jasmine refused to believe otherwise. Refused. Oh, Christ on a cracker. She couldn’t be wrong. Then something occurred to her.
“He probably took it because it’s the only copy, Simon! That way there’d be no proof Voula was the original creator. For Christ’s sake, use your brain!”
“Then that means it could just as easily have been Frankie who took it.”
Jasmine’s mind whirred and it suddenly stopped on one person. “Chloe—maybe it was Chloe!”
Simon’s shoulders lifted. “Maybe, but I didn’t hear Chloe on the phone with Mitch. I heard Frankie. Whether it has so
mething to do with what just went down or not, I don’t know.”
“I just can’t believe Frankie would ever do something so awful, Simon. She adores the diner. She adores Mama Voula. She’s nuts about Nikos. Why would she ever do something like that?”
Simon cocked his head in the direction of Jasmine’s voice, his words tight between his clenched teeth. “Why does anyone do anything? Maybe she was just pretending to adore them until she could get her hands on that recipe and skip off to Mitch for some cash. She’s not the first person to want that recipe.”
“What proof do you have she’s responsible for this?”
Simon gripped his cane, his gloved hand tense and tight on it. “I just told you. I heard her talking to Mitch on the phone. The day she moved into her place.”
Jasmine slowed, but only a little. “And what did the great Simon hear with his finely honed hearing skills?”
“When we went to her apartment the other day for her housewarming, I heard her tell Mitch she’d have it for him. It’s not hard to add the two together, Jasmine.”
Jasmine poked his chest with an accusatory finger. “Yeah, well dumb jock that you are, I’d bet you sucked in math. She could have meant a million different things, Simon. So your theory’s officially just been shot to hell. Now shut up, and let’s go back in and help Frankie sort it out.”
He remained in the middle of the parking lot, unmoving. “The hell I will. I’m just looking out for Nikos and the people who love me like I’m their own, and after her phone call with Mitch, that Hollywood Scoop bullshit, and some pretty incriminating video of her and her ex-husband, I laid it out there.”
Jasmine’s eyes narrowed. “How do you feel about blind, deaf, and mute, quarterback? Mitch did something shitty to Frankie, no way would she help him do something shittier, and she wouldn’t go back to Mitch for all the Betsey Johnson in the free world.”
“You’ve only been friends for a few months. Can you seriously claim to know her? Think of all the money she’d regain if she got her hooks back into Mitch . . .”
Fury sizzled along her spine, racing toward her mouth. One she wasn’t afraid to lambaste him with. “I don’t think I need to know Frankie longer to know she’d never do something like that to another human being after the way she was hurt, and she doesn’t want to get back together with Mitch. I just want you to look at this with the possibility she’s innocent.”
“I’m just bouncing the idea that Frankie’s seen some hard times lately. Some cash wouldn’t make her cry.”
“Way to bounce,” Jasmine torpedoed the words at him. Suddenly, she was doubt-free, and angry about Frankie’s juryless trial. The trouble was, her anger wasn’t just about her friend’s dilemma.
“You’re angry.” Simon said it as though he was surprised she’d be angry he was accusing her one and only friend of not just stealing, but sleeping with a bottom-of-the-barrel licker.
Jasmine scraped her heel on the pavement in disgust, but it wasn’t just on Frankie’s behalf. Part of her disgust stemmed from the notion that her fears about Simon were justified.
“You’re a real Mensa candidate. I am angry. I really was beginning to think you were different. I don’t know why all men with two dimes to rub together and a couple of annuities are assholes, but I was this close to believing you were different. You see all women as opportunistic gold diggers, don’t you, Simon? There’s no way you’ll even allow that maybe some distortion of the truth is happening here. Maybe what you heard and what Hollywood Scoop reports is just a little skewed toward the nasty gossip end of the spectrum. You know what those story-loving whores are like firsthand. Jesus, I thought I was jaded. I think we’re done, Simon.”
When Simon approached her, his nostrils flared. He knew exactly how to locate her because she was wearing the perfume he claimed to love. Standing before her, his face held myriad emotions she didn’t bother to decipher, even if she had the luxury of doing so without ever having to meet his condescending eyes.
“Any excuse’ll do, right, Jasmine?”
“Excuse? You’re accusing my friend of being a backstabbing, money-grubbing bitch without giving her a chance to explain.”
“But Frankie’s the perfect excuse to get rid of me so you don’t have to face the fact that you’re falling just a little in love with me.”
“Simon!” a female voice called from over his shoulder, thwarting Jasmine’s response. A slender, sharply dressed woman approached them, microphone in hand and a cameraman just an inch shy of her ass, scrambling to keep up with the heavy equipment.
The trouble with that attractive woman was this: she was only the leader of a pack of attractive women, and men, hell-bent on getting to Simon.
“Shit. The press,” Jasmine muttered to him, setting aside her fury in favor of protecting an unarmed man. She shoved Simon behind her, steadying herself against his chest.
The woman Jasmine had initially caught sight of jammed a microphone in her face. “Aren’t you Jasmine Archway?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Win fight his way through the crowd with limited success. Who cared who she was? Ashton was a tire mogul—more boring than watching your nails dry. He was rarely, if ever, in the tabloids unless he was banging a rich socialite, and even then, the razzi lost interest pretty fast if the socialite wasn’t Paris Hilton.
Jasmine fought to keep her answer from coming off as hostile, yet the vibe she was picking up was anything but friendly. The woman’s face, lovely and unlined, even in the harsh midday sun, swam in her line of vision.
“Yes. I’m Jasmine Archway.”
“What’s your take on the intimate relationship you’re having with your ex-husband’s biological son?”
Simon’s groan swished through her eardrums.
The world tilted, the parking lot’s pavement rushed upward in a wave of crushed black stone to stare her in the face, then sink back to the ground again, the pack of faces before her blurred into millions of prying eyes.
Summoning all of her former life’s limited paparazzi etiquette, she responded, “I have no comment.”
Oh, but that wasn’t entirely true.
Jasmine did have one last comment before she planned to shove her way through the throng of gossip-mongering whores, get in her car, and go back to her small apartment where it was safe. Uncomplicated. So she could nurse her repeat performance of naïve idiot in private.
Jasmine yanked Win forward through the crowd, pulling him as close to Simon as possible. He’d need help getting through this mob of foaming-at-the-mouth reporters.
Just before she pivoted on her heel, she turned around to take one last look at the man she’d been this close to falling in love with. Her face was impassive, her tone dead. “I guess you’re right, Simon. Any excuse’ll do.”
Before the bitter tears of her foolishness could fall, she ran toward her battered car and away from Simonides Rhadamanthus Jones.
Her ex-husband’s son.
God bless us, everyone.
“I’m going to go to that diner and drag Nikos out by his ear. Then I’m going to show him my senior citizen’s right hook,” Gail snarled, pacing across the small space of threadbare carpet in Frankie’s living room. Maxine snorted at her words.
Frankie’s eyes followed Gail back and forth. She sighed from her place on the lone folding chair, almost but not quite amazed at how worked up everyone was. To be properly amazed, she’d have to be involved. To be involved, she’d have to actually care about taking any further action.
“And I’ll help ya. Then you know what I say, Gail Lumley?” her Aunt Gail’s best friend and Maxine’s mother, Mona, asked.
“What do you say, Mona Marie Henderson?”
She raised a fist, wrinkled but agile, toward the ceiling. “I say we go dig that talleywhacker Mitch out of his plastic kitchen and show him what senior Tae Bo is all about!”
Frankie slumped in her chair, running a hand over her greasy hair. “I say we just let me go back to my air ma
ttress. It’s actually rather nice. Kik loves it.”
Maxine whirled around to face her from her stance in the kitchen doorway. “Oh, no, Frankie Bennett. You’ve been moping for too long now. You are absolutely not going to crawl back into your cave. You’ll get up off your ass and do something about this!”
Disinterest returned full force. Each time Frankie thought she might be able to conjure up the will to fight the unfair situation she’d been presented with, her Aero Bed called like a siren’s song. In her defense, there was nothing like just lying around feeling sorry for yourself.
Tugging the blanket she’d dragged around with her since she’d been unfairly accused of cheating up under her chin, she pondered with slow words.
“I’m not sure what you want me to do. Beg Nikos to listen to me? Beg him to believe I’m not some lying, cheating thief?”
“Yes!” Jasmine shouted, the jingle of her bangle bracelets jarring Frankie’s peace in the quiet place. “Yes, that’s exactly what we want you to do, Frankie.”
Frankie shot Jasmine a bored look. “Look who’s giving out advice.”
Jasmine wagged her finger in warning. “Don’t you dare, Francis. Nikos is not your ex-husband’s son. You were not some pawn in a sick game of payback.”
She shrugged her shoulders, unaffected. “According to Simon, neither were you.”
“And he’s sooo honest and forthright. Please, Frankie. He’d say whatever he had to to the press so he ends up looking like the upstanding, cancer-society-donating hero everyone thinks he is. I’m not buying. Regardless, this isn’t about me. I’m not stinking up the joint with my pity.”
No. That was true. Jasmine was as beautiful as always. Perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up. Perfectly together. Frankie would cringe in embarrassment at her own greasy, rumpled appearance—if she cared, that is.
Alas, for the moment anyway, she didn’t. She’d forgotten how grand the quiet place was, and she only wanted to pay it a little visit. Just for another hour or so. Then she’d see about clearing her name.
Burning Down The Spouse (Ex-Trophy Wives Book 2) Page 28