The restaurant was crowded and overly warm when Quentin managed to push his way inside. He garnered immediate attention from the women of various ages sitting in the foyer waiting for their tables. He didn’t care. He was used to it. No doubt it was his size. Boston seemed to be filled with midgets. A man standing well over six and a half feet tall tended to stand out.
Using that height to his advantage, Quentin found the table where Ava and Francesca were sitting. The women seemed to have spotted Stedman, Ralston, and Analise marching in their direction, because Ava had stopped talking.
Quentin’s gut tightened as he watched the expression on Francesca’s face go from animated to vacant. She was frightened. He knew that just by looking, no matter that she was trying to hide it. With only one thought in mind, Quentin shoved his way through the tables between him and Francesca. He took up a position right behind her just as Stedman and the others managed to wind their way through the diners to Ava’s tableside.
“What are you doing here?” Stedman gestured to Quentin.
Ava gave her ex-husband a cool look of disdain. “He’s her personal bodyguard, Stedman. Surely you can understand the need since you’re the one who has been threatening poor Francesca.”
“I’ve done no such thing.” He growled the words and gazed down at Ava with a look of barely hidden disdain.
Ava gave his look right back with interest. “You have, but I don’t think you’re here to argue about that. What brings you to Chotzky’s? You should hurry up and talk about it before you and your entourage clear the place out with your miasmic presence.”
“Wow, what a use of words!” Stedman snarled. His expression suggested he didn’t find Ava’s command of her vocabulary very amusing or useful.
“So,” Ava said expectantly. “Spit it out.”
“I’m really here to see my dear sister-in-law,” Stedman said with exaggerated care and concern. “How are you, Francesca?”
“Fine.”
Quentin saw the way that Francesca looked. She was anything but fine. They just couldn’t really say much to Stedman about that.
“You never responded to the legal request I made of you last week,” Stedman said pointedly.
Quentin cleared his throat. “What legal request?”
“This matter is between family and does not include the help.” Stedman actually pinched his face as though he’d just tasted something sour.
Those words seemed to rouse Francesca just a little bit. She straightened and managed to meet Stedman’s gaze. “If you want to talk to me, you can talk to Quentin. I trust him implicitly.” Then something hardened in Francesca’s eyes. “As to why I didn’t respond to your little legal threat—because that’s what it is no matter how you want to say it to make yourself feel better—at the end of the day, you’re just a thug.”
“And you’re completely incapable of deciding that for yourself anymore,” Stedman said angrily. “We’ve established this months ago. Years even. You’re not capable of making your own choices.”
“She’s perfectly capable,” Quentin said in a deadly tone of voice. “Just because you would like her to be seen as slightly insane and totally neurotic does not make it true.”
“Quentin, stay out of this,” Ralston said quietly.
“No.” Quentin fired back. “You stay out of it. Why are you even here? You and Analise should be back in your rodent holes or wherever it was that you crawled out of.”
“Don’t be like this, Quentin,” Analise said firmly. “You know that Stedman is right.”
“There is nothing wrong with Francesca,” Quentin insisted. “Now get the fuck out of here before I evict you.”
The threat carried weight mostly because Ava was there. She could marshal the restaurant’s employees to actually physically remove the unwanted guests from Chotzky’s. Quentin didn’t care about the particulars. His comment had the desired effect in that it made the problem exit the building. That was what mattered.
Chapter Three
“What was he talking about?” Ava demanded.
Francesca didn’t want to think about this. She felt herself start to wink out. It happened a lot when she was under stress. Her therapist said that was normal. It was a PTSD thing, but that didn’t make for a very compelling argument for sanity. Did it? Oh, sorry, I’m sort of tuning you out because you’re triggering my PTSD.
Ava poked Francesca’s shoulder. “Frankie. Tell me.”
“Stedman sent a man to the house to serve me with a court order that demands I submit myself for a mental evaluation from a psychiatrist or psychologist to determine whether or not I’m still capable of taking care of my own affairs.” Then she figured she had better add one more thing. “From a financial viewpoint, of course. Stedman could care less if I’m bathing, eating, or sleeping. He just wants to know what’s going on with the money and whether or not he can find a way to take the stockholder votes away from me.”
She felt more than heard Quentin shift behind her right shoulder. “Because he wants those things for himself,” he said for clarification. “That’s what this is all about. Right?”
Ava snarled something rude beneath her breath. “Yes! Of course that’s what this is about. It’s always been about that stupid company! Hyde-Pierson Financial,” Ava said in a mocking tone of voice. Then she rolled her eyes for effect. “If I had known what a pain in the ass that would become, I would have taken if from him in the divorce.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Francesca said automatically. “You lack the killer instinct to do something like that.”
Quentin snorted. “We could burn it down.”
“Can we leave?” Francesca wanted to know. “I would rather just go home. I’m tired.” It wasn’t true, but that was her standard excuse for leaving early from just about anywhere.
This time, Ava gave her a very thorough once-over. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what?” Francesca tried to play it off, but she knew that there wasn’t much to keep Ava from figuring out long term. She was far too astute.
“You’re going to a dinner party with me tonight,” Ava announced.
Francesca was instantly horrified. “What? No!”
“Yes!” Ava placed the tip of her index finger against her lower lip and tugged absently. “Except we need dates. It’s black tie.”
“A date?” Now Francesca was pretty certain that Ava had lost her damn mind. “Do you know how people will stare if I show up with a date?”
“Exactly!” Ava looked triumphant. “It’s the perfect way to make them all see that you’re living a perfectly normal life.”
“There is nothing normal about my life,” Francesca grumbled. She started to take a breath to make some idiotic comment about how she played with a loaded gun every morning, but decided that might not go over so well in conversation. It was likely that Ava would help them lock Francesca up and throw away the key.
“You can bring Quentin as your date,” Ava decided. “I’ll bring Nash. It will be fun. We’ll have a great time making all those old biddies wag their tongues. They’ll be so jealous too!”
“If making old lady Peabody jealous is the pinnacle of your social calendar, you need some serious help,” Francesca muttered. “I wish that woman would forget who I am.”
“Give it a few more years and she will if you keep up the way you have been,” Ava groused. “You used to go out with me.”
Francesca really didn’t want to argue about this again. “I still go out with you.”
“And now you’re going with me tonight. It will be fun.”
“I thought you said dinner party. Why black tie?” Francesca looked at Ava with suspicion. She had a bad feeling about this.
“It’s sort of a gala fundraiser black tie dinner party,” Ava admitted. “You know, it’s the Boston Garden Club’s yearly fundraiser to raise money to restore some old building in town. I don’t remember which one is on the chopping block this year.”
“I’m
not giving them money,” Francesca said irritably. “I’m so sick and tired of people asking me for money. It’s like they think I really am insane and I don’t know what I do with my cash.”
“So, they share Stedman’s opinion,” Ava laughed. “What better way to make them shut up and leave you alone than to start being seen out in public again?”
“Is that your answer to everything?” Francesca snapped. “Because I feel like it is. And what if Quentin doesn’t want to go,” Francesca reasoned. “It’s rude of you to just inform him that he has to go rent a tuxedo for tonight.”
“First of all, it’s a job thing so I’m sure the boss will be fine with his accompanying you.” Ava gave an inelegant little snort. “And for the record, I bet Quentin wants to go to this event just about as much as you do. So why would I ask him? He’d just say no.” She glanced up at Quentin’s impassive face. “Right?”
“Good call,” he muttered. “Although, I would never turn down a chance to help out Francesca.”
“See?” Ava waved to Quentin. “He’s agreed. Now you have to get yourself out of the house and into the car. Think you can handle that?”
“Oh my God, you think I’m just going to wear some old sweats or something?” Francesca was horrified. “I might actually have to go shopping. It’s been so long that my evening wardrobe is woefully out of season.”
THE WORD SHOPPING gave Quentin hives, but they weren’t nearly as bad as the reality of heading to the nearest department store on their way home from brunch at Chotzky’s. He pulled up to the valet parking stand on the curb and got out of the car.
After waving the valet away from Francesca’s door, Quentin very carefully let her out of the vehicle. He loved this moment. Getting her out of the car meant she put her tiny little hand in his as she stepped onto the curb. Just the brush of her bare fingers against his hand was strangely satisfying. He was reminded again and again—every time this happened—that he wasn’t supposed to be having these thoughts about a woman under his protection. She was essentially his client, and yet, for some reason, Francesca had become so much more than that.
“Are you ready?” she asked him. There was a strange gleam in her blue eyes that he hadn’t seen before.
He had to force an answer past his lips. “I’m ready.”
“It’s okay. I can tell that you’re not.” She giggled to herself and slung her arm through his. The gesture of familiarity left him speechless. “I’ll protect you from the mannequins. I promise.”
“The mannequins?” He escorted her through the automatically opening front doors of the huge store. “Why would I be afraid of them?”
“Well, I can’t see why you would be afraid of anything else involved with shopping, so I figured you had a fear of mannequins. Like they were going to come to life and somehow suck you into a world of overdressed stiffs.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud as he tried to reconcile the mental image she was drawing with her sassy words. “You obviously like shopping. I’ve never seen you this lively.”
“I love to shop.” She did not seem shy about it at all. “I used to work in retail in college. My parents thought it was very horrifying that their socialite daughter would stoop to getting a job instead of just marrying into more money like all of their friends’ kids.”
“I can understand wanting to work for something,” Quentin allowed. He thought about how he had liked the marines for just that reason. “I like the feeling of having accomplished something on my own, or having reached a goal.”
“Exactly.” She was nodding emphatically as she steered their trajectory toward a sign that would have made him cringe under any other circumstances. “The thing with retail is that you have sales goals, but you can also have the dual goal of helping someone to find just the perfect outfit or accessory to make them happy. It’s satisfying to me in more than one way.”
“Why don’t you just buy a department store then,” Quentin suggested drily. He couldn’t think of something that would be more awful, but he wasn’t Francesca.
“You know what.” She stopped walking so suddenly that he nearly pulled her off her feet. Then she picked up the pace again with energy. “You’re right!”
“I am?” He wasn’t sure that he hadn’t just kicked the lid off Pandora’s Box, but it was too late to unsay the comment now.
“Well, if I like shopping and I love helping people find the perfect little things to go with their outfits, why wouldn’t I get a little boutique? I wouldn’t want something large of course.”
“What?” He gestured to the immense store surrounding them on all sides and launching four stories into the air. “You don’t want this?”
“No way.” She shook her head. “I draw the line at selling cooking utensils and crockery. I have zero eye for that sort of thing. And linens! Ugh! My housekeeper takes care of all that, thank God.”
Quentin laughed again. He couldn’t help it. She was so lively and so animated right now. He’d never seen her like this before. “You know, if you acted like this around Stedman and other people, nobody would ever suggest that you were mentally incompetent.”
It was as though he had dumped cold water on her sunny day. Her expression sobered, and her gaze turned hooded. “I can’t help the way I act around them.”
“Can’t help it?” he chided gently. “Or you don’t want to?”
“It’s the same thing,” she insisted.
Quentin sighed as they arrived in the ladies’ evening wear department. It was basically Dante’s tenth circle of Hell for Quentin, but he sought out a chair and settled in for the long haul.
Francesca seemed to have forgotten her statement about being unable to change the way she acted in front of Stedman. She was busy giving emphatic instructions to the sales girl about a dress she was hoping that they carried. Her manner was bright, her tone was cheery, and Quentin would not have guessed from her behavior that she had ever been subjected to the sort of horrors that he knew for a fact had plagued her past.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Keeping one eye on Francesca, he pulled out the phone and opened the text. It was from Nash and included orders that he rent himself a tuxedo for the evening. Nash couldn’t help it. He sighed and shoved the phone back into his pocket.
Francesca was staring at him. She cocked her head to one side. The cascade of blond hair falling over one shoulder was almost entrancing enough to make him forget the abominable text, at least until she spoke.
“Nash told you to get a tuxedo, hmm?” Francesca pointed at him. “This could be kind of fun if you would let it be.”
“Fun for you?” Quentin wanted to know.
“Yes.”
He sighed and stood up. “Then let’s get this over with. I’ll subject myself to this torture if you think it will be fun.”
“Just for me?” She looked a little taken aback.
Quentin realized something in that moment. “Sweetheart, I would do just about anything to see you smile.”
Chapter Four
He called her sweetheart. What did it mean? Francesca could not stop thinking about his words. They distracted her during the rest of the shopping trip and throughout the afternoon. She found herself wandering around her suite of rooms, picking up things and putting them back down again while wearing a goofy smile on her face. Nobody had ever called her sweetheart before.
Francesca stared into the bathroom mirror and tried to focus on applying her makeup. She carefully outlined her eyes with the pencil and then set it down. Sweetheart. Even thinking about the word in her head gave her a warm, squishy feeling somewhere in the vicinity of her heart. Her father had called her his little angel when she was a small child, but her husband had not used pet names, endearments, or anything else approaching warm and fuzzy.
There was a soft knock at the door of her dressing room. That would be Emily—the maid. “Come in,” Francesca called out.
Emily gave Francesca an up-and-down look before pronouncing her accept
able. “You look beautiful. Do you need help with your hair?”
Emily had been with Francesca almost since the day she got married to Lyle. Francesca could still remember how nervous she had been about hiring staff for her home. They hadn’t needed much, just a maid and a housekeeper, but the idea of being responsible for such things had been overwhelming. Now, Francesca didn’t know what she would do without the tiny woman who always wore her blue-and-white uniform with a smile.
“Did Lyle ever call me sweetheart?” Francesca stared at Emily in the mirror.
Emily’s expression went blank before she carefully smoothed it to blandness. “Not that I can remember, ma’am.”
“I don’t talk about him, do I?” It wasn’t really a question. Francesca’s staff knew that they did not speak of Lyle around the house.
“No.” Emily gently brushed Francesca’s long blond tresses before beginning to pin them up into an elegant mass of curls atop her head. “Mr. Lyle did not seem given to using that sort of language.”
“What kind of language do you mean?”
Emily pursed her lips briefly. She would not look at her mistress’s face. “Love language, ma’am. He never said a positive word to you that way. In fact, I don’t know that I remember him even paying you a compliment.”
Francesca thought that over. She had no illusions about her late husband. He had been quite the bastard, but she had married him, and she had stayed with him because that was what was expected of her. In hindsight, it had not been a very fulfilling relationship.
“What do you think of Quentin?” Francesca changed topics.
Emily smiled broadly. “I like him very much. He is always polite to myself and to Nona.”
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