Chapter Five
FRANKIE
So as it turned out, Turner had been very serious about staying the night with me.
In my room.
And therefore, in my bed.
I wish I could say I was playing with my hair, wondering about all the ways in which we could accidentally snuggle, but I was way too spooked for that.
I hadn’t lied about the vandalizing, and the occasional gifts this person had left at my door, but I hadn’t told Turner the whole truth about how this ordeal made me feel.
Scared, sure. But also torn. For some reason it had been easy to rationalize all of it back in Boston.
Maybe because it hadn’t happened all at once, but gradually.
But now, I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of this person potentially following me up here.
Sending stuff to my room. How had he known the room number?
Could someone find that out with one call?
A shiver crawled down my spine.
Turner noticed.
I gave him a reassuring smile and he bought it, resuming what he was doing: searching for the missing tv remote on his designated side of the room. As I tasked him to. I was supposed to do the same on the other side, but it was proving to be a challenge.
Sixteen-year-old Frankie would be screaming.
Present day Frankie? She was trying to keep the screaming to a bare minimum.
For both reasons. Trying not to think of the stalker, or how Turner was all up in my space.
It had been a feat when he’d removed his sweater, which left him in a tight white tee with short, rolled sleeves.
Or when he removed his belt, which had done a funny thing to my belly.
But what could I do? Turner Reece had always been tall, big, and burly in all the ways that made my pulse spike.
And a very basic part of me was relishing in the fact he was here to protect me.
Most people assumed he was a brawler. A gruff-looking man with ink and the size to walk through a wall, like he’d threatened to do in the hallway.
And I bet he could do it if he wanted to, but that wasn’t all there was to Turner Reece.
He had so many soft sides to him, if you looked long enough, knew him long enough.
He was too thoughtful for a brawler, quiet, nurturing.
Growing up, for instance, he’d had a knack for the things most boys his age would have stupidly considered to be for girls.
Like baking, or art, or crafts. Anything except sewing, which he had no patience for, and blamed it on the size of his fingers.
It had taken Ric years to finally accept that Turner would never try for his hockey team.
And the fact that Turner had never succumbed—not even for his best friend, and not even when the breadth of his frame and his skill on the ice would have guaranteed a level of success most trained years for—had made me love him twice as much.
Because even that young, he’d had the kind of confidence most boys his age confused with cockiness.
The same confidence he’d just used to say he was earning a place back in my life.
It was the worst possible timing to want to rekindle a friendship, frankly.
It was probably impossible for me to, considering the way I was still feeling.
But seeing him here, around the room; hugging him, confiding in him—a part of me wanted to try.
It wanted to give him whatever he came here looking for. Even despite everything.
Hell, that same part of me would have agreed to be the flower girl in his wedding if he’d asked.
I was a certified masochist. It gave me an edge as a writer, but dear God, it made my life miserable.
“Any luck?” Turner asked from a few feet away, snapping me back into the present.
I shoved the bottom drawer of the dresser closed and turned to face him. “No—”
He’d closed the distance to me. My head tilted backwards, and my cheeks flushed at the sudden proximity to his body.
“No luck,” I croaked, noticing how his eyes were focused on my mouth.
I wet my lips, feeling self-conscious. “I’m afraid we’ll either have to ask for a replacement, or be doomed to entertain ourselves with something else. ”
Turner’s eyes zapped back to mine. They narrowed.
“Like conversation,” I said quickly. “Or board games. Or … staring at the wall. In silence.”
Safe stuff. Definitely not stuff that involved us talking about my feelings, that stalker, or that bed we’d be sharing.
A soft hum left him as he rose his hand between us. The back of his fingers brushed the tips of my hair, his eyes following the movement. “Did you pack any?”
“Any ah, what?”
He repeated the motion, head tilting, focused. My whole body was covered in goosebumps. “Board games.”
“No,” I whispered.
Turner’s hand moved, flicking to where my bangs touched my forehead. The corner of his mouth twitched just as his thumb brushed my temple. “That leaves us with a few options open.”
My eyelids fluttered closed.
I didn’t even know what we were talking about.
What was happening?
What was this gentle exploration of how my hair felt against his fingers?
Payback for what I’d done to him? I felt like I was on fire, somehow.
And he wasn’t even properly touching me.
That part of me that didn’t care for the specifics poked at the walls where I was trying to contain it, testing the limits.
What if I opened my eyes and saw what his face looked like?
What if I reciprocated whatever this was?
God, I wanted to. So badly. Because Turner kept playing with my hair, accidentally brushing the skin of my neck, jaw, temple, as if he had nothing better to do than leaving all these fleeting caresses.
My back bumped against the edge of the dresser, the contact bringing my eyes open.
And damn.
Turner’s face. His eyes. He looked enraptured.
He was enraptured.
What the fuck was happening?
A spot in my chest screamed that it recognized the look, the feeling of being watched like this, so closely, by him. But my brain dismissed it as fantasy. Hope. Not a memory. Turner had never looked at me this way. Like he was holding himself back from … From what, exactly?
I made myself clear my throat. The sound didn’t startle or deter him, but he let his hand fall. “We should call reception. Like we planned earlier. I’m ready now, so let’s stop postponing it, and ask about the note. And a replacement for the remote.”
He nodded his head slowly, that quality that had been playing with my senses still clinging to his eyes. “I will,” he offered, stepping aside. Luckily. Unfortunately? I was confused. “Let me do it, please.”
Before I could ask why, he was beside one of the nightstands, picking the phone up and dialing reception.
“Hi,” he said into the handset, turning to face me.
“This is room 214. Is there any chance you could give me the details of whoever it was that sent a welcome gift upon check-in?” A pause.
“Frankie Rossi. She’s part of the author line-up in the book convention, yes.
” A new pause. “The note wasn’t signed, and my wife can’t figure out who it was from. ”
My stomach summersaulted, my eyes widening.
My wife.
His wife?
“Yeah,” Turner nodded, gaze holding mine.
“So, you will have to check with the staff from the morning shift.” His jaw clenched as he waited.
“To be completely honest with you, Sharon, I’m a little disturbed at the idea of the Inn allowing for anything to be delivered into a room.
My wife will brush it off as ’these things happen,’ but I don’t take her wellbeing or safety so lightly.
She’s way too exposed as it is for my comfort. ”
I walked to the side of the bed like a zombie, all the connotations of what we were learning spinning in my head.
“That’d be great, Sharon,” Turner conceded absently, eyes following me. There was a long minute in which Sharon—I assumed—talked, and Turner listened. Then, he said, “Room service for the inconvenience?”
He was checking in with me. I wasn’t hungry but the last meal I recalled having was lunch. I shrugged at him to confirm I was ok with dinner.
“It’s not going to appease my concerns, but we’d appreciate it,” he said into the line.
“Two Philly cheesesteaks and apple pie drizzled with locally made maple syrup?” My brows arched with surprise.
Cheesesteaks at a quaint Vermont Inn? “The chef is from Philadelphia,” Turner added.
My interest was definitely piqued now. Turner winked at me.
“That’d be perfect. Thank you and—” He frowned, more information pouring in his ear.
“Oh. Well, we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully it’s not as bad as it seems. Thank you, again. Good night.”
I watched him put the phone back, then go to the large window on the side.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“There’s a blizzard,” he announced, dragging the thick drape to the side.
It was late in the evening, and pitch-black outside except for the patio lamps.
They were barely withstanding the violent gusts of wind.
“They can’t know for sure how bad it’s going to be, and whether any roads in the area will be affected, but she’s hopeful it won’t be a major disaster.
There are extra blankets in the closet in case we’re cold. ”
I nodded slowly. A blizzard. One more thing that hadn’t been on my bingo card for the weekend. Would the convention get cancelled? That would leave me back at square one, making all of this pointless.
“Frankie?” Turner called, still at the window. “You okay there?”
“Your wife?” I threw at him, instead of answering.
He shrugged. “Would you have preferred me to say ‘my childhood friend who I have missed like fucking crazy and I’m trying to reconnect with this weekend?’”
Shit.
It was killing me that he kept repeating how much he’d missed me. In the best way possible. But there was the part about reconnecting, too. Which reminded me of everything else.