Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Frankie
One month later…
“This smells amazing!” Adele gushed, pulling the candle straight to her nose for a whiff before holding it for Aria to smell, too.
My stomach turned on itself.
“I like to think of it as pumpkin spice on steroids,” I said through tight teeth, trying to hold it together. “If you’ll excuse me a minute.”
It was rude, but I couldn’t wait for their reply. Thankfully, Adele Layton and her cousin, Aria, were friends of mine and Lou’s from high school.
I darted for the back room, my hand pressed to my mouth. I should’ve just taken the pumpkin spice candles off the shelves and boxed them up far and away so this didn’t happen. But it was fall, and there was no scent more iconic for the season than pumpkin spice, and for the crowds of visitors coming to New England for the cool, colorful autumn, my pumpkin spice candle was by far my bestseller.
Anything for the business, I reminded myself as I shoved open the bathroom door and barely made it over thetoilet before I heaved all of my stomach’s contents into the bowl.
There wasn’t much. I learned my lesson real quick once I realized what was triggering the nausea, and instead survived on saltines for most of the day until I closed up.
Why did it have to be the pumpkin spice? Why couldn’t it be any other candle? Why couldn’t it be his candle?
Taking a deep breath, I wiped my mouth with a paper towel from the roll I’d tucked next to the toilet for these exact moments, and then, when my stomach started to turn again, I reached for my last resort: the candle on the back of the toilet.
Chandler .
When I’d named the candle, I’d been angry. Not thinking clearly. I wasn’t trying to commemorate him, I wanted to burn him from my memory. The man who’d dicked and ditched me. So, I distilled his scent, slapped his name on the jar, and lit a match. Unfortunately, by the time I realized it did nothing to help me forget, the sandalwood and cloves were the only things that settled my stomach—and his baby.
In and out. Breathe in and out. After a few deep inhales, my stomach settled, and I was about to put the candle back and straighten, my hand finding its way onto my stomach, always debating if I was starting to show yet or if it was just my imagination. Or too many blueberry scones.
I stitched a smile on my face and returned to the front of the shop. “Sorry about that, Adele.”
“Don’t worry about it?—”
“We had you covered.” Gigi appeared at my side with a grin, and behind her, Lou and Harper were admiring my fall display with Adele and Aria.
They knew. Mom knew. I’d told them first, needing an army when I sat down and told Jamie and Kit. Of course, they were furious. Not at me. I was a grown woman. Twenty-seven. I could bang and baby-make with whoever I wanted. But with Chandler…my growly, protective older brothers had watched my father leave our mother to be a single mom to not only her two boys but also her twin daughters. Jamie and Kit didn’t like men who walked away, especially when the only thing those men seemed concerned about was money.
The scenarios were very different in my mind. My and Lou’s father was a gold digger. Meanwhile, the only money Chandler was concerned about was his own. And to be fair, when Chandler walked away, he didn’t know I was pregnant. Neither did I. I guess between sleeping at the inn and trying to resist him, I’d missed a few days of birth control.
But most importantly, I hadn’t asked for more. Hadn’t expected more. Hadn’t even suggested more. Unfortunately, I’d wanted more. And those wants had bankrupted my expectations.
“Here you go, dear.”Gigi patted my back and took the bag of candles Adele bought over to her.
I rested my elbow on the desk, my stomach making me wary of taking another step farther away from the bathroom.
“How are your parents doing? They must be so proud of you. Big-city lawyer…” Gigi gushed over my old friends,asking about their family and plans for the holidays back in Vermont, and in turn, Adele asked Harper how things were going with her beekeeping, and Aria asked about Harper’s brothers. It was all a good distraction from how unwell I looked.
Lou came over to the desk, not-so-quiet concern in her gaze.“How are you feeling? ”
I stiffened, changing hormones making me cling to anger that shouldn’t be directed at her. Not really.
I’d told her first, the pregnancy test was still sitting on my bathroom counter. I hadn’t taken time to process—time to think. The first thing I did was call my sister and tell her she had to come to the cabin right away.
“I’m pregnant, Lou. With Chandler’s baby.”
Everything we’d been through, we’d been through together, and this would be no different.
Except I hadn’t been the only one with a truth to share that night. And what she told me changed everything.
“I’m going to have to tell him, right?” For once, I wasn’t sure what happened next.
“No, Frankie. You can’t.”
“Why not?”
She’d hesitated. Flushed. Lowered her eyes. She was hiding something from me.
“Why can’t I tell him, Lou?”
“Because I paid him.”
“What?” I remembered how clearly I thought I’d misheard her.
“Nox saw the two of you that night of the storm. He was worried; we both were.”
“Worried? I’m an adult, Lou ? —”
“Who frequently gets in over her head!” She couldn’t help the way her eyes darted to my stomach. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…I thought it was all for the inn—you told me it was all to get the inn, and I worried it was too much. So, I told Kit—not everything, but enough to explain why I needed to borrow money.”
At that point, it wasn’t the baby that made me sick.
“At dinner that night, I saw the way you looked at Chandler, and I wanted to protect you. You were doing so much for me, and if he broke your heart in the process…so, I asked him what he planned on doing after he sold the inn, and when he said he was going back to Boston, I told him I was willing to match the offer from Mr. Fairfax.”
All of a sudden, his behavior that night made sense. The way he’d turned guarded. The way he’d hesitated to stay the last night…it was because his business was concluded.
But why hesitate to stay for one last kinky fuck? Especially when there were no more strings attached.
I’d been angry for weeks. Hardly spoke to my sister or Kit. But in the end, when I finished Chandler’s candle and let it burn, I realized my anger was misguided. It was her offer—hers to increase or rescind or change at will.
It was his choice to take the money and run.
And now, the prick of fury I felt was only at myself for wanting things to be different. For believing Chandler that night when he made it seem like he wanted more.
Like he wanted me.
“I’m fine.” I started to smile, my stomach turning at that moment just to prove me a liar. I grabbed the Chandler on my desk and took a deep breath.
“That fine?” she murmured, her eyes probing.
I pressed my lips together. My twin had changed. Since she’d become the owner of the Lamplight Inn, there was a confidence that glowed from inside her that hadn’t been as strong or as obvious before. There was more responsibility. More decisions to be made. Higher stakes. And I watched my sister’s fortitude slowly but surely evolve and unfurl out of her former reserved cocoon.
It was a beautiful thing, but only until it was aimed at me.
“They say it shouldn’t last much longer.” Though I’d read plenty of accounts online of women who had morning sickness for the entire duration of their pregnancy .
“And how long is the secret going to last?”
My eyes darted to hers and then returned to the invoices I’d pretended to be examining. She didn’t say anything, just stood there, elbows propped on the counter, chin resting on her hands, and her gaze steady behind her glasses.
After a few seconds, I couldn’t take the silence any longer. “I don’t know, Lou,” I admitted painfully. “I don’t know.”
This wasn’t part of my plan. Not him. Not my feelings. Not the baby. None of it. And maybe all my pranks and schemes over the years were wild and reckless and immature and careless…but they were all plans. Underneath all the chaos, there was a path to follow.
And suddenly, I didn’t have one. I was adrift. Buoyed by the support of the strong women in my family, but still afloat on my own and wondering how I wanted to anchor my story.
Lou picked up the candle on my desk. My safety net. “Are you going to tell him?”
Him.
She never brought up his name like I’d made her promise, but that didn’t stop her from asking. And she was the only one who asked.
From the night I told her to now, only Lou reminded me that I couldn’t run from this. That I couldn’t keep hiding in my shop, making candles, for nine months. I had to create a new plan.
Did I tell him? Yes, I should; it was his baby, after all. No, I couldn’t; he would think I expected something from him, and the last thing I wanted was his obligation.
“I don’t know, Lou. I really don’t.” Some days, I woke up having to re-convince myself that this was reality.
The first ultrasound photo helped with that. So did the nausea.
“You said after twelve weeks… ”
An invisible checkpoint was what that was. An extension that I thought would buy me time. Instead, it passed by in what felt like a blink of an eye.
“I know.” I sighed. “I just…ugh.” I walked to the back, my fingers pressed to my lips, hoping she didn’t follow.
Old Lou wouldn’t, but this new Lou…
“I didn’t expect more. I told him I didn’t expect more.” Except for those few moments where I begged for it. But that was passion, not rational thinking. “The last thing I want is a man in my life for the wrong reasons.”
Lou adjusted her glasses and started to chew on her bottom lip.
“What is it?” I went to her.
“I’m sorry, Frankie.”
I reached for her, pulling her tight to me. “Don’t be sorry,” I whispered, sighing when she hugged me back. If she hadn’t apologized a hundred times since that first night… “You were trying to protect me—trying to do whatever you could to get the inn. I’m sorry I was upset. I never should’ve been upset with you.”
We stayed hugging for what could’ve been seconds or several minutes, I wasn’t sure.
“Lou? Where are—oh, there you are.” Gigi appeared through the curtain, smiling when she saw the two of us embracing. “The bond between two sisters…” Can never be broken. She would say that all the time to us when we were younger.
“I’m ready when you are, Gigi.” Lou pulled away first and then added, “We’re on our way to the stair place to pick out banisters.”
By the time reality sank in that Chandler had left and wasn’t coming back, the inn was officially Lou’s, and renovations had begun. Everyone in Friendship had celebrated the day she’d posted the brand new wrought-iron sign out front that read the Lamplight Inn. She’d even received donations—big ones—from people who were glad to see the inn restored to local ownership and in the care of someone who would diligently and dutifully preserve its history and heritage.
“Sounds like fun.”
“They just finished all the floors. You have to stop by and see it.”
I smiled and nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I hadn’t been back inside the inn since the morning I left it. I kept busy or made excuses, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back. Not yet. Not until everything looked so different that it would never make me recall what it had been before with bare rooms, an air mattress on top of the subfloor, and the man of my dreams.
“Yeah, maybe when they finish the stairs.” And the painting and decorating and furnishing.
Gigi wrinkled her nose at me. “I’ve never known you to run from a challenge, Francesca.”
“Gigi,” I warned and lowered my hand to my stomach. “I’m not running.”
She jutted her chin out. “You need to tell him.”
Air deflated from my lungs.Gigi was the only one who argued with me. For some reason, she believed Chandler should know. She insisted on giving him the benefit of the doubt. Not some reason—the silly little label she’d given me a decade ago. Because she’d written Chandler on a stupid piece of paper, she believed that this tale had a happy ending, no matter how many times I insisted it was nothing more than a ghost story.
“It’s not meant to be, Gigi.”
“You’ll see. ”
“See what?” Usually I didn’t press her, but today I was feeling feisty.
She grinned and cupped my cheek. “That sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan.”
No crap, I wanted to retort. I was pregnant. From a two-night fling with a billionaire jerk who’d ghosted me in the morning. Not part of my plan at all.
“I know that, Gigi.”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh.“You will.”
I bit into the side of my cheek, nodding at Lou’s mouthed apology as she herded Gigi toward the front door. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until the door dinged close behind them and my chest caved in.
I was exhausted, and it wasn’t even the baby. It was the not knowing.
Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.
A low, grumbly noise escaped my chest, recalling the little bit of wisdom Chandler had shared that first night and then beating myself up over it. I’d failed to plan. On him. On us. On this baby. And I was continuing to fail at planning with each day that passed.
Maybe the next step was talking to my brothers—to Jamie. Once I cleared his anger phase, I knew I could count on him to guide me, just like he always had.
But before I did that, I needed a nap.
I glanced at my phone; it was only a half-hour until close. I went to the back and sank onto the cushion chair I’d moved into the corner for my increasingly frequent power naps. I’d just close my eyes for a few minutes. I was sure I’d wake up if the door dinged.
It wasn’t the bell at the entrance that woke me, it was voices.
“Thank you so much for all your help. This smells absolutely divine.”
Help? My eyes fluttered open at the sound of people in the front of my shop. Whose help? I was the only ? —
“The cinnamon is my favorite.”
My heart didn’t trip or stumble; it fell flat on its face hearing his voice again. Three months, three years… I’d never forget its smooth velvet or its confident tenor. Nor the way it turned ragged with desire.
I shoved up out of the lounge chair, speeding to the front of my shop like there were flames at my heels.
I had to be imagining. Hallucinating. He couldn’t be—wouldn’t be.
“Frankie.”
If it wasn’t my jaw that dropped, it was the sound of my stomach plummeting to the floor. Chandler.
He was here—right here in my shop. Selling my candles. I wanted to scream, sob, slap him, and have sex with him all at once. It was the most ridiculous pregnancy craving I’d had yet.
My eyes greedily clamored over him, still partially convinced I was afflicted with pregnancy apparitions as well as nausea. His long legs. Broad chest. Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. The first time I’d met him in slight disarray, it had been feigned. This time, it wasn’t. The storm clouds in his gaze. The cobwebs of sleeplessness clinging under his eyes. Something had happened to him—something that wasn’t my business.
I stiffened, the thought like a match to my fuse of fury. There were many things I wanted to do—wanted to say. Too many answers I wanted to know, but I was too smart now to risk something that might hurt in the end, no matter how good it felt in the moment .
“What are you doing here?” I asked, a dab of false sweetness in my tone.
Breathe, Frankie.
His gaze darkened. “What do you think I’m doing here?”
My lashes fluttered, and I asked innocently. “More business?”
I wasn’t going to give him an inch. I couldn’t. It was more than me—more than my heart—on the line. Twenty-eight years ago, my mother had been strong enough to do what she had to do to protect us, even if it meant becoming a single mom in the process, and now I’d do the same for my baby.
His growl made me shiver the way it imprisoned me still as he came closer. God, I missed the heat of him…and the real taste of his scent. My hands started to reach for my stomach, but I caught myself just in time and instead folded my arms over my chest.
“Frankie, we need to talk.”
Everything about him was stronger because it was familiar. His warmth. His scent. The shoots of electricity up my spine and the gnawing pool of ache down in my stomach. That was the worst of it—the way I still wanted him.
“We do? I don’t think so.” I continued to play dumb because the alternative was to do something stupid, like listen.
The pain in his eyes wounded me. He didn’t have a right to feel hurt; he was the one who left without a word. Disappeared. Never came back. He didn’t get to decide almost three months after ghosting me that now he felt like talking.
“Frankie…” he rumbled and reached for me, and I jerked back like the touch of his fingers would’ve been the worst physical assault.
I banded my arms tighter and lifted my chin. “We had an arrangement, Chandler. A couple of nights sleeping at the inn to prove it was haunted. Those were the terms I agreed to, and now you’ve sold the inn to Lou, so there can’t be anything more to discuss,” I said, unable to stop myself from adding another barb. “Unless you’re going to inform me of some other loophole in this sale that will take the building away from my sister again. ”
His jaw pulsed. He didn’t like that. Good . I didn’t much like him right now.
“Please, Frankie.” His expression shuddered. “Let me explain.”
No!
“There’s nothing to explain—nothing to talk about,” I said, frantically cutting him off before the barb of that temptation sank too deep and poisoned me with its ache. “It was a few nights and over. Nothing more than a ghost hunt.”
He needed to go. He needed to not explain. If he had to explain, then so did I. And I had no idea how I was going to do that. No idea what to say. No idea how to approach this conversation. Jamie always taught us to begin with the end in mind. But I didn’t know what end I wanted. I didn’t know where I wanted this to go because, after three months of nothing, I never expected this.
“That’s not true?—”
“You’re right. It’s not,” I rambled blithely, anything to stop him from talking. “It was never a ghost hunt because there were no ghosts. You were right; I made the whole thing up to try and get you to sell Lou the inn.”
“I know, Frankie.” He let out a sound that could’ve been a chuckle in a different conversation.
“Oh, good. Well, then there’s nothing else to discuss. Business concluded.”My heart rattled like a marble in a tin can.
His jaw fired again. “This isn’t business, Frankie. We were never business.”
I whipped around, causing him to almost run into me.“So that’s why you disappeared in the middle of the night? Hours after my sister matched Mr. Fairfax’s offer?” My brow raised so high it was a miracle I didn’t pull a muscle.
He swore under his breath, eyes flashing like he hadn’t expected me to know about that. Of course not. If it hadn’t been for the baby, Lou probably never would’ve told me.
“If you’d let me explain?—”
“I don’t want you to explain, Chandler. Explaining is the kind of thing you do the morning after. Or a day later. Or even over a phone call or text after disappearing on someone—” I stopped myself and shuddered. “Explaining isn’t something you get to do after three months of silence.”
He banded his arms over his chest, looking as though he wanted nothing more than to reach out and pull me to him. To hold me tight and force me to listen to…whatever kind of confession he had.
“I’m sorry, Frankie.” His broken apology rasped from his lips like embers to a fire, sparking and smoldering and begging for my forgiveness to blow them back to life.
And, goddammit, the troublemaker in me wanted to give it.
“I want you to leave right now,” I declared, tacking on the barb at the end. “I know you’re familiar with the concept.”
He grimaced but didn’t make a move to comply. And me…stupid, irrational parts of me were too busy savoring the sight of him to continue to press the demand.
I couldn’t believe he was here—couldn’t believe he’d come back. He had to know I’d be angry. That this would be the reception he’d get. And still he came. I lifted my chin and swallowed down the bout of weakness that almost asked for an explanation.
“Fine, I’ll go,” Chandler relented. At least those days spent together had taught him one thing; I was formidable. “But I’m not leaving town. Not until we talk. ”
“Then I hope you’re prepared to stay for a very long time, Mr. Collins,” I warned, thinking that being stranded in this small town, away from his city and his big business, was the worst punishment I could inflict.
He stepped close to me so fast there was no chance for me to avoid him. Even if I did, I risked getting too close to the pumpkin spice scent in the back, and as angry as I was, vomiting all over him wasn’t part of the punishment I wanted to extend or part of the conversation I wanted to have.
I sucked in a breath as his heat enveloped me. His scent invaded every receptor in my brain, bringing me back to that night in his arms. That night I thought everything had changed for me. For us.
“I’m prepared to stay forever, Frankie, if you’ll let me.” His words were the perfect brand of promise that made my resolve start to melt.
Bullshit , my racing heart chided. Bullshit sweet words. Bullshit promises. Bullshit torture for a broken heart.
“Please go.” My voice cracked.
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
I didn’t have it in me to protest. Not when it took every ounce of my strength to stop myself from calling out and begging him to stay.
If it was only me, I’d risk my heart for answers. For that explanation. But like my mother, I was going to protect my baby from a man who wasn’t worthy, even if that man was the father.