Chapter 4
Once Frankie calmed enough to stop plotting the Uber driver’s slow demise (because if it weren’t for that asshole, she wouldn’t be standing in a shower right now), she turned her attention to the wig.
Miss Congeniality.
If she were home, it would go straight in the trash. But she wasn’t. And she needed it for her small-town runaway heiress ruse.
With a sigh, she held it under the lukewarm spray of the clawfoot tub’s showerhead. Then, channeling the same grit that had seen her through cutthroat meetings, international flights, and poorly thought-out pitch ideas, she gently worked shampoo through its mud-caked strands.
Rinse. Shake. Flip.
She draped it upside down on the hook by the tub’s edge and hoped it dried into something that didn’t scream trauma.
The fifteen wigs she’d brought were critical. With them, she was quirky Francesca B. Without them, she was powerhouse Frankie Peterson. And no one in Gi Gi’s Crossing could know they were the same person.
The problem was, Francesca wasn’t fully formed in her head yet, which meant her act wasn’t consistent. Which meant Francesca couldn’t be trusted to show up under pressure and save her from exposure. Not yet.
The Uber driver had made that painfully clear. He hadn’t responded to Francesca’s charming banter. He hadn’t backed off when Frankie’s edge slipped through. He’d just been rude. And skeptical. And utterly unimpressed.
Clearly, Francesca needed work. When she was on point, there wouldn’t be any negativity activated. Francesca B invited love, not suspicion.
Frankie had cobbled her together from the worst parts of two women she knew. The annoying weirdness of a quasi-friend, Sophia E. The curated quirks of a former friend turned enemy, Isabella P. Then she’d added a very rich daddy.
Because, as her therapist liked to remind her, Frankie had unresolved daddy issues. Her relationships with both women were best saved for a two-martini lunch. She didn’t particularly like either one of them.
Still, she was observant enough to know both women charmed the masses without even trying. Frankie didn’t. Hell, she couldn’t charm her way out of a paper bag, even on her best day. It just wasn’t in her DNA.
Which meant she’d spend the next two months pretending to be a mix of the two. Not because she liked it, but because it upped her odds at getting through this gig without being recognized.
Also, it gave her the best chance of fooling the spy Mr. Uptight had no doubt planted in Gi Gi’s Crossing. If that spy reported back that she’d become someone light, effortless, and unbothered by small-town drama, she’d be out of this mess faster.
Too bad Francesca was the exact opposite of Frankie. She’d been called merciless, calculated, and burdened. Not exactly adjectives that screamed likable.
When her therapist wasn’t fixated on her daddy issues, she liked to remind Frankie that her core characteristics were unappealing on paper.
Frankie had argued they were armor. Necessary protection after growing up wearing secondhand underwear and eating meals at food shelters run by the mothers of the meanest girls at her school.
Her therapist had just smirked, like, “That’s the best you’ve got? I’ve heard worse.”
And maybe she had a point.
Maybe Frankie’s baggage wasn’t the heaviest. But that didn’t make it any easier to carry.
She’d just learned how to make it look effortless. How to be viciously unconcerned with other people’s feelings or their opinions.
College had been her reset button. She’d chosen a school far from the people who’d defined her worst years. Her freshman year at Drury, she’d enrolled in a course called Fashion Fundamentals. It changed everything.
The class required her to devour fashion magazines. Vogue. Cosmo. Naked Runway. Page by page, she learned about power poses, couture, and influence.
That semester, she’d built herself into someone the world couldn’t ignore. And with that transformation came a new goal.
Not just a job in fashion. The job.
Editor in Chief at a major magazine.
She’d transferred to NYU her sophomore year and never looked back.
She’d reached her career goal while working at Vogue. At thirty, she’d been a long shot, according to everyone, including herself. Landing the position had come with champagne, congratulations, and a heavy dose of imposter syndrome.
The fear of being found out followed her like a shadow. That someone would see past the armor, past the designer labels, and recognize the disposable child her father had once decided she was.
So she’d stayed distant her first year as Editor-in-Chief. Kept the walls up. When that worked, she never bothered taking them down.
Now, thanks to Mr. Uptight’s demand that she prove she’d learned the art of niceness, she was stuck in Gi Gi’s Crossing.
No armor. No control. Just her and the fear of being seen.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The sudden thump of fists on the bathroom door caused her to jump.
“What?” she snapped, slipping into her old self.
“Don’t use all the hot water,” Marcus said. “Save some in case you fall in another puddle on your way to your cottage.”
“Your humor is without comparison,” she muttered, this time too softly to be heard. Francesca wouldn’t say that sort of thing out loud.
From the other side of the door came Marcus’s voice. “You’re okay in there, right? A one-hour shower’s normal for someone like you?”
Respond the way Francesca would respond.
“Darling, normal is anything but what I’ve experienced at your brutish hands.”
“Brutish, huh?”
“But I’ve decided to forgive and forget.”
Pleased with her wit, she waited for his next volley. It didn’t come, which left too much time to think about the way her skin had tingled from the press of his chest.
Clearly not from attraction.
Obviously, it had been annoyance.
Annoyance at being manhandled and barked at like a helpless damsel.
Still, beneath that irritation, something else had stirred when he’d lifted her out of the mud.
Not gratitude. Frankie Peterson didn’t do gratitude.
But something dangerously close.
And that scared the hell out of her.
What if by pretending to be Francesca B, she started feeling things she’d spent a lifetime avoiding? If she began swooning over strong arms and chivalry, Frankie could very well end up making the same mistakes her mother had.
Mistakes like falling for an asshole. An abusive man who’d abandoned his wife of ten years and left her to raise their daughter in poverty. All he’d had to do was change his name and disappear.
Frankie still remembered her mom scraping together what little money they had to hire an investigator. To track him. To force him to pay the child support he never did. The memory made her stomach twist. Not with anger toward her mom, but toward Mr. Uptight. Because this? This was his fault.
He was the reason she was at risk of repeating history.
And once she uncovered his identity, she would ruin him slowly. Painfully. Creatively.
Another knock echoed from the bathroom door.
“If you’re not out in five minutes, I’m coming in.”
Frankie straightened, reached for the robe, then changed her mind.
That was a Frankie move.
Francesca B wouldn’t retreat behind terry cloth. She’d command the room.
Grabbing the towel, she dried off, wrapped it around her chest, cinched it under her arms, then plucked the wig from its drying hook. With a deep breath and a performance-ready smile, she flung open the door.
Marcus’s gaze dropped, swept back up.
“Something wrong with the robe?” he asked.
“It’s the wrong shade for my eyes,” she replied breezily.
“I see.” He glanced past her. “Well, the shower seems to be in working order.”
Frankie tilted her head and let out a soft, melodic laugh. It might’ve sounded flirtatious if it weren’t for the healthy layer of rust clinging to the edges. “Barely. It’s truly a relic.” She brushed a damp curl behind her ear. “But I made do. I’m adaptable like that.”
His brows shot up like she’d surprised him. Like it had never crossed his mind that she might know how to handle a setback. Why was that?
“Good to know.” His tone didn’t land as deeply as before.
Channeling Sophia, she wrapped herself in harmless banter. “I do hope the plumbing can handle all that mud. I’d hate to inconvenience you further.”
He cleared his throat. “I’ll survive.”
She pressed a hand to her chest in mock relief. “Oh, thank goodness. I was terribly worried.” Then, with a slight tilt of her chin, just enough to draw his gaze to her collarbone, she gave him the kind of look she’d seen often during cover shoots.
He didn’t speak, but his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“You’ve been so kind, really,” she added sweetly. “Carrying me inside, providing all these lovely essentials. Not to mention saving my Birkin. Dare I call you…my hero?” The words scraped a bit on the way out, but they had to be said.
Francesca B knew how to flatter a man with a velvet voice and a perfume-ad smile.
Only Marcus didn’t puff up.
There was no grin. No smug tilt of the mouth. Just a narrowing of his eyes.
If she didn’t know better, she might think he knew her secret.
But that wasn’t possible.
Ms. Birdie had promised.
And they had both agreed. No one in Gi Gi’s Crossing could ever know that Naked Runway’s editor in chief had been exiled under the alias Francesca B.
“Aren’t you just the cutest thing with that blush staining your cheeks at having been called a hero,” Frankie teased.
The town’s flannel-wrapped handyman, in all his skeptical scowliness, was a perfect person to practice Francesca on. If Frankie could fool him, she could fool anyone.
Marcus shifted his weight. “Your things are in the cottage you rented from my boss.”
“I can’t wait to see it. A cozy cottage sounds so…amazing.” She clasped her hands together and hoped like hell she was radiating wide-eyed sincerity. “You’re a peach and a doll.”
Marcus shoved his hands in his pockets. “Uh-huh.”
Frankie bit back a grin. She had him teetering. Wobbly men were the easiest to knock over. And when they fell, they tended to hand over exactly what she wanted.