Chapter 17
Frankie switched the phone to her other ear, drumming her nails on the counter while she waited for the mystery caller to identify themselves. Two more seconds, and she was hanging up.
“Francesca, I don’t know how things work in Manhattan, but here in Gi Gi’s Crossing, we don’t answer the business phone with, ‘Who the hell is this?’”
“In Manhattan, we have caller ID, so the question’s usually unnecessary,” Frankie said. “And we have the good manners to introduce ourselves…especially when there’s a chance the person answering doesn’t know who the hell you are.”
“Honey, this is Vivian. The actual owner of the store. Your boss.”
Oh. Right. The pregnant woman who’d handed her a decrepit binder yesterday, announced she was in labor, and vanished like she’d won an argument.
“Please tell me you’re calling from a morphine haze.”
Silence.
“No, from the Bahamas.”
Frankie rolled her eyes.
“Of course I’m calling from the hospital,” Vivian added. “Where else would I be after evicting two tiny humans from my body?”
Frankie shuddered. “You had two babies?”
“Identical twins.”
She’d always thought having a twin might’ve made life a little more tolerable. Someone to share long evenings while Mom worked. Or even just a sibling she actually knew. Unlike the one she’d learned about last year. “And you’re calling me because…?”
“Because my business doesn’t vanish just because I’m recovering. I’m still running things from my hospital bed.”
Frankie didn’t hate the woman’s work ethic. Or her ability to throw shade while on postpartum painkillers. “Fine. Impress me.”
“The Book Club Festival Committee meets tonight,” Vivian said. “Since I can’t exactly waddle in with an IV drip, you’ll be taking charge.”
“Yeah, about that. No. I’m allergic to committees.”
“Well, that’s…crushing news. I’ll alert the town to lower their expectations.”
“I’m sure someone else is dying to prove their worth,” Frankie said, already scanning the counter for aspirin.
Papers rustled on the other end, like Vivian kept a backup store binder in her hospital go bag. “Moving on. If Rae Mathers shows up, march her straight back to school.”
“Who?”
“Gi Gi’s Crossing’s fourteen-year-old menace. Thinks school is optional. She hides out in local businesses like she’s starring in a small-town Mission Impossible.”
Frankie’s headache bloomed. “And she’s targeting you because…you’re the cool, understanding type?”
“She’ll show up because you’re new and she’ll assume you’re a sucker.”
“How would she sucker me, exactly?”
“She’ll claim she’s researching Fourth Wing for a school project. Or shadowing business owners for a made-up Girl Scout badge. She’s inventive.”
“Got it. Rae equals liar until proven otherwise.”
“You’ll have to do more than that. You escort her to the school. No detours, no distractions.”
Frankie propped a hand on her hip. “Not happening. You’re not paying me enough to wrangle the town’s rogue teenager.” On second thought, she had no idea if she was being paid at all. Knowing Mr. Uptight, this was probably a volunteer gig disguised as community integration.
“Honey, small towns are one big family. We all pitch in. I’m letting you off the festival hook, but with Rae? No wiggle room,” Vivian said breezily.
“This town is exhausting.”
“You’ll be fine,” Vivian chirped. “Gotta run. Gatsby’s screaming, Daisy’s glaring, and oh…nope, yep…gotta go.”
The line clicked.
Frankie hung up and glanced out the window.
The woman had named her children after The Great Gatsby.
The theme of this year’s book festival. She shuddered to think what they’d be called if the theme had been Fifty Shades.
Nothing like shouting “Christian!” across a playground and making every mom within earshot think of handcuffs.
She scanned the street for possible lunch escapes. Options were bleak: a hardware store, a law office, the café, and a string of boarded-up shops. She was about to turn away when movement at the far end of the sidewalk caught her eye. A woman in a full wedding gown ducked into a building.
“Either that’s a bridal shop or Gi Gi’s Crossing has a runaway bride on its hands,” Frankie murmured.
She turned back to her desk, if the chaos that passed for her office could be called that, and grimaced.
At Naked Runway, she’d be reviewing proofs and meticulously marking edits in red before anything went to print.
It was a rhythm she knew well, one she’d mastered first as editor-in-chief at their biggest competitor and now at NR.
Here, she was in a small-town purgatory. Watching the door for a truant teen menace.
What would she have become if she’d been raised in a place like Gi Gi’s Crossing instead of the fashion trenches of Manhattan? Nothing worth dry-cleaning. Did small towns even have jobs that didn’t require sensible shoes?
If it weren’t for last night’s crash lesson in the virtues of foreplay, she’d already be halfway to the city, heels muddy, chin tilted in defiance, ready to take her chances with Mr. Uptight’s wrath.
But she’d finally met a man who could short-circuit her brain with the flick of his tongue, and she wasn’t walking away from that kind of neurological miracle.
Of course, she’d punish him properly before allowing him back into her bed.
The man had to learn some orgasm manners.
But once he was trained, she had every intention of seducing him.
Which left her, for now, as a bookstore manager.
She plucked the to-do list Vivian had left and picked item number seven. Organize the bookshelves.
Three hours later, she rubbed the back of her neck. She’d stripped the shop bare. In hindsight, maybe not the best choice. Half the shelves weren’t labeled at all. The rest looked like someone had shelved books while drunk and guided by vibes alone.
“Now for the fun part,” she muttered, eyeing the piles. Sorting chaos into something that passed for a system.
It reminded her of an exercise her therapist had “assigned” during week two: reevaluate life rules by checking each one for relevance, accuracy, and expiration dates.
And by “assigned,” she’d meant mandatory…unless Frankie wanted Ms. Birdie to be invited to the next session.
Frankie’s list of rules:
Apologies are for the lily-livered.
Feelings are for the weak.
Never let a man hold the reins.
Power gets you respect. Kindness gets you walked all over.
None had expired. None were irrelevant. Only one, rule number four, had required a slight revision:
4. Power gets you respect. Kindness gets you walked all over...and the occasional friend.
The only rule she’d never broken was number one.
Rule number two, feelings are for the weak, was the one that had imploded during Fashion Week, ending with a stiletto sailing across the room like a high-end missile. Which, in her father’s words, proved his parting theory…boys were better because girls were ruled by their emotions.
Still, she didn’t regret it. Yes, anger had given the stiletto more speed and force than planned, but only because rule number three had demanded action. Some men needed reminding that the backbone of sisterhood could slay monsters. Unfortunately, Lola had attached her career to one of them.
But back to rule four. If her new version was even half right, if kindness could earn you friends, she should have one by the time she left Gi Gi’s Crossing.
A real friend. Or as real as a friend could be when they didn’t know the real you.
On the plus side, whoever this friend turned out to be, they’d like her for no other reason than her personality, because she had nothing else to offer. No job. No fashion-world contacts to dangle, like Isabella had used before turning down Frankie’s never-offered-to-anyone mentorship.
At least...that was the version Frankie clung to.
Annoyingly, there was evidence—quiet, persistent, impossible-to-ignore evidence—that the story might be more complicated. And if it was? She owed Isabella an apology.
Which was a huge problem because Frankie would never break rule number one.
“Stop borrowing trouble,” she muttered, flipping through a pristine copy of It Happened One Summer. “The chances of making a friend are minimal.”
And even if she did? It wouldn’t be real.
Not when the whole town thought she was some runaway heiress and would riot when they found out otherwise.
Maybe she should tell them. Let them gossip.
Their opinion of her mattered zilch. Okay, maybe a little.
But outside Gi Gi’s Crossing, she had a reputation as a fierce fashion editor to protect.
She couldn’t have it tarnished by word getting out that she’d been banished to a small town by a nobody who hid behind anonymity.
Exhaling hard, she eyed the chaos on the shelf in front of her. “I need an assistant. Or a clone. Or a hostage.”
The front door jingled, but Frankie didn’t look up. She uprooted a mystery that had been hiding in memoirs and returned it to its rightful pile. She was about to rescue a romance misfiled in horror when her spidey senses pinged. Something in the room had shifted.
Whoever had come in was being very quiet. Quiet in a practicing avoidance sort of way.
She glanced toward the front of the store just in time to catch a teenage girl vanish behind a stack of puzzles and unopened boxes. Long limbs, too much eyeliner, moving like she’d been trained in the art of disappearing.
Frankie didn’t follow. Not yet. Instead, she began alphabetizing mysteries, letting the kid think she was invisible. God knew she’d needed that once or twice at that age…especially when the mean girls made sure invisibility wasn’t an option.
The bell jingled again.
“Francesca B?” a woman called, stepping inside with the kind of authority usually reserved for fashion show producers and women who could still fit into their prom dress.
Frankie turned slowly.
“You’re the one with the red heels, right?” The woman’s gaze dipped to Frankie’s shoes, and her face pinched.