Chapter 19
Frankie stepped inside the manor, blinking against the dim interior as the door shut behind her with a heavy thunk. The chandelier in the main hall stayed dark, only a few sconces flickering down the corridor like the place was trying to save on electricity. Or set a mood.
The quiet pressed in, not serene, not peaceful. The kind that hinted more at a murder mystery than a home.
Drywall dust hung to the air, persistent and invisible, already plotting to ruin Lilith. George swore two spirits roamed the halls. Frankie hadn’t met either, but they seemed as likely an explanation as any for Marcus’s sudden retreat from her bed last night.
She stepped over a stray nail gun and kept going, eyes scanning the evidence of a day’s work: plastic sheeting hung drooping across the corridor like a lazy attempt at containment, a ladder abandoned against the stairwell banister, blue painter’s tape peeling from the baseboards in surrender.
A lot had been done in the ten hours since she’d left. Impressive.
She hitched her purse higher and exhaled, taking stock of her emotions like her therapist had taught her. She wasn’t mad at Marcus. Not exactly. Just…
Confused.
He’d made her come apart with nothing but foreplay and focus, kissed her temple like a damn gentleman, and then walked out. Ignoring her very clear preference for the opposite of gentlemanly behavior.
She’d wanted him. All of him. All. Night. Long.
Maybe the ghost had been the problem. Maybe the manor had a thing against sex in the guest rooms and had spooked him mid-stay.
Or…maybe it was her.
Maybe she shouldn’t have joked about calling him Daddy. Or about earning a spanking. It had been meant to tease. Mostly.
But what if that’s what sent him running? What if she was too much? Damn it, he’d been the first one to bring up spanking. She’d just given it a callback.
Frankie squared her shoulders, heels clicking against the hallway floor as she headed toward the parlor. Spiraling had never been her thing, even before therapy. She believed in hitting a problem head-on.
The parlor door creaked open. A fire glowed in the hearth, flickering across the room. And there he was, standing by the mantel, maddeningly composed for a man who’d fled the scene of an orgasm.
Her stomach did an anxious somersault. She’d half expected him to vanish. Pretend last night never happened. Pretend she never happened.
“You’re back late,” he said, voice low. “Making up the hours you missed yesterday?”
Not what she expected, but fine. If he wanted small talk, she could play. She dropped her purse onto a chair. “Vivian strong-armed me into joining a committee since I refused to run the festival.”
“I had your things moved back to the cottage. Everything’s up to code.”
Cottage. The word cracked like a whip. He was sending her away.
One tease, and suddenly she was being treated as if she’d proposed bloodletting for foreplay.
Murder hadn’t even made her request list. He was the one who had brought up spanking first. But if a little banter was enough to send him running, maybe she’d just dodged a bullet.
She smiled, crisp and unbothered. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”
His expression flickered, like he wasn’t sure if he’d won or lost. “Would you join me for a nightcap before you turn in? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
Not retreating. Not yet. Something in her chest gave a hopeful lurch. Definitely not her heart, but something close enough to make her want to kick it back into line.
She tipped her head. “And by nightcap, are we talking bourbon and brooding…or straight to the no-foreplay, spanking finish line?”
Marcus gave her a tight, almost bittersweet smile. The kind that scared away whatever had been playing footsie with her heart. Thank the Gucci gods. Feelings beyond sexual were the last thing she needed for this man.
“Perhaps we should talk before I answer that question,” he said.
Despite all the internal warnings, hope slid in and leaned close.
She smacked it out of the conversation. “Talk?” Her tone carried more sarcasm than a table of ex-NR interns comparing worst coffee-fetching stories.
“As in a heart-to-heart about what it would mean? Not necessary. It means nothing.” Nothing.
A lie. A dirty, desperate lie. But she delivered it like a woman who’d been practicing since the fourth grade, telling classmates it meant nothing to grow up without a father.
“Not that conversation.”
She toed off her shoes and dropped onto the couch, spine straight, heart hammering. “Proceed.”
Marcus turned toward the bar cart, poured two neat whiskeys with the precision of a man emptying his guilt, and handed one to her. “This conversation requires a drink.”
“I can’t remember the last time someone invited me to a whiskey-straight-up conversation,” she said, wrapping her hands around the glass.
“Frankie…” His voice was low, rough. “I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
Frankie laughed, sharp and dry. It was either that or let panic devour her whole. Heart-to-hearts were not her specialty. “Of course you haven’t. Neither have I. One night of selective honesty doesn’t make us soulmates. Please don’t make things weird.”
“I—”
She lifted a hand to cut him off. “Before you say whatever it is that’s got you looking like you’re passing a kidney stone, I want to say something first.” If there was ever a time to try one of those tools from therapy, it was now.
He nodded. “Ladies first.”
Frankie set her drink on the table so he wouldn’t notice the tremor in her hands. Nerves. She knew exactly why. She was about to do something new. Something relationship-forward. And it scared the hell out of her.
“I learned something in a book I flipped through today while rearranging the store.” Okay, fine, she’d learned it in therapy.
He didn’t need to know that. “The author said communication is everything. If you want something to matter, you say it. You don’t hint.
You don’t hope someone will figure it out.
You put it on the table and let the chips fall. ” She drew a breath. “So here it is.”
“I have spent my entire life keeping men out. Men who thought they could edit me. Men who looked at me and decided I needed softening. Trimming. Shrinking. That I was too much of this, not enough of that. That my worth was theirs to measure.”
She should stop. She didn’t.
“My father told me it was my fault he was leaving. Said I was too much of a girl, too much noise, too many tears. He accused my mom of cheating because there was no way I could be his. Said the men in his family only produced strong boys, never once in a hundred years a girl. When my mom told him I looked just like him, he backhanded her and made her cry. And when I told him to say he was sorry, he told me apologies were for the lily-livered.”
Her pulse pounded. Still, the words kept coming.
“Every man who came after him tried to finish what he started. Including Mr. Uptight. He decided I wasn’t nice enough, so he sent me here to practice smiling. As if every promotion I fought for, every sleepless night, every win I bled for didn’t already prove I am more than enough.”
She leaned in, voice low but cutting.
“Then you came along. And I thought, Marcus D sees me. All of me. The sharp parts. The messy parts. The parts that don’t play well with others.
And he doesn’t flinch. Or so I thought. But if you’re about to stand there and tell me that’s not who you are—if you’re just another man who looked at me and decided I needed to be something else—then say it.
Own it. Because I promise you, I would rather walk out of here tonight knowing exactly who you are than waste one more second pretending you’re anything different. ”
Marcus didn’t deny it. He didn’t confirm it.
“You’re just another asshole…aren’t you?”
He downed his drink. “I don’t want to be, but things are complicated.”
Her pride laughed in the face of complicated. She’d heard it from men her entire life. It was the coward’s version of goodbye.
A knock shook the front door.
Marcus swore.
Frankie stood, slid into her heels, and grabbed her bag. The therapy crap had been a mistake. Vulnerability was just an engraved invitation for someone to stick a knife in.
“Were you expecting more trunks?” he asked.
She crossed to the bar, picked up the whiskey decanter, and cradled it like a prize. Not because she wanted it, but because she refused to walk away empty-handed. “See you around.”
“Wait. Let me deal with this and walk you to the cottage.”
Another knock, harder this time.
“I know my way,” she said, already moving.
The night air slapped her cheeks, cold and sharp. She didn’t stop. Didn’t look back. Didn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her hurt.
Some girls got flowers after a night of sex. Frankie Peterson got a half-empty bottle of whiskey and a new life rule carved into bone.
Never bet on being enough. Not for a man. Not for anyone. Not ever.