CHAPTER 45
Special K
I’ve known many beautiful women in my life.
Harper, for all her faults, is physically perfect. But nothing has ever prepared me for Frankie’s kind of beauty. Her open, joyous smile, her twinkling eyes, the way her hair falls wherever it wants and she doesn’t care.
I told Harper the absolute truth yesterday—I once thought I loved her, but I was wrong. I worried I wasn’t pleasing her, that I fell short of expectations. So I adapted my behavior to be the man she wanted me to be, instead of being myself.
I tried to twist myself to her specifications. And even then it wasn’t enough.
I don’t worry about any of that shit with Frankie. I am who I am, and I get the feeling that she’s completely authentic with me, too. Real. Even if she’s leaving out a huge chunk of her story.
And now we’re dancing, our feet crunching on the pine needles, our bodies getting closer and closer together until we’re swaying as one person.
I bend down to kiss her when a black blur runs between our legs and we watch Pussy take off into the woods.
“Pussy!” Frankie screams.
“I got her,” I say. “Don’t worry.”
Yeah, I’ll do the worrying for both of us. The last thing I want is poison ivy on my unit.
“Special K?”
I turn around and nearly lose my breath. Frankie is down on the pine needles, holding herself and rocking. “Please get her. I…”
“I’ll be right back, Boots. It’ll be okay.”
But I’m shocked. She went from laughing to pure panic in a heartbeat. I think it’s time I know what’s really going on. Why she’s here. Why she ran in the night with her damn—”Gotcha!”
I grab Pussy, scoop her up, and hold her like a football. When I walk into camp, Frankie’s on the ground, sobbing.
She sees me and reaches up. “Is she hurt? How bad’s she hurt?”
The cat’s fine. But Frankie’s not.
“Not a scratch on her. Be back in just a second.”
I go inside and put on my jeans, then grab the blanket. I kneel next to her and put the blanket around her shoulders. Frankie won’t look at me, but her entire body is convulsing. She’s struggling to breathe.
She’s falling apart, and I don’t know what to do. This isn’t about Pussy running off a hundred feet or so because she wanted to sit in some ferns.
“You need to tell me, Boots. Time’s up.”
“He’s going to kill me!” she screams, her eyes wild. “He won’t stop until I’m dead! I fucked up my life! I didn’t know he was a Russian mobster! So much blood… I saw it and now he won’t stop looking for me until I’m dead, just like them.”
She’s squeezing Pussy to within an inch of her life. As gently as possible, I extricate the cat from her arms and toss her back inside, then shut the door. I reach Frankie, pull her to her feet, and steady her in front of me.
I hold her shoulders. “Look at me,” I say, needing her to focus. She stares up at me with glassy eyes. She’s checked out. “Frankie. Pay attention, okay?” I watch her slowly return to herself.
“Here’s what you’re going to do. Grab what you need for a couple days. We’re leaving—right now. We’re getting you and Pussy inside an actual house where you’re both safe and comfortable. Nod if you hear and understand what I’m telling you.”
I can tell that she’s about to argue with me, and I sigh with relief. It’s a good sign. “Nod, Boots.” She does.
“And I’m helping you get away. No discussion. I will find a place where you’ll be safe—it’s already in the works.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. “Okay,” she says.
Ten minutes later, we’re on our way down the trail on DG. Pussy’s tucked in between her back and my front.
I swear the cat is purring.
Frankie and I are silent for most of the trip.
“It’s my fault,” I say when we reach the flat grazing land.
“No,” she snaps. “I wasn’t paying attention. It’s my fault. It’s my fault for bringing her here and risking her life in the first place, just like you said, and…”
I reach around and tip her chin to the side. Then, I lean in and kiss her.
A few minutes later, she speaks again. “I need you to promise me something, Special K.”
“As long as I don’t have to go home and give you your space, yes. Whatever you need.”
She nods. “Swear that if anything ever happens to me, you’ll take care of Pussy. Promise me you won’t give her away or take her to a shelter or—”
“Frankie…”
“Promise me.”
“I promise,” I tell her, my heart breaking in two because she truly believes that her slimeball ex is going to succeed in killing her.
The fucking Russian mobster.
“I’d like you to promise me something, too,” I tell her.
“If it doesn’t put you or your family at risk, yes, whatever you need.”
“You know that whole thing I told you about the brig and my criminal charges?”
“Of course.”
“No one in my family knows about that except Cal. No one knows we all left the Navy to avoid the senator’s wrath. Everyone thinks we left at the same time to start the company—not because we were being forced out.”
“I’m so sorry, Special K.”
“It is what it is. Someday, when the time is right, I’ll tell them everything. But the time has never been right. We’ve had too much going on. And my head hasn’t been in the right place, if I’m honest.”
She reaches around and squeezes my thigh. “Of course. They won’t hear it from me.”
We ride into the ranch in time to find everyone gathered on the ranch road. It’s shit timing. If I’d just arrived five minutes later, this whole thing could’ve been avoided. But it’s going down.
We’re about to get a MacLaine Family Welcome. It’s a good thing Frankie’s is a strong woman, body and mind.
Aaaaand… we’re spotted.
My entire family lines the ranch lane. They part the way for Frankie and me to ride up.
And that’s when my brain suddenly puts the pieces together—that’s Harper’s car.
And there’s Harper, behind the wheel about to leave. But then she sees me.
She sees us.
And her expression morphs into a mask of barely controlled rage.
She’s positively seething as her eyes bore into Frankie. I feel Boots stiffen in my embrace as Harper slithers out of her car and plasters a painfully fake smile across her face.
“Well, who do we have here?” she asks.