Page 29 of Frankie and the Fed (Untamed Rascals #3)

M y phone buzzed—a message from Lily wondering if she needed to get a ride home from work tonight. Shit. I’d completely forgotten about her. I shot off a reply and then pocketed my phone.

When I looked up, Jamie was gone. I panicked and scanned the room. She wasn’t here. Dammit.

I grabbed my smoothie to drop it in the trash and headed for the front door, determined to catch her direction before she was gone.

Before I could get to the door, a hand shot out from a room and pulled me into it, pushing me against the wall while another hand shut the door.

“What are you doing here?” Jamie asked, her eyes roaming over my apparently terrible disguise.

“Uh… getting a smoothie. They grow their herbs here on the property,” I said, my voice squeaking and heart racing.

I cleared my throat, trying to regain my composure and not melt into a puddle on the floor at that wild, desperate look in her eyes—gone before I could blink.

“Sure.” She leaned her arm on the doorjamb, hovering over me. God, she was so tall.

My pulse raced from the proximity, and I wanted to push myself closer to her, and revel in the intensity of us.

She was so tense, pulled like a bowstring ready to snap, and I had a feeling if I didn’t tread just right, I would be the one to break her.

“What’s with the bad disguise?” She traced my cheek along the line of contour I’d applied when my plan was seduction, and dipped down to my neck, resting her palm against my fast-beating pulse.

“I wear wigs all the time. What do you mean, disguise?” I didn’t quite sound indignant, too breathy to be anything but aroused. Another few inches and our mouths would brush against each other, our lips would cling to each other, our tongues tangle.

She might be full of lies, but fuck, she was destroying my sanity.

“You don’t wear boring wigs or an obscene amount of layers to hide your tattoos.” She traced her hand down and along the buttons of my cardigan, undoing them one by one, carefully avoiding my skin. “You’re sweating.”

I stood frozen, captivated and unable to breathe, as she traced the sweat beading between my breasts and brought one slick finger to her mouth, sucking it clean .

“What are you doing here?” I asked, desperate to regain some control.

She pushed away from me then—any spell she had woven was now broken, and I regretted my question. Let her lie to me as long as she was mine.

“Just had to meet with someone.” She paced the small room before pausing in front of a section of books that looked ready to topple from the overstuffed shelf.

I kept my mouth shut, hoping she would keep going just to fill the silence. She traced the spine of a book with the same long, elegant finger she used to touch me.

“You shouldn’t follow me,” she said after a while. I hadn’t moved from my spot against the wall, and she hadn’t moved from hers by the books.

It was on the tip of my tongue to deny it, but I was certain she would see through my lie as easily as she saw through my disguise.

“Why not?”

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Go home, Frankie.” She dropped her hand from the books and walked toward me. My breath caught, but she simply grasped the door handle, opened it, and left.

I stared at the space she had occupied, breathing in the faint, delicious smell of her, my mind and heart racing.

I pushed off the wall, a mess of horniness and raging emotions. I hardly saw the world around me as I climbed into my car, my hand shaking too badly to put the key in. Someday I would learn not to get in over my head with some crazy idea.

Tears slipped down my face, and I wasn’t sure my setting spray was good enough to stand up against the onslaught. I tore off my wig and shed my cardigan, hot tears running rivers by now as I worked, stripping myself as bare as I could, trying not to collapse.

Of course, she spotted me. I was just a paleontologist with more wild ideas than common sense. I didn’t know what I was doing. I never fucking did, and one day it would get me killed.

A sharp knock on my window startled me. Shit. I was still in public.

Jamie. Fuck. What was she doing here?

I wiped the tears from my eyes. It was too late to do anything about the mess, but then if she gets her way, she won’t see me after this, anyway.

“What?” I tried to sound indignant, but I was too tired of my own bullshit and it came out sad and resigned instead.

“You didn’t eat.” She held up a brown bag. When did she have time to notice that? Butterflies started up in my stomach at the thought that despite whatever else, she still thought to feed me. I ground my teeth in frustration. She was too fucking perfect.

“Well, I was a bit distracted.”

Her answering smile was small, and I couldn’t trust it to be real.

“I’m sure you noticed I didn’t eat either. There’s a park near here with a nice little creek.” She waved vaguely behind the cafe. “Will you join me?”

The question startled me. After everything, she wanted me to have lunch with her. I wasn’t going to waste this, though. She wasn’t getting away from me.

“Fine, but I need answers.”I couldn’t let her off too easily. I couldn’t just keep groping for her in the dark without her reaching for me in return .

“I can’t. I’m sorry, Frankie, and you deserve better, but please, I need you to trust me. I… just a little more time together. That’s all I can do.” She looked distressed, like the words were breaking her.

The last thing I wanted was her pain, but I also knew the longer I kept her talking, the more likely she would be to let me in.

I nodded.

Relief spread across her face, and I knew then that I wouldn’t let anything keep us apart. I would stalk her across the world if that’s what it took. Jamie was mine.

“Should I give you directions to meet there… or…” She didn’t finish, like she was afraid of what I would say. Perhaps she didn’t realize I wasn’t about to let her get away from me.

“Ride with me. It’s easier.”

She beamed at me and jogged around to the other side of the car, her blonde ponytail bobbing with each step.

I shoved my bag into the back seat so she had somewhere to sit. She fit so nicely in my car. She could drive in the bedroom all she wanted, but the road was mine to control.

I twisted the steering wheel to keep from bursting with the whiplash of emotions I’d been through today. The old leather creaked in response.

“Sorry, baby,” I said, petting the steering wheel to ease my accidental abuse.

“What?” Jamie asked, startled.

“Uh… the car. I—it’s old. I’ve had it since I learned to drive, and I just forgot to treat her gently for a moment.” I caressed the dash like she was my lover, and frankly, she wa s certainly more reliable than most of my actual lovers had been.

I didn’t miss the way Jamie locked onto the movements of my hand along the dash.

“Her?”

“Reliable and sexy. Of course she’s a woman. Look at her curves.” It was so easy to slide into this comfortable banter with Jamie—had been from the moment I first met her.

“She is beautiful.” Her words were soft, and she didn’t take her eyes off me as she said them. “Go that way.” She pointed to the left and directed me through the small town to a beautiful park.

I followed her directions and pulled into a long parking lot situated just under a bridge that spanned over the road, creek, and an adjacent overgrown railroad track.

“Over here,” she said when we got out of my car. She grabbed my hand and guided us to the edge of the creek under a large tree. “I love this spot. Look.”

She pointed to the trunk of the tree, and I’d been so wrapped up in her hand in mine I missed the face carved straight into the old oak.

“Wow.” I stepped up to the carving. I wanted to touch the deep and precise lines of a smiling woman with mischief in her eyes, but a decade of museum work stayed my hand. This was art and should be treated as such.

“They are all over the park. Not every tree, but that just makes it a fun little scavenger hunt to find them all.” She traced the face, not having the same hesitation I did.

Her fingers followed the lines with a reverent familiarity that told me she had done this many times before. I watched her, wondering if this was the first truly honest moment we’d had together.

“How do you know about this park?” I asked, soaking in what I could of Jamie and this place.

“I used to come here all the time.” She didn’t look at me as she spoke. Her words were hesitant and soft, almost like she was afraid to reveal this part of herself.

That surprised me. Neither the museum guide version of Jamie nor the woman in shadows, cloaked in lies, quite matched the version that stood before me now.

“Why did you stop?” I prodded, needing more of her.

“Life, I guess.” She turned away from the carving and sat under the tree, grabbing my hand and pulling me down beside her.

We still hadn’t eaten, but I was more interested in hearing whatever she would share with me.

“I found this place while on a trip during college. I don’t even remember why I was out here, honestly, but it seemed so magical.”

“Where did you go to school?” I asked, moving as close to her as I could. She still wouldn’t look at me.

“A small liberal arts college in a tiny town in Georgia no one has ever heard of. I picked something as far away from my mom as I could.” She swallowed and tightened her grip on my hand but didn’t give me more.

“I went to college at a massive, ancient, stuffy university,” I offered, needing to get back to the place where we were open. “Even joined the same sorority my mom had been in.”

“Oh, yeah?” She asked, looking at me intensely, as if she needed the scraps of me as much as I did her. If I expected her to open up to me more, I needed to do the same.

I nodded. “It was basically just structured bitchiness. It helped me understand my mom more and just cemented that I’ll never have a genuine relationship with her.”

“Why is that?” She pulled our joined hands into her lap, and I took that as a good sign. She wasn’t ready to let go of me yet.

“I came out to one of the other girls freshman year after a mixer and too many drinks. I thought I could trust her, but it was… not well received.”

The ants found our food, and I left it to them. My stomach twisted, remembering the slurs that they hurled at me that night.

“She told the other girls, and I was basically shunned. You’d think a liberal university would be more open-minded, but they made it clear I was no longer welcome.

The stupid part is that Shelly, the person that ratted me out, came out about ten years ago, and all the sorority sisters were bridesmaids in her wedding a few years back. ”

Tears pricked my eyes, and I blinked them away. There was no use crying over it. That lonely 18-year-old me needed to shut up already. What was done was done. They didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry.”

The words were so quiet I almost didn’t believe she spoke them.

I wiped away a few more tears and looked away. It’s not like I wasn’t already a mess today—guess this doesn’t really make it worse.

Gentle hands cupped my face, long fingers running into my messy, sweat-matted hair. I didn’t fight her when she turned my face to her, but I couldn’t quite meet her eyes. I didn’t want her pity .

“I’m pretty sure when I tell my mom I’m gay, she’s never going to speak to me again.” She brushed my cheek with her thumb, catching the tears as they spilled.

“Then you can be miserable, too.” My words held no bite, just more heartbreak. I didn’t want that for her, even if she walked away from me.

“No, then I will be free.”

Free.

“I got my first tattoo after that night. A bird in flight. Free was exactly how I wanted to feel. Instead, I still just felt broken and tossed out.”

I hadn’t meant to admit so much. I should have been seducing her into staying with me, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I bit my lip, trying to keep the rest in, to hide just how much it meant to have her kneeling before me, cupping my face like I was precious and breakable.

“You aren’t broken. You are exactly who you should be.”

“And who’s that?” Some days I didn’t know.

“Frankie.” She said that like it was a given, like that one word encompassed everything I was, had been, could be—like I alone was enough.

“What about you? Who are you?” I bit my lip. I didn’t want to push her and ruin such a perfect moment, but I had to know who she really was.

“I’m still figuring that one out. Maybe you can help me.” She brushed her thumb along my cheek in a slow, gentle caress.

Help her. Would she stay long enough for me to do that?

“I want to.” I sniffled and smiled. It felt foreign after so many tears. “I’m sorry I’m a mess. ”

“You’re beautiful. Would you like to go clean up? There’s a bathroom here somewhere.” I expected her to look around for it, but she didn’t take her eyes off me.

“Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.” I struggled to my feet, forgetting for a moment that I wore heels and lost my balance. Before I could hit the ground, Jamie’s arms were around me, holding me, so warm and perfect.

“Careful.”She stood so close to me. Her lips were right there. Damn those beautiful, confusing, lying lips. I pulled back, steady on my feet, and turned, looking for the bathroom.

“I’ll be right back,” I said firmly when she took a step to follow me. She didn’t look happy about it, but she stayed put.

I was right. Makeup ran down my face, black and tan evidence of my tears. My hair matted to my head in a frizzy, sweaty mess, and all I could do was pull it down, run my fingers through it, and tie it back up. I scrubbed at my makeup, turning my cheeks pink from the friction.

I couldn’t wash away this twisting, confused mass that had taken up residence in my heart. I wasn’t ready to give up on Jamie, even if I’d have walked away from anyone else that made me cry like this.

“She’s still keeping secrets, Frankie.” I reminded myself as I looked in the mirror. I wanted to be with her, but until she let me in, I wasn’t sure that what I wanted was ever going to be enough.

Squaring my shoulders, I left the bathroom. I could do this. I could figure out who she was, why she was here, and what it would take to tear down the barriers between us once and for all.