Burning Down the Spouse (11 page)

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Authors: Dakota Cassidy

Tags: #Separated Women, #Greek Americans, #Humorous, #Contemporary, #Women Cooks, #General, #Romance, #Humorous Fiction, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage, #Love Stories

BOOK: Burning Down the Spouse
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Cosmos grinned, displaying a set of perfect white teeth. “Could’ve fooled me by the way your eyes go all moony when she’s in the room.”
Nikos clenched his jaw. Usually, Cosmos couldn’t get to him, but with no warning, Frankie’d become a sensitive subject. “She’s not my type.” And she wasn’t. He liked them hippier, fuller, rounder, darker haired with an occasional blonde. Yet . . .
Yet what, Antonakas?
Yet shit. No more damsels in distress.
Cosmos crossed his arms over his chest covered in his dirty lunchhour apron. “That’s because she looks like she hasn’t eaten in a year. Wait until she puts on twenty pounds. I saw all those pictures of her during that feeding frenzy the tabloids had with her after her divorce. She’s pretty hot. Seriously hot, Nik. She has crazy long legs and an ass—”
“Shut it,” Nikos warned with a growl of words he found he could barely contain.
The hell?
Cosmos held up his hands like two white flags, but his playful grin remained. “Chill, Mr. She’s Not My Type.”
“She’s not, but would it kill you to give her a little respect?”
“Anyway, Mama’s right. She looks like she’ll keel over at any minute if she doesn’t eat.”
Nikos rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek in thought, forgetting Cosmos’s rude comments. “Hook me up with some meatloaf and gravy, would ya?”
Cosmos grunted. “You got it.” He gave Nikos a shove to his shoulder. “Quit staring. She’ll have holes in the back of her sweater. She can’t afford less insulation on her scrawny body, or she’ll freeze to death.”
Nikos ignored Cosmos and headed toward the stool next to Frankie, brushing against her when he sat with an unceremonious flop. His shoulder brushed hers, making her jolt a little. He motioned to her to take her earphones out. “So do you hate me yet?” Her red-gold hair, pulled back in a mussed ponytail, reeked of onions and garlic.
Frankie’s red-rimmed, amber eyes gave him a thoughtful glance before returning to the magazine she was reading. “Well, I wasn’t in love with you after onion ten or so, but the garlic really was uncalled for. So while ‘hate’ is a strong word, I wouldn’t one hundred percent rule it out.” She wrinkled her pert nose to show her distaste for the dozens of garlic cloves she’d peeled and mashed for him to use in a marinade.
Nikos folded his hands on top of the flecked countertop and smiled. “So I guess I should wait on my marriage proposal?”
He managed to elicit a small smile from her when she turned up one corner of her full, strawberry-colored lips, unadorned by gloss. Admittedly, it pleased him to garner that kind of reaction from someone so deadpan most of the time. “Uh, yeah. At least until I get the smell of onions out of my hair.”
“Damn. And I was already booking the doves and fireworks.”
“Birds are messy, and fireworks are sort of pretentious.”
“Hah! You don’t know my family. Doves and fireworks aren’t even the half of it.”
“Speaking of family . . . your dad . . .”
“He’s crotchety and feeling displaced.”
Her head bobbed in agreement as she set the magazine down. “By me. Thanks for that. Between bouts with Ellen DeGeneres, he’s poked his head into the kitchen at last count eight times to scoff at my chopping skills—openly and with vigor.”
“Don’t let him get to you. My father isn’t one to keep his feelings on the inside. He’s not angry with you. He’s angry with me for finally putting my foot down and making him let go of his duty to the diner when he had a bout with colon cancer.”
“I noticed he’s not afraid to express an opinion.”
Nikos grinned at her “That particular gene runs in the family.”
Frankie sighed. “Are there more of you who’re unafraid to express their opinions? Because if so, I think we should just have one Frankie Bennett viewing and get all the ‘she’s too skeeny—Mitch is a letch’ comments over at once. It works toward good time-management skills.”
His glance in her direction revealed she was teasing, and Nikos found he’d been holding his breath while she spoke. “Speaking of skeeny,” he said as Cos placed a plate in front of her, “eat. No one goes without a meal here.”
“For the lady,” Cosmos said, pushing a fork and knife in her direction before winking lasciviously at his brother.
“Oh, I’m not hungry,” she protested, letting her head fall to her chest in her now familiar gesture of withdrawal. “But thank you.” She flipped back through the magazine with distracted turns of the page.
Nikos pushed the side of the fork through the slab of meatloaf on the plate and used his other hand to tilt her chin up, holding the utensil to her mouth. Her skin was so soft he had to fight to keep from tracing his thumb over it. “Thank me after you taste this, and don’t make me get Mama or you’ll find out just how much drama one little Greek woman can create.” He pressed the fork to her lips in encouragement.
Frankie’s pretty eyes rolled when she opened her mouth, leaving Nikos fighting to ignore the kind of sensual visual she created. They widened when the flavors of Greek Meets Eat’s famous meatloaf tantalized her taste buds.
“This is the famous meatloaf my Aunt Gail was talking about, isn’t it?”
“Beats reading a crocheting magazine, don’t you think?”
Frankie smirked, a dimple appearing on the left side of her mouth. “I’m trying to find a hobby. Because it seems I’ve never had one. Being married to Mitch . . .” She stopped short, her cheeks flushing a pretty shade of red. “Yes. That meatloaf is amazing. It totally beats crotcheting.”
His nod was smug when she cooed her approval, taking the fork from his fingers. “I know. It’s like ground beef and gravy nirvana, right? Mama’s the only one who ever lays hands on the meatloaf. It’s almost the only dish she won’t let anyone else prepare.”
Frankie wiped her mouth with the napkin and nodded with a grin. “It’s delicious. I’ve never had meatloaf this spectacular.”
“There’ve been three food critics and one franchise who’ve wanted to pay Mama for the recipe for that meatloaf, and she’s turned every one of them down. I’d put it to the test against any professional chef’s fig-and-goat-cheese-encrusted whatever.”
Her head dropped again in a quick change of mood. “I’m not a food snob.”
Fuck. She was offended. “I didn’t say you were.”
Pushing away from the counter, Frankie scooped up the plate with one hand and pursed her lips at him in obvious disapproval. “You didn’t have to. Everyone thinks because I was married to a famous chef, I can’t eat anything that isn’t impossible to pronounce, never mind spell, and prepared by the hand of someone trained at Le Cordon Bleu. Yet not one of you have any idea just how many hot dogs and ramen noodles I’ve consumed in this lifetime.”
Nikos made a face at her to try and lighten her darkening mood. “You eat ramen noodles? How bohemian,” he joked.
But Frankie clearly wasn’t having it. Not if her stiff posture and narrowed eyes were any indication. “By the buttloads. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to leave you and your preconceived notions here while I go in the back and finish my break, then get back to mashing a thousand more garlic cloves before my shift’s over and I can go home.”
She sashayed off in the direction of the kitchen while Nikos stared after her.
Okay. So she was a little sensitive.
Reason number nine hundred and ninety-two to stay far away from Frankie Bennett.
Far.
 
“I know it’s wrong, but . . .” the petite brunette named Brandy said from the far corner of the circle the support group had formed.
“Whatever you’re feeling is never wrong—maybe misguided and sometimes even unwarranted, but your feelings are never wrong, Brandy. As long as you don’t let them eat you up and define you forever, it’ll be okay. So share them with us,” the pro bono therapist—some niece of a Leisure Village resident—prompted, her face kind, her words softly encouraging.
Frankie struggled to focus on what Brandy could possibly add to the already somber discussion about the struggle to pay your bills with your minimum wage job after years of being accustomed to spending your days shopping and having your highlights retouched. This supposed support group at Trophy Job’s offices was about as uplifting as a day in the pokey.
Brandy’s lower lip trembled. “You know when you enter a room? Like when you go to a restaurant or maybe a PTA meeting? I miss . . . I miss having his hand at the small of my back to guide me. I miss the security of it. The feeling that I wasn’t so alone,” she said, scraping an angry tear from her cheek. “I miss couple things. But at the same time, I hate that I miss it. He left me for my nanny. My Swedish nanny who was just nineteen! How could I miss
anything
about him?”
Words were exchanged, supportive and understanding, in sympathy for Brandy, but Frankie lost her focus because she understood Brandy’s sentiments.
They gnawed at her with an ache awakened by Maxine’s forceful entry into her cocoon of denial. Maybe it wasn’t as much Mitch’s hand as it was the idea of it she missed. What it represented.
Couple things. All those small, day-to-day occurrences and routines now lost to her.
She was single.
Woefully single.
Something she hadn’t been in a very long time—if ever.
Tonight, she felt more alone than she had in six months.
Uncomfortable with this new rush of emotions dredged up by hearing these women spill their intestines, Frankie remained in her seat within the circle as everyone broke off into smaller groups.
The gorgeous, near flawless blonde to her left leaned into her. “Tissue?” She held out a pink Kleenex.
Frankie blinked, dragging a finger over her eyes to find them wet. Her breath shuddered in and out, taking the tissue from probably the most beautiful blonde Amazon on the face of the planet. “Thank you.”
Her smile, perfect and warm, acknowledged Frankie. “I’m Jasmine Archway.”
Of the famous Archway Tires?
Her smile, red and glossed, was knowing, too. “Yep, that’s the one. Performance tires, truck tires, radials. Tires, tires, tires. Isn’t it funny when the last name Archway is mentioned, Archway Tires is the first place people’s minds go? Especially here at Trophy Jobs where everyone’s jacked up. I bet the name wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at the Stop & Shop. Anyway, I’m Ashton Archway’s ex-plaything. Ex and now broke plaything, that is.”
An ex-plaything named Jasmine . . .
poles, showers of dollar bills, and thong-tha-thong-thong-thongs came to mind.
She chuckled, reading Frankie’s thoughts again
.
“And no. I wasn’t a stripper. My mother was a botanist. Jasmine was her favorite flower.”
Frankie dropped her head to her chest, swiping at errant tears while hiding her shame for judging Jasmine.
She gave Frankie a nudge with her equally perfect round shoulder. “Don’t feel bad. Looking the way I do, the stripper-slash-escort thing comes with the territory. I own it. All the labels a blonde like me conjures up—I own every one of ’em. I know I’m hot. I worked hard to maintain the gifts God gave me. Look where that got me, huh?” She looked down at the front of her tight ruby red sweater, catching Frankie staring with a question in her eyes. “And yes, this is my rack. Not the job of some fancy plastic surgeon. Though,” she said on a wistful sigh, “I wish I’d reconsidered when Ashton said I could have a lift if I wanted it. These days, they’re finding it harder and harder to breathe through all this underwire and steel.”
Frankie burst out laughing, putting a hand over her mouth. “It’s obvious I don’t have the same problem. But on the upside—no boob sweat.”
“Ah, but we have many other things in common. You’re Mitch in the Kitchen’s ex-wife, Francis.”
There was just no hiding—even looking like a mere shadow of her former self didn’t help. Frankie averted her eyes, fighting the rising swell of panic in her chest. She fought an uncomfortable fidget, forcing herself to stay seated instead of running out of the room as though it were on fire.
Jasmine placed a hand on her arm, her frosted white nails flicking at Frankie’s wrist. “It’s not like everyone doesn’t know, Francis.”

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