Burning Down the Spouse (24 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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“Frankie?” He grabbed her arm, swinging her to face him.
She gave his hand a pointed look, lifting her arm in question, returning to her promise to remember he was just a man. No matter how manly. “What? C’mon, haste makes waste.”
“Slow down and listen to me make nice with you for being a jackass. It doesn’t happen often.”
“That you’re a jackass or that you make nice?”
He grinned, warm, sexy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Mitch and Carrie and Marco and whatever else I didn’t tell you about. I swear in the future, anything Mitch does, if he so much as thinks about behaving badly, when I psychically tap into his mind, you’ll be the first to know.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, thanks, but I don’t care what Mitch has done anymore. I didn’t care as much about what he’d done as about what I didn’t know he’d done. I think it was more about how utterly humiliating it is to be the last one to know what was right under your nose. I felt stupid and blind is all. But I’m over it because his past bad behavior is out of my control. So let’s get on with the business of this thing called slave labor.”
Now he chuckled, too, deep and rich, something she’d missed on her time off.
So pathetic, Frankie.
“So, friends?”
She backed up against the cool exterior of the refrigerator with a grin. “You mean like the kind who call each other on the phone and talk nail polish,
Tiger Beat
, and Scott Baio crushes? Or the kind that have a peaceful,
honest
working relationship with no random surprises that leave one another blindsided?” she teased.
“It’s a tough choice. I mean, we are talking Scott Baio here, but I’ll take peace, honesty, and goodwill toward men for five hundred, Alex.”
Frankie stuck out her hand. “Deal.”
Nikos took it, entwining his fingers with hers. “Deal. Now in other important news. Christmas,” he said, still holding her hand.
“What about it?” she asked, forcing herself to keep her fingers from trembling.
Nikos wiggled his eyebrows. “The Antonakas Christmas bash, ma’am. It’s huge. Like invitation-to-the-White-House huge. Well, maybe not that huge, but there are at least as many people at our annual Christmas party as there are at a White House formal. I know it’s late in the game and you might already have plans, but I forgot to tell you before your day off. It’s Christmas Eve. I know that’s tomorrow, but we have tons of food, family by the busload, more nieces, nephews, and grandkids than ten daycare centers, and more chaos than a three-ring circus. It’s loud, bad for calorie counting, and there’s usually a drunken brawl with ringside seats, and we try to keep it all inclusive for every faith. It’s also one of the rare few days a year when the diner’s closed. And of course, both you and Gail are invited. All the employees and their families usually at least do a drive-by if they have other plans.”
Of which she had none, and that hadn’t depressed her much at all until Nikos described his family’s celebration. Then disappointment crept into her thoughts.
Employees. Know your place, Bennett. Got it.
Frankie’s smile waned, but her tone, she was proud to say, remained steady as a rock. “Sounds like fun. I’m in, but I wouldn’t count on Gail. She was hedging about some invitation her gentleman caller extended to her, but she didn’t want to leave me alone. She’ll be happy to know I have plans. You know, the
employee
kind. So sure, I’d love to come. Need help prepping for it? Bring something? Maybe something with goat cheese and figs?” she joked.
Clearly, he’d missed her emphasis on “employee” because he skipped right over it and zeroed in on the party planning. “Nope. The rest of the family gives us a day off and they do the cooking. Anyway, good deal. So now that we’ve made nice, I have some details to work out for tomorrow’s party.”
“Then I’ll get to work,” she replied with forced good cheer.
By her late-morning break, Frankie smiled with the satisfaction of a job well done. A mountain of chopped onions and garlic even Barnabas couldn’t criticize lay in wait for Cosmos to marinate his next batch of brisket in, and she’d reorganized the fridge so each item he needed was at the ready.
The rumble of her stomach led her to find Voula and her infamous meatloaf. “Look at my Frankie,” she said with a gleam in her eye. “Now Mama doesn’t have to force her to eat. The horse finds the grass all by herself.”
“Water. You’re leading a horse to water, and if I eat any more of your water, I’ll need a bigger car,” Frankie said, smiling back, giving her a squeeze to her shoulders.
Voula pinched her at the waist. “In no time we have to buy you bigger pants. That makes my cockles warm. Now eat and make Mama smile.” She winked, piling the meatloaf and fries high on the plate, then dousing it with an overflowing ladle of brown gravy.
Frankie took the plate, and she and Voula headed to Nikos’s office, where he’d kindly offered to let her bring Kiki in for the afternoon while Gail was in Atlantic City on a senior overnight trip. As she walked, she scooped up a heaping forkful to stuff it in her mouth with a blissful sigh. “Voula, you should market this. It’s the best meatloaf I’ve ever eaten. It’s simple and rustic and there are so many flavors, my mouth does the happy dance. Trust me when I tell you, when I was married to Mitch, I tried a million different ideas, variations on the original theme, trying to make the perfect meatloaf. They all paled in comparison.”
Voula’s eyebrow rose as she made her way around Nikos’s desk to gather up Kiki from a napping Barnabas’s lap. “You mean mine is better than the bad Mitch’s?”
Frankie giggled, smiling at how comfortable Kiki was with Voula. “Yours is better than some of the best chefs in the world, Voula. It’s like uber-meatloaf.”
She frowned, her round face wrinkling. “Uber?”
“Like the crème de la crème. The
best
,” Frankie assured her around a crispy-tender French fry.
Voula nodded, as if she knew she had the world at her feet with just one bite of her concoction of ground beef and spices. She dug around in her apron pocket, pulling out a treat for Kiki, who took it with her usual somber gratitude. “It is a secret I tell you one day, Frankie.” She chuckled, tapping the dog’s nose with affection. “But you know, my memory is so bad, I have to look at the recipe every time I make.”
Frankie gave Kiki a quick kiss and waved a fork at Voula on her way out of the office, plate in hand. “Whatever’s in it, it’s hardcore, and you should guard the secret with your life.”
Voula’s chuckle followed her out into the dining area where she went in search of her bottle of water and her latest magazine endeavor into finding a hobby, poetry writing.
“Frankie?”
A foreboding chill of unease skittered up her spine. No. It couldn’t be. How? And more important, why?
“Frankie?” An all-too-familiar hand tapped her shoulder.
Dear Universe, would it be an insult to my mother if I legally changed my name? I don’t think she’d be too upset with me, seeing as each time someone says it, the destruction of my fragile psyche and my newfound happy place typically occur.
Damn it all. Just when she was getting her groove back, or if not her groove, then at least a safe distance from the ledge she’d so precariously teetered on—in walks the one person who almost sent her over the edge.
She sucked in a breath, mentally arming for battle.
Okay, Frankie, time to man up. In the spirit of this changed-woman gig you’ve hired on to—face the ex. Like a big girl. Like you mean it.
Like the prick owes you money.
Her turn was a slow execution while she composed her face, forcing her body language to express an air of casual indifference. “Mitch.”
He smiled, that charming “come let me show you my spiderweb” smile. Nothing about him had changed. He was still handsome and camera perfect. His periwinkle blue shirt had not a crease in it, and his steel gray silk trousers were as smooth as glass. “It’s so good to see you, Frankie.” Mitch opened his arms as though she’d fall right back into them.
At one time, maybe as little as just five months ago, maybe, just maybe, she might well have dived back into the shallow end of the pool. Even with his infidelity, if only to find comfort in the routines of her old life with him and not to have to face life alone.
Yet, seeing him now, she was never so glad she’d slept her postdivorce trauma almost entirely away. The only emotion she could summon for Mitch was distaste and a mild case of anxiety. Anxiety that had nothing to do with his physical presence but rather stemmed from her question as to what exactly he wanted.
Booyah for time and distance and oh, yeah, functioning brain matter.
Frankie took a step back, placing her half-eaten meatloaf on the front counter. “How did you find me?”
His smile upped its wattage. “What difference does it make? I’m here now.”
As though that made everything all right as rain. “Phew, thank God, right? I mean, how was I going to go on breathing like I have for the past seven months without you?” She raised a condescending eyebrow to pack her punch.
Mitch chose to ignore her snipe, and instead, sat down on one of the counter stools, laying his forearm beside his identical, as yet untouched plate of meatloaf. “Can we talk?”
Frankie’s head cocked in an absurd parody of “what the fuck?” “About?”
He patted the stool next to his in a gesture of friendly warmth. “What’s been going on in your life. How you’re doing. You know, conversations people have when they haven’t seen someone they care about in a long time.”
People you care about? Seriously? Oh, tongue don’t fail me now.
“When you find that someone who cares about me, have your people call my people. Until then, go away.”
“Aw, Frankie. We have some hard feelings between us, don’t we?”
“Well, they’re not soft and squishy.”
Mitch gave her his best “I haz a sad” expression. “Can’t we let bygones be bygones?”
“Oh, they’re bygone. All gone, in fact. Now go back home to Bamby.”
“Bamby and I are over.”
“Did she find out about Carrie?” Frankie asked like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
“Carrie?”
Frankie marveled at how dumbstruck his perfectly aged face appeared. How many women had there really been before Bamby? Something to ponder as she sent him packing. “I know how hard it must be to keep track of all the female pairs of eyes you’ve wobbled,” she sympathized, letting her words drip with false consolation. “Carrie was a woman you met right here in this diner. A foodie, so to speak. A foodie married to someone else. But that’s all water under the proverbial bridge now, Mitch. The past is the past and all that jazz. I don’t know why you’re here or how you found me, and frankly, I don’t give a prostitute’s checkup why, because we have nothing to say to each other. Now, you’re interrupting my lunch hour. Go. Away.”
Mitch’s face went hard for a moment, before he recovered and slapped on his smile especially made for his fans. The “I am the great chef and you are the minion” smile. “I can’t believe you’re working in a diner.” He pushed his food around his plate, wincing as though the mere idea that the food didn’t cost a hundred bucks physically hurt him.
“I can’t believe you have the balls to mock my job or the food here. First of all, that’s the best meatloaf you’ll ever eat,
Chef Mitch
. So if you plan to be insulting, take it elsewhere or I
will
bring my wooden spoon out of retirment. Second of all, at least here the only monstrous ego I have to contend with is the homeless guy’s out front who claims I’m blocking his sun when I park in the space in front of his bench. Believe me when I tell you, being employed here is like rainbows and rocking horses compared to working for you.”
But Mitch was ignoring her again. He’d decided to brave a bite of food for heathens and was too busy making groans of chef pleasure. “This is amazing.” Mitch held up a forkful of meatloaf. “Just amazing.”
Frankie gave him a sour glare. “Sometimes food for heathens can be that way.”
“Any chance I could get the recipe?” he asked, licking the fork like a cat licking cream from his whiskers.
Beyond flabbergasted at Mitch’s bold request, Frankie held herself away from the counter with stiff arms. “So you can tell the world you created it like you did with all of my recipes for the show? Fat chance, Mitch. Besides, it’s a family secret, and even if I did know it, I certainly wouldn’t give it to you so you could claim it as your own stroke of genius.”
“How’s my Kik?”
“
Your
Kik? You mean the dog you cared so much about you had a clause put in our divorce that said you wouldn’t be held responsible for any of her veterinary bills? That Kik?”
His face didn’t change, but his eyes shifted. “I loved Kiki,” he defended so weak and insincere, it was all Frankie could do not to gouge his eyes out with her fork.
She shook her head with an angry swish. “No, you loved the ratings she brought the show. You loved letting everyone believe the PETA-loving Mitch had saved her. But we both know the truth about that, don’t we?”

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