Mirepoix (A Recipe Of Love Book 1) (19 page)

“You’re early for breakfast Lindsay, the frittata will be done in about fifteen minutes. You might want to get your food radar checked out, your timing is off.” I glance up when there’s no response and see Lindsay standing in the doorway holding her Ipad looking like she was seconds from snapping. I immediately sit up and scramble over the arm of the couch and rush over to her in a panic. Lindsay is definitely sarcastic and not known for being a little ray of sunshine. the only thing that can make her this mad is her biological family, or someone hurting one of her honorary family members. I mentally start a list of who we need to call if it is her family as well as thinking of where the weapons are in case it’s someone threatening one of us.

“Sit down Frankie. I need to show you something.” She leads me back to the couch, she looks back at Joe behind me with an odd look on her face that I can’t decipher. I feel anxiety starting to swirl in the pit of my stomach, I know I’m not going to like whatever she has to tell me. I can safely cross off her family because she wouldn’t be worried about me if it was them. I can feel my heart starting to race, I wish she would just tell me what’s wrong. Instead of telling me she hands me the Ipad.

I glance down and can feel myself freeze, everything in me shocked into immobility by what I’m seeing. The picture I could handle and even come to love eventually, it’s a picture of Joe and I from last night in his kitchen when he’s holding the lapels of the chef’s coat and kissing my forehead. I have my eyes closed and a peaceful expression on my face. Without knowing us, you can tell just by looking at the picture that we love each other, and that we had no idea the picture was being taken. What has me shocked into stillness is the headline, “Has Restaurant Princess Picked Her New King?”

I scan through the article and see it has synopsized my life into a few short paragraphs. Nothing is left out, being orphaned at 10, the little orphan dream story of being adopted by my dead parents rich bosses. How I was spoiled and expected to take over their restaurant, but upon their deaths closing it down and going into seclusion. There’s a bit about running an artisan soap company but I’m portrayed as hiding, counting the profits from my Gram and Pap’s business I callously closed as soon as they died. The story goes on to mention Joe’s background and about his business and his cookbook coming out. I’m left looking like a money grubbing whore who is trying to dig my claws into Joe.

I feel my chest getting tight and can tell I’m in a full blown panic attack but my mind is stuck in a spiral at this point. Everyone knowing about me. They know I didn’t deserve the great life I had. They know I am disappointing my adopted parents memories. They know I wasn’t strong enough to keep their dream going. They know I’m not good enough for Joe. They know there’s something wrong with me. Nothing is mentioned about my anxiety but it clearly shows there’s something wrong with me. No one goes into seclusion unless there’s something wrong with them. Broken. Bad. Wrong. Undeserving.

I distantly hear shouting and someone shaking me but I can’t snap out of the panic attack. I feel myself bent over and my head shoved between my knees. I feel warmth behind me and legs bracketing mine. I am suddenly enveloped in warmth and the smell of cedar. I’m sat up and see Joe thread his hands with mine and wrap our arms around me so I’m hugging myself with him. I can feel him taking deep exaggerated breaths tricking my body into matching him to try to slow my breathing. I close my eyes and focus on his smell and try to ignore my circling thoughts and just focus on the physical. I open my eyes when I feel a pill placed in my mouth and see Lindsay on her knees in front of me. After putting the pill in my mouth she holds up the small glass of water so I can take a drink and swallow the pill. I force myself to focus on her eyes and the tears streaming from them, I also concentrate on Joe behind me surrounding me keeping me safe even from my mind.

I can feel myself slowly calming as the medicine kicks in. I know I’ll be taking a nap shortly. One of the side effects of the medication is making me sleepy. I really hate having to take any of it but I understand why Lindsay felt I needed it. I know she’s just taking care of me. Again. Like always. I reach out my hand, forgetting for a moment that Joe has our hands joined, I was really worried about why my arm was so heavy and my hand all big and tattooed, once I remember it’s Joe’s hand too I wipe our fingers across her cheeks drying her tears. I give her a small smile and settle back into Joe.

“Sorry guys, it will be okay. Frittata out of oven when timer on fridge beeps. Sleepy time. Love you’s” I kiss Lindsay right on the mouth, then turn my head so Joe can give me a kiss too. I giggle at the look on his face, guess even worrying about your freaked out woman doesn’t trump a brief girl on girl fantasy. After giving him a soft kiss I turn and snuggle into his chest and fall asleep. I know Lindsay will find out who is responsible for the article being written and deal with it better than I could ever dream of.

23

Joe

Fucking hell. I can’t believe that just happened. Watching Frankie melt down completely like that has to be one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. Forget the time I put out a grease fire in the kitchen, or the time I got into a bar fight when I was young and dumb, nothing has scared me as much as holding Frankie and trying to get her to take a deep breath, just one full deep breath. I was scared she was going to black out from lack of oxygen before we got her meds in her. I wasn’t even for sure about what the rest of the article said, I was reading over her shoulder and got as far as who her adopted Gram and Pap were and stopped reading when I realized what was going on.

“How long do you think she’ll sleep for?” I asked Lindsay quietly while I cradled Frankie. I needed to put her down but couldn’t stand to not have her in my arms right now. I needed to feel her slow steady heartbeat to keep me calm and reassured it wasn’t still thundering fiercely.

“She’ll be out for a couple hours at least. Long enough for me to figure out who took this photo and sent the story tip in.” Lindsay grabs her Ipad and walks to the island, where she sets it down before grabbing the frittata from the oven. Luckily they’re easy to reheat because I don’t think I could handle trying to eat right now. I finally relinquish my hold on Frankie and lay her down on the couch before tucking a throw around her. I stand for just a moment drinking the image of her still and at peace in, I am going to need to keep that image in the front of my mind in order to stay calm while we handle this shit.

“Get the coffee machine out and make me a cup please.” I hear Lindsay say as I walk in her direction. I turn and walk around the island, to the cupboard where everything is stashed. I set it up and get it working brewing a cup for her and just leave it out. I have a feeling we’re going to need a bunch of coffee to get through this. I bang my head against the cupboard while I wait for her cup to finish, I have a bad feeling this is going to turn out to be my fault somehow. I didn’t ask for this and don’t condone it but it seems likely it comes back to me.

I lean across the counter and see Lindsay is running a search on the photo on her ipad while texting and emailing on her phone. She’s wasting no time in calling in every favor and marker she has at her disposal. I look at the photo she has pulled up and see based on the angle it had to have been taken from just inside the door to the kitchen of the restaurant.

“Hold off on that a second, I need to get on a computer and I can tell you who took the photo. I had the security upgraded on the restaurant last year and have cameras all over the place, we can check it and see who was by the swinging door when the photo was taken.” I tell Lindsay and I hand her the cup of coffee. She takes a deep drink before looking me in the eye and shocking me.

“It’s not your fault Joe, I know you wouldn’t use her history like this to fuel your fame. I’m willing to guess she never even told you that Gram and Pap were Dom and Sofia Rossi did she?” While she’s questioning me she walks over to one of the million and a half tables and pulls a laptop and charger out of the drawer. As she’s plugging it in and getting it turned on, I admit the truth.

“No she didn’t. I don’t know why she didn’t. Was it because she didn’t trust me? Did she think I would do something like this?” I ask the question that had me worried the most. I know she said she trusted me, but I was afraid she thought she was number two in my priorities which is so far from the truth it actually scares me. I would close everything up and find something else to do with my life in a heartbeat if it meant I could have Frankie safe and happy forever.

“No she probably didn’t even think about it. To her they were just Gram and Pap, not the semi-famous Dom and Sofia. I didn’t meet Frankie until we were in college, but Anthony told me some people gave her grief when she was first adopted, about how she was lucky her parents died so that she could be rich now. She would give it all away to have her parents back, but no one believed that. When Pap died, and she was supposed to take over the business, she couldn’t handle the anxiety of thinking everyone would be comparing her to them and finding her lacking. It wasn’t the money, in fact since she refused to sell the name she didn’t make any money off closing it. She rents the empty space out and gets money that way, but it’s probably less than she would have if she sold the building and the name like a few buyers wanted.”

“Okay, I just need to make sure she knows she comes before everything for me now.” I tell her as I get logged into the website that will let me view the footage from the security cameras. I know what time to look for based on me looking at my watch and making note of the time when Staci was not dealing with her tables. Lindsay comes over and watches over my shoulder as I get to the time I think the photo was taken. We both watch people come and go through the swinging door, bus boys with dish tubs and wait staff hauling trays of food out, but no one pausing long enough to have taken the photo. Finally when I’m about to give up and start calling people, I see Staci stop after opening the door and take a quick look around before pulling out her cell phone and taking the picture.

“I knew that bitch was trouble. I’m going to rip her hair out and strangle her with it. I can see her trying to punish you guys but I don’t know how she got the info about Frankie’s past or why she would push for this story. This story paints Frankie as the bad guy and you as an innocent being taken advantage of.” Lindsay states in a frighteningly cool voice as she starts typing furiously on her phone. I think her cold is more terrifying than if she exploded in a rage. I’m having trouble holding onto my own temper, I pull out my own phone to bring up the employee info stored on it. I make sure I save everything on my phone and on my computer in case there’s ever a fire that destroys the paper files in the office.

“Here’s her info, I’m leaving how to handle this in your hands. I’m too mad to do anything other than threaten to throw her in the river and let the fishes have at her.” I angle the phone so that Lindsay can get the info from it.

“Okay, I’m going to give this info to someone we know. He can go visit her and find out who she sent the picture to. He’s much better at intimidating info out of people than I am since everyone always holds my size against me.” Lindsay tells me while she’s still busy typing away. “Go take a shower and I’ll sit with Frankie, then you can sit with her while I get ready. This is likely going to require one or both of us to put in a personal appearance somewhere so I want us to be ready to roll when the info comes in. Is your truck at your place or here?”

“It’s at my place, you guys don’t have any off street parking for it. I’ll call Mario and let him know he’s in control today."

“Okay, I’ll have someone go get it and bring it down. Can I have the keys?” I unclip the keys and take off the ones for the truck while I shake my head at the reach Lindsay has, I take back my thoughts from last night, she already has an army but doesn’t care about taking over the world. She is however mobilizing the troops to find out who tried to hurt Frankie.

If someone would have told me three months ago, I would be squeezed into my truck with Lindsay and Anthony going to confront and fire my personal manager, after asking Andy to stay with Frankie I would have first asked who the fuck these people were, then questioned their sanity. Yet that’s exactly what was going on.

When Lindsay came back from taking a shower at her place, she was talking with her phone headset while typing out messages at the same time, I personally was shocked, I didn’t know those ear thingies were even made anymore. I guess if I were on my phone as much as Lindsay must be I would need one too.

“Okay thanks for the info Big Papa, that’s exactly what we needed. No, I have it under control, Anthony is almost here and Andy should have his truck here any minute.” She looked up at me briefly before continuing “No if I need him locked down I think Anthony can handle it, I don’t think it will be an issue though.” She walked over to the door buzzer and hit the button to let someone in after looking at the video monitor. I was sitting on the couch with Frankie’s head in my lap while I was petting her soft hair to keep myself calm. I watched her open the door and Andy and Tony walked in looking pissed right the fuck off, so I’m guessing they were fully briefed.

“Don’t judge.” I told them as they eyed me petting Frankie like she was a kitten.

“Don’t blame you at all dude, her hair is really fucking soft.” Andy told me while shaking his head. They both stopped at the island and we all looked to Lindsay waiting to hear what information she found out, and what the plan was. It probably looked hilarious as fuck, this tiny chick who looks like she is a dainty princess that would need protecting, giving orders to three guys that dwarf her. Even Andy the shortest of us was about three of her wide and made her look even tinier.