Chapter One
Frankie
Six months ago
“I need a favor,” my best friend, Marcie, said. Through my cellphone connection, she sounded weak and breathless, and not in a fun way. In the background, I heard a muffled flushing sound.
I lounged on my couch, waiting for my first coat of Naughty or Nice Red polish to dry on my toenails before I started on the second. “Anything for you, Marse.”
“Do you have any plans for tonight?” Her voice caught mid-sentence, like she was swallowing something. It sounded…gross.
I leaned over and started on my left big toe again. “Nope. I’m all yours, but you don’t sound great, so do you really want to go anywhere?”
On the other end of the line, I heard an unmistakable retching noise. I grimaced and pulled the phone away from my ear until she finished throwing her guts up.
“Remember that sushi place yesterday?” she said when she returned to the phone, sounding even worse. “The one a couple blocks up from the store?”
I capped my nail polish and set it on the coffee table, then reached for the topcoat. “Yeah, the one that Kresley and I refused to eat at with you because it had bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling? Unforgettable.”
“Well, you made the right choice,” Marcie said. “I’ve been throwing up all afternoon and I think I just live on my bathroom floor now.”
“Do you need me to help you with anything? Gatorade? Hold your hair back?” I asked, balancing the phone against my shoulder as I brushed the clear topcoat over my gleaming red toes.
“No, nothing like that.” She sighed, sounding exhausted. “Dad’s in town. He got a dinner reservation for us at the Screech Owl.”
I felt a gentle pang in my chest when she mentioned her gorgeous, sexy father, but ignored the sensation and instead clucked in sympathy at Marcie’s disappointment. “Aw, Marse, that sucks. You’ve wanted to try that place forever.”
“Honestly, I don’t think I’m ever going to eat again, so it’s not a huge deal to me right now,” she replied weakly. “But I don’t want Dad to spend his evening sitting at the hotel bar or alone in his room. Would you go with him? He likes you and plus, he’ll totally pay.”
Suddenly, I wanted to barf, but not from any funky shellfish. It was spending an evening at a trendy, dimly lit restaurant with Clive Davenport, my best friend’s dad and the man I’d been lusting over since his daughter and I shared a dorm room when we were eighteen.
It was just a crush, I told myself at the time. Except people were supposed to get over crushes, and when it came to Clive, I was very much still under the whole thing. And frankly, it hurt—at twenty-four, I should have been fucking my way through the Pacific Northwest and having a great time doing it. Instead, I was rolling through unsatisfying relationships and flings while I thought about my best friend’s dad the whole time.
She’d be absolutely shocked if she knew.
“C’mon, Marcie,” I said lightly. “Your hot dad doesn’t want to spend the evening with me.”
It might have been an excuse, but I felt the truth of it even as the words came out of my mouth. Why would he want to spend time with me? I was just his daughter’s party girl best friend. Her employee, for crying out loud.
“Francesca Pallas,” Marcie said, her tone suddenly brisk. Or at least as brisk as a person could sound between bouts of bad shellfish-induced vomiting. “You’re great and my dad thinks you’re great. Just go out, get a free fancy dinner, order a few top shelf cocktails and then later you can tell me how good it was.”
The end of her sentence trailed off into loud heaves as she upchucked into the toilet one more time. I sat and patiently admired my freshly polished toenails until she finished. A minute later, she was back, out of breath again.
“Please, Frankie,” she said softly. “My dad loves it out here, and he’s been really excited about this visit to Seattle. I don’t want him to be all alone and miserable.”
She sounded so sincere and sad that my last threads of resistance snapped.
“Okay, Marse,” I said gently. “I’ll go to dinner with your dad. Do you need me to drop by your apartment with anything before I meet him? You never said.”
“I—" she started, but before she got another word out, she retched violently again. I pushed back my wild curls and grimaced. I was surprised she had anything left in her stomach.
“Gatorade would be good,” Marcie finally said.
“I’ll drop some off on my way to have dinner with your dad,” I promised.
And maybe, if I was lucky, God would have mercy on me and Clive wouldn’t be as perfect as I remembered.
* * *