Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
“And eavesdropping,” Gabe added. “Can’t forget that.”
“Rat,” Frankie hissed back at him.
Gabe didn’t look concerned or offended. He probably was paid to rat her out.
Larkin shook his head, eyeing Gabe and then Frankie like he didn’t know what to do between the two of them. The guy didn’t like to talk that much, but Frankie made it her mission to argue with him at least five times a day lately. She had to do something.
“All right,” Larkin muttered, tipping his head back toward the balcony, “come sit out here with us, Frankie.”
“Oh, do I finally get to be a part of the big secret, too?”
“It’s no secret. It’s business.”
She didn’t understand, but...didn’t that sum up her whole life?
“And no,” Larkin added, tossing it over his shoulder as an afterthought. “No, you can’t be part of the secret. It’s a club, you’re not invited.”
His joke stunned her momentarily. “You know,” she said, finding a place to sit in the heated, glass balcony next to Carina and her words at the same time, “I wouldn’t have thought you were so funny.”
Larkin kicked back to relax in the lounge chair, grinning. “My first love was comedy.”
“Really?”
“No, I’m bullshitting you. My first love was a woman named Beth. Now I pay her twenty thousand a month in alimony to fund her vacations with her flavor of the year. At least, I don’t have to pay child support anymore for kids I’m not allowed to see.”
Carina pressed her lips together at the comment, silent otherwise.
Frankie gaped. “You have kids?”
“Five, actually. They’re all grown up now.”
“Why couldn’t you see them?”
“The court decided my PTSD, my job, and the man I work for, were not appropriate for children. That’s what I got for splitting my first paycheck from your father with my ex-wife. I thought I was doing the right thing, making sure she was taken care of even if we weren’t together. She just took that money and ran with it as fast as she could to the most expensive divorce and child custody lawyers she could hire. I barely got to see my kids at that point anyway, and when I did...”
His words trailed off as he sighed. “When I did see them, they acted like entirely different children than the ones I helped raise. Although, if you asked my ex-wife, I didn’t help raise them at all because six to eight months out of the year saw me on missions with the team. She sure loved asking for another one every time I came home, though.”
Frankie chewed on her inner cheek, looking to Carina to see her pressing the heel of her palm into the top of her rounded stomach as she made a strange face. “You okay?”
Carina nodded. “Oh, yeah...just normal discomfort today.”
The way Carina’s face contorted slightly, brows pinching together like she felt pain, made Frankie concerned.
“You’re sure that you are all right?” she asked her stepmother.
Carina just waved a hand. “Fine, really. You should tell her that story, Larkin.”
“Hmm? Which one?”
“How you met Sal, and how he got you to work for him.”
“Ah.” Larkin’s gaze darted to Frankie. “Do you want to hear it?”
“Tell me,” Frankie said, needing the distraction.
Sinking into the chair, she felt swallowed in Nico’s sweater. She only took it off to send it to get washed by the hotel’s laundry staff, but that had its downsides, too. It didn’t smell like him anymore.
“It was what,” Larkin posed, not really asking a question, “something like seven years after he’d married his first wife. Right, Carina?”
“About that,” she agreed. Legs up on the coffee table in front of them, she continued pushing against the top of her stomach and shifting slightly in her chair.
Frankie kept one eye on her while Larkin talked.
“Anyway,” Larkin said while stretching his neck back and forth, “his in-laws, your mother’s parents, were dead by then because he and Delilah had control of the Dove money at that point. I was speaking at an event for veterans with PTSD. After I got up there and talked about how I didn’t believe PTSD was a thing until I lost three quarters of my team in a five-minute span on a mission that should have been cut and dry, and walked away with every symptom known to man, your father came to speak to me.”
“At the event?”
“Mmhmm.”
“Why was he there?” Frankie asked.
“A friend thought he needed to accept some things about himself that he hadn’t been ready to deal with and figured getting him to sit through a bunch of war vet speakers would make him just enough removed from his own experiences to see what he was dealing with.”
“PTSD,” Frankie said quietly. “That’s what you mean.”
Larkin shrugged. “It’s harder to accept things about yourself when you feel like the direct cause of it. From that, I speak with experience, which is why I think, your father came to find me after the event, specifically.”