At first, he’d assumed she was one of Lola’s models, waiting to slip into a pair of signature pumps. But then she’d taken a seat.
The show had started. And instead of watching the runway, he’d watched her.
That’s why, near the end, he had been the only one who saw it coming.
She’d leapt to her feet and hurled the shoe.
He’d been too stunned to duck. Too shocked to do anything but flinch as the red-bottom heel smacked him in the head.
Pandemonium followed.
Dazed, Marcus had yanked his ball cap lower over his face. It was a disguise he always kept close during camera-filled events. He’d slipped out before his face ended up on every social feed from Milan to Manhattan, just one wrong angle away from waking a deadly vendetta still hanging over him and his brothers
Later, he’d learned the beauty’s name. Frankie Peterson. And that her tantrum had halted the show, destroying Lola’s debut.
“Ouch,” Frankie complained as he ascended the front steps, pulling him out of his thoughts. “You’re holding me too tight.”
“Just don’t want you tumbling headfirst down the stairs,” he muttered, loosening his grip.
At first, he’d assumed her outburst had come from somewhere raw. Something personal. He’d even contacted her boss, once he realized it was Ms. Birdie, and offered to drop it if Frankie issued a public apology in the magazine she edited. She hadn’t. Not a word. Just stubborn silence.
He reached the door, a heavy, weathered thing with flaking paint and an ornate brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head. The wood groaned faintly as he twisted the knob and stepped inside the manor.
Not pausing, Marcus marched through the entryway, past decades of disrepair and layers of town bureaucracy, and straight into the downstairs bathroom. He dropped Frankie, mud-caked clothes, bedraggled wig and all, into the deep clawfoot tub.
Her outraged gasp was deeply satisfying.
“Strip,” he said flatly. He grabbed a towel from the rack and dropped it onto the tub’s edge.
“Excuse me?” She clutched the wig to her chest.
“Shampoo, soap, and a robe are right there. Make good use of them.” At the doorway, he paused. “I’ll take your suitcases to the cottage.”
“Youare a horrible man.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He shut the door behind him, already grinning.
The banishment of Frankie Peterson might be the best idea he’d ever had.
Or the worst.
Time would tell.
Chapter 4
Once Frankie calmed enough to stop plotting the Uber driver’s slow demise (because if it weren’t for that asshole, she wouldn’t be standing in a shower right now), she turned her attention to the wig.
Miss Congeniality.
If she were home, it would go straight in the trash. But she wasn’t. And she needed it for her small-town runaway heiress ruse.
With a sigh, she held it under the lukewarm spray of the clawfoot tub’s showerhead. Then, channeling the same grit that had seen her through cutthroat meetings, international flights, and poorly thought-out pitch ideas, she gently worked shampoo through its mud-caked strands.
Rinse. Shake. Flip.
She draped it upside down on the hook by the tub’s edge and hoped it dried into something that didn’t scream trauma.
The fifteen wigs she’d brought were critical. With them, she was quirky Francesca B. Without them, shewas powerhouse Frankie Peterson. And no one in Gi Gi’s Crossing could know they were the same person.
