“If I was there, I tuned her out.”
“You are my bestie,” Ziggy declared, with the conviction of someone delivering a headline. “And don’t you dare argue. You’d lose.”
Frankie looked at him sideways. “But I am not nice. I have been told I leave scars.”
Ziggy’s smile softened, the showmanship gone. “Frankie, you matter to me. I adore waltzing with your sharp edges. They keep me on my toes and my wit polished.”
Hmm. She would like to think Marcus felt the same. Odds were he did not waltz.
Not when he definitely did not text. Or call. Or grasp basic communication like someone interested in being her friends-with-perks guinea pig.
Which was fine. Completely fine. She had picked him because he was safe.
And clearly temporary.
Ziggy finished his drink and stood. “My bath awaits.”
“As does my vibrator,” Frankie said dryly.
He staged a gasp and slipped out, leaving the manor quiet.
On impulse, she reached for her phone. According to the book, step ten in building a genuine connection was to risk a small truth during a rough patch. She wasn’t sure if radio silence from your temporary lover counted as a rough patch, but if it didn’t, it should.
Before she could second-guess herself, she typed:
Frankie:Do you like my sharp edges as much as I like your guarded ones?
She set the phone aside, pulse skittering. That wasn’t casual. That wasn’t cautious.
That was real.
She shouldn’t be doing real with a guinea pig. They were for practice. For screwing up. For getting it wrong so you can get it right when it finally matters.
Not for real.
Hell. Who was she kidding?
Marcus wasn’t just anyone.
He was the reason she had even tried to be likable in the first place. Not because he’d asked it of her, but because she wanted to be a better version of herself around him. He was the first person who made her want to change.
Unlike that sanctimonious jackass Mr. Uptight, who tried to force her to.
Her phone stayed still on the cushion. Outside, the baubles on his ridiculous golf cart caught the porch light and glittered like a dare.
Chapter 37
Marcus stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his Manhattan penthouse and stared out at the city, feeling as steady as a man on a ledge during a hurricane. Far below, Central Park lay quiet, a postcard pretending not to know better.
Two weeks away from Gi Gi’s Crossing hadn’t cured anything. The city only made the unrest inside him sharper.
His pulse jumped at the memory of his rushed exit. The media calls, the careful trail of counter-rumors he and his brothers seeded to pull the reporter off Frankie’s scent.
It had worked. According to their sources, the journalist had officially marked Frankie off her list of possible stories and moved on to juicier prey: a billionaire’s rooftop menagerie that had allegedly awoken the block at 3 a.m.
Only in New York.
Still, relief didn’t come. He was unraveling.
