Ms. Birdie hadn’t even bothered with innocence when Frankie confronted her about Marcus’s presence. Worse, she hadn’t given her the courtesy of a heads-up that Lola was about to reveal her secret to the entire crowd. One minute Frankie had been the town’s fashion villainess, the next she was practically canonized as a do-gooder.
Years of carefully building a formidable reputation and poof, stripped away in a heartbeat, leaving her raw, exposed, and not even in a flattering light.
Ms. Birdie’s motive for not looping Frankie in wasn’t hard to decipher.
She knew Frankie would rather gargle sequins than sit through the “why” being aired in public. And she needed Frankie here. Needed her to run headfirst into Marcus.
Frankie reached for the righteous fury she usually weaponized in moments like this. Her armor. But it didn’t show. The space it used to occupy was…vacant.
What rose instead was quieter. Steadier. Something therapy had planted and Gi Gi’s Crossing had watered. And when it finally clicked, she knew exactly who to blame.
Mr. Uptight himself.
Thanks to Marcus, she could no longer get a proper mad on to hide behind.
That convenient emotional fire extinguisher had been replaced with a new, annoying lesson: Don’t torch the house you might want to live in later.
And wasn’t that just infuriating?
Marcus stopped at the velvet settee and motioned for her to sit. “After you.” His voice carried a thread of nerves.
Good. He should be nervous.
She glided down with practiced grace, folding her hands in her lap to keep from lunging for his throat. “Nice setup,” she muttered. “Very Ms. Birdie. I knew better than to think she’d stay out of my business.”
Marcus sat beside her, still gripping the gift box. His expression wasn’t smug. It wasn’t guarded. It was hesitant, wary. A man bracing for impact.
Which, to be fair, he should be.
She’d read the article. Understood why he’d bolted at the festival when the journalist showed up. Self-preservation she could almost admire. But notshowing up at the coffee shop? That wasn’t survival. That was silence wrapped in cowardice. Which was why she’d stuffed her heart in a black box and told it to shut up.
Except…the damn thing still pinched now as she looked at him.
He’d decided when to disappear.
Now, apparently, he got to decide when to reappear.
Neat trick, if you were the one holding all the power.
And yes, she’d fallen in love. Not despite his interference but because of it. Because of him, her heart had finally shouted down the tyrant in her head.
Hell. Who even was she anymore?
She refused to look at the gift box, unwilling to give him that satisfaction. “I find it interesting that you couldn’t bother to show up at the coffee shop for five days straight, but you’re here now with a pretty package you supposedly brought for me. Why now and not then?”
He exhaled, and something flickered in his expression, raw enough to nearly undo her. He didn’t look like a man chasing small talk and some neat bow. He looked like a man braced to lose her for good. That made this more than a reunion. This was a reckoning.
And damn if there wasn’t a tiny thrill in knowing he understood exactly how much work it was going to take to win her back.
“When you first came on my radar,” he said, “I saw you as a force of nature. Something a man didn’t control. He just held on and hoped to survive.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
His lips curved faintly, but his eyes stayed serious. “Now I see you for what you really are. A fierce, stubborn wildflower that insists on blooming between concrete cracks. But wildflowers need light to thrive. And I didn’t show up at the coffee shop because I didn’t want to drag you into the shadows where I dwell.”
Her chest constricted.
“You deserved better than that,” he finished.
