“Yes. Yes, we are."
“Please,” Frankie whispered from across the café where he was wiping down tables, but I ignored him.
“Don’t you worry, baby girl,” Earnest chortled through the speakerphone. “I am going to get you the prettiest divorce you’ve ever seen.
“I just want a quick divorce,” I said, and there was a noise at the entrance to my little office where I’d done paperwork for a life with a man who didn’t deserve it.
“No!” Frankie cried hoarsely, his eyes looking wild. “Please, no. Please just give me a little time to convince you how sorry I am.”
“Is that him?” Earnest cackled. “Tell Frankie to count his days. I’ve been hoping for a case against Mr. Perfect over there for years. I’m the only lawyer in town, too. He’s going to have to get some city slicker in here to represent him. By the time I’m through, you’ll own the gold in his dental fillings.”
“No!” Frankie protested again. “I don’t agree to a divorce. I do not want a divorce.”
He fell down in front of me. “Look at me! I was an idiot!”
I ignored him, waving Cash into the bathroom.
“Thank you so much,” I said, “I needed a skilled man to fix some mechanical issues around here.”
“I have skills, baby girl,” Cash said. “For anything you want done with my hands.”
Frankie’s jaw dropped. “Are you seriously flirting with my wife?”
“Maybe I am,” Cash said, setting his toolbag on the ground. “What are you going to do about it?”
Frankie looked taken aback, but I felt a warm prickly blush across my cheeks.
Me and Cash? My eyes scanned down his broad back and massive shoulders as he bent over the toilet.
He was definitely hot.
Athena flew down and pecked my estranged husband hard in the ear.
“Please, let's talk about this,” Frankie begged.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said, swallowing through a lump in my throat, but my next breath felt a little bit lighter.
“You wanted to be with Christabelle, so now you can be with her. No problem. You can be with Christabelle, and I will be free.”
“I don't want to be with Christabelle,” Frankie moaned. “It was a stupid immature fantasy.”
Cash set his tools down beside the toilet, which was gurgling in a sinister fashion, and bent to his work.
“I don’t know how you can show your face around here after what you did,” he said, the muscles in his broad shoulders shifting as he picked up a wrench.
I felt less humiliated than I expected.
After all, Cash wasn’t patting my head sympathetically, just glaring at Frankie as he gripped the heavy wrench.
“It was a mistake,” Frankie said, “Let me help you fix the toilet.”
He reached for the tools, but Cash’s arm shot out and blocked him.
“No, thank you. I don’t need you dropping any of them in the toilet.”
Frankie wriggled in embarrassment because he hated to be reminded of his mechanical ineptitude.
“Do I have this right? You two are not together anymore?” Cash asked.
