I winced at the reminder. “Fran thinks her mom is home.” I fisted my hands on my thigh. “How the fuck am I going to explain that?”
Cal walked over to me and pulled a stress ball from his pocket to hold out for me. “Take it. You’re going to need it this next month, because you’re going to have to tell Fran her mom died. And we’re going to have to deliver on that.”
For three days, they held me back from going to see her. Olive, Pink, Rosy, Archer. All of them.
Or she did.
I’d tracked them down to one of the Hardy hotels but had been informed that Olive would make her husband lock it down if I tried to enter.
I did anyway.
And Dimitri caught me. That fucker.
He claimed he was protecting my own Sanctum from me, and not one damn person argued with him.
“Daddy, you seem mad that Ms. Darling is gone,” Franny told me the next night.
Rosy had been doing most of the nannying with my mother throughout the day. She glared at me every time she could though. Even my mom scolded me: “Make it better, Jameson, or so help me God I won’t forgive you—and I forgave you for even your own father’s passing.”
Great.
She’d turned my mother against me.
“I’m not mad, Fran Bran. Just anxious for her to come home.”
“Then you should probably send more flowers, because she wouldn’t have left me and our bunny unless you made herreallymad.”
That night, I sent not just hundreds, I sent thousands of flowers. Every type of flower in that dark-pink color she liked. Then I called and called, but she ignored every one of them.
Stop sending flowers.
Come home and talk to me then. Or let me into that hotel.
I need time.
Time is about to be up. I am going to break into that hotel.
Dimitri said you already did and he stopped you.
You’ve turned all my friends against me.
My mother even.
And my daughter.
Franny would never turn against you.
She already has. She’s suggested I send you a pink car, and I will tomorrow.
Don’t you dare.
I did anyway. The car arrived the very next day.
She threatened to never speak to me again if I didn’t give her a little more time, and I was scared enough that I held back.
I held back seeing her, but held nothing else back.
I even told her Franny missed her and sent her damn pictures of that stupid bunny.
