A low chuckle escaped him. “Oh, my babe is a dirty girl.” He rubbed my thigh. “You just give me a list, we’ll make them all come true.”
“Let’s start with your bed.” The fact I could even get the words out startled me, but Archie’s smile was worth it.
“Yes,” he said with a rumble as he started the engine before he kissed me one more time. “Let’s.”
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
FRANKIE
The drive back felt charged in the best possible way.
Not frantic. Not reckless. Just… inevitable.
Archie’s hand stayed on my thigh most of the way home, fingers flexing absentmindedly like he needed the reminder that I was real. That we were real. Every time his thumb brushed higher, heat sparked through me all over again.
We didn’t talk much.
We didn’t need to.
The air between us felt newly uncaged.
By the time the garage slid open and the Ferrari rolled, my pulse was racing again. He killed the engine, turned toward me, and that look in his eyes made my stomach drop in the best way.
“My room?” he asked softly.
I swallowed then licked my lips. “Your room.”
We were barely inside before his hand found mine again, lacing our fingers together as we moved through the side room that connected the garage to the kitchen. The air felt too electric. Too hot. Too?—
“You have some nerve.”
The voice cracked through the air like a whip.
We both froze.
“You really thought I wouldn’t come back?”
Muriel’s voice cut through the foyer like crystal snapping.
Archie went still.
I didn’t need to see her to know it was her. Her voice was sharper, colder. A blade wrapped in silk.
Archie’s grip tightened around my hand.
She had always been almost cruelly polite to me. The kind of woman who smiled without warmth and asked about your future like she was assessing whether you deserved one.
From the first day I met her and she asked about myfamily, I got it. She didn’t like me or my mother. She definitely didn’t think I belonged in her house or anywhere near her son and she never bothered pretending otherwise.
We stepped into the living room.
Muriel stood near the fireplace, immaculate in cream and pearls, posture carved from marble. Her expression was ice.
And facing her?—
My mother.
