ANCHOR BABY
FRANKIE
I stare at myself in the mirror as my phone continually beeps and buzzes with messages and calls and emails I’m ignoring. Argh. How did my life turn on a dime? How do I turn it back?
You should know how easy these things happen, dumbass, my brain lectures me.You aren’t guaranteed happiness or even simplicity. Life has it out for you, bitch.
Now the hotel suite phone rings. I ignore it like I’m ignoring my cell and stare at my reflection. I have to do this shoot. It isn’t ideal. In fact, it’s less than ideal. San Sebastian has temperamental weather. It turns cloudy on a dime, and don’t even get me started on the wind. By the time I change into the bikini, turn on my ring light, and get my cell set up on its stand, I can barely stand on the balcony without being blown off. The only half decent shot has me clutching the railing, my wavy hair flying every which way. It’s got an angry Gods, Medusa vibe to it, which I can spin. I think.
I lean forward in the bathroom mirror, touching up my lip gloss and my back instantly seizes. I gasp, my eyes slamming shut, and I take shallow, panting breaths until it passes, which is a couple seconds later. Thankfully. I ignore what that means as I pull myself slowly to a proper standing position. I give myself a minute to take a couple deeper breaths and see if anything else hurts. It doesn’t. I walk slowly into the main room from the bathroom. As I stare out at the sea and debate trying to do another shot in the second bikini I promised the brand I would promote, there’s a loud, hard knock on the door. I know exactly who it is.
“I’m working, Nick!” I call out politely but firmly.
The door opens anyway. I tighten the tie on my bathrobe, which is wrapped over the bikini I’m wearing. Normally, I take comfort in the fact that my bodyguard always has a key to my room, but in this case, not so much. “I could have been naked!”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Nick replies as he strides across the small entry hall into the main living space. My suitcases are open on the floor of the living room, the contents strewn about. Two of the three swimsuits I made a twenty-thousand dollar deal to promote are carefully laid out on crepe paper on the couch. “Lucia is being Lucia.”
He thrusts his personal cell in my direction. My eyes focus on a series of text messages from my little sister, each of which are progressively more demanding. She’s trying to get a hold of me. Each one gets more angry and laced with profanity as Nick ignored her, like I was.
“Okay. Okay,” I sigh. I grab my own phone. He nods his shaved head. But instead of punching my sister’s name in my contacts, I pull up the pics I took on the balcony. “I’ll call her after you weigh in and tell me if any of these are useable.”
He frowns. Hard. It makes him look so damn menacing. That’s why my dad hired him when I was eighteen, after the incident of which we do not speak. Well, that and the fact that Nick doesn’t just look dangerous. He is. He has saved my ass from bad situations more than once. Nick yanks my phone from my hand and flips through the photos. He doesn’t look like he’s scouring them, but he is. “Last one. It’s sexy in that bad-ass dark way. Different for you. In a good way.”
He shoves the phone back into my hand and glares, his dark brown eyes narrowed. “Call that hellion sister of yours.”
As soon as the door clicks behind him. I punch my sister’s name in my WhatsApp contacts and hit video chat. She answers before the first ring can even finish. She looks wild, like with anger or venom, but that isn’t a foreign look for my sister who carries a chip on her shoulder bigger than her race car. “What the hell, bitch? Do not voicemail me ever again. Especially not in an emergency situation.”
“So, you agree dad has lost his mind and it’s a devastating mistake that we need to fix somehow?” I say and drop down on the chaise lounge next to the plate of chocolate-covered strawberries the hotel gave me as a welcome gift.
“What? No,” Lucia barks back, annoyed. Her dark, curly hair is slicked back, like it usually is, in a low, tight pony. She’s not wearing a lick of make-up, which also is pretty normal. “I mean, I didn’t expect him to retire just yet, but I always knew you were his plan when he did.”
“I’ve moved on, and I thought he knew that. I thought everyone knew that.”
“You haven’t moved on,” Lucia replies, the expression on her face amused, which pisses me off. “It’s time to stop kidding yourself. You could be anywhere in the world when the season is on, but youalwayswatch.”
“I watch F2 to make sure you’re okay. That’s it… most of the time,” I fib.
“Lying causes wrinkles, Frank. Be careful or you’re gonna have to partner with a Botox company,” Lucia says, laughing at her own joke. “So, back to the Team Principal thing. It’s crazy, but it was bound to happen. I’m just wondering why he picked now.”
“Adelaide, I guess.” I pick up one of the strawberries by the green leafy stem and stare at it as it dangles in front of me. “She wants more granddad dick.”
“Frankie, don’t. Gross.” Lucia looks truly nauseous, and if I think about my words, I would be too. “What I think is… she wants a baby.”
I snap up to a sitting position and wince. Fucking back. “You can’t be serious. Now I’m going to puke.”
“Think about it, Frankie. She’s your age,” Lucia replies, and there’s dread dripping from her tone. Her tanned skin looks almost green. “Most normal women that age want babies from their husbands.”
“Most normal women this age don’t marry men older than their own dad and expect babies… do they?” I question. “Anchor baby. She’s gunning for an anchor baby?”
“Isn’t that when you have a baby in another country to get citizenship or something?” Lucia thinks about it for a minute. “A baby that keeps her tied to a man and his money is the same thing though I guess. So, yes. An anchor baby.”
“But even if that nightmare is the truth, why would he have to quit work for that? He didn’t when we were born. Hell, he only took one day off for Mom’s funeral,” I say and try not to think about that tidbit of family history too long.
“Yeah… I don’t know, but it is a distinct possibility,” Lucia replies.
“I’m taking the position.” Saying it out loud actually sends a nervous shiver down my spine. I walk over to the air-conditioning and turn it down.
“Of course you are. I didn’t doubt it for a second,” Lucia replies, and she’s walking too, down an aisle on a plane. A private one with plush leather seats. I see some F2 Mirabella people I sort of recognize in the background. I think one is her publicist and the other a marketing person. All would have signed NDAs, so I don’t worry about what they might overhear. Those became mandatory in the Mirabella employment package after someone from the race group gave private info on me to the tabloids after my ‘drug overdose.’ “So has Douchebag or Douchebag Junior exploded yet? I mean, I didn’t hear a sonic boom, but I’ve had my headphones on.”
