Page 48 of Playing for Keeps

My eyes searched the room, frantically seeking out the one person who would make me feel better and worse at the same time.

“She’s not here,” Mitch told me, voice low. With his hands in his pockets, he rocked back on his heels, acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world. As if this conversation were completely innocent and not him talking me off a ledge. “She stopped coming to the parties when Corey’s not here.”

“Why?” I asked, though I shouldn’t have.

“Probably the same reason you stopped coming all together.” When I looked at him, Mitch’s eyebrow rose. “You, Vinny. She’s avoiding you, too.”

Throwing back the rest of my drink, I rubbed at the sharp ache in my chest. Wondered if I should torture myself with the thought of coming to Frankie’s next party when Corey was home. Wondered how bad it would be if Jen brought him. If it’d throw me back into Carina’s arms or maybe something worse.

“You can’t keep avoiding each other forever,” Mitch said, clapping his hand on my shoulder. “One of these days, you’re going to have to face each other and talk.”

With that, he walked away, and I spent the next two hours struggling to keep my head up, to stay above water, to not let everything weighing on me drag me down until I drowned.

Tonight was the night. The one I’d been working for. The one I’d been dreading.

The night Lee and I told Frankie what we’d done.

It was another reason I’d been avoiding Frankie. Knowing I was going to turn her world on end. Doing things she’d only see as betrayal. There was a right way and a wrong way to handle this, and any way other than what I had planned tonight would certainly ruin our relationship.

Just hoped I could do this right.

When eight o’clock rolled around, the majority of Frankie’s guests had taken their leave, but enough were still there that I was worried about a scene. Lee’s booming voice reverberated through the place as he arrived and greeted Frankie, my father, Vivian, and Mitch.

I was as ready as I could be. Lump in my throat pushed down, steady breaths loosening the tightness in my chest.

It was business.

That’s all it’d ever be.

A smile flickered over Frankie’s face as she walked into her office and found me sitting at her conference table, the papers I’d had my father sneak in earlier in the day spread out on the smooth wood before me. “You looking to indulge in my private stash?” she asked, this lightness in her voice that I wanted to hold onto and keep between us as the night progressed.

But the click of the door behind Lee had that smile dropping right off her lips, that lightness disappearing like it was never there.

“What’s going on?”

“We need to talk,” Lee said, his loud voice tempered, most likely by the same worry I had of the people on the other side of the door.

Frankie’s gaze flicked between the two of us, landing on the table before jumping back to Lee. “Okay.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why don’t you start by telling me what’s going on?”

“Have a seat, Frankie.”

A deep breath. Her shoulders pulled back before she smoothed a hand over the top of her head.

She wasn’t pleased.

But she sat, taking a seat as far from me as she could.

As if whatever was coming was all my fault.

Lee sat between us, closer to me than to her. As if he, too, could feel the anger and frustration that emanated from my cousin like we’d fallen into the fiery depths of hell.

He took the stack of papers I nudged his way, then passed it over to Frankie.

“Been thinking we need to make some changes to the company for a while now,” he began, then gestured to the papers Frankie’d blatantly ignored. She raised one eyebrow at him, then cast her gaze at the stack without bothering to touch them. “Feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Like I’m getting burnt out. The company’s suffered, and frankly, I can’t keep going like this.”

Something on the paperwork caught Frankie’s attention, and she grabbed the stack, pulling it closer. “Seems you’ve already made changes without consulting me. These are dated two months ago.”

“Six weeks,” I told her. “We wanted to give it a test run before we brought it to your attention.”