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Chapter Two
Clive
Present day
“Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the inconvenience, but Alpha Airlines flight 4788, Minneapolis to Seattle, originally scheduled for takeoff at seven-fifteen, has been delayed for aircraft maintenance. The revised departure time is nine o’clock. Please come to the customer service desk if you have any questions or conflicts. Thank you.”
The speaker clicked off, and a collective groan rose from the crowd of assembled passengers who crawled out of bed at the crack of fucking dawn to catch this flight. And now, ten minutes before we were supposed to board, our flight was delayed for almost two goddamn hours.
Irritation trickled through me. I was supposed to meet my business partner, Denton Sawyer, to walk through a building we were planning to renovate and lease out, but at this rate, I would have to bump it to after my lunch date with my daughter.
I scrolled through some pictures that Marcie sent me yesterday, and smiled at the beaming selfie in her office. A few pictures around her boutique, showing me new displays and some pricey merchandise that she just got in. And one candid that I had looked at probably a dozen times—Frankie, her dark curls spilling over her shoulders as she rearranged a shelf of fancy handbags.
Surprised by the unexpected photo, Frankie’s lush, pink lips were parted in a perfect O. She wore a close-fitting green top that displayed her round breasts and narrow waist to perfection. Outside of my daughter, she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Whenever I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my ideal woman, hers was the only face that ever came to mind.
Men my age weren’t supposed to get this hung up on women the same age as their daughters, for God’s sake, but I thought about her every single day. And since that sensual kiss on the waterfront six months before, she occupied more of my thoughts than ever before.
I still felt guilty about how I talked down to her and walked away that night—she told me how badly it hurt her when people blew her off like that, and I did it anyway. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment, and my only excuse was that I’d been fearful of what else I’d do to her, and with her, had I not gone back to my hotel room. Alone.
I wanted—maybe needed—to apologize. To see her again and tell her that she was beautiful and wild and funny, and that she deserved all the best things in life.
I rubbed at my chest, at the pain that throbbed in my heart whenever I thought about Frankie. I missed her. Her easy smiles and laughter, and her kindness and untamed spirit. And now that I knew what her lips felt like against mine, the thickness of her hair as I wound it around my fingers, the soft heft of her breast in my palm—it haunted my goddamn dreams.
With a deep breath to steel my nerves, I pulled up my phone’s messaging app and tapped out a text to Frankie.
I’m coming into town this weekend and I’d like to see you. Do you want to meet me somewhere and talk?
Before I lost my nerve and deleted the whole thing, I pressed send. It was still really early on the west coast, so I didn’t expect an answer right away.
But that didn’t stop me from glancing at my phone every few minutes until my delayed flight finally boarded. Every time it buzzed with a new message, my heart raced as I flicked through to see if it was her.
It never was.
When my plane touched down in Seattle four hours later, I had a slew of messages and missed calls from Denton, my assistant in Minneapolis and a couple more from my daughter, but still nothing from Frankie.
I couldn’t excuse it away with the time difference or spotty airplane internet—Frankie Pallas was icing me out. And the worst part was that I probably deserved it for being an asshole and handling the situation so fucking badly.
“So what kind of escrow period do we think we’re looking at?” I asked Denton, focusing on business. We stood in an empty, unfurnished residential unit in the building that we hoped to turn into a trendy, high-end mixed-use development. It was dated and dusty as-is, but I saw a lot of possibilities.
“Short,” he said. “Three or four weeks. The sellers need cash and we don’t need to do a lot of negotiation. The zoning and permitting shouldn’t be a huge issue. After we go to contract, we can start bringing people in for estimates before we officially take possession.”
I paused and looked out the window at the busy Seattle street below. “It looks really good, man.” I turned to Denton, my new business partner, and smiled at him. He smiled back—he looked tired, with dark shadows smudging under his eyes, but pleased. “You did a great job finding this place.”
Denton turned and ran a hand over the worn kitchen counter. “So what do you want to do? I’ve got a lead on a place out here and I think I’m going to just stay full-time and sell my house. So it’s not a problem if you want to manage things from Minneapolis.”
I looked back over at my partner. “Not sure yet. I’m staying in Minneapolis for now, but I’m excited to be here more often. I don’t get to see my daughter enough, and I want to be more available to her when she needs me. It’s been too long since we lived in the same state.”
Something flashed on Denton’s face, but just as quickly, he nodded knowingly. “She seems like a great person,” he said, having met her earlier at a coffee shop.
“She is,” I said, and smiled as I thought of my brilliant and beautiful daughter. “Best thing I ever did. And the hardest.”
“How old was she when your wife died?” he asked curiously. “If you don’t mind talking about it.”
I glanced out the window again. “Fourteen.”
His shoes scuffed against the worn linoleum as he stepped up next to me and looked out at the city. “You deserve to live for yourself, Clive. You did the single dad thing for so long—it’s great if you want to be close to Marcie, but she’s all grown up and seems to be doing really well. Maybe you could do something for yourself, you know?”
“You think?” I thought about Frankie’s lips against mine and my hearted thumped with longing, even while my brain swirled with my conflicting thoughts. It had been a long time since I’d seriously dated anyone, and even longer since I’d craved any one particular woman.
