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Frankie’s.
My highly displeased agent sits in an armchair across from me in her usual head-to-toe black, long, dark hair curtaining intense hazel eyes. That paired with her severe expression, her hand flexing menacingly around her gray acrylic cane, she looks like a pissed-off witch, ready to curse me. I think, one more wrong move on my part, and she just might.
“You,” she says flatly, “are an ass of unfathomable proportions.”
“This is not news.” Shutting my eyes, I drop my head back on the arm of their sofa.
Frankie jabs my thigh with the tip of her cane. Hard.
“Ow!” I whine. “Ren, Frankie hit me.”
“Don’t talk to him,” she snaps. “He has no part in this conversation.”
“So we’re having this meeting at your house while Ren makes us lunch, why again?”
“So I won’t murder you,” she tells me darkly.
I swallow. Frankie’s wrath is just about the only thing I’m scared of. That and losing my hockey career.
I might also be a teensy bit scared of finally having done something that could cost me Ren’s friendship, too. Not that I’d ever admit that to anyone, especially Ren.
I glance toward the man in question, who still exhibits no signs of having written me off, considering he drove me to and from my most recent doctor appointment in his minivan and is now making me a meal. Still, he’s got me nervous, standing with his back to me, focused on whatever’s cooking on the range while he wears his theater-nerd apron covered in doodled William Shakespeares.
“Ren,” I whisper-plead.
He gives me an apologetic glance over his shoulder. “Better listen to her. You know I’d step between you and anything, Seb, except my wife.”
As he says that, Frankie’s expression transforms from a scowl to a smile, which she beams his way. He beams a smile back.
Their mutual gaze is disgustingly affectionate.
“Stop doing that in front of me. It’s making me nauseous.”
Frankie cuts me another scathing glare and pokes me in the hip this time, making me yelp. “Sure that nausea isn’t a response to your self-sabotaging bullshit finally coming back to bite you in the ass?”
“I know I fucked up. I told you, I understand, okay? Now it’s your job to help me fix it. That’s why I pay you the big bucks.”
Frankie snorts, leaning back in her chair, and—thank God—dropping her cane beside her. “Seb, I am brilliant at my job. I am a damn good sports agent. But this is pushing the limits of even my abilities. If it were simply managing your image, that would be one thing—”
“Managing my image is exactly what I need you to do.”
“No,” she says flatly. “It’s not. Your image does not need ‘managing.’ It needs a goddamn resurrection.”
I frown. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
Frankie blinks at me slowly, as bleak silence thickens the air. Ren bites his lip and keeps his eyes on the stovetop, stirring steadily.
“Yes, Gauthier,” she finally snaps. “It is ‘that bad.’”
Oh fuck. I’ve been Gauthier-ed. I’m in trouble.
“So I crashed my car,” I concede diplomatically. “But it wasn’t into anyone else.”
“No,” Frankie mutters between clenched teeth. “Just an after-school outreach program facility.”
Ren winces.
“At least it was two in the morning? No one was hurt?”
