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“Hey,” Marie said, looking between the two of us. “What did we miss?”
“Nothing,” I said with a warning glance at Kate. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Well, it’s about to become something,” Joni put in eagerly. “We came to find you, Frankie, because there is a super hot as frick man asking for you outside. One Sofia just called Dad. Yes,please, by the way. I remember him being yummy, but da-yum, Daddy!”
“Ew, Joni, that’s Sofia’s father,” Marie said, elbowing Joni in the ribs.
“Doesn’t mean he can’t be Frankie’s daddy too,” Joni said with a wink.
I reared back. “Xavier’shere?”
Marie nodded next to her, but elbowed Joni in the ribs. “Don’t be gross.”
“Don’t be celibate,” Joni retorted back, then hobbled forward with a conspiratorial grin. “Seriously, though, sis. Do we need to go out there and kick his ass for you? I might have a bum knee right now, but I still got buns of steel. I could drop kick him across the square if you want. Or we could just sic Matthew on him. He’s so wound up with sexual tension, he’d probably tear Xavier a new one for cheating on you the way he did.”
Kate just gave me another look, this one of the distinct “I told you so” variety.
I stood up, checked myself in the mirror, then turned toward the door.
“Thanks, but I don’t think that’s necessary,” I told my sister. “When it comes to Xavier, I can take care of myself.”
Maybe if I said it enough, I’d really learn to believe it.
* * *
Thank you for reading Then Come Lies and the first bit of Last Comes Fate. Make sure preorder the final chapter of Xavier and Francesca’s story, out June 2023!
www.nicolefrenchromance.com/lastcomesfate
Need more?
Keep reading for a peek at Matthew and Nina’s story, which begins with The Scarlet Night
THE SCARLET NIGHT
AN EXCERPT
I never wore black to work. My sisters said it made me look like a gangster. The Italian genes in our family made a pretty clear stamp on the six of us. Frankie, Marie, Kate, Lea, Joni, and I all had deep green eyes, olive skin, and dark brown hair that gleamed like oil slicks under street lamps. After friends in law school started calling me Vito Corleone just to piss me off, I decided I couldn’t have judges thinking the defendants were guilty because their prosecutor looked like a crook. So I saved the pinstripes and undertaker colors for nights like this, when looking a little bit dangerous acted more in my favor than not.
Envy was my favorite bar in Manhattan. Buried under a crumbling brick walkup on the Lower East Side, it was far enough from work that I never ran into colleagues, close enough that I could get home on a single train, and on the polar opposite side of the city from the rest of my nosy family. I may have lived with one sister, but I was as likely to run into one of the other gossip fiends in certain neighborhoods as I was to see a taxi. That alone made it worth spending time in a bar named after one of the seven deadly sins.
Envy also happened to offer the occasional free drink, considering it was owned by someone I had known my entire life: Jamie Quinn, my best friend.
“How you doing, Jamie?” I shook out my trench coat and adjusted my vest before sitting down at the bar. My hair was soaked—I’d had to leave my hat at home to dry.
“Zola.” Jamie accepted my fist bump. “Wasn’t expecting to see you tonight. Not in that fuckin’ hurricane out there.”
The city was a river. I was going to be up until three in the morning polishing my shoes to get these stains out, but what was I going to do? Wear rain boots with vintage Armani? Get the fuck out.
I shrugged. “I needed a change of pace. The rain makes a man feel cooped up, you know?”
“I hear that,” Jamie said. “I opened a Chianti yesterday afternoon. You want?”
I shook my head. Jamie’s house Chianti was decent, but not after more than a day, when it would taste like vinegar. “Don’t think so.Aperitivotonight.”
Jamie nodded, unsurprised. “Right up.”
He made quick work of my drink—his own twist on a Negroni that he served with a tray of house-marinated olives—then scuttled down to pour PBR for a bunch of NYU kids straying from Third Avenue. I ate an olive and looked around. The barwasunusually quiet for a Friday night. Only the adventurous were out and about. Well, and the lonely.
