Total pages in book: 157
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154525 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 773(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Nico kissed her again, taking away her breath, words, and whatever questions remained. Especially when he stopped to kiss a path down her neck and then between her breasts. His lips inched away from her skin so he could ask, “Who does this with you?”
She swallowed thickly. “You.”
He came back up to her fast, dropping an open kiss to her mouth. “And that?”
“You,” she repeated.
“What else would you let me do?”
Frankie’s breath caught hard in her chest, but the truth slipped out before she could stop it. “Whatever you wanted.”
“Who else gets to do that to you? Who else has?”
“No one.”
Not even him, yet.
But he could. He could.
Nico tipped his chin up slightly, the glow from the windows and lights outside casting shadows across his already devastating features. “As long as I’m the only one doing those things with you, I guess that makes you mine.”
•••
Frankie didn’t realize some churches required parking passes after certain times in the day, which left her scrambling to find a spot on a nearby street before two in the afternoon. The Church of the Holy Redeemer in Brooklyn was one such establishment. She still couldn’t figure out why her father sent her a message asking if she would meet him that afternoon there, but she also couldn’t refuse him.
Salvatore could have just shown up to the penthouse. He didn’t have to make the effort to request they meet, if she was able. That was an important part of his message that she couldn’t quite shake off.
It took an extra fifteen minutes for her to find a place to park, and then another five minutes to walk to the church. By the time she came upon her father waiting on the brick-and-mortar steps, it was already ten minutes past the time she promised to be there.
“Sorry, parking was—”
“Yeah, it’s shit,” Salvatore interjected, chuckling. “It always was.”
She looked up at the tall peak of the church where the gray bricks continued to climb straight up to a massive silver cross pointing toward the cloudless sky. “It feels like we haven’t been to church in a while.”
“It’s been a minute,” her father agreed. “This one, though...well, it’s been a few years for me. Likely never for you.”
“You’ve come here before?”
“My parents married in this church. And I was baptized here, too.”
“Huh.”
Salvatore rubbed his hands together and avoided her curious gaze. “Thanks for coming. I know it was an odd request, but—”
“I miss you, Daddy.”
“I miss you too, Sunshine.”
He pulled her in for a hug the second she got close enough for him to grab. For once, he said nothing about how short her pleated, pink skirt was, even if she had pulled on a pair of white lace tights underneath for modesty’s sake.
“How’s Carina?” she dared to ask.
Salvatore laughed a broken sound. “Angry. Still angry and hateful, but what else should I expect? I said—did—a horrible thing.”
She pulled away, folding her arms over her chest, and tapping her ankle-high, heeled boot to the step. “Yeah, maybe so. But so has she.”
“Not like that, Frankie. Her words are barbed wire on a good day, sure, but she’s never cut me that deep. I think the situation was made worse by the information I didn’t know, but that’s not an excuse.”
Speaking of that information...
“So, she’s really pregnant, then?”
“Yeah, she is.”
“Didn’t see that coming,” Frankie admitted.
“Me, either. I can’t believe I’m going to be a father again at fifty-three. I’ll be what, seventy-one by the time they’re your age?”
She snorted, too amused for her own good. “You’re not even doing the math right. You turn fifty-four in a few months. The baby won’t be here by then. And you’ll be seventy-two, Daddy.”
He practically wheezed at the number, waving a hand as if to shoo away the truth while he surveyed the busy street beyond the church. “Insane. I don’t know how the fuck I got myself in this mess.”
“A lack of condoms, apparently.”
His gaze cut right back to her. “Francesca!”
“What? It’s true.”
He just shook his head.
“So, she’s keeping it, then?” Frankie asked of Carina.
He cleared his throat, shrugging. “Honestly, I don’t know. We’d need to be talking for me to have that information, and we’re not. I’m lucky she’s even at the house because she packed a bag. Or three.”
“Except the party’s coming up.”
“Yep,” Salvatore agreed, “and she can’t really leave with that going on, so...”
“I guess you’re running out of time to figure out how to apologize.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
Frankie grinned. “I mean, can’t I enjoy this a little?”
“One of us might as well.”
“You’re not happy about it?”
At that question, her father’s gaze turned back on the street beyond them. Not quickly enough, though. She saw what he tried to hide with distraction and distance.
“Are you happy about it?” she asked pointedly.
“It’s not for me to happy about yet,” he eventually replied, glancing back at her then. “It’s not my body; it’s not my choice. I know you heard some things that you shouldn’t have heard about Carina, but you don’t know it all, baby. You don’t know everything. When, or if, I can be happy about it, you’ll be the first to know. Okay?”