One Night with Frankie, page 1
One Night with Frankie
A steamy, age-gap novella
Mimi Flood
One Night with Frankie
Copyright © 2021 MIMI FLOOD
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Any product names or names featured are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference.
978-1-7777921-0-7 (Print)
978-1-7753539-7-3 (eBook)
If you obtained this copy through legitimate sources (i.e.: buying, using a lending option, or through a paid subscription or library), thank you for being honest.
If you are reading a PDF of this for free obtained from a pirating website, your mamma would be ashamed of you. Good For You, Sir.
Cover design: Mimi Flood
Contents
1. Henry
2. Frankie
3. Frankie
4. Henry
5. Frankie
6. Henry
7. Frankie
8. Henry
9. Frankie
10. Henry
11. Henry
12. Frankie
13. Henry
14. Frankie
15. Henry
16. Frankie
17. Henry
18. Frankie
19. Henry
20. Frankie
21. Henry
22. Henry
23. Frankie
24. Frankie
25. Henry
26. Frankie
27. Henry
28. Frankie
29. Frankie
30. Henry
Acknowledgements
About the author
Also By Mimi Flood
one
Henry
Five years earlier
There should have been no doubt in his mind. When Henry received the email from the Dean, he should have sensed it coming. But he believed that this was just a regular meeting between him and his friend of over fifteen years, otherwise known as his boss.
Stephen’s secretary let Henry in and offered him coffee. He sat down in the brown leather chair, facing the large wooden desk, and stared out the window across, watching the students enjoying the wonderfully sunny day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the temperature wasn’t anything like the usual September weather. An Indian summer, they called it, and Henry loved everything about it. He wasn’t ready to bring out his fall jackets and scarves yet. He hated having to put away his bike and take apart Barbara’s garden to prepare for winter. The only thing he liked about fall was the leaves changing color.
Almost ten minutes late, which was unusual for the man’s obsessive punctuality, Stephen walked in and the air in the room shifted.
“Morning, Henry,” his friend said, taking a seat behind the desk. He pressed his shoulders back and set his mouth in a straight line. His eyes didn’t quite meet Henry’s, either. Another sign something wasn’t right.
“Morning, Steve. How was your weekend? How’s Mary?”
“Fine. Just fine.” Stephen scratched his nose, then fiddled with papers on his desk. He cleared his throat. “And yours? Do anything good?”
Henry let out a long sigh, interlacing his fingers across his stomach. “Not particularly. Went to the park with Barbara. Had a picnic. Did some air ballooning, too.” Stephen’s thick white brow met in the middle of his wide face, and Henry smiled. “I’m kidding, Steve. I watched the game and did some reading. You know how it is?”
“I guess that means things aren’t better with Barb?”
Henry crossed his legs and looked away. “Not really, no.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Maybe you’d be better off—”
“Would you mind if we didn’t talk about this right now?” Henry interrupted. “I have to get ready for my class.”
Stephen leaned back in his high-top chair and scratched his grayish-white beard. “That won’t be happening.”
A sharp pain stabbed Henry in the gut, but he tried to ignore it. “Fine, if you insist on talking about my soon-to-be ex-wife, then…” His joke fell flat. His friend stared, blinking a few times, telling Henry all he didn’t have the courage to say out loud. “It’s not going away, is it?”
Stephen shook his head. “Afraid not. Her parents have hired an expensive and thorough lawyer. They’ve promised to keep it out of the papers, but on one condition.” He loosened his tie, and Henry sensed his world dropping.
“And what’s that?”
“That you leave without a fuss.”
Henry slammed his hands on the desk and caught a flicker of fear cross his friend’s face.
“Stephen, you know this is bullshit. It’s all lies.”
Stephen shrugged in a way that said he wasn’t sure what to believe. Witnessing his friend turn on him cut Henry to the bone. “You know it’s not true, right? I didn’t do it. She just needed my help.” Henry ran a hand through his reddish-brown hair. The length was too long, and he took a mental note to schedule a haircut soon. “Christ, Steve, she’s nineteen.”
“Exactly, Henry. Nineteen.” Stephen sat up straight. “What were you thinking?”
“I was just helping her out. She was struggling with her paper, and I…” His word faded with the memory. He’d made many poor decisions in life, but this was by far the worst.
Stephen shook his head and rolled his brown eyes, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have helped her.”
Henry caught the implication in his friend’s words and bit back his anger, letting out a deep breath by his nose. Resigned, he let his shoulders drop. “So, what does this mean? I’m on probation? Sabbatical?”
Stephen’s brow furrowed, and he looked at Henry with pity in his eyes. “You’re fired.”
“Fired?”
“I have no choice. We’ve tried to talk them down, but the board and her lawyer won’t settle for anything less.”
“I’ve been here for ten years. You can’t just—”
“It’s already done, Henry. You need to pack your things.” He glanced at the clock. “Security will escort you to your car.”
Henry’s skin burned as darkness seeped in. He’d made one mistake. He’d trusted the wrong person. This wasn’t happening. “But Stephen, what am I—”
“Immediately, Henry.”
Stephen’s eyes darted toward the door. Henry knew the security guard was waiting on the other side. Stephen kept talking, offering empty words of sympathy and understanding, but Henry refused to hear them. Nothing his friend could say would heal this betrayal. He could make excuses and claim the board made him do it, but Henry doubted how hard Stephen had fought for him. Not as much as he should have, that was certain.
“Tell me the truth, as my friend. Do you really think I slept with her?”
The slight shrug and momentary hesitation were enough. “Henry…”
He raised a hand to silence him. “No, forget it. You don’t need to say anything else. Take care, Stephen.” He walked to the door, his clenched fist resting on the knob. “Thanks for ruining my life.”
As expected, the guard, dressed in grey and black, with his chin raised, projecting a false sense of power, waited for him with a glare. He followed behind Henry to his office, watched him pack his possessions into a cardboard box—things that had cluttered his desk for years—then the rotund man escorted him to the parking lot without a word.
Henry sat in the lot in his beaten-up old car for hours. He watched the students and wished he’d done things differently. He put the car into gear and wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, leaving behind his career, his life, knowing there wasn’t much left to return home to, either.
two
Frankie
Present Day
She should buy some curtains. It was the one thing Frankie refused to have someone else do for her, and because of this, it was also the one and only thing that left her apartment unfinished.
Her mother scolded her on an almost daily basis for it.
“Did you get curtains yet?”
“It’s an enormous window, Mom. I can’t just pick something up at the store. They need to be custom.”
“I agree. Why don’t you let Lamont take care of it?”
Lamont. There was no way she would let her mother’s interior designer back into her apartment after his last attempt. Much to her disapproval, he’d taken what had been a Boho-chic loft and turned it into something her mother would feel right at home in—something the polar opposite of who Frankie was. It took her months to undo the damage he’d caused, and she was just recognizing her décor again.
And so, every morning, just like this one, she laid in bed and stared out her semi-circle window, with the sun glaring through a crack between the buildings across the street and hitting her right between the eyes.
She really should get some curtains.
Her phone pinged with repeated notifications. She wasn’t awake yet, and her body even less, so she let it ring. It didn’t matter. The people she wanted to hear from weren’t up yet
Maybe she’d go out and buy some curtains today, she thought, when her phone rang. With a stretch, she reached for it. It was her lawyer. She pressed Ignore.
Again, it rang. This time it was her mother. There was no way she would take her call this early. Ignore.
By the time it rang for the third time, she was about to throw the iPhone across the room when she saw the image of her friend on the screen. If Lindsay was calling, it wasn’t good. Lindsay never woke before twelve. And definitely never called.
“Linds?”
“You are so screwed,” her friend’s soft, country-song crooning voice said laced with subtle hints of mockery.
“Now what did I do?” she asked, but instinctively her gut clenched.
“They have a video. Of you and Jason.”
The heat from the sun seeped in through the window like fire from hell—a hell coming straight for her. “How…?” Her words drifted.
“Whatever you do, don’t turn on TMZ.”
It was too late. Frankie was already reaching for her laptop and typing the address in. The headline flashed across her screen in bold, red letters:
Sex in an alley! Mega-billionaire heiress caught with a married man!
“No.” Her hand flew up to her mouth.
“How could you let yourself get caught?”
Frankie pulled the phone away, staring at it, repulsed by her supposed best friend’s lack of support. “I didn’t let myself get caught, Lindsay.”
“Well, you weren’t stealth about it, were you?”
“But how did they catch us? There was no one there.”
“Are you dense? Someone obviously leaked that you’d be at the club. Someone obviously saw you two leaving.”
Jason. She needed to speak to him. Now. But why hadn’t he called her first? “I have to call him.”
“No, you fucking don’t. You need to get rid of any proof you two were together. And then call your lawyer.”
“But—”
“Stop. You’ve been stupid enough already. Don’t keep it up.”
“Lindsay?” she asked, but the line went dead.
She scrolled through the headlines just as her phone pinged with more incoming texts and emails.
Her lawyer was next to call.
“This is manageable,” Reggie said, his thick Brooklyn accent confident and direct. “But you need to delete any proof you two were in a relationship.”
“So, I’ve been told.”
“And you’ve got to leave town, too. Try to get out of the city, for a couple of days, until we get this under control.”
“Where am I going to go, Reggie? Everyone knows me.”
“Think of someplace. And do not speak to anyone. I mean it. Not one fucking person. The press is outside your place right now, so make sure you sneak out quick with your head down.”
With heavy feet, she padded to the window, peeking down. Five floors below from her penthouse loft, she spotted them. Small heads with caps, camera straps wrapped around their necks, hounding every person who walked in or out of the building. She gulped.
As if she didn’t feel guilty and shameful enough, now she had to run away with her head hanging in shame. “Yeah, I’ll figure it out. Have you spoken to my dad yet?”
He sighed. “Who do you think woke me up with this?”
Her heart tugged, and she lost her breath. Her father was like the watchful eye of God, monitoring anything that had to do with the family—the legacy—and especially her, his only child. Not only was her life under the constant scrutiny of the paparazzi, but it was so because of her father. She feared what he’d say, what he’d do. Any scandal was a big no-no in their family, and she’d unintentionally walked right into one.
“Get your stuff together and head out. I’ll try to put out the fires.”
“Do you think you can?”
He sighed heavily. “Let’s hope.”
“I’m sorry, Reg.”
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”
She made it to the underground garage without being seen and stuffed her Louis Vuitton suitcase in the trunk of her liquid crimson Vantage Aston Martin. Frankie wondered if her father would repossess her twenty-first birthday gift after all this settled down.
She sat behind the wheel, tucking her long blond hair into and adjusting the black baseball cap she’d put on, lowering it just enough to hide her face. The engine whirled, and she braced the steering wheel with a tight grip and white knuckles before pulling up to the garage door. The metal barricade rose with a whine, and her breath hitched when she saw the handful of paparazzi on the other side. Their cameras exploded in a frenzy of flashes, their yells surrounded her, and she pressed the gas, fighting the urge to haul ass for fear she’d run one of them over.
Despite how much she hated them, and how they hounded her and her family, she didn’t want to add a charge of manslaughter to her now tarnished record. When they eventually pushed back from the car, she drove through the Manhattan streets with only one destination in mind.
three
Frankie
Oakwhite Bay was the one place where she could be herself, where no matter how long since her last visit, still felt like home. Her true home. Where she could hide from her mistakes and avoid the repercussions of her poor choices.
The quaint seaside town hadn’t changed over the years. The shops were quiet, the restaurants half-full and the people still as friendly as ever. There was nothing hectic about it. Everything moved at a slower pace, and after leaving the busy city behind, she’d never craved Oakwhite’s laziness more than she did at that moment.
Her phone vibrated in her purse, but she didn’t pull it out. They all needed to speak to her. Now. Her agent, her manager, her PR firm. They all wanted her, and they wouldn’t leave her alone until she returned to New York. But that could wait. It had to. She refused to deal with her life and everything about it. And the one person whose phone call filled her with the most anxiety was the one person she knew wouldn’t bother calling. Not right now, anyway. Her father would judge from afar. Miles and miles of country separated them, and yet she felt the burn of his disappointment seeping into her, finding her in this small town she held so dear. There was no escape from him—from what he’d done to alter her once simple life—but this was the closest form of escape she’d find.
When she was a child, Oakwhite Bay had been a summer getaway for her and her family. A place where seaside cottages co-mingled with rocky-shored beaches, and where your only concern was whether you’d have lobster or fish for supper. Back then, her family comprised three people, not thirty thousand. Back then, she was the centre of her parents’ universe and she didn’t feel like the last runner waiting for the baton in a relay race. The legacy—her father’s favorite word.
Now, Oakwhite was a hideout, an escape from her life, from the facade she wore to make everyone else happy. And it was this drive to make others happy that brought her back to Oakwhite’s simplicity nestled within dune-lined beaches.
Wandering the streets for a few hours, Frankie peeked into shops but didn’t buy anything, worried customers might recognize her or that her family would track her credit card. It was stupid of her not to bring more cash. The lady at the B & B didn’t seem too interested in her or who she was, but seemed preoccupied with why someone so young would travel alone.
“I like it,” Frankie had replied. “The independence.”
The lady’s smile had been patronizing. She seemed disappointed with the answer, but Frankie didn’t mind—it was the truth, in a much deeper sense than the little old lady could fathom. Daily, Frankie longed for freedom, but had never mustered the courage to look for it. The matter—as Reggie’s texts were now calling it—was just the kick in the ass she’d needed for some time away from the city. And what better place than the town she’d spent almost every summer of her childhood?
Main Street turned right onto Lakeside, and Frankie grew tired and hungry. She hadn’t eaten since that morning when she’d hopped into her car and hit the I-95 North. Her stomach rumbled. She looked around for anything she could buy, something quick that wouldn’t fill her with regret in a few hours. Need to keep in shape—you’re our image. Her father’s words echoed in her head, filling her with seething bitterness.
