Sunset In Central Park

Frankie gave a half smile. “Am I the white shirt in that analogy? Because I’m not sure I’m white-shirt material.”

Eva studied her. “I agree. I’d say you were more of a combat jacket.”

“Robyn has gone upstairs to fix her makeup.” Paige steered the conversation back to work. “The guests will be arriving any minute. I’m going to talk to them.”

“We’re canceling?”

“No. We’re going ahead, but now it’s not a bridal shower—it’s a party. A celebration of friendship.”

Frankie relaxed slightly. Friendship she could cope with. “Nice. How did you pull that one off?”

“I pointed out that friends are there for the bad times as well as the good. They were invited to share the good, but if they’re true friends they’ll be right there by her side for the bad.”

“And bad times are always improved by champagne, sunshine and strawberries,” Eva said. “Here she comes.”

Frankie reached for the next pitcher of flowers and Paige put her hand out to stop her.

“Those are beautiful. What are you doing?”

“The flowers are supposed to match the mood of the occasion, and these are too bridal.”

Without waiting for Paige’s approval, Frankie tossed the bridal Queen Anne’s lace into the border and watched as the flowers hit the dirt.

She tried not to think of it as symbolic.

The three friends arrived home an hour or so before the sun was due to set.

Sweaty, irritable and miserably unsettled by the events of the day, Frankie searched in her purse for her keys.

“If I don’t get inside in the next five seconds I’m going to melt right here.”

Paige paused by the front door. “Despite everything, it went well.”

“He dumped her,” Eva murmured, and Paige frowned.

“I know. I was talking about the event. That went well. We should celebrate. Jake’s coming over. Why don’t we all meet up on the roof terrace for a drink?”

Frankie didn’t feel like celebrating. “Not tonight. I have a date with a good book.” She wasn’t going to think about how Robyn Rose was feeling. She wasn’t going to worry about whether she was all right or whether she’d ever have the courage to love again. That wasn’t her problem.

Fumbling, she dropped the key and saw Eva exchange a glance with Paige.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course. Just tired. Long day in the heat.” And part of that heat had come from being exposed to a boiling cauldron of emotions. Frankie retrieved the key and wiped her forehead with her palm.

“You should wear a skirt,” Eva said. “You would have been cooler.”

“You know I never wear skirts.”

“You should. You have great legs.”

Frankie made a blind stab at the door but it wouldn’t open. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“All right, but we thought you might need distraction after the bridal shower so we bought you something.” Paige dug her hand into her bag, the bag that held everything from cleanser to duct tape. “Here.” She handed over a parcel and Frankie took it, touched by the gesture.

“You bought me a book?” She opened it and felt a thrill of excitement. Her bad mood evaporated. “It’s the new Lucas Blade! It’s not out for another month. How did you get this?” Almost salivating, she held it against her chest. She wanted to sit down and start reading right away.

“Eva is well connected.”

Eva’s cheeks dimpled into a smile. “I mentioned to dear Mitzy that you love his work, and she used her power as a grandmother to force him to sign you a copy, although why you want to read a book called Death Returns I do not know. I’d be up all night screaming. The only good thing about that book is his photo on the jacket. The guy is insanely hot. Mitzy wants to introduce me to him, but I’m not sure I want to meet a man who writes about murder for a living. I don’t think we’d have much in common.”

“It’s signed?” Frankie opened the book and saw her name in bold black scrawl. “This is so cool. I was thinking of preordering it but the price is shocking because he’s so successful. I can’t believe you did this.”

“Your idea of horror is a bridal shower or a wedding, but you did it anyway,” Eva said, “so we wanted to treat you tonight. This is our thank-you. If it scares you and you want company, bang on the door.”

Frankie felt her throat thicken. This was friendship. Understanding someone. “I hope it does scare me. That’s what it’s supposed to do.”

Eva shook her head, bemused. “I love you, but I will never understand you.”

Frankie smiled. Maybe not understanding. Maybe friendship was loving someone even when you didn’t always understand them. “Thanks,” she muttered. “You guys are the best.”

The key finally slid into the lock and she stepped into the sanctuary of her apartment. She closed the door and the first thing she did was pull off her glasses. The frames were heavy and she rubbed her nose gently with her fingers and walked through to her pretty living room. The space was small, but she’d furnished it well, with a few good pieces she’d found on the internet. There was an overstuffed sofa that she’d rescued and covered herself, but what she loved most about her apartment were the plants. They crowded every available surface, a rainbow of greens with splashes of color, leading the eye toward the small garden.

She’d turned the small enclosed space into a leafy refuge.

Gold flame honeysuckle, Clematis Montana, and other climbers scrambled over trellises while pots overflowed with a profusion of trailing plants. Vinca and bacopa tangled and tumbled over the small area of cedar decking that caught the sun at certain times of the day, and a Moroccan lamp sat in the center of the small table for those evenings she chose to sit alone rather than join her friends on the roof terrace.

Peace and calm enveloped her. The prospect of an evening reading a book she’d been looking forward to for months lifted her mood.

This was her life and she loved it.

Not for her the stomach-churning roller-coaster ride that was love. She didn’t need that and she certainly didn’t want it. She never wasted an evening staring longingly at her phone, hoping it would ring, and she’d never cried her way through a single tissue, let alone a whole box.

She flipped open the book, but she knew if she read the first page she’d be hooked, and first she needed to shower.

Tomorrow was Sunday and her schedule was clear, so she could read all night if she wanted to, sleep late and no one would care.

One of the many benefits of being single.

She put the book down, wondering why everyone else seemed so eager to give up that precious status.

Much as she loved her friends, she was glad she lived on her own. Paige and Eva had shared the apartment above hers for years and even though Paige was now spending more time at Jake’s apartment, she still spent at least half the week in her old room. Frankie suspected that decision was driven as much by her friend’s desire not to leave Eva alone as a need to maintain her own space.

Eva’s romantic longing for a family was something Frankie understood but didn’t share. Her experience was that family was complicated, infuriating, embarrassing, selfish and, on too many occasions, hurtful. And when it was family that hurt you, the wounds were somehow deeper and slower to heal, perhaps because the expectations were different.

Her experiences growing up had influenced so much of who she was and how she chose to live her life.

Her past was the reason she couldn’t attend a wedding without wanting to ask the couple if they were sure they wanted to go ahead.

Her past was the reason she never wore red, hated skirts and was incapable of sustaining a relationship with a man.

Her past was the reason she felt unable to go back to the island where she’d grown up.

Puffin Island was a nature-lover’s paradise, but for Frankie there were too many memories and too many islanders who bore a grudge against the name of Cole.

And she didn’t blame them.

She’d grown up cloaked by the sins of her mother, and her family’s reputation was one of the reasons she’d made the move to New York. At least here when she walked into a store, the other people weren’t all talking about her. Here, no one knew or cared that her father had run off with a woman half his age, or that her mother had decided to heal her insecurities with affairs of her own.

She’d left it all behind, until six months earlier when her mother had stopped moving around the country from job to job and man to man and settled in the city.

After years of very little contact with her only child, she’d been keen to bond. Frankie found every interaction excruciating. And woven in between the embarrassment, anger and discomfort was guilt. Guilt that she couldn’t find it inside her to be more sympathetic toward her mother. Her mother had been the prime victim of her father’s infidelities, not her. She should be more understanding. But they were so different.

Had they always been that way? Or was it Frankie’s fault for going out of her way to make sure they were different? Because the clearest memory that lingered from her teenage years was her absolute determination to be nothing like her mother.

Stripping off her shirt, she walked into her little kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. Paige and Eva would no doubt spend the evening chatting, dissecting every moment of the event.

Frankie had no wish to do that. It had been bad enough at the time without going through every detail again, and it wasn’t as if they didn’t know what had gone wrong. The groom had dumped the bride. The way she saw it, a dead body didn’t need a post-mortem if you could see the bullet hole through the skull, and right now she needed to take her mind off everything to do with weddings.

Stepping into the shower, she washed away the stresses of the day.

It could have been a disaster, but with her usual smooth efficiency, Paige had rescued the situation.

Robyn’s friends had been wonderful, supporting her and saying the right things. There had even been laughter as they’d shared champagne and Eva’s cakes. Instead of an impending wedding, they’d celebrated their friendship.

Frankie wrapped herself in a towel and stepped out of the tiny bathroom.

Friendship was the one thing that could be relied on.

Where would she be without her friends?

And although she wasn’t in the mood for drinking and talking on the roof terrace, there was comfort in knowing they were only a few steps away.

She’d snuggle up with her book and lose herself.

She pulled on black yoga pants and a T-shirt, put some cheese on a plate and sat down to read. Immersed in another world, she almost leaped out of her skin as an enormous crash came from the kitchen.

“Holy crap.”

Yanked from a fictional world of horror, it took a moment for logic to kick in and tell her that one of the herb pots carefully balanced on her windowsill had fallen.

She didn’t need to investigate the source of the accident; she already knew.

Not a serial killer, but a cat.

“Claws? Is that you?” Still holding her book, she walked through to the kitchen, saw the soil and shards of terracotta scattered across the floor and a terrified cat with fur the color of marmalade. “Hey—you need to look where you’re walking.”

The cat shot under the kitchen table, eyeing Frankie from a safe distance, her fur almost vertical.

“Did you scare yourself? Because you scared the hell out of me.” Calm, Frankie put her book on the table and stooped to clear up the mess. The cat shrank farther under the table. “What are you doing down here? Where’s Matt? Is he working late?”

Matt, Paige’s brother, owned the house and lived on the top two floors. It was Matt, a landscape architect, who had found the old, neglected brownstone years before and lovingly converted it into three apartments. The four of them lived there in almost perfect harmony. Along with the cat Matt had rescued.

Frankie disposed of the shattered pot and the soil and reached for a tin of cat food. She carried on talking, careful not to make any sudden movements. “Are you hungry?”

The cat didn’t move, so Frankie opened the tin and tipped it into the bowl she’d bought after the cat’s first visit.

“I’ll just leave it here.” She put the bowl down.

Claws approached with the watchful caution she always showed toward humans.

As someone who approached people in much the same way, Frankie empathized.

“I don’t know how you’re getting down from Matt’s apartment, but I hope you’re being careful where you tread. Wouldn’t want you to be hurt.” Although it was a bit late for that. She knew Claws had been abused and neglected before Matt had rescued her. As a result, the cat trusted no one except Matt, and even he was scratched if he made any sudden movements.

Claws sniffed cautiously at the bowl and Frankie stood back, giving the animal space.

Pretending to ignore her, she topped off her wineglass, cut a few more slices of cheese and sat down at the kitchen table that had been a housewarming gift from her friends. It was her favorite place to sit, especially first thing in the morning. She liked to open the windows and watch the sunlight stream over her garden. It was a suntrap, catching the light and warmth from early in the morning.

“We should probably celebrate.” She raised the glass. “To being single. I can go where I like, do what I like, I’m dependent on no one. I sail my own ship through whichever waters I choose to navigate. Life is good.”

Claws took another sniff at the food, keeping one eye on Frankie.

Finally, she started to eat and Frankie was surprised by the sense of satisfaction that came from knowing the animal was beginning to trust her. Maybe she should get a cat of her own.

Unlike some humans, cats understood the notion of personal space.

She opened the book and started to read where she’d left off.

She was halfway through the third chapter when she heard a knock on the door.

Claws froze.

Frankie pushed a piece of paper in the book to mark her place, trying not to be irritated at the disturbance. “It will be Eva or Paige, so there’s no need to freak out. They’ve probably run out of wine. Don’t break any of my plant pots while I answer the door.”

She tugged open the front door. “Have you drunk so much that you can’t—oh.”

Matt stood in the doorway, although stood wasn’t really the right word, she decided. He virtually filled the space. He topped six feet, his shoulders broad and powerful from all the heavy lifting he did at his job. He could have been intimidating, but a faint smile tilted the corners of his mouth and softened the rough edges of masculinity. There were a dozen reasons why a woman might take a second look at Matt Walker, but it was that bone-melting sexy smile that guaranteed he was never short of female company.

“So far this evening, I haven’t drunk a drop. Hoping to remedy that soon.” He glanced from her to the door. “You should use that security chain I fitted for you.”

“Normally I do. I thought you were Paige.”

He smelled good, she thought. Like summer rain and sea breeze. It made her want to bury her face in his neck and breathe him in.

She wondered which of them would be more embarrassed.

Definitely her. Matt wasn’t the kind of guy who was easily embarrassed.

“Am I disturbing you?” He scanned her damp hair and she pushed at it self-consciously.

When it was wet it turned an unflattering shade. “Rust” one boy had called it at school after she’d been caught in a heavy rainstorm. When she blushed, which she was now doing thanks to her wayward imagination, her face clashed horribly with her hair.

“You’re not disturbing me, but if you’re looking for Paige and Eva they’re up on the roof terrace.”

“I wasn’t looking for them. I’ve lost my cat. Have you seen her?”

“She’s here. Come in. I opened a bottle of wine.” She issued the invitation without a second thought because this was Matt. Matt, whom she’d known forever and trusted.

“You’re inviting me in?” His eyes gleamed. “I’m honored. It’s Saturday night and I know how much you love your own space.”

The fact that he knew her so well was one of the things that made their relationship so easy and comfortable.

“You have owner’s privilege.”

“There’s such a thing? I never knew that. What other benefits am I entitled to that I haven’t been claiming?”

“The occasional glass of wine is definitely on that list.” She opened the door wider for him and he strolled past her into her apartment.

Her gaze lingered on his shoulders. She was human, wasn’t she? And Matt had an impressive set of shoulders. The kind you could lean on, if you were the leaning type. She wasn’t. Even so, there was no denying that the man was sexy from every angle, even from the back. Of course, the fact that she found him sexy was her secret and it was going to stay that way.

She could enjoy her own private fantasy, safe in the knowledge that no one was ever going to find out.

Frankie closed the door behind him. “How did you lose your cat?”

“I left the window open but she’s never had the courage to climb through it before. I don’t know whether to be pleased that she was finally brave enough to explore or worried that she felt the need to escape from me.”

“Mmm, I guess that depends on whether this is a onetime thing. Do women often try and escape from you?” No, she thought. Of course they didn’t.

“All the time. It’s hell on the ego.” He was cool and relaxed and her heart gave a little kick, as it always did around him.

She ignored it, as she always did.

Unlike her mother, she didn’t think sexual attraction was an impulse that had to be acted on. She’d rather have a long-term friendship than short-term sex any day. In fact, there were a million activities more appealing than sex, which she’d always found to be fraught with complications, unrealistic expectations and pressure.

If they gave out grades for sex, you’d be a D minus, Cole, with nothing for effort.

She frowned, wondering why that memory had come into her head now.

The guy had been a total jerk. She wasn’t going to give a second thought to a man whose ego was so big it had needed its own zip code.

Matt, on the other hand, was a good friend. She saw him most days, sometimes on the roof terrace where they met for drinks or movie night and sometimes at Romano’s, the local Italian restaurant owned by Jake’s mother.

Their friendship was one of the most important relationships in her life.

Which was one of the reasons she tolerated his cat.

“I think you should be pleased she wandered down to my apartment. Shows she’s slowly gaining confidence. With luck she’ll eventually stop trying to scratch us all to the bone. She’s in the kitchen.” She walked through and he followed her, scanning the profusion of pots on the windowsill.

“You’re growing herbs now?”

“A few. Sweet basil and Italian parsley. I grow them for Eva.”

“There’s an Italian parsley? All those trips to Italy I took in college and I never knew that.” He strolled across to the window and stared out across the small garden. “You’ve done a good job with this place. I’m lucky having you living here.”

They talked all the time about a range of subjects but he rarely made personal comments. She hated the fact that it flustered her.

“I’m the lucky one. If it weren’t for you I’d be living in an apartment the size of a shoe box and storing my clothes in the oven. You know how it is in New York.” Embarrassed, she stooped to stroke the cat and Claws shot under the table for protection. “Oops. Moved too fast. She’s nervous.”

He turned. “She’s getting better. A few months ago she wouldn’t have paid you a visit.” He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and Claws immediately crept out and jumped onto his lap. “Thanks for feeding her.”

“You’re welcome.” Frankie watched as Claws gave a slow stretch. The cat lost her balance and shot out her claws, but Matt curved his hand over her back, holding her securely against the hard muscle on his thigh.

Frankie stared at that hand and the slow, reassuring stroke of his fingers and felt herself grow hot.

“Something wrong?”

“Excuse me?” Frankie dragged her eyes from the mesmerizing movement of his fingers and met his amused gaze.

“You’re staring at my cat.”

Cat? Cat. “I—” she’d stopped staring at the cat a long time ago. “She’s still skinny.”

“The vet said it will take a while for her to regain all the weight she lost when she was shut in that room.” There was a grim set to his mouth that reminded her that there were limits even to Matt’s patience. And then he smiled. “Have I seen that T-shirt before? The color suits you.”

“What?” Unbalanced by both the smile and the comment, she stared at him.

She didn’t think Matt would ever mock her, which could only mean—

“Do you want something?” She looked him in the eye. “Because you can just ask straight out. You don’t have to do the whole ‘you look nice in that T-shirt’ thing to soften me up. Thanks to you I live in the best apartment in Brooklyn, and on top of that I’ve known you forever so you can pretty much ask anything and I’ll say yes.”

“Another owner’s privilege?” He gently lifted the cat and set her down on the floor. “You probably shouldn’t have told me that. I might choose to invoke that clause in our agreement.”

Was he flirting with her?

Confusion jammed her thought processes.

She always knew where she was with Matt but suddenly she was in unfamiliar territory.

Of course he wasn’t flirting. They never flirted. She didn’t know how to flirt. Her expertise, honed over a decade, was in putting men off, not in encouraging them.

And anyway, Matt would never be interested in her. She wasn’t sophisticated enough or experienced enough.

She needed to say something light and funny to restore the atmosphere, but her mind was blank.

Matt watched her steadily. “I paid you a compliment, Frankie. You don’t have to strip it down and check it for bugs or incendiary devices. You just say thank you and move on.”

A compliment?

But why? He never paid her compliments. “This T-shirt is five years old. It’s not that special.”

“I didn’t say I liked your T-shirt. I said I liked the way you look in it. I was complimenting you, not what you were wearing specifically. Did you mention wine?” Smoothly he changed the subject and she turned to pick up the bottle, frustrated with herself.

Why did she have to turn it into such a big deal? Was it really so hard to flirt?

Eva would have had the perfect response ready. So would Paige.

She was the only one who had no idea what to say or do. She needed to get a “how to” book. How to flirt. How not to make a fool of yourself around a man.

“Montepulciano. Unless you’d rather a beer?”

“Beer sounds good.”

She stooped and pulled one out of the fridge, forcing herself to relax. She was going to type “how to flirt” into a search engine later. She was going to practice a few responses so this never happened again. If a guy paid her a compliment, she should at least know how to respond instead of treating every comment as if it were an incoming computer virus. “How was your day?”

“I’ve had better.” He snapped the top off the beer. “Too much work, not enough time. Remember that piece of business I won a few months ago?”

“You’ve won loads of business, Matt.”

“Roof terrace on the Upper East Side.”

“Oh yes, I remember.” This conversation was better. Safe. “It was a real coup. Is there a problem with planning?”

“Not planning. That’s all good. What isn’t good is the fact that Victoria left yesterday.”

Frankie had trained with Victoria at the Botanic Gardens and she’d been the one to recommend her to Matt. “Doesn’t she have to give you notice?”