Page 29 of Final Serenade

“Best steak in town.” Frankie grinned wolfishly, ushering me inside. His fingers felt wonderful on my back.

“Let me be the judge of that.” I tried to match his lighthearted tone.

He seemed at ease and I understood his choice of establishment but wondered if he’d been worried about the paps at all.

The place was tucked away in the literal underground and from what I could tell, the only point of entry was through the hotel lobby, through the concierge, and then a guard.

We sat in a private booth, casually flipping through the menus. Frankie still wore his jacket, but he took off the sunglasses and set them on the table. The Dodgers hat hid his signature sandy locks, and a thin fringe of stubble shadowed his strong jaw. This was a very-well-thought-out intentionally disheveled look that was obviously created to help him blend in with the rest of the L.A. crowd. It didn’t work. I could sense his sex appeal from across the table. The man was a tantalizing enigma, and the heat he elicited was a dark vortex of all-consuming desires.

Everything with him felt almost…criminal.

There wasn’t a single question in my head that I didn’t want to ask Frankie, but I wasn’t certain where to start or if I was allowed.

He’d been gone for seven years. No one had heard or seen him since he crashed into a freeway divider on his motorcycle while going 120 miles per hour. At least that was what they said on the news.

I’d been an impressionable teenage girl. Lost and utterly broken. With a crappy life. I hadn’t known Levi back then. Or Linda. I had a minimum wage part-time job and was trying to save up for my own apartment. That day, I’d secretly sobbed for Frankie. I’d never been the kind of person to pray, but I did that too.

And now, he was sitting across the table from me. Magnetic and taunting. A man I wouldn’t imagine having dinner with, even in my wildest dreams. It almost drove me to the edge.

My phone buzzed in my purse.

“Sorry,” I muttered, setting the menu aside to check the message. Force of habit. I couldn’t afford to miss an important press release. “It’s work.”

“Sure.” Frankie rested his forearms on the table and watched me.

The text was from Levi. He wanted to know when I planned to pick up my laptop.

Got held up with some stuff. Will come by tomorrow, I typed and tossed the phone in my purse.

“Sorry, does it bother you when people do other things in your presence, your highness?” I joked, my eyes meeting Frankie’s.

He laughed. “No.”

“Oh.” I brushed the page of the menu with the tip of my index finger. “That’s good to know.”

“I recommend either meatloaf or steak.”

“Can you vouch that neither of those have the stuff that’ll turn me into the Green Goblin?”

“I think it’s best we ask the waitress,” he suggested.

We ordered both dishes and requested extra plates. Frankie hardly ate anything. He was moving a piece of potato and some green beans around his plate with his fork while I was polishing off the meatloaf. The food tasted amazing and for a second there, I didn’t care if sauce dripped down my chin, no matter who I was with. Simple things made me happy too. Not just rock stars. We kept our conversation light. Music. Career—mostly mine. And a few Hall Affinity songs came up.

This was by far the most bizarre dinner I’d had in years. And my mother sure knew how to organize reality-TV-show-worthy family nights.

“Okay…” I set my fork down and leaned back in my chair. My stomach was pleasantly full and my brain had received enough fuel. Time to get serious. “I don’t want to sit here and pretend you’re my neighbor Pete. You can't seriously expect me not to ask you any questions.”

“I don’t mind being Pete.” Frankie’s smile shot straight to my heart.

“But you’re not.”

“What do you want to ask me about?”

“Why now? Why after seven years of silence did you decide to return?”

The intensity of his gaze washed over me like a murky wave. I saw it in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about those seven years. Yet here we were.

“Asking a music journalist to dinner implies sooner or later she’d raise the topic,” I tell him, my voice quiet but firm.

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