Page 129 of Whispers and Wishes (Untouchable 4)

“Just keeping an eye on her.”

“Yeah yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I snorted. Coop had always been the cooler of the heads among us, and he’d always been the most relaxed. Today, he’d also been the most in charge, and the fact that he got Jake to calm the fuck down and listen was a minor miracle. “Sure thing.”

Inside, I glanced at Frankie, who stared through the windshield toward the stadium. “Hey,” I told her, reaching over to clasp her left hand. “Bubba’s fine. He knew what he needed to do, and he did it.”

“I know,” she admitted. “But how much of a hypocrite am I that watching that, even knowing what I knew, pissed me off because I didn’t want her touching him? Particularly whenhedidn’t want her touching him.”

Lifting her hand, I press my lips to her knuckles. “I ever tell you that your left is almost as powerful as that right you can throw?”

The distraction worked, she glared at me. Hey, I’d take what I could get. “You’re not funny.”

“You wound me.”

The corners of her mouth gave the barest of twitches. “You’re impossible to wound. You have a magnificent ego.”

“I do, don’t I?” I winked at her. At least some of her scowl had diminished. Starting the car, I backed out and spotted Coop waiting for us. He’d given me time to settle her. Five bucks said he was aware of how uneasy that whole scenario would have left Frankie.

Part of that was why we hadn’t wanted her involved in the first place.

She sighed.

“Talk to me?”

“About what?”

“Anything,” I said. “Do you want to tell me how the appointment went? How are classes going? Do you want to see if you can record the classes, or are you getting the notes and stuff from the teachers? Halloween would be good. Anything you want to talk about, babe.”

“How is this going to work exactly? Rachel made a recording, you did, Jake did, and I know Bubba was recording it, too, right?”

Okay. So we would talk about how it would work. I diverted toward Starbuck’s. Conversation like this required coffee or liquor. With the pain meds she had, no liquor needed to be involved. Behind us, Coop followed right into the drive-thru line. I waved at him and he shot me the bird.

Aww, poor Coop. Stuck without Frankie in his car. I should shed a tear.

“You’re smirking.”

“I am. But I’m picking on Coop in my head, and it’s really funny.”

She snorted.

“As for how it will work, let me order the coffee and I’ll walk you through it again.” I thumb nailed it down to the bullet points. “Step one—Rachel already happened. Step two—with Bubba we just witnessed.”

“And participated in,” Frankie pointed out. “I hope I didn’t hurt him.”

I did not laugh. I deserved a medal for not laughing. “Bubba can take a hit. Besides, if you’d really wanted to hurt him, all you had to do was have Jake pop him.”

“Jake has already hit him. A lot.”

True. “So, see, if you’d really wanted to hurt him, you wouldn’t have been the one hitting him. At least not bare-handed. I’ve seen your golf swing. You can do serious damage.”

She laughed.

It was like winning the pennant race. “Okay, point taken. So step three is splicing all the recordings together?”

“Yup,” I said. “I’ll work on that once we’re back. I may need to head over to my place, but I’ll try it on the laptop first.”

“Are you sleeping over there?”

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