I angled my hips away because I wouldn’t have put it past Frankie to whack me in the bollocks. She didn’t move though. She remained still as a statue and because of her compliance, I hurried through cleaning away any remaining dirt in her cut. A couple of minutes later, and I was done. I raised Frankie’s small hand to my face and gently blew on her cut which made her release a sound very similar to a sigh. I didn’t look at her as I opened a package of gauzes and pressed one against her palm and sealed it in place by wrapping a small bandage around her hand before I grabbed a safety pin from the first aid kit and clipped the bandage in place.
“Thank you.”
The sincerity in her tone told me her anger had cooled off dramatically in the last few minutes. I nodded, then gathered the empty plastic packets I’d used and put them into the bin next to me. I knew Frankie expected me to leave but there was no way in hell that that was happening. There was something going on at Mary Well’s. Joe was speaking to the police, Deena too, the place was empty of customers and Frankie had somehow cut her hand. She said she ‘handled it’ and I wanted to know what the fuck ‘it’ was.
“You need to leave.” She looked anywhere but at me. “Staff only.”
“How’d you hurt your hand?”
“For God’s sake.” She huffed. “You’re a persistent little shit.”
“That’s twice you’ve called me little.”
“Does that hurt your little boy feelings?”
She was trying to be mean and engage me in an argument to distract me from what I wanted to know and it wasn’t working.
“You’re the one with the nickname ‘little’, Pippin. Not me.”
“Don’t come for my height today, Groot,” she warned. “I’m not in the mood.”
I moved closer to her, enjoying the widening of her eyes and the seductive little O that her rose-red lips made.
“Then tell me what happened to your hand,” I pressed. “You said you ‘handled it’. Tell me what ‘it’ was. Does it have something to do with the police being here?”
Frankie’s sigh told me she was going to answer me, she always had little tells I copped before she actually did, or said, something. She was the easiest person in the world for me to read, she always had been.
“Joe wants you and the rest of the band to be able to come in and enjoy your food without fans asking for pictures or autographs or anything like that. He put it up on Mary Well’s social media that while you guys are at his diner, you are not to be hassled. There’s a sign on the front door too.”
I must have missed that. “He did?” I tilted my head and smiled. “That’s kind of him. I appreciate that and I know the lads will too.”
“Yeah, well, not everyone is so inclined to listen to Joe,” she grumbled. “A man walked in through the back about forty minutes ago. He offered me one hundred pounds to let him get close enough to sneak some pictures of you eating in here without you and the others knowing. I said no and told him to get out. He tried to offer me more money so I grabbed the mop and warned him to leave. He got super annoyed at me, grabbed the mop and pulled on it. I lost my balance and fell. I banged my knee and cut my hand when I fell.”
I wasn’t a temperamental person; despite what a lot of people thought about me, I wasn’t one who was quick to anger. However, listening to what Frankie had just told me made me question myself because rage was quick to flow through my veins at the thought of someone harming my girl. A voice in the back of my head reminded me that she wasn’t my girl and I wanted to scream at it to shut up, but I put all of my focus on Frankie instead.
She must have seen the anger in my eyes because she put her hands on my forearms.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” she assured me. “Joe came in and threw the man out by the scruff of his neck and Anna called the police. I doubt he’ll try anything like that in here again.”
How naive she was irritated me.
“Are you serious right now?” I demanded. “You doubt he’ll try anything like that again . . . ? You don’t know the man or what he will and won’t do, Frankie.”
Frankie frowned. “The police were called.”
“That doesn’t mean shit to paps,” I stated. “D’you know how many warnings they get for doing shit like this to people connected to celebrities. Some of them even get arrested but they don’t care once they get a good picture or piece of footage.”