He stared at her. “Who would hide shit like that?”

“Bierman, the director of research and development, who might get a rather hefty bonus for a successful launch of a product and who has been backing this product for years.”

“Putting unknown numbers of people who take that drug at risk?” Benny asked, unable to wrap his head around someone doing something that unbelievably dickish.

“It’s highly likely the side effects that are dangerous don’t occur in the entirety of the subjects that took it or they wouldn’t be able to hide it. It’s probably that it happens very rarely and only came out in the later phases of the trials, which could mean the longer the drug is taken, that’s when the adverse effect is experienced. And at this juncture, dumping Tenrix, the loss of capital on that product would be colossal.”

“That makes it okay?” Ben pushed.

“No,” Frankie answered. “But for someone like Bierman, it might make it worth the risk.”

“The FDA has to approve that shit, Frankie.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But what did they approve?”

“Fuck,” Benny whispered, getting what she was saying.

“If that drug is dangerous, Ben, I can’t let it launch.”

Fuck.

There it was. Frankie getting a wild hair and wanting to get involved.

“You’re not stickin’ your nose in this,” he stated.

Her eyes got wide again, and this time, it was in a way he absolutely did not like.

“So I leave, turn my back on this, Bierman succeeds in getting Tenrix launched, and people in a couple of months of taking that drug, or a couple of years, or a couple of decades, suffer unknown consequences? Consequences that were worth quashing data and two men getting dead?”

“I thought you said your boss has his own concerns.”

“Yeah, but you blow the whistle on something like this, you gotta prove there’s been a foul on the play. You can’t make allegations without anything concrete backing it.”

“So let him find the concrete.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

He turned to her and shot back, “And what if you do?” He lifted a hand, curled it around her neck, and yanked her closer so they were near nose-to-nose. “This guy is desperate enough for this drug to go through, he’s killin’ people and you’re already on the firing line ’cause he wants to take down your boss who’s askin’ questions. You get involved in a deeper way, what will he do?”

Her eyes slid to either side before coming back to his when she announced, “That’s where you and Sal come in.”

He dropped his hand and sat back in the couch, resting his head on the top to look at the ceiling, before he muttered, “Fuck me.”

He lifted his head when he felt Frankie positioning to straddle his lap, something she set her beer aside and yanked her skirt up to do. A dirty play since he liked her there too much, he liked her skirt up around her hips more, she knew it, and she hadn’t even started talking yet.

Then she started talking.

“I’d like to talk to Lloyd, but I can’t. Not yet. Not this early. I’d like to talk to Colt, but I can’t do that either without throwing Sal under the bus. So what I have to do is talk to Tandy, speed shit up, get just enough that it won’t make it look like seriously nasty office politics if I go to Lloyd with my concerns about Bierman. It can’t be hard to find. Nurses worked on those trials all over the country. There have to be witnesses, data, files, and not all on a computer. This drug has been in testing for ages. There has to be something.”

He looked into her eyes and stated, “You do know that I carried you through a forest with you bleedin’ from a gunshot wound.”

“I know,” she replied gently.

“So you know I kinda don’t want a repeat performance of that.”

Her face was soft when she said, “Sal and you’ll keep me safe.”

He curled his fingers around her hips and informed her, “This is not a smart play, Frankie.”

She lifted her hands to hold him on either side of his neck and she returned, “This is the only play, Ben. People’s health is at stake.”

He stared at her, thinking she was right. If that was a possibility, it’d be a dick move to walk away and hope someone else would deal with it.

But Frankie was not that kind of person. If that was a possibility, and it sounded like it was, she’d never walk away.

So now she was walking right into that field.

But it was Ben’s job, working with fucking Salvatore Giglia, to make certain a dead body didn’t drop on her.

Or far fucking worse, her beautiful body dropping.

He kept staring at her, thinking he’d like to bring Cal in on this. He and Vi would be home from their honeymoon in three days.

But people were getting whacked; Cal was a new husband, new father.

He couldn’t bring Cal into this.

It was Sal. Sal and Benny.

Fuck.

“I don’t like this,” he told her.

“It won’t take long,” she replied. “I think Tandy’s crew has laid the groundwork.” She leaned into him. “And it might turn out to be nothing. It might not be Bierman and Tenrix. It might be he’s just a massive dick. It might be the hits have nothing to do with this or each other. It might just be Wyler has bad luck and attracts crazy people, and then I’ll have another decision to make ’cause I won’t want to work for a place like that, even from a home office in Chicago.”

Ben kept staring at her, knowing that was not in the realm of possibility. The company was big, but there were too many coincidences. It had to fit together.

He just didn’t want Frankie being the one to fit it together.

Even so, knowing his baby, he had no choice.

So he said, “You make no move without me knowin’ about it.”

She grinned, bent in, and touched her mouth to his, a light in her eyes he did not like and her body wired a different way.

No fear. All in. Raring to go.

Fucking Frankie.

Moving back, she said softly, “Okay.”

“I gotta fill Sal in on all this shit.”

She nodded and repeated, “Okay.”

“I’m close for the long haul,” he told her, and her head tipped to the side.

“What about the restaurant?”

“Pop and Manny are on it.”

“Is that gonna be okay?” she asked.

“My other choice is…?” he asked back.

“Well…Sal,” she answered, and his fingers dug into her hips.

“I keep you safe.”

That got him another soft look before she whispered, “My Benny.” Then suddenly, her head jerked and she asked, “What did you do with Gus?”

“Put him in your second bedroom when I got here.”

Her eyes got huge again, this time in a way he liked, and she asked loudly, “You brought him?”

“Not gonna leave him behind for an indeterminate stay with Mrs. Zambino. He might forget who’s payin’ for his puppy chow.”

“Oh my God!” she cried, and he lost her straddling his lap since she jumped off and ran toward the hall.

Ben let his head drop back to the couch and, again, looked at the ceiling, wondering if he’d gone insane.

He turned his head to the side and saw Frankie come in, cuddling and cooing at Gus, no shoes, skintight, sexy, don’t-fuck-with-me business dress (that in about five minutes he was going to peel off of her), her mane of hair pulled back at the top, wild with curls at the bottom, and he knew he hadn’t gone insane.

He’d gone and got himself pussy-whipped.

“I haven’t paid a pet deposit,” she announced.

“That gonna be a problem?” he asked in reply, and she gave him a huge smile.

“No, seein’ as I have no qualms with them evicting me early.”

He liked that answer a fuckuva lot so he ordered, “Come here, Frankie.”

“Though, they do, while I instigate my heretofore unmined sleuth powers to uncover probably highly felonious acts at a major, multinational pharmaceutical company, the commute is gonna be a bitch.”

“Come here, Francesca.”

She again tipped her head to the side. “Has Gus been walked?”

Fuck.

He hadn’t.

Ben folded out of the couch and ordered, “Go get some flip-flops.”

“I can walk him in heels.”

He cut his eyes to her. “You put those heels on to walk Gus, you’ll find yourself ass to the hood of the first car we pass, giving your neighbors a show. You want to give your man a break from all that”—he threw a hand her way—“you put on flip-flops and I might be able to control it until I get you and our dog back through the front door.”

She grinned her I-have-a-secret-and-I-wanna-moan-it-in-your-ear grin and replied, “I’ll get some flip-flops.”

“Good call,” he muttered.

She bent to put Gus to the floor, torturing Benny by giving him a direct view of her ass with her tight skirt stretching tighter, thankfully straightened, turned, and walked back toward the hall.

Gus looked at Benny, then down the hall toward Frankie and immediately started waddle-trotting after her.

She came out in flip-flops, got some plastic bags just in case, and they took Gus for a walk.

After, Ben made it all the way to her bed before he peeled off her dress.

Twenty-five minutes later, when he made her come, she moaned her secret into his ear.

It consisted of three words.

“Love you, Benny.”

***

“My turn!” Frankie announced when Ben came back from the bathroom at J&J’s Saloon and approached where Cheryl and Frankie were sitting.

She laid a hard but quick one on him that obliterated any possibility of wingman status (not that it wasn’t already gone since he was there), grinned into his face, then part-walked, part-strutted, and part-bounced to the back where the bathrooms were.

She did this with every male eye in the joint following her ass covered in the tight skirt of her dress, or her long legs that were bare and led into a pair of hot-as-hell heels.

So although Benny appreciated the view, it was also irritating as fuck.

“You’re a new breed of badass,” Cheryl noted, taking his attention to her.

“Come again?” he asked, seeing she was studying him closely.

“Not the show-up-and-demand-to-go-out-with-your-woman-to-make-sure-she-doesn’t-get-into-trouble move. That’s not a new breed of badass, that’s the usual one. The after-she-gets-shot-let-her-stick-her-neck-out-and-do-it-with-the-Chicago-mob-at-her-back move.”

Jesus Christ.

Frankie told this woman what was going down? How long was he in the goddamned bathroom?

His stomach tightening, he slid in front of her, did it holding her eyes, necessarily and intentionally getting close because there was no room, but also because he had a point to make.

“She shouldn’t have told you,” he said low.

“No shit?” she asked in return.

He didn’t reply to that.

He ordered, “And you aren’t gonna say dick to anyone.”

Her eyes narrowed.

He’d been around Cheryl once before, at Vi and Cal’s wedding.

Frankie called her edgy.

Benny and any other man who took one look at her would call her hard.

When she met them at J&J’s, reminded of that hardness and seeing it without her in a bridesmaid gown, happy her girl was happy, Ben understood this was why she wasn’t getting laid.

Men didn’t like hard. They liked soft. They didn’t mind attitude and there were those, like Benny, who wanted that. Some men could get off on the challenge of smoothing out sharp edges, or knowing that was what a woman gave out in the world, but when he got her home, she gave him the sweet underneath.

But Cheryl was straight-up hard. Her eyes said “you are not getting in there no matter what you try, so don’t bother trying.” And everything about her said she’d take what she wanted, and if you got anything out of that, she didn’t give a fuck. This would mean you wouldn’t get anything out of that except maybe an orgasm, but not a good one.

This woman wasn’t about exploring the possibility of building a future or just having a good time and some laughs.

This woman was about riding you hard until she found it, climbing off even if you hadn’t, getting dressed, and going home.

The loyalty she gained from Vi and now Frankie made him wonder what made her like that and why she didn’t put out what she gave to her girls in order to at least get laid and at most find herself a man.

“You do not know me, but I am no dumbfuck,” she said in a voice cold as ice, proving his thoughts true.

“I figure you aren’t, I’m just remindin’ you not to be.”