CHAPTER THREE
Frankie~
The huge kitchen was full of D’Angelos. Two whirlwinds in matching pink sundresses grabbed Frankie’s knees. “Aunt Frankie,” Becky and Quincy shrieked. Frankie squatted and picked them up, one in each arm, and returned their excited hugs. “Have you girls gotten taller?”
“Yeth,” they shouted. They had also lost their front teeth. She held them close, enjoying their squirming bodies. Their lively chatter. It was good to be home. Good to hold her nieces.
Tasha was helping Mom. Their humming hung in the air. A cooking tune. Tasha was the daughter Mom had always wanted – domestic and gentle. Not that Mom didn’t love Frankie and Eleanor or her other daughters-in-law. But she and Tasha had been friends even before Tasha married Harry.
Frankie thought their closeness was good for them both. Tasha was an orphan and Caroline had a lot of maternal affection to give. What she objected to was Tasha’s brother muscling into the family on the strength of Harry and Tasha’s marriage. He’d had his chance to be part of the clan and turned it down flat. Turned her down.
Mom and Tasha were cutting garlic bread to go with the aromatic lasagna cooling on the counter. Tasha wiggled her knife in welcome. Harry was sitting at the table with Dad and a beer. Both men were grinning. Harry waved his glass. No bottles at Mom’s table. Grant was peering inside the fridge.
“Can we help?” asked Eleanor.
“We have it under control,” Mom said. “Sit down and get out of the way, girls. Big girls and little girls. Grant, the deviled eggs are already on the table. Sit down.”
“Can I have five minutes to change out of these leathers?” begged Frankie.
“Sure,” Mom said. “I had to put Eleanor in with you. I’m giving Aunt Lois and Uncle Sam her room.”
Mom had sent most of the relatives to hotels, but Lois and Sam were in their eighties. They and a few other elders would be staying in the house, as was only fitting. Sharing a room with her twin, as they had done when they were little, would be a great chance to catch up properly.
The Air Force had given Frankie years of practice with lightning changes. She had hung up her leathers to await a thorough cleaning and was back in the kitchen in khaki shorts and a polo shirt well before her five minutes were up.
Grant came to the table with an open bottle of champagne in one hand and a bouquet of long-stemmed glasses in the other. “We have to celebrate,” he announced jubilantly.
“Celebrate what?” Frankie took a deviled egg. Chewed. Swallowed. Took another bite. “These are fantastic, Mom.”
“Thank you,” Grant said demurely. “It’s the sriracha sauce.”
“You made these?” Frankie looked at Grant with new respect.
“From Nana B’s recipe.” He radiated masculine satisfaction. Nana B, Genevieve’s maternal grandmother, was a tough cookie and a fierce guardian of her recipes. Obviously she had given Grant her full approval. “Have another.”
Frankie was ravenous. She took another of the spicy treats. “So what are we celebrating? Other than your nuptials? And Nana B’s stamp of approval.”
Grant opened his palm. A small chamois bag lay on it. He shook out a tiny chip of glowing rock onto his other palm. Even across the table she could feel the heat. Like all phoenixes, Grant was immune to fire. He could control it. And with that scrap of white-hot lava he could transform his mate. Every eye was riveted on the incandescent stone.
“Where’d you get that?” Frankie asked.
“Vesuvius.” He looked smugly around the table. For the D’Angelos, Vesuvius was the volcano of volcanoes. After all, their great-great-grandfather had emigrated from Naples. The D’Angelos might be proud Americans now, but they respected their roots too.
Wow. And double wow. Grant had scored a live ember from Vesuvius itself. Freshly harvested and ready for the ritual of immortality which would turn Genevieve into a phoenix shifter. That scrap of burning rock was a treasure above jewels.
“Did you fetch it yourself?” Frankie demanded skeptically.
“Naturally. I was in Naples last week for Luisa Miller. I used one of my days off to harvest it.”
The table buzzed as they all asked questions about the legendary volcano. It was traditional for a phoenix to fetch his own Egg of Immortality to transform his bride, but not necessary. On two separate occasions, Pierce had flown into the heart of a volcano, first to get Linc’s Egg* and then to harvest his own**. Frankie and Grant had fetched Harrison’s from Mt. St. Helens.***
Flying through the heart of a living volcano was beyond perilous, but Grant looked exalted by his memories. He spoke eloquently of the ravishing beauty of the underworld. Frankie envied him. Would she ever get the chance to make her own awe-inspiring journey to Vesuvius?
She asked the other pertinent question. “Has Genevieve agreed?”
“Not yet,” Grant tucked his prize away in his breast pocket. He grinned. “But she will.” He poured champagne for those not drinking beer.
Mom and Tasha brought two huge trays of lasagna to the table and went back for the garlic bread. They took their seats at the long harvest table. Grant stood. “To my Phoenix Bride.” He raised his glass and drank.
“To Genevieve,” they chorused.
“To the cooks,” added Dad.
“To the cooks,” they replied.
That took care of the champagne. Tasha poured cold tea over glasses of ice and added straws and passed them down the table. Mom cut big squares of lasagna and sent them after the tea. Everyone helped themselves to salad, garlic bread and deviled eggs. The noise of nine people all talking at once was both ear-splitting and the essence of home.
Just when she was beginning to relax, the kitchen door opened. A deep voice spoke. “My apologieth. I fell aschleep.”
Frankie turned. Cam Reynolds was swaying slightly in the doorway. Big, blocky and bearlike, his blond hair far too long for a service man and his thin face ashy. Sweat darkened his chest and spread in great circles under his arms. The noisy D’Angelos instantly hushed.
Little Quincy hopped up from the table and dashed to his side. But she didn’t hug him, she carefully took his hand. “Me and Becky saved you a seat, Uncle Cam,” she stage-whispered.
Cam smiled but his face didn’t work right. He lurched rather than walked to the chair between Rebecca and Quincy. He was on a cane and handled it clumsily. Frankie was so used to Cam’s strong, effortless athleticism that this shambling, stumbling, punch-drunk scarecrow horrified her.
“Close your mouth,” hissed Eleanor.
The horror show continued. “Good athernoon,” he mumbled out the side of his mouth. Van Buren. He had to actually be drunk.
None of the others were so much as looking as Cam fell into his chair. But neither were they speaking. Except for Quincy. “We’re having zanya,” she said importantly. “Do you want some, Uncle Cam?” She was still speaking in a throttled shout.
“Thure,” he rumbled.
Mom cut him a minute square. Tasha put a single skimpy spoonful of salad on his plate. Quincy handed him his table napkin opened. Rebecca carefully held the plate of deviled eggs so his shaking hand could take one. “They’re really good,” she assured him in the same artificial whisper as Quincy’s.
It took Cam a long time to pick up the egg. His hand shook so much, the little red square of pimento on top fell onto the table. He ignored it and picked up his fork. Conversation around the table resumed, but for once only one person spoke at a time. And they pitched their voices low, enunciating each word as for the hard of hearing.
In any case, Cam was not listening. He dropped his first bite of lasagna back onto his plate three times before he managed to convey it to his mouth. He chewed slowly as if the effort tired him. After three bites he laid his fork down and did not pick it up again. He used his tea to wash down a fistful of pills, before slumping lower in his chair.
What in the name of Herbert Hoover had happened to her hulking, macho lover? Now that she had recovered from her initial surprise, she realized that Cam’s shirt and khakis hung limply on him because the great slabs of muscle that made him so burly had melted away. It wasn’t just his sweating and trembling that made him appear frail. He was weak. And suffering.
And totally looped out of his stupid, bull-headed, bear skull.
* * *
Cameron~
He had done it. He had gotten through lunch without exposing his weakness. He didn’t think that Frankie had even noticed how shaky he was. But now he was done like dinner. He needed to wait for those pills to kick in.
Thank goodness, Caroline had offered him the sunroom couch for a nap. Before he trekked back to the cottage, he would stretch out and recuperate. He lay down and shut both eyes.
After a moment, he wished he had remembered the shutters. The sun was no longer shining directly into the windows, but the daylight was still too bright. In a moment he would pull himself together and darken the room. Right now, even the stabbing behind his eyes wasn’t enough to get him upright again.
The door closed with a bang and jerked him out of his doze. The room was still too bright, but it was Frankie who was truly alight. Fury shone from her face as though she were a blazing sun goddess. She loomed over him fists on her hips.
Those shorts of hers would have hit a normal-sized woman at knee level. On her they exposed eight inches of gorgeous, supple thigh that made his mouth water. Her polo shirt outlined her magnificent bosom. No drooling, Reynolds. Drooling isn’t cool.
“What in the name of General Custer is going on, Reynolds?”
He loved it when tough, hard-driving Frankie used her mom’s favorite expletives. Caroline D’Angelo had taught her kids and two generations of Air Force wives to swear like ladies. His own mother had been a pupil. In extremity, he himself still liked to invoke George Washington rather than use the profanity he had learned in the service.
But he closed his eyes against Frankie’s wrath and shamelessly pulled rank. “That’s M-M-Maj. Reynolds to you, D’Angelo.” Maybe she wouldn’t notice the stuttering.
“You really have lost your mind, Bear Boy, if you think you can dismiss me that easily.”
He didn’t bother opening his eyes. And he hadn’t really thought informing her he outranked her would work. “If w-w-we’re going to have this f-f-fight, could you c-c-close the shutters first?”
There was a long pause. Warrior Woman deciding whether or not to accede to his request. But her feet moved to the windows and the glare blessedly vanished. He cracked his eyes. His Frankie stood in front of the shutters, tall and furious. A wrathful, gorgeous Amazon.
“What’s got your tutu in a twist?” he asked.
“You’re stoned out of your gourd, Reynolds, that’s what. What the fuck are you on anyway?”
He waved at his bad leg. “I’m not stoned,” he lied. “I’ve been hurt, I’m taking my meds as instructed.”
“As who instructed?”
“My shrink. Various doctors. Couple of surgeons. The usual. Why?” Fighting with Frankie was better than painkillers. Even his head didn’t hurt as much.
“Do any of those doctors know you’re a bear?”
He snorted. “O-f-f course not.” Not that he really was. Not anymore. Didn’t matter what he took, his bear was a casualty of war. You couldn’t get worse off than dead.
“That’s no excuse. You know better.”
“I have a s-s-steel rod in my left femur, a new knee, and they want to rebuild my ankle. To say n-n-nothing of the shrapnel in my skull. And two busted eardrums. I’m taking whatever the hell they give me, Phoenix.”
If anything, her outrage grew. “You’re on more than painkillers.”
“You bet, sugarplum.”
“What’s your psychiatric diagnosis?”
“Concussion with complications.”
“Like PTSD?”
“Exactly like PTSD.”
“Oh, shift. I’m sorry.” She strode around the room like an avenging fury. Turned on one bare heel. “They’ve got you on antidepressants,” she accused.
“T-t-two kinds.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“I-i-i-f you like.”
“I could strangle you!”
“Now you’re talking.”
*Phoenix Aglow
**Phoenix Ablaze
***Phoenix Aflame