Page 102 of Unraveled

“The food should be here soon, if you want to wash up or anything,” Gian told her.

Cara nodded, thinking she should do just that. Chris hadn’t given her much time to do anything except throw on something appropriate after she’d arrived home from classes. “I’ll be quick.”

“Bathrooms are toward the back, bella.”

A quick kiss later, that was all but ignored by the other men at the table, and Cara headed for the bathrooms. She made fast work of washing up her hands, and did a check of her little bit of makeup in the mirror, finding her lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara had held up remarkably well throughout the day. She fluffed her curls with her fingers, resetting some of the waves, and headed back out to the table.

She nearly rammed into a familiar man as she rounded the hallway corner leading back out onto the restaurant’s main floor. For a brief second, as she apologized out of habit for not paying attention, she hoped he wouldn’t recognize her.

She knew that was a foolish wish.

Of course, Frankie would recognize her face. Her features were a perfect match to her dead twin’s. And from what information she had gathered from Gian and Lea’s online, private journals, the two had been involved for quite a while. It still made her a bit uncomfortable, given the circumstances of their relationship, but Cara was now sadder about it, more than anything else.

She wished Lea had told her.

“Cara,” Frankie said, taking a wide step back.

“Frankie.”

He shifted from foot to foot, shooting a glance over his shoulder before looking back to her. Nervousness wrote heavily all over his actions.

Cara cleared her throat, waving toward the semi-private area. “I should get back to my table.”

“Sure, but first, uh … could I apologize?”

“For what?”

Frankie shrugged one shoulder. “A while back—at the club when you showed up. I probably came across as rude, and that wasn’t my intention. You shocked me, and your face, it really took me off-guard. I’d seen you from afar before, with Lea, but never up close like that. When she said identical, she meant that quite literally, I guess.”

He offered her a tentative smile that Cara returned. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not, Cara. I am sorry.”

She nodded quickly. “Thank you.”

“How are you?” he asked, posing the question with a careful tone. “Don’t feel like you have to tell me, if you don’t want to. You certainly don’t owe me anything, but in a way, I feel like I might know you. She talked about you often, even though we tried to be casual and keep the personal shit out of it all.”

“She’s doing well,” came a deep voice from behind Frankie.

Cara’s gaze flew to Gian, who had clearly come looking for her, and she smiled a bit wider. “I am. I’m doing a lot better now.”

Frankie murmured something fast in Italian to Gian, who shrugged in response, as though he hadn’t a care in the world.

“All is fine,” he assured Frankie. “As long as she says so.”

“It is,” Cara said. “Thank you again, Frankie.”

Gian side-stepped the man as Frankie headed down the hall toward the men’s bathroom. “I need to make a call, Cara. Can you find your way back to the table without running into someone else?”

She laughed at his teasing. “I’m sure I can.”

“All right, get going. The food is waiting.”

He dropped a kiss to her forehead before he headed down the hallway, bypassing the bathrooms altogether and exiting through a back door into what looked like an alleyway.

Cara wasn’t all that interested in sharing a table with her cousin and Stephan while Gian was gone, but she sat back down with a smile and surveyed the pasta and salad dish that had been set out for her.

“What the hell took so long?” Constantino asked.