Page 208 of Made in Love and Blood

“Good,” Carina murmured. “He’ll do it. Sal can do—”

“Stop eavesdropping,” Gabe said louder.

Spinning to glare at the man, she replied, “The door is open, they left it that way.”

“Go find something else to do,” Gabe told her.

“Like what, watch paint peel?”

“There’s no paint peeling going on here. This suite is six grand a night.”

Fascinating. Frankie wished she cared. “I’m bored as shit.”

“Yeah, well—”

“Are you arguing with him again, Frankie?” came Larkin’s voice behind her. Now, she spun back around to the glass doors. Larkin smirked where he leaned against the side tracks. “For the record, he’s not paid to listen to you complain, either.”

Apparently, they weren’t paid to do a lot of things. Just annoy her. “I wasn’t complaining, I’m bored.”

“And eavesdropping,” Gabe added. “Can’t forget that.”

“Rat,” Frankie hissed back at him.

Gabe didn’t look concerned or offended. He probably was paid to rat her out.

Larkin shook his head, eyeing Gabe and then Frankie like he didn’t know what to do between the two of them. The guy didn’t like to talk that much, but Frankie made it her mission to argue with him at least five times a day lately. She had to do something.

“All right,” Larkin muttered, tipping his head back toward the balcony, “come sit out here with us, Frankie.”

“Oh, do I finally get to be a part of the big secret, too?”

“It’s no secret. It’s business.”

She didn’t understand, but...didn’t that sum up her whole life?

“And no,” Larkin added, tossing it over his shoulder as an afterthought. “No, you can’t be part of the secret. It’s a club, you’re not invited.”

His joke stunned her momentarily. “You know,” she said, finding a place to sit in the heated, glass balcony next to Carina and her words at the same time, “I wouldn’t have thought you were so funny.”

Larkin kicked back to relax in the lounge chair, grinning. “My first love was comedy.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m bullshitting you. My first love was a woman named Beth. Now I pay her twenty thousand a month in alimony to fund her vacations with her flavor of the year. At least, I don’t have to pay child support anymore for kids I’m not allowed to see.”

Carina pressed her lips together at the comment, silent otherwise.

Frankie gaped. “You have kids?”

“Five, actually. They’re all grown up now.”

“Why couldn’t you see them?”

“The court decided my PTSD, my job, and the man I work for, were not appropriate for children. That’s what I got for splitting my first paycheck from your father with my ex-wife. I thought I was doing the right thing, making sure she was taken care of even if we weren’t together. She just took that money and ran with it as fast as she could to the most expensive divorce and child custody lawyers she could hire. I barely got to see my kids at that point anyway, and when I did...”

His words trailed off as he sighed. “When I did see them, they acted like entirely different children than the ones I helped raise. Although, if you asked my ex-wife, I didn’t help raise them at all because six to eight months out of the year saw me on missions with the team. She sure loved asking for another one every time I came home, though.”

Frankie chewed on her inner cheek, looking to Carina to see her pressing the heel of her palm into the top of her rounded stomach as she made a strange face. “You okay?”