Fran pulled back from the hug and looked at her friend, lips pressed tight together. She wouldn’t mention Jamie’s name if Beatrice didn’t. The poor girl had been through enough today without rehashing romances of years gone by.
“Right!” Fran put on a jaunty grin. “Time to totally change the topic! Now, as my best friend, won’t you please give me just a teensy, tiny hint about my new boss so I don’t ruin things in the first five minutes?”
“You’re the one who wanted a mystery assignment!”
“I didn’t want them to know who I was—not the other way around!” Fran shot Bea a playful glower.
She’d already been burned by a business partner who had known she was heiress to her father’s electric-car empire. And when it came to her social life, people invariably got the wrong idea. Expected something...someone...more glamorous, witty, attention seeking, party mad.
It was why she’d given up physio altogether. Dogs didn’t give a damn about who she was so long as she was kind and gave them dinner. If only her new boss was a pooch! She giggled at the thought of a dog in a three-piece suit and a monocle.
“What’s so funny?” Bea asked.
“C’mon...just give me a little new-boss hint,” Fran cajoled, pinching her fingers together so barely a sheet of paper could pass between them.
Bea shook her head no. “I’ve told you all you need to know. The girl’s a teenager. She’s been in a wheelchair for a couple of years now. Paraplegic after a bad car accident. Very bad. Her uncle—”
“Ooh! There’s an enigmatic uncle?”
“Something like that,” Bea intoned, wagging her finger. “No hints. They need the dog so she can be more independent.”
“She needs the dog.”
“Right. That’s what I said.”
“You said they need the dog,” Fran wheedled, hoping to get a bit more information, but Bea just made an invisible zip across her lips. No more.
“That’s not tons to go on, you know. I’ve been forced to bring two dogs to make sure I’ve got the right one!”
“Forced?” Bea cackled. “Since when have you had to be forced to travel with more than one dog?”
“C’mon...” Fran put her hands into a prayer position. “Just tell me what her parents are like—”
Beatrice held up her hand. “No parents. They both died in the same accident.”
“Ouch.” Fran winced. She’d lost her mother to divorce and her father to work. Losing them for real must be devastating.
“So does that mean this devilishly handsome uncle plays a big role in her life?”
“No one said he was handsome!” Bea admonished. “And remember—good things come to those who wait!”
Bea took on a mysterious air and, if Fran wasn’t mistaken, there was also an elusive something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. How could a person glow when their whole life had just been ripped out from beneath them? Bea was in a league of her own. There weren’t too many people who would set up a dream job for a friend who was known to dip in and out of her life like a yo-yo.
“Well, even if her uncle is a big, hairy-eared ogre, I can’t wait. Nothing beats matching the right pooch to the right patient.” Fran couldn’t stop herself from clapping a bit more, drawing the attention of her two stalwart companions. “C’mere, pups! Help me tuck in Her Majesty.”
Bea batted at the air between them. “No more royal speak! I don’t want to be reminded.”
“What?” Fran fell into their lifelong patter. “The fact that you’re so royal you’d probably bleed fleurs-de-lys?”
“That’s the French, idiot!”
“What do Italian royals bleed, then? Truffles?”
“Ha!” Bea giggled, reaching out a hand to give Fran’s a big squeeze. “It’s not truffle season. It’s tabloid season. And they’re definitely going to have a field day with this. I can’t even bear to think about it.” She threw her arm across her eyes and sank back into the downy pillow. “What do you think they’ll say? Princess left at the altar, now weeping truffle tears?”
Fran pulled her friend up by her hands and gave her a hug. It was awful seeing her beautiful dark eyes cloud over with sadness. “How about some honey?” she suggested, signaling to the two big dogs to come over to the bedside. “That mountain honey you gave me from the Dolomites was amazing.”
“From the resort?” Bea’s eyes lit up at the thought. “It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Maybe...”
“Maybe what?” Fran knew the tendrils of a new idea when she saw one.
“Maybe I’ll pull a Frannie!”
“What does that mean?” She put on an expression of mock horror, fully aware that it wasn’t masking her defensive reaction.
She knew exactly what it meant. A lifetime of trying to get her father’s attention and failing had turned her into a wanderer. Staying too long in any one place meant getting attached. And that meant getting hurt.
“Don’t get upset. I envy you. Your ability to just pick up and go. Disappear. Reinvent yourself. Maybe it’s time I went and did something new.”
Fran goldfished for a minute.
“That phase of my life might be over,” she hedged. “Once this summer’s done and dusted I’m going home.”
“Home, home?” Bea sat up straight, eyes wide with shock. “I thought you said you’d never settle down there.”
“Dad’s offered to help me set up a full-time assistance-dogs training center—”
“You’ve never accepted his money before! What’s the catch?”
“You mean what’s going to be different this time?” Fran said, surprised at the note of shyness in her voice.
Bea nodded. She was the one who had always been there on the end of a phone when Fran had called in tears. Again.
“We spent a week together before I came over.”
“A week?” Bea’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s huge for you two. He wasn’t in the office the whole time?”
“Nope! We actually went to a car show together.”
Bea pursed her lips together. Not impressed.
“I know. I know,” Fran protested, before admitting, “He had a little run-in with the pearly gates.”
“Fran! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It turned out to be one of those cases of indigestion disguising itself as a heart attack, but it seems to have been a lightbulb moment for him. Made him reassess how he does things.”
“You mean how he’s neglected his only daughter most of his life?”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“Francesca Martinelli, don’t you dare tell me your heart wasn’t broken time and time again by your father choosing work over spending time with you.”
Fran met her friend’s gaze—saw the unflinching truth in it, the same solid friendship and loyalty she’d shown her from the day they’d met at boarding school.
“I know. But this time it really is different.”
“Frannie...” Bea’s brow furrowed. “He took you to a car show. You hate cars!”
“It