Chapter 34: Reinforcements
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After dinner, Frank found himself seated outside on the backyard veranda of Pentecost Manor with his cell phone in hand, dialing Tony Scibelli.
"Yo."
Frank smiled at the familiar voice. "Tony, it's Frank Farmer."
He replied with a hardy laugh. "Farmer! Ha! Nice of you to call."
"What are you up to?"
"Sittin' at my Uncle Larry's house, watchin' The O'Reilly Factor."
"Exciting stuff."
"You bet."
"Family doing alright?"
"Oh yeah, we dust ourselves off just fine in this family."
"I'm glad to hear it."
Tony was quiet for a moment where Frank gathered he was leaving the room. "So, why did you call?" He chuckled. "You need a bodyguard?"
The irony of Tony's joke was not lost on Frank. "Actually, I do."
"Uh oh."
Frank explained their complex situation as diplomatically as possible to Tony over the phone. Thankfully, Tony's loyalty to Rachel had not waned in the slightest, and he jumped at the chance to come work for her again in her time of need.
"You wouldn't happen to need a chauffeur, too, would you?" Tony proposed.
Considering that Frank had mostly been driving Rachel around himself these days, his ears perked up. "Maybe. Why? You know someone?"
"Look Frank, I'm just gonna be one hundred percent translucent with you..."
Frank grinned to himself.
"...My boy Ricky needs a job," Tony revealed. "You remember my cousin Ricky, right? From Ma's funeral?"
Frank's photographic memory served him a fleeting image of an average build, clean-cut Italian man with dark features. "Yeah, Ricky Bianco. I remember him."
"Well he drove getaway cars—er, cabs—in New York City for years. Plus he's a huge fan of Rachel. You could probably convince him to do a kamikaze for her."
Frank said amusedly, "That won't be necessary."
"So, you want me to bring him along?"
Frank thought for a moment. It wasn't a secret that Tony's connections would not always be savory. As a stickler for background checks, Frank would be quite the hypocrite if he chose to conveniently not run one for this young man. Still, the idea of having a full-fledged mobster on his side in this battle sent a strange frisson of excitement down his back. It would take some convincing to get Pettigrew to hire him on, but Frank knew the man trusted him enough to turn a blind eye.
Frank glanced back through the bedroom window where he could see Rachel's topless form as she changed into her nightclothes, her fingers lingering lovingly on her belly.
"Yeah, I want him."
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Rachel was comforted by the news that Tony would be back on her team by the end of the week. She held out hope that their situation could be improved, as hopeless as it might have seemed right now. Frank had seemed to calm down a bit since discussing the plan with Pettigrew, which Rachel was even more thankful for.
She laid in bed with him that night, half-watching the television on its lowest volume setting. Her attention was mostly drawn to the way the light from the screen reflected in his vigilant blue eyes. It was still strange to see him clean shaven again – in a way he looked more familiar to her now, and it teased her heart with memories of the time he had worked for her.
His fingers never seemed to be able to stay still, and he restlessly fiddled with the lace on her camisole or locks of her hair as he held her.
"Do you think you can see my belly yet?" she asked him out of the blue, experimentally sliding down the sheets to show off her still mostly flat abdomen.
His eyes lazily flicked down to the site in question. "Not from this angle," he whispered. His eyes returned to the television screen. "When you're standing up, sometimes I can tell."
Rachel felt a tiny thrill at the idea that he had been observing it already. And this, she thought to herself, was exactly why she always had to ask him questions. He would never offer up such private thoughts of his own volition. He made his observations in careful silence. She burned with the need to know all of the other observations he kept tucked away in the impressive catalog of his mind.
As she studied his face, she was intrigued by the quizzical contortion of his brow in response to whatever was on TV. Curious, she turned to join him in watching a ridiculous film trailer for some over-the-top science fiction movie. She caught the flash of a familiar face as a fast sequence of scenes came to an intense peak, then dropped into blackness with the theatrical release date in garish green numbers.
"Figures he'd be doing some crappy, second-rate alien movie now," Rachel said bitterly.
Frank looked down at her where her head rested on his chest. "Who?"
"Preston Pierce." Rachel pronounced the name with all the exaggerated loathing of a schoolgirl who still believed in cooties. "We used to go out back in the day."
As usual, Frank was quiet. She glanced up at him to find a mysterious vehemence within his eyes, his expression frigid.
"You're much better looking," Rachel said reassuringly, "and smarter, and classier, and you have a much bigger d–"
"I'm not jealous," he interrupted her with a perfunctory chuckle. His murderous eyes did not falter from the screen, however, and he was now staring at the little girl in the Welch's grape juice commercial as if she had just killed his entire family.
Rachel smiled to herself as she settled back down with her ear directly above his heartbeat. "Of course not."
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"I sold my house in Chatsworth," Frank announced as he walked into the dining room the next morning. "Home inspection is done. The buyer is coming to sign the papers today."
"What about the rental in Leona Valley?" Fletcher asked.
"It'll have to sit for now," Frank shrugged. "The landlord knows we can't stay there."
Scott hummed in agreement. "He called me last night and told me there were more cars camped out there again."
"It'll die down when they realize they're not getting any action out there," Rachel reminded them.
"Yeah." Frank straightened the sleeves of his dress shirt, observing the rest of the table who were still in their pajamas. Instead of sitting down to eat, he downed a glass of orange juice then quickly moved back towards the doors. "Well, I'm off to Chatsworth."
"Frank?"
The confusion in Scott's voice caused him to turn around.
Rachel met Frank's eyes at the very moment he made the realization.
He couldn't go out alone.
There was a heavy weight to the silence that lingered in the room then, as all eyes were fixed on the bodyguard who now needed a bodyguard of his own.
Awkwardly, Scott rose to his feet. "I'll be ready in ten minutes, Frank."
Rachel never let her gaze drift away from Frank's face. She could see the struggle within him, however he might have tried to hide it. He nodded with a practiced nonchalance as Scott brushed past him to exit the room, tension visible in his jaw.
Rachel dutifully got up from her chair to kiss him goodbye, trying not to let the stiffness of his countenance offend her.
Minutes after he'd departed, Julie Pentecost and her daughter Laura finally joined their guests for breakfast. Unlike the others at the table, they were fully dressed and made up for their day, their clothes and accessories as immaculate as their perfectly styled hair.
Having met the women years before, Rachel was not surprised as they took great pride in their appearance. She initiated brief introductions with Fletcher, who conveniently found an excuse to leave shortly after the women arrived.
"Well, Rachel, if there's anything my staff can do to make your stay more comfortable, you'll of course let me know, won't you?" Julie said as she gestured for the butler to refill the empty tray of whipped butter.
Rachel simpered across the table. "I have no problem voicing my concerns."
Julie's look was neither judgmental nor surprised. "I'm sure you don't."
Laura chimed in then, with a casual sweep of her long blonde hair. "Hard to believe you just turned forty, Rachel. You look absolutely stunning." She gave Rachel a suspiciously warm smile as she measured out the tiniest two drops of creamer into her coffee.
Rachel raised an eyebrow in the direction of the young woman. "Thanks, Laura. So how did your latest movie do at the box office this weekend?"
Julie conveniently covered her mouth with her napkin while her daughter struggled to remain composed in her response. "Well, we're uh, competing with the latest Pixar release, so . . ."
Rachel nodded with a forced smile then swiftly changed the subject. "So, how was Vegas?"
"Boring," Julie said flippantly while lightly buttering a piece of toast with her knife. "I lost thirty grand."
"Hmm. Shame." Rachel busied herself with spooning a second helping of fruit salad onto her plate.
"I got to meet your, uh . . . boyfriend yesterday," Julie said, her deep voice catching Rachel's undivided attention. "He seems like quite a . . . stable fellow."
Rachel had to wonder if this woman's words were passive aggressive toward her own instability.
"Yes he is," she responded as calmly as possible.
"Laura hasn't met him yet," Julie continued, with a significant, lingering stare in Rachel's direction. "Maybe you could introduce them when he gets back."
Rachel had the distinct impression that the woman was trying to help her by insisting that she be present during their introduction.
With her winning smile in place, Rachel made confident eye contact with Laura Pentecost from across the table. "Oh, I'd be more than happy to."
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The moment Frank returned from his trip to Chatsworth, Rachel caught him coming through the doors with Pettigrew.
"Honey, have you met Julie's daughter Laura yet?"
He was flustered from being bombarded by her question the moment he set foot in the foyer. Rachel didn't know how else to do it except to rip the bandage off fast. She knew exactly what the implications might be of introducing this very attractive woman to her very attractive boyfriend. And those implications were never more pronounced than when Frank's eyes fell on Laura's nearly flawless face.
He resorted to his customary silence, followed by a cursory, barely-there once-over of her figure. The frighteningly brief second was not lost on Rachel.
"Nice to meet you," he murmured, a noncommittal gloss to his deep voice.
Laura extended one slender, manicured hand. Rachel hated her pale pink nail polish.
With a contained sparkle of glee in her green eyes, she said, "The pleasure is mine, Mr. Farmer."
He shook her hand once. He did not instruct her to call him by his first name.
"So the Chatsworth house is off your shoulders?" Rachel asked sweetly, rubbing his arm.
"Yeah."
"Are you going to be permanent residents here, then?" Laura asked teasingly.
"We're breaking ground up north," Frank said in a clipped tone. "On track to be finished by the end of the year."
Laura tilted her head slightly, inspecting his face in a way that Rachel felt to be very invasive. "So we'll have you here for a while?"
"I doubt it."
Rachel took some satisfaction in how quickly Laura's face fell as Frank's curt reply.
"I think he means until the press finds us out," Rachel clarified, her hand still tight on his arm. "Then we may have to consider relocating."
Laura lifted her chin in acknowledgment, but refused to meet Rachel's gaze. Her eyes instead focused on Frank, lowering from his face to trail down the rest of his body. A tiny smile caught her lips as she saw the exposed grip of his pistol at his side. He casually adjusted his jacket to cover it.
"I think you're safe in this house, Mr. Farmer," Laura said in a soft voice. Rachel glared at the woman, refusing to allow such blatant flirting to take place right under her nose.
Frank looked uncomfortable for barely a moment before Pettigrew conveniently came to the rescue. "Coming to lunch, Farmer?"
"Yeah."
As he turned to leave with Rachel at his side, she discreetly tucked her hand into his back pants pocket, making sure that Laura saw.
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That night, Frank made love to Rachel in the large marble bathtub of their ensuite. Her hands mapped an encouraging path along his bare back as he thrust slowly into her, whispering her loving prose against his ear. Just before he could find his release, he heard a sound behind him, and he looked over his shoulder to see an elegant hand with pale pink nail polish pushing the door open.
His reflexes kicked into immediate action and he quickly dislodged himself from his lover, pulled a semi-automatic out from the water, and lifted his right arm to open fire at the intruder before she could set foot on the tile…
He woke up with a start in bed, no longer wet and no longer armed. The only consistencies that had carried over from his dream were that Rachel was right beside him and he still had a massive erection.
He put the blame entirely on her for having worn silk and lace to bed. He realized not long after waking that his fingers had been locked in a tyrannical grip on her hips, gnawing into her so hard that he'd left marks just above the waistband of her panties. Pregnancy had turned Rachel into even more of a sound sleeper than before.
Overwhelmed by the oppressive heat of his own body, he disrobed himself completely beneath the sheets and attempted to calm down. But his attempts were thwarted when Rachel stirred in her sleep and leaned innocently back into him, so that his pelvis was flush with her silk-clad bottom. He squeezed his eyes shut as his hips helplessly twitched against her. He was done for.
As if sensing his agony, she reached one sleepy hand behind him and clutched his bare backside. Knowing she'd just granted him permission, he desperately stripped her from the waist down and speared into her from behind. He groaned at the long-withheld sensation of being buried deep inside of her, moving slowly at first, bathing his length in her welcoming wetness. Encouraged by the warmth of her sighs, he hastened the pace of his hips and began to pummel into her, his hands cupping her swollen breasts beneath her camisole. He surrendered to his climax in a storm of rough shudders and long moans, raining kisses all along the smooth skin of her back. His fingers aimed shakily for her lap, kneading her flesh with urgent force until she came even harder than he had, fluttering mercilessly around him.
In the heat of the moment, he didn't give a damn that her cries of pleasure could likely be heard all throughout the expansive house. With a voice that had been a little too well-trained in the art of projection, Rachel's orgasms were often of the harlequin variety, forcing every pair of ears within a one mile radius to discern the obvious cause for her outburst.
The next morning at breakfast, they all knew.
Frank was reminded why he had not dared to touch Rachel during their stay with Fletcher at the cabin. The boy looked absolutely mortified as he avoided eye contact with either of them, intensely committed to demolishing the stack of pancakes on his plate.
Frank was accosted by the knowing yet discreet smirks of Pettigrew and Fitzgerald, and the quietly perturbed curiosity of Julie Pentecost as she sipped her tea. But the openly hungry green gaze of Miss Laura Pentecost was what drew him to skip breakfast altogether that morning.
A few hours after breakfast, Julie pulled Frank aside when she found him stalking the hallways with Pettigrew.
"Listen, Farmer, I like you," she told him, earnest and furtive as her eyes glanced in both directions for eavesdroppers. "And because I like you, I would advise you to do everything in your power to avoid being alone in a room with my daughter."
Frank wasn't sure how to respond, being that "I already planned on it" seemed like a rather brutish way to inform this woman that he wasn't fond of her daughter. As a conciliatory compromise, he asked, "Does this have anything to do with Rachel?"
She replied cryptically, "You'll learn soon that many aspiring actresses will stop at nothing to take down their competition when they see something they want."
Frank heard the woman loud and clear.
He kept his words delicate, "I'll do my best to keep my distance."
"You'd damn well better," Julie said, her keen eyes full of warning, "Or else she'll be all over you like Ronnie Turcotte on Secretariat."
Frank immediately enlisted Pettigrew to follow him closely on his heels for the rest of the week.
Having a bodyguard of his own came with its advantages.
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On Friday morning, Tony called Frank to inform him that he and Ricky had arrived in L.A. He had wanted to share the update with Rachel, but she had gone into hibernation again after another flare-up of pregnancy symptoms which could not be overcome. Fletcher had stayed with her in her room all afternoon, until finally she had felt well enough to emerge. Even dressed in her robe and slippers, hair pulled up in a crooked bun, and not an ounce of makeup, Frank was taken by the sight of her, having missed her all morning.
Upon making his grand arrival at the manor, Tony teased Rachel before she could come down the stairs to greet him.
"Come on, down! You're next on The Price is Right!" He belted out an exaggerated cover of the theme song, causing some of the household staff to stare in curious amusement.
Rachel descended the stairs, a half-asleep smile on her face. "Hey, Tony," she crooned, and hugged him tightly, her figure dwarfed by his gigantic frame.
"You remember Ricky?" Tony gestured to his cousin, who suddenly appeared somewhat shy in Rachel's presence.
"Hi, Ricky," Rachel smiled. Ricky blushed. "You guys know I'm really grateful for this."
"If I was gonna drop everything for anyone, honey, it'd be you," Tony said with sincerity.
They adjourned into the large sitting room where Scott could brief them on the happenings of the week and what their plans were for Rachel's next public outing.
"We want to be strategic," Scott said. "Her image is pretty fragile right now, and the public still doesn't know Frank's name."
"Wonder how long that will last," Rachel said bitterly from her corner chair. Frank glared in her direction but didn't reply.
"Do we want to try an appearance somewhere this weekend?" Scott opened up the floor to the rest of the room, but all of them looked expectantly at Frank.
"I don't think we should start somewhere here in L.A.," Frank said, noting the curious way Rachel's eyes turned up.
"Where did you have in mind?" Scott asked.
"I'm due to visit our building site outside Coarsegold," Frank said. "There's a place near Bass Lake called The Pines Resort where we can spend the night. It's an easy drive to our plot, but it's discreetly located enough that we might be able to get away with her not even being recognized."
The group looked to Rachel.
She thought for a moment before admitting, "I would like to see how the house is coming along."
"It's your house, Rach, you should be able to go whenever you want," Tony said. "That's why we're here." Ricky nodded from the side of the room where he stood with his hands in his pockets, quietly observing the exchange.
Though he could sense her apprehension, Rachel met Frank's eyes with resolution. "Let's do it."