Burning Down the Spouse.

Dakota Ca.s.sidy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

For the Rainbow Diner back in Pleasantville, New Jersey. You have no idea what a haven your diner became for me when nothing else was open and I needed to escape the fears of my pending single parenthood. I couldn't afford more than one cup of coffee, but no one ever balked because I didn't order food, and you kept my cup filled. Thank you for allowing me to keep my dignity when I was nose to nose with the bottom of the barrel.

And to Guy Fieri of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives fame. Dude, your show was invaluable in my research. With diners pretty few and far between in Texas, and never having been in the kitchen of one back at my old stomping grounds in New Jersey, I needed some insider info, and your show was a ginormous help to me. Plus, you're kinda funny, but seriously, walk away from the spice jokes. The Ginger/Mary Ann reference is pushing some comedic boundaries. No. I kid. Because I love. Really. Also, Tyler Florence, who tweets the most amazing cooking information almost like he knows, by some weird osmosis, just when I need it. You're the "ultimate" personable, fan-friendly celebrity chef.

And to Barry Manilow for the song "I Made It Through the Rain." Those who know the song will understand what it means.

Most of all, to my father, Robert Cartwright, who watched every single Food Network show known to man with me and adored, among many, Rachael Ray. Each time I cook a meal these days, I remember Rachael Ray's infamous word-one Dad repeated to me daily at dinner-"yummo." So yummo, Daddy. A big yummo from down here. I miss you.

Dakota Ca.s.sidy.

CHAPTER ONE.

See, the problem is that G.o.d gives men a brain and a p.e.n.i.s, and only enough blood to run one at a time.

-ROBIN WILLIAMS.

So maybe things had gotten a little out of hand, Frankie Bennett reflected. Through the lingering clouds of black smoke, she perused the carnage now littering her husband Mitch's made-for-TV kitchen with a rather detached view.

But really, live tapings were all about the unexpected, right?

No doubt, the ratings for Mitch in the Kitchen's first-ever live show on the Bon Appet.i.t Channel would be ginormous.

And all because of her.

G.o.d, she really was a giver.

"Jesus Christ, Frankie! What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" a male voice whisper-yelled from the floor below, drawing her attention to the a.s.sorted utensils scattered at her sneakered feet.

Jesus Christ, indeed.

Frankie looked down where one of the stage crew was slinking across the tile on his belly, his hands over his head like they were in a war zone.

Her eyes shifted, catching the debris littering her brand-new Nikes.

Hoo s.h.i.t. She'd totally mangled Mitch's favorite wire whisk, the one he demanded always be to his left when the recipe he was cooking called for one.

The stank would surely fly for that offense.

It was part of his new collection of kitchen gadgets and overpriced ca.s.serole dishes no one but a Hilton could afford to buy.

It was also shiny, she noted. Very shiny.

Frankie waved her hand in the air and wrinkled her nose. Wow. Who knew one little flick of a Bic could create so much kitchen towel wreckage? Oh, and look. Mitch's stupid thousand-dollar-a-pound black French truffles lie smashed to smithereens against the wood flooring, so flattened by Frankie's foot they looked like those Parisian pancakes Mitch loved to brag he'd created the recipe for. Well, with one little exception. The truffles were black, and Mitch's pancakes weren't.

But there was always the five-second rule, right? Maybe he could have his a.s.sistant-slash-a.s.s-kisser Juliana scoop them up off the floor and salvage what she hadn't done the watusi on. No doubt, she could definitely use some help sc.r.a.ping them off the bottom of her shoe.

That insight made her giggle, a little high-pitched, and if she was honest, it did sound a little crazy-a.s.sed, which drew more slack-jawed astonishment from everyone around her.

Mitch would dock her pay for those thousand-dollar truffles.

Black French truffles do not either cost a thousand dollars a pound, Frankie.

That was true, but you'd think they did the way Mitch had reacted when she'd taken them down with one fell swoop of her arm. There'd been a lot of yelling, hands flying, and red-faced, vein-popping fury on his behalf.

It was to be expected. They were, after all, million-dollar-a-pound black French truffles.

"Cuuuuuttttttttt!" a male voice yelled.

Well, screamed-on a hacking cough, no less.

Pretty loud, too, considering the amount of smoke inhalation he'd probably incurred.

Probably Epson. He was a control freak of a director. If they were thirty seconds to live and everyone wasn't in their exact spot marked with the masking tape he'd so lovingly placed on the floor himself, he was dramatically putting his hand over his chest as though he could will himself to leave this plane just by thinking the words "heart attack." "d.a.m.n it! I mean-go-to-commercial!" he corrected, his anxious screech but a vague penetration through Frankie's eerie wall of calm.

Yep. That was her. Always rockin' the unruffled. Always keeping things on track. Always asking how high when someone said jump.

Frankie's shoulders slumped when the red light on camera three blinked off. She jammed one hand into the pocket of her tailored jeans, stepping over the gla.s.s remains of the mixing bowls Mitch preferred. He liked the visual effect mixing ingredients in them created for his television audience.

Her other hand clutched a wooden spoon. She made her way past the row of copper pots and pans hanging over Mitch's six-burner cooktop with the boil-in-eight-seconds feature. How peculiar, Frankie thought, pausing to see that the crew had all begun ducking and diving for cover with mouths open wide in horror.

Like they were all waiting for something bad to happen.

The crash of the spoon she wielded against the bottom and sides of all that copper did sort of sound like a xylophone, Frankie decided. Huh. She'd always wondered if it would . . . But it would probably sound much more pleasant to the ear if she had a stainless steel spoon. That'd make some righteous noise.

That decided, Frankie made her way to exit stage left and go home. Today had been brutal, her arm was strangely sore, her throat was scratchy and a little raw, and she had a killa headache.

However, by the look on hubby Mitch's face, one Frankie knew well, it didn't appear he agreed she was due some "me" time. She sighed with a forlorn whistle to it. There went the bubble bath and gla.s.s of Chardonnay.

f.u.c.ker.

Frankie's eyes searched for Kiki, her longhaired Chihuahua mix. Kiki was Mitch's on-air mascot. She'd attended every taping since Mitch's viewers had seen Frankie in the audience with her. After an abundance of emails from fans of the show who wanted to see more of Kiki, Mitch had dubbed her an a.s.set-a mangy, smelly one who might get hair in his precious food, but an a.s.set that couldn't be denied. Kiki turned into an overnight sensation when Mitch's fans found out she was a stray he'd rescued after finding her foraging outside the Bon Appet.i.t studios.

What he forgot to mention was he didn't rescue anything. Mitch couldn't rescue something or someone if he had the paramedics with him. He didn't even like Kiki. Frankie had found Kiki at the Dumpster outside the studios, scrounging through a garbage bag carelessly thrown to the ground. To her husband's utter mortification, she'd fallen in love and promptly brought her home.

Scooping her up on her way out, Frankie chucked Kiki under the chin and whispered, "Tonight when you curl up in that crazy three-thousand-dollar bed of yours, thank the doggie G.o.ds you're deaf, Kik. I think we're in for a s.h.i.t storm of verbal a.s.sault."

Mitch's hand wrapped around her arm, yanking at the sleeve of her carefully-picked-by-her-personal-shopper cashmere sweater. "What the f.u.c.k is the matter with you, Frankie? Do you have any idea what you've just done?" he roared so loud, her hair lifted off her shoulders.

Done? She'd done what she'd always done. Prepped Mitch's food to within an inch of perfection for the live show and put it in sequential order in the set's refrigerator. Checked not twice but thrice to be certain his spice bowls were filled with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, arranged each mixing bowl and utensil in the correct order of usage. Then she'd gone off to his dressing room to make absolutely certain he had ice-cold bottled Perrier for commercial break. That was her job at the Bon Appet.i.t Channel-Mitch's whipping, er, food prep girl.

Once she'd completed those menial tasks, she'd smelled the lovely flowers someone had sent to Mitch while reading the attached card.

Dear Mitch, Let's celebrate your stratospheric rise in the cooking world at my place after the show. I'll have your favorite ma.s.sage oil and chai tea waiting.

Oh, wait. The flowers . . .

Was that what this was about? Was Mitch upset that she'd crushed them to oblivion like his stupid black French truffles? Jesus. He was so picky. It was just some water on the floor and rose petals. Big s.h.i.t.

Kiki curled up over her neck, shivering. She might not be able to hear Mitch, but she certainly sensed his fury. "You're angry about the flowers," Frankie stated rather than asked, bouncing Kiki to soothe her. "They're just roses, Mitch. Go buy yourself twelve dozen. G.o.d knows you make enough money. I'm going home to take a bath. This last week with you before this live taping hasn't exactly been a game of Chutes and Ladders."

Mitch's grip only became more forceful, matching his rising anger. His fingers dug into her upper arm, refusing to let her leave. Eyes, lined with crinkly webs of an age he was finding harder and harder to hide, grew wide. "Are you f.u.c.king serious?"

"Just like one of those heart attacks Epson's always prepping for," Frankie responded, bland and disinterested. Once more, she made an effort to leave, ignoring the crowd gathering behind Mitch's back.

Mitch jerked her back, forcing her to face him and making Kiki cringe. A fury so crystal clear in his gray-blue eyes it scorched her with its venom. "You're a jealous b.i.t.c.h! You never could handle my success, could you, Frankie?"

"Handle it?" What was there to handle? It was all about Mitch or it wasn't. Easy-peasy. Successful or unsuccessful, Mitch was da man of the hour-every hour of every single day. All Mitch, all the time.

His mouth became a thin line, the veins in his neck, angry, blue, and pulsing. "Do you have any idea what the tabloids will do with that stunt you just pulled on live TV? They'll rip me to shreds!"

Frankie let her head fall back on her shoulders so she could properly display the huge amount of disinterest she was feeling about poor widdle Mitch and his poor widdle reputation. "So?"

"So? So?" His face became a mask of furious disbelief. "You just accused me of being unfaithful to you on national TV, Frankie-with another Bon Appet.i.t Channel chef all while you set my kitchen towels on fire! But not before you trashed everything in your wake on a live set. Half the world saw you behaving like you had roid rage!"

Well, a.s.suming half the world had actually tuned in . . . that might be a tad generous. Mitch's ratings were pretty d.a.m.ned good, but he wasn't exactly Emeril. Though, that was the intended goal for tonight. And it wasn't like she'd accused him of being a bottom-feeding infidel without cause. Why was he always so hard to please?

"Can you even hear me, Frankie? You've ruined my reputation. The tabloids will have a field day with this!"

Yeah. It would probably be pretty ugly and obviously, Mitch needed some form of validation from her to prove his point. Her job as ego-stroker extraordinaire was never done, was it?

Her shoulders lifted, despite the painful grasp he had on her upper arm. "Yeah. You're probably right. So they'll call you a disgusting, lying, cheating pig who's boning a chick half his age named Bamby? With a 'Y' on the end of it, in case you missed that memo. She's sent like twenty of them in the past month since she slept with the CEO and nailed Bamby's Bakin' to remind us. I don't know about you, but for me, Bamby With A 'Y's' repet.i.tive nature is a little old."

Frankie paused, almost forgetting the original question. Oh, wait. She remembered. The tabloids. "Where were we? The tabloids, right? Is there some error in the statements I made while I trashed your live show and all of your ridiculously expensive Mitch in the Kitchen cookware? Did I miss a detail? If you want, send me an email memo so I'm sure I have it all ironed out and I don't get a single, filthy stat wrong, because we all know how meticulous you are about the smallest details. Do that and mark it 'IMPORTANT.' You know, all in caps like you do so I won't miss one out of the nine hundred you send me a day. For now"-she attempted to shrug off his iron fist, hiking Kiki up higher on her shoulder-"I'm going home."

Yet Mitch hung on to her. He might be fifty-eight, but he had some grip from all that hand mixing he did. "The h.e.l.l you'll step foot in my home! Never again, Frankie Bennett! You got that? It's my brownstone. Mine. In fact, all of it's mine! I want a divorce. Do you hear me? And so is Kiki!"

Frankie sighed, c.o.c.king her head to the left, eerily detached. "Yep. I heard you. And Kiki's mine. I'd bet my left foot and my right hand your fans would love to hear who really found Kiki. She doesn't even like you. So forget it. And I guess I'm fired, too, huh? b.u.mmer that. Good thing I'm blessed with the ability to color-coordinate food so it has camera appeal. Bet it's a skill that'll come in handy when I look for work. Oh, and geez, I hope my new boss is a total tyrant. I can't work unless someone's screaming at me. Know what else? I really, really hope he's an a.n.a.l, egotistical, self-serving, whiny, aging half-man who has manicures once a week like some soccer mom. I can't see why anyone would ever want to work for someone who doesn't have at least two of those traits." She yawned. "Okay. Gotta go. You and Bamby enjoy your stratospheric success."

With a hard shove, she pushed her husband Mitch away from her for the last time, stepping over the smashed carton of organic eggs so she wouldn't slip and break an ankle, and made her way out of the studio.

She gave nary a glance to the crew and their wide-eyed stares when she sauntered down the long hallway leading to the exit.

When pa.s.sing Bamby With A "Y," she held up Kiki, sticking the dog under Bamby's nose. Kiki hung there, her little legs dangling, wide-eyed with nary a blink. "Grrrrrrrrrrrr!" Frankie mimicked a much bigger dog than Kiki, giggling when Bamby squealed in terror.

Bamby hated dogs, probably as much as she hated the letters "I" and "E." Her leggy, tight body; her shiny, chocolate brown hair; her quivering with fear at Kiki didn't even make Frankie pause.

Frankie realized she should probably want to beat the b.i.t.c.h to within an inch of her life with a rolling pin-maybe a meat tenderizer, that'd definitely leave marks-but there was simply no fight left in her.

Stumbling into the warm night air, she dug around in her jeans to find the keys for her car.

Mitch might own everything. The brownstone was in his name. True dat. Every investment, vacation home, st.i.tch of clothing in their walk-in closet, checking and savings account might be his, too. That's what prenups were for. Mitch had made sure she'd signed one when they'd married eighteen years ago. She'd done so willingly to prove her undying devotion to the head chef at Reynard's. Back then Mitch was just financially sound, but he'd clenched every penny as though it were his last.

Eighteen years later, he was now insanely rich and still clenching every penny between his tight a.s.s cheeks.

Smart. He must've had some kind of crystal ball that told him he was going to be worth millions someday.

Yes, Mitch owned it all, Frankie mused ruefully.

But by G.o.d, her little Nissan Versa was hers.

Six months later "She's asleep? It's almost three in the afternoon!"

"Tell me something I don't know, Maxine. I think it's depression," Frankie's Aunt Gail said. In fact, if she were willing to open her eyes and get out of bed, Frankie'd bet Gail was nodding her head full of shortly cropped white hair, while her finger rested under her bottom lip.

"Has she been diagnosed with depression?" whoever Maxine was asked.

"Are you kidding? She hasn't been anywhere in months to be diagnosed with anything. All she does is sleep."

"Gail Lumley, why didn't you call me sooner?"

"Because you're so busy with the new business and school. Not to mention your new husband. You have so little time alone with Campbell. I didn't want to intrude."

Maxine chuckled all warm and squishy, making Frankie clench her eyes tighter. "My new business is exactly the cure for this kind of depression."

"But she's so cranky when you wake her. Like a hibernating bear."

"Really? Well, that's too d.a.m.ned bad."

"I wouldn't," Gail warned.

"Yeah? Well, I would," Maxine said. "Now give me the cookie."

The door to her Aunt Gail's small second bedroom cracked open, shedding a slant of light across the floor, forcing Frankie to burrow farther under the knitted afghan and tuck Kiki closer to her. A slight shift, and the bed sagged with someone's weight, and her faithful little Chi was suddenly up and away. The faint sound of pig noises drifted to Frankie's ears.

"Frankie Bennett?"

No.

The someone in question made a rash move by dragging the covers off her in a whoosh of cold air. "I said, Frankie Bennett?"

"Who are you?" she moaned in response to losing her knitted coc.o.o.n.