“Actually, I arrested her,” Frankel had replied sheepishly. “You’d think that would have been my first clue.”

Rachel started laughing.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Frankel said.

The Tragic Tale of Julia Molinari and John Frankel followed.

“Italian girl,” Rachel observed.

“With all the feistiness and nutso family you’d expect.”

Case in point—the evening they met.

Frankel had been working undercover outside the Garden, trying to break a scalping ring that was driving licensed ticket brokers in Jersey City on a road to ruin.

“There was this one girl who kept trying to hawk a couple of nosebleeds for a crappy game. The Grizzlies were in town and no fan wanted to watch the Knicks go against up against some lousy Canadian team they could actually come out of the stands and play for in the fourth quarter.”

Rachel laughed again. “Vancouver did suck pretty bad.”

Frankel raised an eyebrow.

“My dad’s an avid Liverpool booster, just like my granddad—but it never took with me,” Rachel explained. “Men running around in circles for a solid hour with nothing to show but a scoreless draw. I started watching the Euros play on the telly and once guys like Dirk headed to the NBA, I was hooked. My folks thought I came to America to get a master’s in journalism but it was more about going to the Garden and seeing the Knicks and Celtics battle live.”’

Frankel thought about checking to make sure his jaw wasn’t hanging open.

“So, you were saying?” Rachel asked after taking a sip of the hot toddy.

“Huh?”

“Julia? Outside the Garden?” There was a twinkle in her eye.

He checked. Yup. Jaw definitely hanging. He resumed his story.

As tip-off approached, the pesky but striking willowy brunette had already passed by him a number of times. Finally, absolutely desperate, she thrust the tickets in Frankel’s face, blatantly asking what he’d give her for the pair.

Frankel pulled out his badge.

The girl didn’t miss a beat when she told him she’d take face value.

He’d cracked up. But still ended up cuffing her.

“You can’t be serious,” she had said.

Looking back, he realized he’d been a bit of a hard ass. But he figured he had been teaching Julia Molinari a life lesson. It was back at the precinct when he’d allowed Julia to make her one call that Frankel had gotten his first taste of his future father-in-law.

“What’d I get for the tickets?” Julia screamed in the phone. “I got fuckin’ arrested for the tickets, that’s what I got!”

Frankel could hear the dial tone on the phone. She turned and shrugged. “I was gonna say a thousand-dollar fine or six months, but you hadn’t told me yet.”

And then she’d smiled at him like no other woman Frankel had ever met.