Muffin Top (Page 2)

“You already have one brother and four sisters who are like that already. I bring balance to the Force.”

It was probably true. There were seven Hartigan siblings—all ruled over by Frank Senior and Katie. Frankie and his twin Finn had followed in their dad’s footsteps and become part of Waterbury’s bravest. The triplets, Fiona, Ford, and Faith, had chosen different routes, with his sisters going into teaching and Ford crossing over onto the Dark Side by joining the Waterbury Police Department. How a nice girl like Gina could see past that awful fault to actually fall for the guy was beyond Frankie. Fallon came next in the Hartigan order, and she was a ball-busting nurse who put all of the patching up and shit-kicking skills she learned growing up in a rowdy working-class family to keep even the gangbangers in line when they came through her emergency room. Finally, there was the baby, Felicia, the pint-sized Hartigan—well, almost a Carlyle now—who lived across the river with her billionaire fiancé and studied ants. The family joke went that the Hartigans fell into all three categories of Irish: the red Irish, the black Irish, and the so-bull-headed-their-ancestors-got-kicked-off-the-island-for-rebel-activities Irish. And that joke was funny because it was true.

“How about instead of feeling sorry for yourself for having all this paid time off, you do something productive, like figure out what we’re going to do for mom and dad’s anniversary,” Ford said. “We all agreed to pitch in and do something big for them.”

The plan had been to send them to Paris for a week, until their dad came home and declared that if their mom forced him to go to one more frou-frou French restaurant to eat snails and force-fed duck livers, he was going to choose to starve to death instead. Yeah. The Hartigans were all known for being a little bit on the loudly dramatic side, with every hill being the hill they’d die on.

“I’d say, with three weeks off, you’re the perfect man for the case, Junior,” Ford said, using Frankie’s most hated of nicknames.

“Yo Hartigan, you’re up,” someone hollered from the area near the dartboard, saving Frankie from having to smack his brother upside the head on general principle for calling him Junior.

Knowing he’d been saved, Ford raised his beer in salute and strolled off to the back, leaving Frankie in unfriendly territory without a cop guide. Now, it wasn’t that the cops and firefighters of Waterbury were sworn enemies, it was just that, well, there was a long-lived and healthy-ish rivalry between them, so they tended to stick to their own kind—except for the annual charity hockey game, during which they happily and enthusiastically beat the ever-loving shit out of each other in between scoring goals.

The bar got a whole lot friendlier when Bobby Marino, who was all of seventy-six if he was a day, gave up the serving duties to Shannon Kominsky. Tall with a body that made a man do a triple take and the kind of warm brown skin that he knew from personal experience was very soft to the touch, she always brightened up the bar at Marino’s.

Frankie had known Shannon for years, they’d spent time together naked before, and they had both walked away relaxed and happy. If he played his cards right, tonight could be a repeat performance, complete with orgasms and her post-sex chocolate chip cookies. Some women liked to snuggle after sex. Some liked to talk. Shannon baked.

“Heya, Shannon,” he said, giving her the half-lazy, half-cocky grin that had started getting him laid in high school.

And the grin would have worked, if she’d have seen it. Instead, she kept her gaze off of him as she picked up his beer, slid a coaster under it, and set the mug back down. “Not tonight, Frankie.”

Damn. That brush off came brutally fast.

“What did I do?”

Now she did look up at him, but it was probably just to give him the are-you-stupid look on her cute face. “It’s what you didn’t do.”

His expression must have been as blank as his brain right then, because she shook her head and her lips curled in a rueful smile.

“Call, Frankie,” she said with a chuckle. “You never called.”

Fuck. He shifted on his barstool. “I’m sorry, it’s been crazy, but I’ve got some time off. Maybe you and I could—”

“Honey, it’s been six months.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers, the neon light from the Budweiser sign above the bar catching the diamond ring on her finger. “I’m off the market.”

“Damn.” This was starting to happen with way too much frequency lately. Why was everyone getting married all of a sudden? “Looks like I’m too late.”

“Oh sweetie, you were never in the running.” Shannon leaned her forearms on the bar and brought her head close, lowering her voice as if she was about to impart an important secret. “Frankie, you’re one of the best lays in Waterbury. All us girls agree.”

His ego grew two sizes before the second part of her declaration registered. “You talk about me? All of you together like that?” Comparing notes? Chicks did that? Fuck, did other guys know this little factoid? Because that shit was dangerous.

“It’s Waterbury. This neighborhood is like a small town when it comes to gossip,” Shannon said. “But here’s the deal. You’re respectful. You don’t promise anything you’re not going to deliver. You’re fun. You’re honestly a good guy, but, honey, you’re not the kind of guy who delivers happily ever afters.” She gave him a look that walked the line between sympathy and pity. “And once you get to a certain point in your life, all of the fuck-buddy fun loses its luster and you want more, you want a forever kind of thing. You understand what I’m saying?”

Love. That’s what she meant. That once-in-a-lifetime, you’re-a-lucky-son-of-a-bitch-if-you-find-it thing that everyone thought his parents had, that Felicia had with Hudson, that Gina had with Ford, and that Tyler had with Everly. And for him, it was as likely to happen as him finding a unicorn, because he knew Shannon was right. He’d always known it. He wasn’t a delivery driver for Happily Ever Afters R Us, which meant he was as likely to find it as he was to find…

“A fucking unicorn,” he muttered.

Shannon’s eyebrows went up in question. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said with a sigh because how did you explain a unicorn to a woman who’d just told him he wasn’t ever getting one?

Shannon shook her head at him and strutted down to the other end of the bar to take some fresh-out-of-the-academy kid’s order. Annoyed with the fact that the zinger she’d delivered hit a little too close to home, Frankie turned around and perused the crowd at Marino’s. Going east to west, it pretty much went cop and a badge bunny, several cops and one hot badge bunny, a group of sad-sack cops with no badge bunnies, a shitbird in a suit who looked totally out of place, and one Lucy Kavanagh, who looked like she was about to punch his lights out.

Now, this could get interesting.

Frankie got up off the barstool and strolled on over to provide the zaftig firecracker best friend of Ford’s girlfriend some help should she need it.

…

If one more person told Lucy that she’d be so pretty if she just lost some weight, she was going to set them on fire.

All she wanted to do was sit in Marino’s in peace and enjoy her jalapeño cheeseburger with a side of spicy fries and a Mountain Dew—yeah, that’s right, full-calorie Mountain Dew, suck it, Judgey McJudgeyPants—as her own special treat after the week from hell. She’d planned to tell her bestie Gina about it. Her bestie’s fiancé was a cop, hence why they were meeting for dinner in a cop bar, but Gina had to cancel at the last minute because of a bride gone bridezilla.