Muffin Top (Page 23)

The pop of a new can of Diet Dr. Pepper being open sounded, drawing Lucy’s attention back to where Henrietta and Frankie stood on opposite sides of the counter, looking like two people who’d spent the last two decades gossiping over drinks.

Henriette moved her bendy straw from the empty Diet Dr. Pepper to the new can. “How long have you been dating?”

“Not long.” Frankie looked over at Lucy and grinned, obviously so pleased that he’d figured out how to charm Henrietta that he practically reeked of self-satisfaction.

That massive ego of his should annoy her. Instead it just made her giggle—something she covered with a short, fake coughing fit. Remember, this is all fake. Nothing to feel here. Just move along.

After waiting for Lucy to stop cough-laughing, Henrietta asked Frankie, “What are your intentions?”

“Mrs. Campher!” The exclamation escaped her lips before her brain even had a second to register what she was saying. And people paid her the big bucks to always think about the message before it went out. So much for being able to apply that skill to her own circumstances.

“What?” Henrietta shrugged. “I’m near death. I don’t have time to beat around the bush.”

The woman was full of it. She’d outlive them all.

“My intentions?” Frankie said, seemingly unruffled by the older woman’s nosy question. “Nothing but trouble.”

Pure orneriness glittered in Henrietta’s eyes. “The kind that leaves a girl sighing or the kind that leaves her crying?”

Frankie gave Henrietta a wolfish smile and deepened his voice so his next words came out all sexy and low. “The kind that leaves her screaming for more.”

And for the first time in her entire life, Lucy watched as Henrietta smiled. As if the shock of that wasn’t enough, the old woman let loose with a creaky laugh that ended with a wheezing fit.

“Are you okay? Do you need us to go get your son?” Lucy asked, hustling over to the counter.

“I’m fine,” she said, waving off Frankie as he was about the round the counter and come to the older woman’s side. “Don’t fuss over me.”

Frankie stopped, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Thanks for your help, Mrs. C.”

“Bah.” She rolled her eyes. “Enjoy that man of yours, young lady.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Really, what else could she say? Henrietta was incorrigible. Sometimes the better part of valor really was admitting defeat.

At least this once.

…

Frankie was standing in the magma-hot July sun, sweating his ass off in a public park at a little after four in the afternoon. It wasn’t sexy. It sure as hell wasn’t comfortable. It was, however, a fact of life, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Why was this happening? Because he decided to show off, like an asshole.

Yeah, he was in enough pain to admit it to himself if not out loud—because that was going to happen exactly never. A smarter man would have read the directions stating that the bowl needed to be held at exactly six feet, eight inches off the ground at ten past four in some sort of Indiana Jones trick to find the final item on the scavenger hunt, and he would have gone and put it on the stand provided just for that purpose. However, Frankie was the kind of moron that decided to hold it aloft. Why? Because Lucy was watching. So yeah, he was a jackass.

“I’m dying,” he said as another bead of sweat took its sweet time sliding down his spine while his shoulder muscles started to scream at him. “How much longer?”

Lucy kept her attention focused on the clock app on her phone. “Don’t wimp out on me now, Hartigan. It’s almost time.”

“You’re not the one holding a fifty-pound concrete bowl above your head.” His ego was bigger than his brain.

“Come on, don’t tell me a big guy like you can’t take it.” She looked up at him and smirked—yes, smirked. No sexy smile. No come-hither curl of her lips. Smirked. And damn if it didn’t turn him on enough to give him that extra burst of adrenaline to hoist the bowl a little higher.

She continued, “Anyway, you were the one who declared it was no big deal.”

Yeah, tell that to his biceps, which were lodging a criminal complaint for stupidity because to really add fuel to the fire, he hadn’t waited until the last minute to lift the big-ass bowl. There was no way he could put it down now without admitting total defeat, and he never did that. So, he bitched. “I signed on for a scavenger hunt, not to be a human sundial.”

“But you look so good doing it.” She gave him a slow up-and-down.

Now that he was used to. He’d been getting double takes since forever. It wasn’t a brag. It was the truth. But it felt different coming from Lucy. Better. Hard-won. “Story of my life.”

“So how come you haven’t been in one of those hot firefighters calendars?” she asked, looking back down at her phone as the seconds flowed like molasses in January on the frozen tundra.

“Didn’t want to pick up a second job to cover the cost of security because of all the extra stalkers.” And because it was creepy as hell. He liked people. He did not like being an object.

“You mean you don’t have stalkers already?” she asked with a snarky little giggle.

This woman. She didn’t let him get away with any shit. She gave as good as she got. Of course, realizing this while he was holding up a concrete bowl in the hot July sun getting the arm workout from hell didn’t mean he was going to admit to her that he liked her scary, ball-busting ways.

“Ladies love me.” He winked at her.

She snort-laughed. “That sounds like the title of your autobiography, Ladies Love Me: The Story of a Former Sex Fiend.”

Oh yeah. There was that. Good for a lay, but not good enough to take home to Mom. That wasn’t exactly how Shannon put it, but it was close enough.

He adjusted his grip on the bowl without lowering it. “It wasn’t always sex.”

“Oh yeah, what was it?” Her question was as brash and to the point as usual, but there was more than a hint of concern and empathy in her eyes.

“It’s different for every woman,” he said, trying to put it into words for the first time. “Sometimes it’s the smell of her perfume or the way she struts through a room. It’s the little things that you don’t notice right away, like the way someone adjusts her walking speed to stay on pace with someone else instead of speeding ahead. Other times, it’s the little things you have to earn—a secret she’s never told before, or way she lets go and laughs without worrying about what it might sound like to someone else.”

“Holy shit, Frankie.” Lucy stared at him, her eyes wide with shock. “You’re a romantic.”

Whoa. That was not where he’d been going with that. He was an appreciator of women, all women, not some dweeb who wrote bad, sappy poems and spent nights in watching chick flicks and did stupid shit like profess his love in front of the entire world. That was not him.

“Did I mention the sex?” He puffed out his chest, a move he realized too late just made keeping the heavy-ass concrete bowl in the right position above his head even harder. “That part is really fucking good, great, the best.”

“Calm your gonads, I’m not going to let your secret out.” She didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she was laughing at him as she glanced down at her phone, then back at the spot on the shady ground where the sun spilled through the cutout in the bowl. “And that’s it.”