Muffin Top (Page 4)

“I appreciate what you did. Seriously, I am going to hold that memory tight for the next time some asshole decides that he or she needs to impart unsolicited advice about my body, but you don’t have to eat with me. I’m a big girl. Obviously.” Yes, because making fat jokes before anyone else could was a habit ingrained since grade school, when Jimmy Evans asked if she’d make the Pillsbury Doughboy giggle if he poked her in the stomach. She’d punched him in the stomach instead. That had gone over about as well as expected.

“No really, can I stick around and eat with you?” he asked, leaning forward as if he was about to impart a deep, dark secret. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Long story that should take at least as much time as it does for us to eat our burgers.”

Now how could she say no to that?

…

Frankie took a dramatic pause at the end of his story about the cops-on-firefighters brawl at the end of the last charity hockey game—one that his smack talk had started but his right hook had finished. “And that’s why I was banned from Marino’s unless accompanied by my brother.”

Across the table from him, Lucy raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “It’s clients like you who are the reason why I’m going all spicy tonight.”

“You have charming, especially handsome clients?” Ego? Him? All the fucking time.

She laughed. It was a big sound, one that filled the space around them. “Some of them. Others are just scarily powerful and rich.”

The curiosity was killing him, but he wanted to draw it out in order to get another one of those laughs of hers. “Don’t tell me, I want to guess what you do.”

She dragged a fry through the hot sauce that set his mouth on fire and pointed at him. “I’ll let you have three.”

The woman didn’t give an inch. He liked that.

His gaze traveled over her in a slow once-over as she ate her french fries. Her basic black suit jacket hung over the back of her chair. The plain white shirt she wore only had the first button undone—not flashy by any means—but that asshole had been right, her tits were fantastic, and it was hard to miss them even though they weren’t on display. Her makeup was subtle, except for the bright red lipstick, as if she couldn’t help but highlight that mouth of hers that was always moving. It wasn’t that she talked too much, it was that she wasn’t ever, in the few times he’d met her, ever at a loss for words. Her soft auburn hair was pulled back into a low ponytail that tempted his fingers.

Thinking back to the way she’d handled that idiot earlier, he could see her delivering some vigilante justice. “Secret assassin?”

“In a way,” she said cryptically. “I do kill things for a living.”

“Enforcer?” It was pretty obvious just by looking at her gives-no-fucks resting face that she didn’t put up with idiots.

“Sure. Some days. I have to make sure people stay in line.” She emphasized her point by drawing one red-tipped fingernail across the table.

“Ringleader?”

“Only on the days that end in Y.” She waited a beat. “I’m a publicist and I specialize in crisis communications.”

He could see that. Lucy Kavanagh was not a woman to be fucked with. She held her own.

“So we’re in the same line of work.” He lifted his beer in toast and grinned. “We both put out fires.”

She clinked her glass of soda against his beer mug. “Pretty much.”

After that, they finished their burgers with small talk about Marino’s food—the best kind of bar comfort food; the weather—good riddance to winter; and people who put fruit in beers—freaks of nature.

“So, what kind of fires are you putting out now?” he asked, not above getting a little gossip.

She started fiddling with her straw, sending the ice cubes in her soda clinking around in the glass. “I am officially on hiatus.”

“Your boss make you take a forced vacation, too?”

She chuckled. “Since I’m freelance and highly in demand, I can afford to take off time when I want.”

“So what’s on the agenda?” If it was anything even remotely interesting, he was going to find a way to tag along. Three weeks on his own was going to send him off the deep end.

“Not what I’d originally planned.”

The way she said it set off Frankie’s gossip alarm bells. Oh yeah, people might like to think it was the ladies-who-lunch type who liked to spill tea, but most of those folks had never been in a firehouse on a slow shift when there was nothing to do besides run drills and gossip. He reached over to her plate and swiped three jalapeños that had fallen off her cheeseburger. “Tell me and I’ll eat all of these in one go.”

She shrugged. “It’s just three jalapeños, that’s nothing.”

Not if he had an asbestos mouth, which he did not. Anything above the mildest of salsa and his mouth was on fire. “I’m delicate.”

“Oh yeah. Everyone in Waterbury talks about fragile Frankie Hartigan,” she said with a chuckle.

He sat up a little straighter in his chair. He’d just meant it as a dumb joke—because he really did hate spicy food—but now? He had just enough time to think oh shit before his male ego took over and he popped the demon circles into his mouth. As he started to chew, he watched her eyes go wide and a smile start to curve her full lips upward, which definitely made the move worth it. Then the fiery taste hit his tongue, and it was all he could do not to spit the damn things out. Instead he reached for the water the waitress had brought along with his beer and downed it in one gulp. Yeah. Totally manly.

By the time he set his depleted water glass down, Lucy wasn’t even trying to hide her smile. It was just amused, far from being flirtatious. Not the normal reaction he got from women, even when he was being an ass.

“Have some pity. I almost died from that. Tell me the truth.”

She cocked her head to one side and gave him a considering look before saying, “I was going to go to my high school reunion, but thank God my sanity returned.”

“What are you talking about? I went to mine. It was a blast,” he said, trying to wrap his brain around her stance. “Anyway, you have one of those cool jobs with celebrity clients that you can shove in people’s faces.”

She snorted and gave him a hey-dumbass look. “I’m sure it was fun for you.”

“But not for you?”

“Spend a week with all the fat-shaming jerks I went to school with when I could be getting a mani-pedi? No way.”

She stopped fidgeting with her straw and looked up at him as if daring him to disagree with the assessment. He couldn’t do that. Lucy Kavanagh was plus-sized. No one made it through to adulthood without getting picked on for something—he’d had his locker stuffed with gingersnap cookies in seventh grade—but anyone who looked different from the norm got it worse. But that was when they’d all still had lizard adolescent brains. There had to be another reason—and his gut was telling him exactly what it was.

“You’re full of shit.”

“Excuse me?” One of her eyebrows went up—way up.

The little patch of color blooming at the base of her throat confirmed he was right. “You’re scared.”

“I am not.” More fidgeting with the straw, as if it was either that or sitting on her hands. “Fine. It’s going to be couple central, and I am not looking forward to a week of being the third wheel or being a wallflower during all these activities—even a pseudo prom at the end. It would be awkward, but I’m not afraid.”