Muffin Top (Page 40)

Reaching out to put his arms around her shoulders and scooting closer to her just seemed as natural as breathing. “You just need the right person to show you it’s possible.” Okay, maybe being around her and still on the comedown from a killer orgasm had made him a little more touchy-feely than normal.

“Are you applying for the job?” She gasped and looked at him with a look of pure, abject horror. “I didn’t mean that. I know this, whatever it is, is only fun. You haven’t led me on. I know you don’t want more.”

The words rushed out of her so fast they nearly tripped over each other as a huge swath of red made its way northward from her more-than-impressive rack. Because he was a human with eyeballs and she was a gorgeous naked woman in front of him, his gaze dipped down to her nipples, then lower across her belly and to those round hips that made his fingers itch with the urge to grab hold of all that softness and worship it. Damn, even after spilling his guts and while she was in the middle of an embarrassed ramble he wanted to toss her down and fuck her silly.

“What if I am looking for the job?” he asked. “Do you have an application on hand that I can fill out?”

She snorted and rolled her eyes at him. “Very funny.”

Sure, he’d said it as a joke to lighten the mood and ease her embarrassment, but something about the idea settled somewhere deep inside of him and took root.

Lucy, her cheeks still pink, gave him a sassy wink. “Last one in has to fold up the blanket and put it away in the storage locker.”

All he had to do was look at the blue-and-green checked material for a mental flash of what they’d just done on it to make his balls tingle in anticipation. “Do you think we should leave it after…”

His words died in the face of her hearty laugh. Seriously. The woman was practically bent in half as she giggled her ass off at him. Finally, when she could take a breath, she gave him a you-dumbass look and shook her head.

“The lake is part of my family’s land,” she said. “I’ll come out in the boat before we leave and get rid of the damning evidence by tossing it in the washing machine at home.” His shock must have shown, because she started laughing again. “You don’t think I’m the kind of woman who goes skinny-dipping in public, do you? Come on, I have a professional reputation to uphold. Imagine me trying to scare the crap out of one of the Ice Knights players who’d fucked up when there were naked pics of me on the internet. That’s a big oh hell no.”

Of course, she hadn’t left anything to chance. Not his Lucy. “You really are something.”

“Yep,” she said, taking three quick steps that brought her right to the edge of the platform. “And you really are the last one on the dock.”

Then, with a shit-eating grin, she jumped into the dark water, surfacing a few feet away, and started swimming to shore. Of course, Lucy being Lucy, she rolled over on her back to wave at him before flipping over again and taking off. And all Frankie could do was watch because the sight of her mouthwatering ass shown off to perfection in the moonlight made his brain blank out and his dick get hard.

If he had Lucy Kavanagh’s boyfriend application at that moment, he would have been filling it out. In triplicate. Immediately.

But he couldn’t help wondering if she’d even still want to see him when they got back to Harbor City. What if she saw that failure in him, too? The one Shannon had pointed out—not with glee but pity—that he wasn’t a guy who could deliver happily ever afters.

Chapter Fifteen

One thing was for sure. Being sober did not make Constance less of a complete and total bitch. Today, however, Lucy was not going to let the über-hag get to her. It was amazing what a few brain-blowing orgasms could do for a woman’s state of mind.

She ignored the other woman when she waltzed over and stood next to Lucy a few feet from the front of the stage, where the next event for the reunion decathlon was about to start.

“Interesting,” Constance said. “I figured you would have been the natural choice for this.”

Without meaning to, Lucy curled her hands into fists before she realized it and had to take a few deep breaths so she could unclench her hands. Instead of responding, she focused on Frankie as he tied a plastic bib around his neck and sat down in front of the homemade berry pie for the pie-eating contest. She caught his eye, and he winked at her, making her insides do that ooey-gooey thing that sent all of her happy endorphins straight to her clit.

That little buzz of pleasure gave her the strength to turn to the woman determined to make her life hell like it was high school all over again and deliver a super sugary smile in place of a knuckle sandwich. “Frankie has many talents, including eating pie. Lots of pie. With gusto. Plus, there’s always a big bang at the end.”

It took a second, but Constance got it. Or at least Lucy thought she had, considering the way her face got all mottled and how she let out a huff of disgust before stomping away. The woman wasn’t even trying to go the frenemy route. She’d moved on to a full-frontal assault. Lovely.

Yeah, getting laid well really did have a positive effect on her mood.

She must have still been riding the high of finally giving it back to her tormentor—and the fact that Frankie came in first in the pie-eating contest, no shocker there—to agree to take on the next challenge. Really, it was the only reason she could think of as to why she had her forehead pressed to the end of a bat and was spinning around and around as the crowd of reunion attendees counted to ten. Once she heard that, though, she popped up into a standing position and started running toward Frankie, who was standing about ninety feet away—the length from third base to home plate. Or at least she meant to run. Her legs were a wobbly mess, and the world was shifting as if she was on a boat and it was going down hard and fast.

“Come on, Lucy!” Frankie hollered at her. “You can do it.”

“Lu-cy! Lu-cy!” the people around them chanted as they clapped and cheered her on.

Holding her arms out as if that could stop the ground from weaving this way and that, she stumbled and bumbled her way toward the blurry redheaded giant urging her forward. Thank God he was a big target, because otherwise she wasn’t sure she would’ve made it. But she did.

She nearly knocked Frankie off his feet with the force of her clumsy impact, but she made it. Best of all, she beat Bryce, who had stopped three feet in front of Constance and was upchucking all the pie he’d gobbled in an attempt to win that contest.

By the time the next to last contest of decathlon, a game of cornhole, ended, she and Frankie were tied with Constance and Bryce in points. It was all going to come down to the big finale to be held during the dance tonight.

“So, are you ready to go home and get psyched up to win?” Frankie asked as they made their way to his car.

She thought about it. When the invitation to her reunion had arrived in the mail, the only goal she had was to show all of the people who had given her a hard time in high school that they didn’t matter to her anymore. Of course just by thinking that, she was pretty much confirming, to herself at least, that they did.

But the past few days of participating in the decathlon had shown her something.

She’d gotten to talk—actually talk—with a lot of the people she’d graduated with. They weren’t the same people now that they’d been then, any more than she was. Everyone had changed and grown. She wasn’t unique in that aspect. And with that realization, something a lot like contentment settled into that spot and shoved out a lot of the old bitterness.