Muffin Top (Page 5)

“Really?” He paused and pointedly dropped his gaze to her fingers on her straw before looking back up at her face. “Prove it by going.”

She released the straw and dropped her hand to her lap. “Unlike some people,” she said, giving him a look that made it all too clear she was talking about him, “I am not about to get dared into doing something dumb.”

“Fine. How about getting dared into doing something fun?”

She cracked a smile. “You’re trouble, you know that?”

“You’re not the first woman to tell me that.” He winked at her and tapped his beer mug against her soda glass.

“I can believe it,” she said before popping a stray jalapeño into her mouth as if it wasn’t going to set her mouth on fire.

Frankie had grown up with enough estrogen in his house to know that women were not delicate, mysterious creatures. They were like dudes, but curvier, and usually a helluva lot meaner when you pissed them off. This observation hadn’t been changed by his encounters with the women of Waterbury whom he wasn’t related to, either. In fact, because of the women he’d dated, he’d added the following to his all-about-women knowledge base: Don’t fuck with them. Don’t lie to them. Don’t come until they have first.

Still, he also knew when to leave things alone, so he moved the conversation on to funny stories about their newest rookie. She had him laughing his ass off with some of her clients (unnamed, of course) who did even dumber shit than the rookie. He never would have thought a monkey could be trained to attack paparazzi, but he learned something new that night.

By the time the waitress dropped off his bill with her phone number scrawled on the bottom, he was relaxed back against his chair, having a damn good time because he wasn’t worried about impressing Lucy so he could get in her pants. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken bread with a woman and had this kind of an easy, low-key good time. Mellow didn’t usually describe his interactions with women. Naked and orgasmic usually described his interactions with women, just not long enough to include actual conversation like this.

Shit. What if Shannon was right? What if he was just a good-time guy and nothing more? What if there wasn’t anything more to him than orgasms? He took a drink of beer, which had suddenly gone skunky.

Lucy sat across from him digging through her oversized red purse—the woman had a whole color-scheme thing going—for exact change to pay her bill, pulling out a quarter, rooting around in the bag again, then pulling out a dime, and repeat. It was kinda hilarious.

“You know,” he said. “They will make change.”

She paused in her search long enough to flip him off.

He laughed long and hard as he placed a few bills on top of his check. Shit, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman with whom he didn’t share a last name was so totally unimpressed by him. Since puberty, the fairer sex had pretty much fallen at his feet. That wasn’t a brag. It was fact. So he’d acted like any red-blooded man and had accepted the status quo as his due. He’d never given the situation a second thought—right up until Shannon’s comments had struck him like a two-by-four to his thick skull.

He was thirty-three, single, and he lived with his twin brother. All of his friends were married, some more than once, and he was still fucking around at bars looking for Ms. Right Now and nothing more, as if he was still twenty-five and an idiot. So, what was he waiting for? What was he missing? Was he just destined to be the designated Waterbury fuck buddy? He didn’t have answers for any of it, but that last question left a bad taste in his mouth.

It was past time for him to figure this shit out. He needed a reset, a change of priorities. He’d step back from the scene for a few weeks and maybe then he’d figure out what was giving him this itchy little feeling that things weren’t just off, that he’d missed something important. That was it. A temporary powering down of the small head to power up the big head. There was a reason why fighters didn’t fuck before a big match. Women messed with a man’s head. So he’d enter a little player rehab for a few weeks, just him and his right hand.

Yeah, but he wasn’t one for spending a lot of time by himself. Could be a twin thing or that he was just a people person in general, but even the idea of three weeks with only himself for entertainment gave him the cold shakes.

The waitress picked that moment to stop by, and he nearly grabbed his bill back from her to tear off the section with her number on it.

Get a grip, Hartigan.

He stilled his hand in time, but that had been damn close.

“Thanks,” Lucy said as she handed over the exact change plus tip.

Lightning struck for the second time in five minutes: he’d be Lucy’s date to her high school reunion. It was the perfect plan because, as awesome as she was, she wasn’t his type. There wasn’t any teasing flirt to her. She was blunt, ballsy, and definitely not the kind of woman to relinquish control even for a second. However, she was fun as hell, and that was just what he needed to keep him busy and out of trouble. And the fact that she was definitely not into him was a bonus.

Lucy stood up and set her purse on her chair, then started to put on her jacket. Adrenaline jolted him out of his seat.

“You can’t miss your high school reunion,” he said, louder than he meant. “You owe it to yourself to go show them that their bullshit couldn’t hold you back. You already have the killer job, and I have the perfect solution for dealing with people giving you shit.”

“Really?” she asked, not even slowing in the process of getting her suit jacket on. “How’s that?”

“I’m gonna be your date.” He straightened to his full height of six feet, six inches. “No one gives anyone I’m with a hard time.”

Lucy laughed—loud enough to make the people around them turn and look—and smacked her hand to the table.

Damn. His ego was as big as he was, but it had taken about all it could take in one night.

“Very funny,” she said, wiping away a tear of laugher from her eye and catching her breath. “But I’m not going to drive with you out to Missouri for my high school reunion.”

Now that was a haul. “Why aren’t you flying?”

That question wiped the smile off her face. “Have you seen how people my size are treated on a plane?” She gave him a slow up-and-down. “You of all people should understand that those little seats are uncomfortable unless you’re a Smurf.”

She wasn’t wrong. Every time he’d take his seat, he had to pretzel himself up to fit, and then the jerkwad in front of him always tried to tilt his seat back, right up until he saw the pissed-off giant behind him. Really, not flying made sense.

“So we drive.” He shrugged. “How long could it take?”

“A day and a half.” She picked up her purse and slid the strap over her shoulder.

He could make that work. “Good thing I am on forced vacation.”

“You’re suspended?”

“No.” That would be easier to take. Then there would be an actual reason why he couldn’t go to work, rather than because of some bullshit rule. “I haven’t taken any of my required off-time, and the HR department freaked out. Don’t make me sit home and be bored. Seriously. I don’t do time off well. Last time I built a deck.”