Muffin Top (Page 51)

She was contemplating her ceiling when her phone vibrated on the bedside table.

Frankie: Miss me yet?

Lucy: Nope. Totally starfishing.

The man had a big enough ego, he didn’t need her to be his fluffer.

Frankie: You got your legs spread wide and everything?

Was it weird that she heard the teasing in his voice in her head, and it sent a shiver down her spine?

Lucy: You’re incorrigible.

Frankie: Pretty much.

Lucy: Can we grab lunch tomorrow?

Frankie: Breakfast? Can meet you at your place after I get off shift.

Lucy: See you then.

Frankie: G2G got a call.

…

Frankie had six grocery bags hanging from his forearms when he got off the elevator on Lucy’s floor. Sure, he could have left half of the breakfast ingredients in Scarlett and taken two trips, but multiple trips was for wimps, and he was too ready to finally see Lucy again.

After smiling at the old lady who got on the elevator when he got off, he hustled over to Lucy’s door and lifted his hand to knock. The door opened before his knuckles even met the wood.

She stood there in a long gray sweatshirt with Boss Babe written across the front and a pair of yoga pants. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing those sexy red glasses of hers. Damn she looked good.

But that wasn’t what made him relax.

It was that feeling of coming home to her that eased the tension in his shoulders and loosened the vice grip on his lungs.

“Hey,” Lucy said, a nervous but excited smile playing on her lips.

He fucking hated that unsure smile. Without thinking twice, he dipped his head down and kissed it right off her face. When she let out a moan of appreciation, he followed up by sliding his tongue inside. It was so fucking good to touch her again, to be near her again, that he almost that forgot one of the bags he was about to drop had a dozen eggs in it.

He broke the kiss and looked down at her, loving that her smile was all smart-mouth Lucy again.

“Do you always answer your door that way?” he asked.

One of her eyebrows went up. “By kissing whoever knocked?”

“Technically, I didn’t knock,” he teased. “You opened it before I got a chance. I think you’re a little excited to see me again.”

She rolled her eyes. “That ego.” Then she took two bags from his grip. “You brought groceries?”

“I’m making you breakfast.” Okay, he’d gotten way more than they needed for breakfast, but he wanted to make sure to have a little bit of everything just in case she hated one thing or another.

“I made brunch reservations,” she said, leading him inside. “I’d figured you’d be tired after your shift and wouldn’t want to cook.”

He shut the door and followed her into her kitchen, setting the bags down on the island in the middle of the room. “When it comes to being with you, I’m never tired.” He leaned down and stole another kiss. “In fact, we’d get arrested for what I plan on doing to you after breakfast if we were in public. So, would you be cool staying here?”

Standing on the other side of the island, she cocked her head to one side and did the world’s worst impression of total innocence. “You have plans for me?”

“All sorts of them.” He gave her a wink and then started unpacking the bags. “But first, let’s make apple French toast.”

Lucy helped him unpack the bread and eggs, apples and real maple syrup, the milk, the OJ, the croissants, the bacon, the turkey sausage, the hash browns, the muffins, and everything else. By the time it was all spread out on her island, they were both laughing at the sheer spectacle of it all.

“So,” he said, looking at the huge spread. “I may have gotten a little too much for just the two of us.”

“Ya think?” she asked with a laugh. “Please tell me you know how to cook, because I’m shit at it.”

“Every firefighter knows how to cook.” He zipped around the island to her side and pulled her in close before kissing her again. “It’s part of what makes us so sexy.”

“Prove it,” she said, her tough talk undermined by the turned-on breathiness of her tone.

Oh, challenge accepted.

And that’s how he ended up teaching her to make French toast. She took over the whisking of the eggs while he peeled and sliced the apples so thin they were almost see-through. Next came the vanilla and the cream that she stirred into the eggs. After that it was an assembly line of dipping the bread into the egg mixture, laying it on the electric griddle, and adding the thin apple slices on top before flipping and letting that side toast.

“You sure you got this?” he asked as he looked over her shoulder while standing close enough behind her that it was just natural for his hands to fall to her hips.

“As long as you don’t distract me into burning them.”

That was just the kind of comment that needed to be responded to, but not with words. Instead, he dipped his head down and started kissing his way up the column of her neck to the sensitive spot behind her earlobe. As soon as he got there, she almost dropped the spatula.

“Frankie,” she said in encouraging censure. “Don’t you have bacon to cook?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He nipped her earlobe and gave her a light smack on the ass before moving to the stove and putting the bacon into the pan.

They ended up skipping everything else but the juice and the scrambled eggs because by the time the French toast was done and stacked on two plates, both of their stomachs were growling. They hustled out to the balcony, where they sat at the tiny little bistro table and took in the Harbor City skyline, eating in companionable silence—unless you counted Lucy’s moans of pleasure when she took her first bite of the apple French toast.

It was nice, the lowkey ease of it. He’d never made breakfast with anyone who didn’t share his last name before. Like everything else with Lucy, though, it just felt…right.

He was trying to figure out how to put that into words when her phone buzzed and a photo of Lucy with her dad popped up on the screen. Looking down, she screwed up her mouth and flipped over the phone. Considering how close they’d seemed in Antioch, that was weird.

“Didn’t you want to take that?” he asked.

She turned her face toward Harbor City. “I’ll call him back after breakfast.”

Oh yeah. That set off every warning bell in his head. He’d thought Tom had liked him; hell, he’d seemed to practically give his approval for Frankie going after Lucy. Why the change? Unless he’d gotten it wrong. After all, he was the guy who’d never realized what all the women of Waterbury said about him behind his back until Shannon dropped her truth bomb.

“What is it?” He forced his fingers to loosen their grip on his fork. “He doesn’t like the idea of me dating his daughter?”

“Is that what we’re doing?” she asked, a teasing lilt to her voice.

“Yes.” Of that he had absolutely no doubts. Now, whether he could actually trust himself not to be his old man’s son, that was another thing, because for as much as he didn’t want to think he could, it was hard to ignore the family ghost that had been haunting him since high school. “I’d ask you to wear my class ring, but God only knows where my mom packed that away. So, what’s the deal with your dad?”

“He’s just watching out for me.” Still, she didn’t look at him. “Doesn’t want me making the same assumption that he did with my mom.”