Muffin Top (Page 60)

Frankie pulled up the memory of walking into that firehouse. His dad had been against the wall, his hands at his sides. It was Becky who’d been plastered against his old man.

“That’s a pretty convenient story that you didn’t share all those years ago,” he said as he kept running it over and over in his head.

“Junior,” his dad said with a frustrated sigh. “I love you, but don’t think for a minute that I need to explain myself to you when I haven’t done a damn thing wrong.”

Maybe the explanation wouldn’t have mattered when Frankie was seventeen, but after years as a firefighter, he’d seen that agonizing place when someone went down in a blaze, where a spouse was experiencing so much pain that became so overwhelming that all they wanted to do was just be rid of it for a little while. Still, he’d been so sure then and had never let go of it, even when the doubts started creeping in.

“He’s telling the truth,” Finn said, his voice sounding as tired as Frankie felt at the moment. “I ran into Becky outside of the firehouse when I came back from that bullshit errand you sent me on. She was talking to Mom, who’d come by to drop off lunch for Dad since it was a Saturday and she wasn’t working. Becky was crying to Mom, hanging onto her as if her whole world had been blown away. She kept telling Mom she was sorry, that she didn’t mean to kiss him. Mom just held Becky tight and told her it was okay, that it was all going to be okay. So I gotta ask you, do you really think you know more than Mom?”

The question landed like a two-by-four to the side of the head. There wasn’t a Hartigan sibling alive who would dare think they knew more than Katie Hartigan, because his mama didn’t raise any stupid kids. He turned to his dad, still half-processing what in the hell he’d just learned, almost afraid to hope that he’d been wrong.

“Is that really what happened?” Frankie asked.

His dad didn’t blink, didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

All those years, all those times that he thought he was protecting everyone, he’d just been digging a hole for himself because he thought he knew best. Instead of talking it out and asking questions, he’d given up and walked away from a man who up until that moment had been his real-life hero.

He’d been a fucking idiot.

“I gave up too easily,” he said, realization sucker punching him in the gut.

Ford snorted. “That’s because everything always came easy to you. School. Friends. Women. Life. So when something didn’t fit within your accepted parameters, you didn’t have a damn clue what to do about it. That’s why you fucked shit up with Lucy, because you thought you could blast in like some knight in shining armor when that was the last thing she needed or wanted.”

Frankie, Finn, and Frank Sr. all turned to look at Ford, wearing almost identical expressions of shock and horror.

“When did you turn into some crackpot TV doctor?” Finn asked, blinking in surprise.

Ford glared at them. “Gina has recommended some books.”

Who in the hell had taken over his emotionally clueless brother’s body? Looking around, he saw he wasn’t the only one with that reaction. Frank Sr. and Finn were staring at Ford like he was one of the Pod People, too. For his part, Ford just tapped his thumb to his fingers as the tips of his ears turned red.

“The thing is,” Ford said, zeroing in on Frankie, “I’m not wrong and you know it.”

What Frankie wouldn’t give to tell Ford to fuck straight off. Maybe he could even draw his baby brother into tossing down like they had the night Frankie had enlightened Ford about what an idiot he was being when it came to Gina. Sure, he’d walk away with a few bruises, but that was better than the guilt jabbing into him like an electric cattle prod.

Because he hadn’t just seen something and gone into automatic protector mode when it came to what had happened with his dad. He’d done it with Lucy, too. When that guy at the bar had gone off like a moron, he should have walked away. Instead, he’d given in to the need to try to be her knight on a white horse. Lucy didn’t need that. She didn’t want a protector, she wanted someone she knew would always be at her side. He’d had the opportunity to show her that he would be with her, always. But he’d fucked it up.

“Shit. I fucked up.” He looked around at his brothers and dad. “What in the hell am I going to do now?”

Finn shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I’m happily single.”

True enough. He turned to Ford.

His youngest brother rolled his eyes. “To paraphrase what a giant jackass told me recently on the deck of this house, go get your girl.”

None of this was helpful, so he faced the man who would be totally within his rights to tell Frankie to go jump off a bridge. “What do I say?”

“You gotta figure that one out for yourself, Junior, but whatever you do, go big. A woman like Lucy isn’t someone you just sweet-talk your way back to. You’re going to have to work for that job.”

The last word jumped out at him. That’s what Lucy had asked him about on the floating deck back in Antioch. Sure, she’d been joking, but he wasn’t—not then and definitely not now.

“Can you help me arrange a thing tomorrow and help me get Lucy to it? Maybe tell her it’s a wedding thing?” he asked Ford.

“Have you ever planned a wedding?” His brother looked at him like he was the Pod Person now. “That shit is complicated. There are color-coded spreadsheets.”

“What if it’s not related to the wedding?” Finn asked. “What if it’s just family and close friends?”

That would be perfect.

Ford grumbled something under his breath before answering. “This had better work, because otherwise Gina is going to kill me for messing with her scheduling.”

A few minutes of planning later and Ford and his dad were heading toward the front door, but Frankie couldn’t let his dad walk out without apologizing.

“I’m sorry for thinking the worst, Dad,” he said, emotion making it hard to get the words out. “Can you forgive me?”

His dad gave him the same easygoing grin that Frankie saw in the mirror.

“For doing what you thought was the best thing to protect this family?” Frank Sr. asked. “There’s nothing to forgive. You responded the way a man should—not by thinking of yourself, but by thinking of those around you that you loved.” Then he pulled Frankie into a full-on man hug with hard back-patting. “Just try not to jump the gun quite so fast next time. Now, don’t mess this up, or I’ll never hear the end of it from your mother.”

“She knows about me and Lucy?”

His old man gave him a look that screamed out duh. “She’s Katie Hartigan, isn’t she? The woman knows everything.”

It was true. The woman always did. And that should have been his first clue that what he’d thought he’d walked in on all those years ago wasn’t what it had looked like. Instead, he’d been so determined to protect her that he hadn’t even given it a thought. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, not with family and definitely not with Lucy.

Now it was time to get to work. Number one on his list? Sweet-talk Fallon into committing a kidnapping.

Chapter Twenty-Three

That morning, Lucy called her dad as soon as she could, considering the one-hour time difference and her hangover. Vodka and Mountain Dew were both dead to her for the next good long while.