Muffin Top (Page 7)

“It’s twelve hundred miles spread out over two days. It’ll be eating fast food in the car, a night in a cheap hotel, and probably a speeding ticket or two,” Lucy said. “Romantic is the last thing it’s gonna be.”

Even if she couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like.

…

Poker night at the house Frankie shared with his twin Finn was serious business—when it came to beer and bragging rights. The betting was limited to pocket change, and the jokers were always wild. He, Finn, and Ford were already two hands in when Fallon came through the door after a long shift in the ER, still wearing those god-awful clog shoes and a surly expression on her usual makeup-free face.

“Are you insane?” she asked without any other form of greeting. “You can’t take Lucy Kavanagh to her high school reunion.”

Frankie flinched. The brotherly shit-talking around the table stopped in an instant.

Fuck-nutters.

He’d been hoping to get out of town before anyone in the Hartigan clan found out about his plans in order to avoid a trip to Judgementville, population his pain-in-the-butt sister Fallon. With a family as into each other’s business as theirs was, he should have known the chances of getting away clean were somewhere between null and never gonna happen.

Frankie dropped his cards on the table, face up—at least he had a whole lotta nothing in his hand anyway. Finn laid down his cards, and Ford gathered them all up and started shuffling. Both of his brothers looked from Fallon to him, shit-eating grins on their faces, ready for the show—all his suddenly mute brothers were missing was the popcorn. Smug jerks.

There really wasn’t a point in denying his plans. “Why not?”

“Because she’s my friend.” Fallon yanked out a chair, put her jar of quarters on the table, and sat down.

Non sequitur alert. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Frankie, I love you,” she said as Ford started dealing. “But you can’t make Lucy part of your ever-changing harem. She’s not like your other women. She’ll take it personally. You may not realize it, but under that eats-nails-for-breakfast persona is a total softie.”

Annoyance had him bouncing his knee under the table. “I don’t have a harem.”

That got a round of disbelieving chuckles from the table. Assholes. He was related to a bunch of assholes.

“Well, I don’t.” He loved women, what was so wrong with that? He dated many of the women he was attracted to, and while getting to date number three rarely happened because there was always another woman out there who caught his eye, no one walked away orgasm-free or heartbroken. Everyone knew the score going in. He was nothing if not honest and up-front. And what had he gotten for that honesty? A reputation as a guy who was good for only one thing. That was starting to really piss him off. “Anyway, if I did, Lucy wouldn’t be part of it.”

“Why’s that?” Finn asked as he picked up his cards.

He glanced down at his cards and found another crapfest. “She’s not my type.”

Fallon snorted and threw two cards on the table facedown in the universal sign for hit me with two fresh cards. “You mean she isn’t all boobs, ass, and tiny waist, weighing in at under one hundred and twenty pounds.”

“That’s not it,” he said, not bothering to keep the pissed-off edge out of his tone.

His sister should know him better. He was an asshole, but not that kind of asshole. The truth was, Lucy would eat him alive. People might say firefighters were adrenaline junkies who rushed into danger when others ran away, but every one of them had finely tuned survival instincts. He knew just where that line was, and for some reason Lucy Kavanagh set off every warning bell he had. That hadn’t stopped him from thinking about her at inopportune times—like in the shower when he was taking care of his morning hard-on—but that only reinforced that his dick could not be trusted at the moment.

“Really?” Fallon asked. “Then what is it?”

“I’m on the bench, so no woman is my type.”

Ford laid his cards facedown on the table and gave Frankie the cop stare down he’d been practicing since birth. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve benched myself.” Finn, Ford, and Fallon all stared at him like he’d grown another head. Guess he was going to have to spell it out for them. This wasn’t going to be weird or awkward at all. “I’m taking a break from sexual activities.”

“Did you catch something?” Finn asked.

They might be twins, but it was definitely fraternal, not identical. While Frankie had rarely met a risk he didn’t want to see if he could survive, Finn was the kind of guy who never did anything by chance. Of course he’d figure Frankie had blown off protection, which he did not do. Ever.

“No, I do not have an STI.” He bit out each word at his brother.

Fallon eyeballed him. “Did you fall down and break your boner?”

Frankie flipped his sister off. And to think that question came from the registered nurse in the family, who had to know that wasn’t possible. At least he didn’t think it was. Fuck. He was not going to Google that. Some things a man didn’t need to know.

“Then what is your thinking here?” Ford asked.

“Let’s just say I’m expanding my horizons, and this three-week break from work might be the perfect time to take a break from other things, too.”

Everyone sat in excruciating silence for all of about five seconds before Fallon let out a huff of disgust. “Franklin Delano Hartigan, you shithead.”

“What the hell is that for?” he asked. Not that he wasn’t, but he did like specifics.

“That’s why you agreed to go to Lucy’s high school reunion,” Fallon said, shaking her head. “I’ve been trying to figure it out since she told me, and now I understand. You shallow jerk of a man, you think that by spending a week in the constant company of an extra-curvy woman that you’re taking yourself ‘out of temptation’s way.’” She air quoted the last bit sarcastically.

“That’s some bullshit,” he said before he could think better of making the admission. His lack of attraction to Lucy had more to do with total non-compatibility rather than physical attraction. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Everyone just stared at him, their cards ignored. Why had he opened his mouth? He should have just let his family think that he was the same kind of asshole as the piece-of-shit at Marino’s giving Lucy a hard time about her cheeseburger. It would have been a helluva lot less awkward.

“So, you find her attractive?” Finn asked, sounding a lot like their scientist youngest sister, Felicia, when she was in the middle of gathering data for a study—except instead of getting information on ants, it seemed like Finn had focused in on his twin.

Fallon glared at him. “If you say she’s got a pretty face for a bigger person, I am going to stab you with the closest pointy object.”

“Look, I can’t help who I’m attracted to. I have dated all sorts of women,” he said, unable to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “It’s not that I’m excluding anyone, it’s just that I am drawn to who I am drawn to.”

And women who were never going to buy the lines he was selling were not one of them. He liked his balls attached and swinging under his dick, thanks very much.