Muffin Top

by Avery Flynn

  Damn. It wasn’t that you couldn’t go home again, it was that you shouldn’t because it was like returning to a time when you were your most awkward self all over again.

  “So,” Henrietta said. “This man was an idiot and an asshole.”

  Frankie grinned at the older woman, crossed over to the counter, and leaned on his forearms. The move wasn’t lost on the older woman, who snuck a look at the way his biceps peeked out from his T-shirt sleeves.

  If he noticed, he didn’t play it up. Instead, he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I went over to Lucy and said I was sorry I was late for our date. Then I helped the asshole see the need to vacate the premises.”

  “Did you punch him in the face?” Henrietta asked with a bloodthirsty expression.

  Frankie shrugged his broad shoulders. “Didn’t need to.” He crossed over to Lucy and wound his arm around her waist, pulling her in close. “And that’s how I ended up as the lucky guy dating Lucy Kavanagh.”

  Finding jeans that fit her ass and the dip of her waist was a problem. What wasn’t a problem? Finding the right words for almost any situation. There was a reason why she’d gone into crisis communication: she didn’t panic, and she always knew what to say.

  But standing in the middle of the antique and collectibles shop next to a Queen Anne dressing table and a cabinet of paste jewelry from the 1920s, she couldn’t string a sentence together. Why? Because Frankie Hartigan was doing the unthinkable—he was taking one of those really shitty moments that was repeated too often in her life and tweaking it so instead of being at the butt of the joke, she was the center of the story’s action in a good way. She had no idea what to do with that.

  Henrietta didn’t seem to be similarly affected as she gave Frankie a considering look. “Top drawer under the stuffed cock.”

  Of course that’s where it was. Lucy walked over to the rooster that had fallen under the taxidermist’s knife. It was a Brahma and stood almost three feet tall, with pure white feathers accented by a smattering of black plumage that went down to its feet. It stood next to a sign that said Cock of the Walk on top of an old library card catalog cabinet. She opened the little drawer with a tiny picture of Wolfie clipped to the front and pulled out one of the gold wolf teeth found inside.

  The pop of a new can of Diet Dr. Pepper being open sounded, drawing Lucy’s attention back to where Henrietta and Frankie stood on opposite sides of the counter, looking like two people who’d spent the last two decades gossiping over drinks.

  Henriette moved her bendy straw from the empty Diet Dr. Pepper to the new can. “How long have you been dating?”

  “Not long.” Frankie looked over at Lucy and grinned, obviously so pleased that he’d figured out how to charm Henrietta that he practically reeked of self-satisfaction.

  That massive ego of his should annoy her. Instead it just made her giggle—something she covered with a short, fake coughing fit. Remember, this is all fake. Nothing to feel here. Just move along.

  After waiting for Lucy to stop cough-laughing, Henrietta asked Frankie, “What are your intentions?”

  “Mrs. Campher!” The exclamation escaped her lips before her brain even had a second to register what she was saying. And people paid her the big bucks to always think about the message before it went out. So much for being able to apply that skill to her own circumstances.

  “What?” Henrietta shrugged. “I’m near death. I don’t have time to beat around the bush.”

  The woman was full of it. She’d outlive them all.

  “My intentions?” Frankie said, seemingly unruffled by the older woman’s nosy question. “Nothing but trouble.”

  Pure orneriness glittered in Henrietta’s eyes. “The kind that leaves a girl sighing or the kind that leaves her crying?”

  Frankie gave Henrietta a wolfish smile and deepened his voice so his next words came out all sexy and low. “The kind that leaves her screaming for more.”

  And for the first time in her entire life, Lucy watched as Henrietta smiled. As if the shock of that wasn’t enough, the old woman let loose with a creaky laugh that ended with a wheezing fit.

  “Are you okay? Do you need us to go get your son?” Lucy asked, hustling over to the counter.

  “I’m fine,” she said, waving off Frankie as he was about the round the counter and come to the older woman’s side. “Don’t fuss over me.”

  Frankie stopped, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Thanks for your help, Mrs. C.”

  “Bah.” She rolled her eyes. “Enjoy that man of yours, young lady.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Really, what else could she say? Henrietta was incorrigible. Sometimes the better part of valor really was admitting defeat.

  At least this once.

  …

  Frankie was standing in the magma-hot July sun, sweating his ass off in a public park at a little after four in the afternoon. It wasn’t sexy. It sure as hell wasn’t comfortable. It was, however, a fact of life, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  Why was this happening? Because he decided to show off, like an asshole.

  Yeah, he was in enough pain to admit it to himself if not out loud—because that was going to happen exactly never. A smarter man would have read the directions stating that the bowl needed to be held at exactly six feet, eight inches off the ground at ten past four in some sort of Indiana Jones trick to find the final item on the scavenger hunt, and he would have gone and put it on the stand provided just for that purpose. However, Frankie was the kind of moron that decided to hold it aloft. Why? Because Lucy was watching. So yeah, he was a jackass.

  “I’m dying,” he said as another bead of sweat took its sweet time sliding down his spine while his shoulder muscles started to scream at him. “How much longer?”

  Lucy kept her attention focused on the clock app on her phone. “Don’t wimp out on me now, Hartigan. It’s almost time.”

  “You’re not the one holding a fifty-pound concrete bowl above your head.” His ego was bigger than his brain.

  “Come on, don’t tell me a big guy like you can’t take it.” She looked up at him and smirked—yes, smirked. No sexy smile. No come-hither curl of her lips. Smirked. And damn if it didn’t turn him on enough to give him that extra burst of adrenaline to hoist the bowl a little higher.

  She continued, “Anyway, you were the one who declared it was no big deal.”

  Yeah, tell that to his biceps, which were lodging a criminal complaint for stupidity because to really add fuel to the fire, he hadn’t waited until the last minute to lift the big-ass bowl. There was no way he could put it down now without admitting total defeat, and he never did that. So, he bitched. “I signed on for a scavenger hunt, not to be a human sundial.”

  “But you look so good doing it.” She gave him a slow up-and-down.

  Now that he was used to. He’d been getting double takes since forever. It wasn’t a brag. It was the truth. But it felt different coming from Lucy. Better. Hard-won. “Story of my life.”

  “So how come you haven’t been in one of those hot firefighters calendars?” she asked, looking back down at her phone as the seconds flowed like molasses in January on the frozen tundra.

  “Didn’t want to pick up a second job to cover the cost of security because of all the extra stalkers.” And because it was creepy as hell. He liked people. He did not like being an object.

  “You mean you don’t have stalkers already?” she asked with a snarky little giggle.

  This woman. She didn’t let him get away with any shit. She gave as good as she got. Of course, realizing this while he was holding up a concrete bowl in the hot July sun getting the arm workout from hell didn’t mean he was going to admit to her that he liked her scary, ball-busting ways.

  “Ladies love me.” He winked at her.

  She snort-laughed. “That sounds like the title of your autobiography, Ladies Love Me: The Story of a Former Sex Fiend.”

  Oh yeah. There was that. Good for
a lay, but not good enough to take home to Mom. That wasn’t exactly how Shannon put it, but it was close enough.

  He adjusted his grip on the bowl without lowering it. “It wasn’t always sex.”

  “Oh yeah, what was it?” Her question was as brash and to the point as usual, but there was more than a hint of concern and empathy in her eyes.

  “It’s different for every woman,” he said, trying to put it into words for the first time. “Sometimes it’s the smell of her perfume or the way she struts through a room. It’s the little things that you don’t notice right away, like the way someone adjusts her walking speed to stay on pace with someone else instead of speeding ahead. Other times, it’s the little things you have to earn—a secret she’s never told before, or way she lets go and laughs without worrying about what it might sound like to someone else.”

  “Holy shit, Frankie.” Lucy stared at him, her eyes wide with shock. “You’re a romantic.”

  Whoa. That was not where he’d been going with that. He was an appreciator of women, all women, not some dweeb who wrote bad, sappy poems and spent nights in watching chick flicks and did stupid shit like profess his love in front of the entire world. That was not him.

  “Did I mention the sex?” He puffed out his chest, a move he realized too late just made keeping the heavy-ass concrete bowl in the right position above his head even harder. “That part is really fucking good, great, the best.”

  “Calm your gonads, I’m not going to let your secret out.” She didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she was laughing at him as she glanced down at her phone, then back at the spot on the shady ground where the sun spilled through the cutout in the bowl. “And that’s it.”

  “Thank God.” He sat the bowl back down on its low pedestal.

  Really, it was a pretty brilliant way to end the scavenger hunt. The final item, programs from the class’s graduation, were hidden in different spots around the park. Each of those spots could only be found following a path illuminated by the sun through the hole in the bowl at a certain point in time. He marked off the time 4:10 p.m. on the clue sheet left by the concrete bowl so others trying later in the week would know that the program hidden in that location had been claimed. So far only one other time had been marked off the list. Not bad odds for placing high in the competition.

  For her part, Lucy was marching north in accordance with the written directions for the last clue on the scavenger hunt.

  “Ten, eleven, twelve,” she counted out loud with each step forward. “Thirteen.”

  That brought her to a rose bush with about a million red blooms. Frankie watched as she pondered the situation, too distracted by how the breeze toyed with the hem of her bright blue skirt and showed off a couple of more inches of sexy, thick thighs to think about where someone could have hidden the program. Lucy obviously wasn’t as distracted, because it took all of ten seconds of concentration before she bent down and retrieved a rolled-up graduation program from a box hidden underneath the rose bush.

  She held it up above her head, using both hands as if the piece of paper was as heavy as the fifty-pound concrete bird bath bowl. “Victory!”

  “Good thing you’re not competitive.” He strode over to where she stood in the shade of the trees bordering the walking path and the rose bushes.

  She gave him a cocky grin and fanned herself with the program. “It’s one of my best qualities.”

  “Now, that’s a long list,” he said, stopping next to her in the shade so there was only an arm’s length of space between them.

  She turned to face him, tossing her long brown hair over one shoulder and rolling her eyes at him. “Henrietta’s not around to hear you.”

  “Doesn’t make the truth any less so.”

  And it didn’t.

  Without considering if it was a good idea, he stepped in so close that if there’d been any sun shining through the thick tree branches it would have had to fight to get between them. The urge to touch the silky strands of her hair hit him hard enough that he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from doing it.

  The woman was pretty damn amazing—not that he needed to confirm that, but yeah, thinking that had him checking her out using his peripheral vision. It was a mistake, but what a sweet one to make. What she did to that shirt tucked into her swirly skirt was fucking phenomenal.

  “Frankie Hartigan,” she said, shaking her head and letting out a soft chuckle. “You can’t breathe without flirting.”

  “Good thing you’re so much fun to flirt with.”

  “That’s not what most people say,” she said with a sigh and sank back against a tree trunk, some of that gleeful, smart-ass attitude of hers dimming in her eyes.

  Pivoting until he stood face-to-face with her, still not touching her no matter how much he wanted to—and damn did he want to—he needed to set the record straight. “Then you spend too much time around assholes.”

  “No argument there.” Her agreement came out breathy, and her cheeks had taken on a pink tinge.

  “Present company excluded.” He meant it as a light little tease, but it came out too rough for that because it was taking every ounce of self-control he had not to put his hands on her generous hips, which were the perfect size for his big hands, and kiss her until she forgot all those other men and could only think of him.

  “Of course.” She looked up at him from beneath her long eyelashes and let out a shaky breath. “We should go.”

  “Why?” Leaving was the last thing he wanted. Lucy Kavanagh was a woman who needed kissing and more—God knew he was more than man enough for the job.

  He was playing with fire. Good thing he had years of the best training for being around flames without getting burned. Still, considering that the kiss he was millimeters from delivering was only the beginning of all he wanted to do with Lucy Kavanagh, he could feel the flames licking his fingers.

  They were close but not nearly close enough. Somewhere way in the back of his head he heard the warning not to follow his dick, but the rush of attraction was much louder. Yes. Shannon and the other women of Waterbury were right about him, and he didn’t have the strength right now to deny the truth of it. He just wanted to give in with Lucy.

  Seemingly as caught in the moment as he was, she didn’t make a move to put any space between them. “You know why.”

  He did, and he was a giant fucking dumbass for even coming up with the idea of going cold turkey on sex and then spending a week with Lucy Kavanagh. He’d been a jackass to think this would be a week free of temptation. The woman was temptation personified, from her red mouth to her whiplash-inducing curves to her ball-busting sense of humor. He was in so much trouble—and he fucking loved it.

  Still…she was right. He couldn’t shake the feeling that if he didn’t get the big head straight before he got his dick involved it’d be an epic-level disaster. Of course, knowing that didn’t make pulling away any easier.

  But he did, one achingly slow millimeter at a time, before he could give in to the electric draw between them. Gone was the scent of her wrapping around him, the warmth that came from being so near her, and the tangible sense of anticipation that always hit when he was within touching distance. He fucking hated it.

  Man, was he screwed—and not in the way he normally was.

  “I guess we should go turn in the scavenger hunt items,” he said instead of begging her to come with him to a secluded spot along the trail where he could drop to his knees and explore everything that was underneath that skirt of hers.

  Lucy—the woman who had a comment for just about everything—only nodded.

  They stared at each other for another moment heavy with promise, then she slipped past him and started heading back toward the high school. It was a short walk, and Constance was walking out as they were walking in.

  “Back already?” She pressed one hand to her chest in mock concern. The woman really was a piece of work. “I totally understand. It was really hard this year. It took
Dave and me forever to find everything, and for a second I even thought we were going to have to go back and finish up tomorrow, but of course that didn’t happen. We just turned ours in. We were the first.”

  “Looks like we’ll have to settle for second place,” he said. “At least for this event.”

  There was a beat of silence in which he could have sworn he heard Lucy’s mental answer of “fuck yes” because she was thinking it so hard. Then he held up the bag with all of the loot they’d collected.

  Constance let out a little “huh” that almost sounded like respect. “Congratulations.” Then she sashayed off toward a bright blue BMW.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said, watching the other woman drive off and wondering if maybe she’d misjudged her. “I was close to doing all the things I tell my clients not to do.”

  He laughed. “No worries. Come on, let’s go claim second place and then plot how we’re going to do that hag in over cheeseburgers. I’m starving.”

  “Only if I get to shower first.”

  That, of course, only put the mental image of a naked Lucy in his mind, her peach nipples slick with soap. How often had he pictured some variation of that since he’d caught sight of her fabulous tit that had broken free from her tank top at the B and B the other morning? Only nearly every waking moment. It was the last thing he needed to be thinking about—at least when there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it—but he couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Sure,” he said, not sure what he was agreeing to, but knowing he needed to say something before her quick mind put together that he’d gone into the perv zone.

  “Great.” She took the bag of found scavenger hunt items from him, the graze of her fingertips setting off an electric pulse that shot straight to his dick. “Let me go turn this in and then it’s bubbles and burgers.”

  Thank God she didn’t seem to expect him to respond since she simply turned and strode into the high school gym, because he wasn’t sure he had enough blood still going to his brain to form words. It was a situation that was beginning to feel normal with each day he spent with Lucy.