by Avery Flynn
“And what business is it of yours what I eat?” She punctuated the question by slathering a fry in Sriracha and popping it in her mouth.
“No need to get defensive there, I’m just trying to help,” said the guy—who hadn’t even bothered to introduce himself or—wait for it—say hi before launching into his unasked-for monologue about her eating habits. “I mean, come on, no woman comes into a bar alone unless she’s desperate for some male company. It’s all about showing up and looking decorative.”
Now that was just some sexist bullshit right there. Who in the hell ever said that to a guy? Answer: no one.
“Really?” She pushed her steak knife farther away from her plate so she wouldn’t be tempted to stab him with it. “You don’t think I might just want a Mountain Dew and a burger?”
The guy went on as if she hadn’t said a thing. “I’m serious. You have a great face. If you just upped the veggies and eliminated the carbs, high-fat protein, and sugar, you’d be a solid eight instead of a five.”
She eyeballed the guy who wouldn’t stop flapping his gums about things that had nothing to do with him. He was balding and wore a bad suit that only emphasized his beer belly—and he wanted to give her tips about how to look good? Of course he did.
Her chin started to quiver, and she ground her jaw tightly closed. This asshole would not make her cry. It didn’t hurt, what people thought of her, if she didn’t show it.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Muffin.
Lucy was a healthy weight. She had an abundance of curves, sure, but she was healthy. And more importantly, finally happy with her plus-sized body. But times like this, assholes like this, really had a way of stripping her hard-fought confidence. Why was it socially unacceptable to shame anyone for anything except their weight? Sadly, it was still open season on those who didn’t look like what everyone else considered skinny.
She was used to being ignored when she walked into a department store. Or skipped in a line when someone thinner weaved around her. Or had her opinions in meetings dismissed simply because they came from a person of her size. But having someone publicly rate her attractiveness? That was a new low.
She briefly wondered what her “score” would be in an orange jumpsuit.
“And,” he continued, totally clueless about how close to death he was, “I’m only rating you as a five because your face is nice and your tits are fucking fantastic.”
That was it. She was going to have to kill a man in the middle of a cop bar on a Friday night. They better have chocolate cake in prison, but even if they didn’t, it would probably be worth it.
“There you are, honey,” said a deep voice she recognized just as a very large shadow fell across her table.
She looked up—way up—into the beyond-handsome face of Frankie Hartigan, who was built like a redwood tree and, rumor had it, had one between his legs.
“I’m sorry I was late for our date.” He glanced over at the dipshit veggie-pusher. “Is this guy giving you a hard time, honey?”
Chapter Two
The temptation to say “Yes, Frankie, please squash him like a bug while I clap and watch” was so, so strong—like, the guys who pull semi trucks with their teeth strong. Instead, she played along with her best friend’s fiancé’s brother—OMG, that was now the name of her imaginary all-girl ska band—and smiled sweetly up at him.
“He was bothered by my dinner order, honey.”
“Really?” Frankie looked down at her plate, over to the dipshit, and then right at her. There was no missing the devil in his eyes right before he turned his attention back to the other man. “What’s wrong with what my girl’s eating?”
Mr. In Her Business blanched. Literally. The color drained out of his face so fast that he resembled one of those swipe right before and after photos on makeover blogs. How in the hell she managed to not laugh out loud she had no frickin’ clue.
“N-n-nothing,” the man stuttered.
Nope. He was not getting off that easily.
She looked up at Frankie, still standing next to her chair, his big hand braced on the back of it, and said in the clueless voice that anyone with a brain would know meant there was danger ahead, “He said I should have ordered a salad, then I might have a chance to move from a five to an eight. I’m a five because I have great tits.”
Thunderous didn’t begin to describe the dark look of pure vengeance that crossed Frankie’s face, making even the freckles that crossed over the bridge of his nose look scary. Mr. Buttinsky made a little squeaking noise that reminded Lucy of the sound of air coming out of a balloon when someone pulled the tip taut as it was deflating. Frankie took a step forward, menace vibrating off of him in waves. The other guy didn’t bother to say a word, he just took off, weaving his way at a fast clip through the crowded bar and out the front door. Lucy liked to imagine that he peed his pants a little as he did so.
“Thanks, Frankie,” she said to the man still staring at the departing figure of Mr. Peed His Pants. “I owe you one.”
Her ginger knight in well-fitting jeans and a T-shirt made some kind of noise that maybe was a response in the affirmative. It sounded kinda like “no problem.” Whatever. She was used to that from guys. She was only of interest until a hotter, skinnier, or prettier woman came along. It was the universal fat chick cloaking device.
Determined not to let it annoy her as much as it usually would, she turned back to her jalapeño cheeseburger, spicy fries, and soda. Now she could finally enjoy her dinner in peace.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Frankie clunked down a three-fourths filled mug of beer on the other side of her table, pulled out the chair across from her, and sat down. Before she could even ask what he was doing, he waved the waitress over and told her he wanted whatever Lucy was eating, plus an extra order of fries and another beer. Once she’d left, he turned his attention to Lucy and gave her what could only be described as a vibrator smile. She named it that in her head—thankfully only in her head—because she now had a desperate need for her vibrator and maybe a fresh pack of batteries.
“You’re not gonna make me eat alone now that we’re on a date, are you?” he asked, swiping one of her fries.
She hated to stereotype, but he was really hot and, well, pretty people weren’t known for being the smartest in the room. And add to that the fact that his muscles had muscles and she decided to speak a little slower than usual. “We’re not on a date.”
He cocked his head to one side and blinked his blue eyes at her and gave her a wink, obviously sending the message that he was just messing with her. “But that’s what I told that chucklehead.”
Her interactions with the oldest Hartigan had been limited to large get-togethers that involved her bestie Gina and her fiancé, Frankie’s brother, Ford. They hadn’t really talked before. In fact, he was the kind of hot that meant he was usually surrounded by whatever single women were there. But still, she was sure he had someplace else to go.
“I appreciate what you did. Seriously, I am going to hold that memory tight for the next time some asshole decides that he or she needs to impart unsolicited advice about my body, but you don’t have to eat with me. I’m a big girl. Obviously.” Yes, because making fat jokes before anyone else could was a habit ingrained since grade school, when Jimmy Evans asked if she’d make the Pillsbury Doughboy giggle if he poked her in the stomach. She’d punched him in the stomach instead. That had gone over about as well as expected.
“No really, can I stick around and eat with you?” he asked, leaning forward as if he was about to impart a deep, dark secret. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Long story that should take at least as much time as it does for us to eat our burgers.”
Now how could she say no to that?
…
Frankie took a dramatic pause at the end of his story about the cops-on-firefighters brawl at the end of the last charity hockey game—one that his smack talk had star
ted but his right hook had finished. “And that’s why I was banned from Marino’s unless accompanied by my brother.”
Across the table from him, Lucy raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “It’s clients like you who are the reason why I’m going all spicy tonight.”
“You have charming, especially handsome clients?” Ego? Him? All the fucking time.
She laughed. It was a big sound, one that filled the space around them. “Some of them. Others are just scarily powerful and rich.”
The curiosity was killing him, but he wanted to draw it out in order to get another one of those laughs of hers. “Don’t tell me, I want to guess what you do.”
She dragged a fry through the hot sauce that set his mouth on fire and pointed at him. “I’ll let you have three.”
The woman didn’t give an inch. He liked that.
His gaze traveled over her in a slow once-over as she ate her french fries. Her basic black suit jacket hung over the back of her chair. The plain white shirt she wore only had the first button undone—not flashy by any means—but that asshole had been right, her tits were fantastic, and it was hard to miss them even though they weren’t on display. Her makeup was subtle, except for the bright red lipstick, as if she couldn’t help but highlight that mouth of hers that was always moving. It wasn’t that she talked too much, it was that she wasn’t ever, in the few times he’d met her, ever at a loss for words. Her soft auburn hair was pulled back into a low ponytail that tempted his fingers.
Thinking back to the way she’d handled that idiot earlier, he could see her delivering some vigilante justice. “Secret assassin?”
“In a way,” she said cryptically. “I do kill things for a living.”
“Enforcer?” It was pretty obvious just by looking at her gives-no-fucks resting face that she didn’t put up with idiots.
“Sure. Some days. I have to make sure people stay in line.” She emphasized her point by drawing one red-tipped fingernail across the table.
“Ringleader?”
“Only on the days that end in Y.” She waited a beat. “I’m a publicist and I specialize in crisis communications.”
He could see that. Lucy Kavanagh was not a woman to be fucked with. She held her own.
“So we’re in the same line of work.” He lifted his beer in toast and grinned. “We both put out fires.”
She clinked her glass of soda against his beer mug. “Pretty much.”
After that, they finished their burgers with small talk about Marino’s food—the best kind of bar comfort food; the weather—good riddance to winter; and people who put fruit in beers—freaks of nature.
“So, what kind of fires are you putting out now?” he asked, not above getting a little gossip.
She started fiddling with her straw, sending the ice cubes in her soda clinking around in the glass. “I am officially on hiatus.”
“Your boss make you take a forced vacation, too?”
She chuckled. “Since I’m freelance and highly in demand, I can afford to take off time when I want.”
“So what’s on the agenda?” If it was anything even remotely interesting, he was going to find a way to tag along. Three weeks on his own was going to send him off the deep end.
“Not what I’d originally planned.”
The way she said it set off Frankie’s gossip alarm bells. Oh yeah, people might like to think it was the ladies-who-lunch type who liked to spill tea, but most of those folks had never been in a firehouse on a slow shift when there was nothing to do besides run drills and gossip. He reached over to her plate and swiped three jalapeños that had fallen off her cheeseburger. “Tell me and I’ll eat all of these in one go.”
She shrugged. “It’s just three jalapeños, that’s nothing.”
Not if he had an asbestos mouth, which he did not. Anything above the mildest of salsa and his mouth was on fire. “I’m delicate.”
“Oh yeah. Everyone in Waterbury talks about fragile Frankie Hartigan,” she said with a chuckle.
He sat up a little straighter in his chair. He’d just meant it as a dumb joke—because he really did hate spicy food—but now? He had just enough time to think oh shit before his male ego took over and he popped the demon circles into his mouth. As he started to chew, he watched her eyes go wide and a smile start to curve her full lips upward, which definitely made the move worth it. Then the fiery taste hit his tongue, and it was all he could do not to spit the damn things out. Instead he reached for the water the waitress had brought along with his beer and downed it in one gulp. Yeah. Totally manly.
By the time he set his depleted water glass down, Lucy wasn’t even trying to hide her smile. It was just amused, far from being flirtatious. Not the normal reaction he got from women, even when he was being an ass.
“Have some pity. I almost died from that. Tell me the truth.”
She cocked her head to one side and gave him a considering look before saying, “I was going to go to my high school reunion, but thank God my sanity returned.”
“What are you talking about? I went to mine. It was a blast,” he said, trying to wrap his brain around her stance. “Anyway, you have one of those cool jobs with celebrity clients that you can shove in people’s faces.”
She snorted and gave him a hey-dumbass look. “I’m sure it was fun for you.”
“But not for you?”
“Spend a week with all the fat-shaming jerks I went to school with when I could be getting a mani-pedi? No way.”
She stopped fidgeting with her straw and looked up at him as if daring him to disagree with the assessment. He couldn’t do that. Lucy Kavanagh was plus-sized. No one made it through to adulthood without getting picked on for something—he’d had his locker stuffed with gingersnap cookies in seventh grade—but anyone who looked different from the norm got it worse. But that was when they’d all still had lizard adolescent brains. There had to be another reason—and his gut was telling him exactly what it was.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Excuse me?” One of her eyebrows went up—way up.
The little patch of color blooming at the base of her throat confirmed he was right. “You’re scared.”
“I am not.” More fidgeting with the straw, as if it was either that or sitting on her hands. “Fine. It’s going to be couple central, and I am not looking forward to a week of being the third wheel or being a wallflower during all these activities—even a pseudo prom at the end. It would be awkward, but I’m not afraid.”
“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.
