Muffin Top

by Avery Flynn

  He lifted his hand to knock on the front door, but it swung open before his knuckles could hit wood, revealing a woman who was five foot nothing, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, and was wearing a necklace with a ginormous wooden cross hanging from it.

  “You must be the sweet couple Maureen called me about,” she said. “I’m Katy Kendrick and I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  “The bad news,” he and Lucy said at the same time.

  “This is our busy season, with it being high school reunion time and all, so the only room I have available is our smallest one, and we’ve been using it for storage so it’s pretty crowded with boxes.”

  Room? Just one? That wasn’t great, but it definitely could be worse.

  “Not a problem,” he said. “We’re just grateful to have a place to sleep tonight.”

  “Wonderful.” Katy looked up at them with a sweet look on her face that made him think of puppies and unicorns. “And I just love your wedding ring.” She ducked her head toward the sapphire ring on Lucy’s left ring finger. “We run a good, Christian establishment, so it’s such a relief you’re a married couple. I’m not sure what we’d have done otherwise.”

  He froze. Solid. Like one of those people cursed in mythology. He would have thought he’d learned to bluff with all the poker he’d played, but no, he sucked at lying almost as much as he sucked at building decks.

  “Three years and he still insists on carrying all of my luggage. Can you believe it?” Lucy said, smooth as a velvet Elvis painting as she slipped her arm through Katy’s and led the woman into the house, leaving him with the three suitcases on the porch. “So, tell me about this adorable B and B.”

  The rest of what they were saying was lost as the two women walked down the hall while Frankie watched, a little awed and a whole lot scared. Not shrivel-his-balls scared, more of like that thrill of oh-my-God-yes that happened right before he walked into a burning building when everyone else was running out. Fallon was right, Lucy was not to be messed with, but not for why his sister thought. It wasn’t that Lucy wouldn’t survive—he might not.

  That odd awareness buzzed through him as he picked up the bags and carried them inside to where the women were standing just inside a room at the top of the stairs.

  “I know it’ll be a tight fit,” Katy said.

  Lucy turned and gave him a look that managed to say “oh shit” and “keep your mouth shut” at the same time. Now that was a skill. He found out the reason for it a few seconds later when he peeked over the top of the women’s heads. The room was small, but that wasn’t the problem. It was the practically wall-to-wall boxes that left a narrow walkway from the door to the connected bathroom and around the double—yes double—bed in the middle of the room.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Lucy said to the other woman. “This is far from a crisis.”

  Frankie took another look at the bed, trying to figure out how he could fit his six-foot-six-inch frame on it, let alone how the two of them would fit on it without becoming a pretzel of intertwined limbs and some serious spooning. The mental image of having Lucy’s soft curves against him had an immediate and very hardening effect.

  Not a crisis? Unless the bathtub was big enough for his ass, that was exactly what this was.

  Chapter Five

  “Don’t even touch it.”

  Frankie glanced down at the bill the waitress at the diner had dropped off along with his slice of pecan pie. And this is how it was going to go with Lucy. He shouldn’t be surprised. The woman didn’t have an easy bone in her body.

  “Why not?” He toyed with the edge of the bill. He couldn’t help it. He liked watching her get all fired up.

  She narrowed her eyes and reached for the receipt. “I’m covering food and board during this trip.”

  “Are you saying that I’m a kept man?” he asked, not letting go when she tugged at the narrow piece of paper signed with hearts and ten digits that looked like a phone number.

  Lucy snorted and tugged again. “That would indicate someone wanted to keep you.”

  Now that sliced like his fork through the delicious goo hiding underneath the pecans in his pie. It must have shown on his face, too, because Lucy’s bright red lips drooped just a bit.

  “Of course, your problem is too many people want you, right?” she asked, her words without their usual bite, but she still managed to slide the bill from his grasp.

  He picked up his fork and pushed it through the pie with enough force that his fork clunked against his plate. “I don’t have a problem.”

  One of her eyebrows went up, then another. “Then what are you running away from?”

  “Who said I’m running?” He shoved the pecan pie—his favorite of all the pies—into his maw and chewed it without tasting even a hint of gooey goodness.

  She kept the bill in her left hand as she dug through her purse with the right, probably looking for exact change. “No one goes to a high school reunion unless forced or they’ve won the lottery, and you’re driving a bazillion miles to go to a virtual stranger’s high school reunion.”

  “You’re not a stranger. I’ve known you for months.” If by known, he meant that they’d been in the same room and spoken all of about twenty-five words to each other.

  She dropped a quarter, three dimes, and two pennies on the black plastic check holder, along with several bills. “You’ve known of me. That doesn’t mean we actually know each other.”

  There she was, Lucy Kavanagh, the woman who saw through all of the bullshit and called his sizable ass on it. She reminded him more of his sisters than any woman he’d ever dated, and that was just weird. Needing to clear that out of his thick skull, he opened his mouth.

  “Okay,” he said, not thinking about what was going to come next. “Give me the down and dirty, and I’ll give you mine.”

  She cocked her head to one side and considered him as if he was one of her problem clients. This could go either way, really, but that was the fun in diving in headfirst without testing the water—as long as you didn’t get knocked unconscious, it was an adrenaline rush. Mind seemingly made up, she zipped her purse closed and locked her focus on him in a way that had him squirming.

  “I grew up in Antioch, Missouri, the only child of a retired underwear model, yes really, and the local doctor,” she said. “I had a pet lizard named Scales McGoo growing up and took piano lessons every afternoon. To this day, I will shiv anyone who tries to make me play ‘The Entertainer’—the ragtime song, not the old Billy Joel one. I graduated top of my class, was captain of the debate team, and went on to college a few hours away. I majored in public relations, held down a full-time job while going to classes, and didn’t lose my virginity until a week before I graduated college, when I had an awkward one-night stand with the bartender at the local dive bar where all of us students went.”

  She took a quick pause to take a drink while he tried to process the rapid inflow of information.

  “I love my job even though I want to kill my clients some days, I live in a gorgeous apartment with a beautiful view of the Harbor City bridge, and six months ago I went on what I thought was a date but turned out to be a sales pitch for an MLM scheme selling weight-loss supplements. Can you believe that the guy actually had a great return on the diner outlay when he pulled that crap because his so-called dates were so humiliated that they agreed to a subscription just to get away from him faster?”

  She took a long sip of her Mountain Dew float through the bright green bendy straw and then continued.

  “My favorite color is red. I’m a Virgo. I would give up my DSW rewards card for a week on a private island where I can lounge on the beach without anyone giving the fat girl in the bikini a second look. Oh, and I believe anyone who leaves voicemails instead of texting like a normal human being should be smacked.” Another pull from her float. “Okay, your turn.”

  Fuck-nutters. It would take him a week to catch up to all of that.

 
“What did you do to the guy?” he asked.

  Confusion put a V between her eyes. “The bartender?”

  “No.” Bartender? Who didn’t have a bumping uglies with bartender in their history? “The supplement asshole.”

  She got an evil grin on her face that almost made him feel sorry for the douchebag. “I ordered two of everything on the menu and stuck him with the bill. I figured that probably came close to negating every penny he’d earned from his other dates. Now, stop stalling. I believe you promised me down and dirty.”

  Challenge accepted. Taking a deep breath, he plunged in.

  “I’m the oldest of the seven Hartigan kids,” he began. “That’s how the entire neighborhood referred to us then and still calls us now. Dad’s a firefighter and Mom’s a teacher. I did okay in school and never wanted to do anything after graduation except the firefighter academy. I did not graduate top of my class, my brother Finn did.” Him? He’d been in the highest 30 percent, but it had come so easy to him that he hadn’t put that much effort into it. Top third was good enough. “I lost my virginity my freshman year in high school when I took Connie Wagner to her senior prom.” She’d asked him, and things had just rolled forward from there. “I believe in driving fast, playing hard, and working until the job’s done. I might be the head pot-stirrer in the family, but I’ll smack the shine off of anyone who even tries to bust the chops of anyone in my family.”

  Not that he’d admit it out loud to anyone who shared his DNA, but there had been days when Fallon had been in high school that he’d picked her up from school just to give the shitheads giving her a hard time a message. All he’d had to do was look at the little punks and they’d just about pissed their pants. Of course, Fallon had just rolled her eyes at him when he’d turned the same look on her and informed her that he was not happy to have to come get her from school but Mom hadn’t given him another choice.

  “I don’t really date so much as I hook up, and the night we had dinner at Marino’s was when I found out that I’m the kind of guy someone bangs but they don’t take home to meet the parents. That little punch to the ego got me thinking, and until I figure some things out, I am on the sexual bench, something I’d very much appreciate you not share with anyone else.”

  That last part he hadn’t meant to say out loud, but Lucy had that effect on him. She made him work for it, and the unvarnished truth just sort of came out. Man, if she had that impact on him, he couldn’t imagine what spilled out of her clients’ mouths when she’d sat them down and gave them that look. It was the one she was giving him right now.

  Leaning forward with a neutral accepting look on her face, her forearms on the table, she gave off the air of someone who wanted to hear all about a person’s fuckups and would help fix them. “Sexual bench?”

  “I’m temporarily celibate.” Fuck. If only the diner waitress had given him a stapler to use on his mouth instead of her number, he wouldn’t be stuck here watching Lucy have a non-reaction to his announcement, which was a reaction all in itself.

  “How often do you usually have sex?”

  “Few times a week.” Sometimes the same woman. Usually not. It had been fun when he’d been young and dumb. Now? Things were different. He couldn’t put his finger on the reason why, but it was.

  “And how long has it been?” she asked, her voice as bland as if she’d been asking about the weather.

  “A week.” He shoved another bite of tasteless pecan pie into his mouth.

  Finally, her facade cracked and she grinned at him. “No wonder your forearms are so muscular. It must take a lot of wrist action to make up for all of that.”

  He almost choked on his pie. That was not what he was expecting from her. Did she ever say what he’d presumed? The answer to that was a big negative.

  “What?” she asked and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m dateless, not orgasmless. There’s a reason why sex toys are a fifteen-billion-dollar global industry.”

  He shook his head, since his ability to speak wasn’t working at the moment. It wasn’t the first time in his life that he’d been rendered speechless, but it didn’t happen often—unless, of course, he was around one Lucy Kavanagh.

  She nodded and went on. “The stats say twelve percent of women masturbate with a sex toy at least once a week, but come on, that’s gotta be underreported. Amazon has something like sixty thousand adult items in stock, plus there’s places like Babeland and Adam and Eve. And it’s not just women. Twenty percent of men say they’ve used a vibe.” She gave him that teasing grin of hers again. “Have you used a vibrator?”

  He shook his head. Sure, he’d started the “down and dirty,” but he’d never expected her to really take it there—if only verbally.

  “Oh Frankie.” She reached out and patted his hand as if he were some sweet, young, naive thing, which his male ego insisted he most definitely was not. “You are missing out.”

  “How do you know all this?” And what else did she know?

  “I am a curious, sex positive, grown-ass woman,” she said, her shoulders tensing and her chin going up as she withdrew her hand. “Or were you thinking it was just the old line about fat girls having to be more creative and enthusiastic in bed because it was the only way we got laid?”

  She said the question in the same teasing tone she’d been using for the past five minutes, but there was no missing the line of tension wound through it. It had his muscles tightening in response as she watched him, waiting for his answer, no doubt having already answered it in her head.

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Go straight for the worst thing someone could be thinking like you’re launching a pre-emptive strike?”

  “Experience.” She stood, hooking the long strap of her purse over her shoulder, her hands shaking just the slightest bit. “Look, I’ll let you in on a secret to survival for someone like me. If you prep yourself for the worst, you won’t be disappointed, and if you own the insult before it can be uttered, you can’t be hurt.”

  Frankie hadn’t gotten this far in life without learning to read women, and what he got from Lucy’s fuck-you stance was that sympathy was the last thing she wanted. No doubt she’d heard enough empty platitudes in her life.

  Still, he couldn’t help but ask, “Aren’t you afraid of missing out on something because you don’t give people a chance?”

  “Haven’t met anyone yet who was worth taking that chance on, so it looks like we’re both celibate for the moment.” She picked up her float from the table and held it out to him in a toast. “To no nookie.”

  It was not a toast he ever thought he’d be raising a glass to, but then again, he never thought he’d ever be cockblocking himself. So he clinked his glass against Lucy’s, then watched as she wrapped her full lips around her straw and sucked, and he failed horribly at willing his dick not to react to the sight.

  For the first time, he started questioning this whole “bench” plan.

  …

  Calling what was in their en suite bathroom back at the B and B a bathtub was an insult to bathtubs everywhere. It was just about the regular width of a tub, but only half the length of a normal one. There was no way either of them were going to make it a night sleeping in that thing—not without the mother of all shoehorns and probably a firefighter with the jaws of life to get them out the next morning.

  “You’re not gonna make me say it out loud, are you?” Frankie asked as he stood behind her in the bathroom doorway.

  She let out a sigh and mentally girded herself up for the shitty reality of the situation. “No.”

  “That leaves the bed.”

  Whirling around, too desperate to find another solution to even think about exactly how close they were, she ended up with her nose almost touching Frankie’s chest. She inhaled a few million lungfuls of his delicious scent as she tried to remember how to form words. Being this close to him just did that to her. It really, really wasn’t fair that he smelled so good whe
n he already looked like he did.

  That way lay bad decisions. Decisions totally and completely endorsed by her girlie bits. “There has to be another option.”

  He took a step back, pivoting as he did so they both were staring out at the cramped and crowded room. Boxes marked Christmas, Halloween, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day, and other holidays were literally stacked up to the ceiling along every available wall space. That left a narrow walkway between the boxes and the double bed that led to the bathroom and the door. Her suitcases and his duffle barely fit stacked on top of each other in the bathroom between the toilet and the pedestal sink. The floor could work, as long as Frankie laid on his side and could manage to shrink himself down to the size of a normal American man.

  “If you can spot another option, then I’m good, but I’m practically walking sideways just to get through the room,” he said.

  “I can take the floor.” There was no way she could make him take one for the team for that. As long as he didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night and walk to the bathroom, they could make it work.

  He snorted. “That’s just dumb.”

  She turned to face him, daring him to repeat that. Lucy was a lot of things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. “Excuse me?”

  At least he had the decency to look contrite about his word choice. “Look, I don’t have cooties, and I’m not going to jump your bones if we share the bed.”

  Of course not. Heat crept up her cheeks, and she desperately hoped he didn’t notice. Her gaze dropped to her wide-width sandals, which she had to special order, and the jeans she ordered from a specialty shop and then had to get altered because it wasn’t enough of a pain in the ass to find clothes and shoes that fit—the powers that be made it a more expensive process than for the so-called regular-sized women. There was no way in hell that she’d ever be Frankie Hartigan’s type. It shouldn’t hurt, and God knew she didn’t want to be his type anyway, but the high school reunion already had her on edge, and the off-handed, no-duh rejection just sliced straight through her defenses.