by Avery Flynn
“Fine, we can talk about the plan of attack for this week.” She made her way farther into the room, moving toward that wall of windows while stating her point that she wasn’t going until she was good and ready without saying a word about it. “We need to walk a fine line between being believable and shutting up everyone’s mouths.”
He crossed his arms over his bare chest and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by believable?”
What did he think she meant? That people were going to take a look at her and then at him and then figure something was rotten in Antioch—and they’d be right. If going to her reunion alone was going to be bad, going to her reunion with Frankie and having everyone realize it was a farce would be about a million times worse. Humiliation was very much not her thing.
Her shoulders sank, but she refused to look away from him. She’d own it and take its power, just like she had with her size. “The last thing I want is for people to realize the truth.”
“The truth?” The vein in his jaw twitched as he stalked toward where she stood with her back to the windows, annoyance as plain on his face as the dusting of pale freckles across his shoulders. “That I’m just arm candy?”
It came out more like a curse than a question—as if it was the last thing he wanted to be, which it probably was. Who wanted to be her arm candy? Definitely not someone like him.
She didn’t mean to take a step back, but there was a dangerous heat swirling in his eyes, turning them a darker shade of blue that kicked her heart rate up and turned her mouth dry. “That this is a pity date.”
His gaze dipped to her mouth and then lower to her sleep tank top and shorts, which more than covered everything plus some—and had cats on them—but her PJs seemed to shrink under the intensity of his focus. “I wouldn’t call it that.”
Oh, she knew what he was doing. The man flirted as easily as he laced up his shoes, but that didn’t mean she was going to fall for it. “Look, I’m a big girl, I can take calling things as they are. I’m not ashamed of my size. I would, however, be very embarrassed if it got out I had to bring a fake date to anything, much less my high school reunion, okay?”
Taking another step nearer, he stood so close that while they weren’t touching, they might as well have been. Her heart rammed against her ribs, and a riot of excited butterflies zoomed around her belly. She could just picture how she must look to him—a flushed plus-sized woman in cat pajamas. Her inner sarcasm bitch declared it totally sexy.
One side of his mouth curled up, and he raised his one arm, putting his palm against the glass behind her. Then, with deliberate slowness, he did the same with the other arm, effectively bracketing her with his sinewy arms. His pecs were at eye level, and that was very not fair, so she looked up and up some more to his face. The man was too tall, too big, too overwhelming for his own good. It wasn’t that she was trapped. Far from it. Her mutinous body didn’t want to move an inch. It wanted more. It wanted to feel him pressed against her, his mouth molded to hers, and his hands everywhere.
“Maybe you noticed,” he said, his voice holding none of the humor his one-sided smile denoted. Instead it was hot, hungry, needy in a way she could identify with all too well. “I’m not exactly small, either, and a pity date this is not.”
The rough edge in his words did floppy-floppy things to her insides as she wet her lips in anticipation. No! Not anticipation. Because they were dry. That was all. “What is it, then?”
His jaw tightened, and his gaze jerked away from her mouth. “A lesson in frustration.”
She flinched. It couldn’t be helped. Sure, she wasn’t his type, he wasn’t hers, and he was on a sex suspension, but still—ow. “That bad, huh?”
“You have no idea.” He shook his head as if he was trying to grasp it himself and let his arms drop before taking a step back.
Annoyance—and to be honest, a little embarrassment at how badly she wanted that kiss he obviously had no interest in giving—snapped her spine straight. Well fuck you very much, Frankie Hartigan. So she wasn’t like her underwear model mom or the other women she’d seen him cuddled up with on every day that ended in Y. Too fucking bad.
“Well, I’m sorry it’s so difficult for you,” she said, not giving two shits about the peevish tone of her voice. “But this whole thing was your idea.”
The bastard didn’t even look the least bit sheepish about being such an ass. “I don’t know what I’m doing right now, and being with you isn’t making it easier.”
Boo-fucking-hoo, Mr. Big Boy Firefighter. “This trip was your idea.”
“I’m not talking about the damn trip.” He ground out the words. “I’m talking about the fact that I’m here with you”—he waved a hand toward her, gesturing at her tank top and sleep shorts—“like this.”
Like this?
Like.
This.
She glanced down at her pajamas. They weren’t her normal late-night-with-a-guy nightie and panties, but why in the hell would they be? She was in her dad’s house with a guy who she didn’t have even a sliver of a chance with even if she wanted to—which she didn’t.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked, her defensiveness getting in the driver’s seat and flooring the gas. “These are my I-don’t-give-a-damn jammies. They aren’t about you. Not everything is about you, Frankie Hartigan. Just because you’re having pussy withdrawal and you don’t like me in cat-themed PJ’s or whatever—” She took a deep, calming breath. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t attracted to her. She sighed. “I am who I am, Frankie. That’s not going to change.”
Frankie’s expression gave off the impression that she was talking a different language—one he’d never even heard of before. Her foot slid off the metaphorical gas pedal. She searched his face for any hint of disgust or censure and found none. The buzzing in her ears quieted, and the heat that had rushed up from her toes cooled until it was just a pool of clammy regret in the center of her palms. She’d totally overreacted, brought her own baggage and had laid it at his Frankie’s feet. Here was the guy who’d given up a week of his life to be her fake date for her high school reunion. And she was pissed because he hadn’t wanted to kiss her as much as she wanted him.
Shit.
Her friend Gina was right. She really needed a filter.
“I’m sorry. For everything,” she said quickly.
Slipping around him before she could say anything else stupid, she hustled out of his room, down the stairs, through the small hall that connected the guest suite to the kitchen and to her own childhood bedroom, trying her best to outrun the embarrassment burning her cheeks.
It didn’t work. It never did.
Of course, she might get lucky and the house could get hit with a meteor tonight. Or aliens could invade. Or, you know, Godzilla could attack. All were preferable at the moment to the sun rising on a new day that would involve sitting across the kitchen table from Frankie Hartigan.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Frankie set his bowl of cereal on the small kitchen table and sat down across from Tom. Lucy was nowhere to be found. She’d come into his room last night in that form-fitting tank top and short shorts, and his brain had taken a distant second place to his cock. All he’d wanted to do was everything, and he couldn’t. The fact that he’d reacted that way to Lucy was just one more mark against his ability to think about a woman without his dick getting involved.
She’d made some ludicrous comments about him not liking cats or something. Honestly, it’d been hard to follow what she was saying over the sound of his heartbeat hammering in his chest. He’d focused all his attention on willing his little head not to make his attraction to her known. It wasn’t like she’d given him any signals she was into him, either. Jesus. Get a grip, Frankie.
Before Shannon had dropped her little truth bomb, if she’d given him the slightest green light, he would have just fucked Lucy six ways to Sunday, gotten her out of his system, and moved on. Now, instead of waking up with a sexy
woman and breakfast in bed, he was pouring almond milk into his organic, multigrain cornflakes. His dick and his stomach were very disappointed with the entire situation.
“What is it that you do in Waterbury, Frankie?” Tom asked as he took a drink from a brownish-green smoothie in a plastic cup with a picture of a French Bulldog in sunglasses on it. “Do you work at Lucy’s firm?”
“No, I’m a firefighter.” He took a bite of the cereal. Okay, it wasn’t dusted in sugar and floating in whole milk, but it wasn’t cardboard, either. He could live with that.
Tom steepled his fingers and tapped them against the dimple in his chin. “And how did you choose that line of work?”
“It’s a family tradition.” He shrugged and took another bite. “Every Hartigan male, with the exception of my brother Ford, has joined the fire department for three generations.”
The only noise in the kitchen was the sound of the cereal being crunched up in Frankie’s mouth and the stuttering slurp of Tom getting up the last of his smoothie through the extra wide straw. Weird? Not at all. Frankie had breakfast with the dads of all the women he almost kissed and then spent the night fantasizing about. Didn’t everyone? Wow. That much mental sarcasm was usually Fallon’s territory. He needed to shovel the organic flakes down before he got hangry and things really went off the rails.
“Ahh,” Tom said in that way that just screamed, lay on my couch and tell me about your mother. “You’re not a risk-taker.”
Frankie almost choked on his cornflakes. What in the hell? “I run into burning buildings for a living, I wouldn’t say that.”
“I’m talking emotional risks,” Tom said. “That would explain the sexual situation you find yourself in.”
And this had just gone from weird to totally bizarre. He was not afraid of risks and he was not having this conversation with Lucy’s dad at the breakfast table. He was not afraid of women or relationships. He loved women and knew he wasn’t relationship material. That’s the part Shannon had gotten right. He was his father’s son—the part of his dad no one knew but him.
Still, Tom’s statement sliced through him like an ice pick between the ribs. His throat closed up, his gut churned, and his pulse pounded in his ears like it hadn’t since that day when he’d walked in on— No. He wasn’t going to go there. Not now. Not ever again.
“No offense,” he managed to get out between clenched teeth. “But I’m just here for the cornflakes, not therapy.”
“You’re right.” Tom pushed his chair back and got up. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.” He picked up his cup and took it to the sink, where he rinsed it out and put it in the dishwasher while saying, “Never mind my questions. I’m sure you’ll work it all out on your own.”
He would. He was a man of action and he’d taken it, cutting himself off and getting himself out of temptation’s way. At least that had been his plan—right up until Lucy showed up at his house in that ridiculous electric car and had given him shit about Scarlett. What did it say about him that he’d gotten turned on not just by what he could imagine that sweet mouth of hers doing to him, but also by what she was actually saying? It said that even this brief conversation with Dr. Sex Therapist had fucked with his head.
He needed to get out of here.
The only reason he was even sitting down for breakfast was to get a peek at the woman who’d completely screwed any chance he’d had of getting eight hours of sleep last night.
“Lucy set this up, didn’t she?” The woman was trouble—and not in the way the women he wanted to get up close and naked with usually were. Nope. She was trouble in the maneuvering-him-around-like-a-pawn-on-a-chessboard way. “That’s why she’s not here.”
Tom didn’t say anything, but his gaze shifted to the kitchen doorway. Frankie followed the older man’s lead. Lucy stood there, her hair pulled back into a high ponytail that she must have worn to sleep because it was beyond jacked up, with chunks of hair that looked like hair bubbles popping up around her head.
“What did I set up?” she asked, her voice still thick with sleep.
She was wearing that damned tank top and pair of shorts that should not look sexual at all, but on her, with the massive rack she had? Yeah, he was officially up now.
Shifting in his chair, Frankie dropped his gaze back to his cereal.
“Nothing, Muffin,” Tom said, brushing over the question she’d walked in on as he made his way to the coffeepot and poured some of the brew into a muffin-shaped mug. “How did you sleep?”
“Like the dead,” she said, seemingly looking everywhere but at Frankie.
Yeah, Frankie could definitely not claim a good night’s sleep. He’d spent most of the night thinking about Lucy. At three in the morning, he decided that he didn’t give a shit how much he was proving the point that all he did was follow his dick and jerked off while thinking about the sway of her heavy tits under the tank top she was still wearing.
And when in the hell had he turned into the kind of asshole who was overthinking everything? He liked things simple. House burning down? Put the fire out. Hot chick giving him the look? Bang her in the bar bathroom.
His life had been simple, right up until it wasn’t. Fucking A.
This is what happened when there was an attempted therapy intervention first thing in the morning.
Lucy, studiously ignoring the fact that he was sitting at the table, shuffled into the kitchen with Gussie trotting in on her heels, his eyes bugging out and his tongue hanging from his mouth. When she didn’t drop any flakes on the floor as she poured her cereal, the dog gave a little huff of disappointment and made a beeline for the doggie bowls by the back door.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, unable to look away from her.
Who’d known he was such a glutton for punishment? First the no sex—and wow had he spent a lot of time looking for loopholes in that little pledge he’d made to himself—and now spending almost every moment of the next week with a woman who could make him harder than the pole at the firehouse. Shit. He really did not need to make that comparison right now, because all he could picture was Lucy sliding down that pole in a Marilyn Monroe–type dress that would fly straight out. Good God. He was turning into an upskirt perv. Maybe he should take Tom up on his offer to talk this shit out before he joined some online I’m-a-loser chat group.
Of course, staring at Lucy right now wasn’t helping. She kept her back to him, which gave him the perfect view of how her ass looked in those sleep shorts. Like the view from the front, it was definitely more than a handful and it made his mouth go dry with wanting.
Oblivious to the direction of his thoughts, Lucy answered the question he’d forgotten he’d asked as she poured almond milk into her bowl. “We have to get down to the high school and pick up our reunion packets.”
The sheer level of totally not thrilled in her tone broke through the lusty haze of his thoughts. “You make it sound like we’re going to our own hanging.”
She turned to face the kitchen table, still not looking directly at him, gripping her cereal bowl hard enough that her knuckles were white. “That’s because I’ve met Constance Harmon.”
“Do I want to know?” Rhetorical question because he hated that Constance bitch on pure loyalty grounds.
Lucy’s gaze flicked over to him and then back down. “You’ll find out soon enough. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
Then, with only the slightest of pauses by the empty chair at the table, she hustled out of the kitchen with her bowl of cornflakes.
“Now, that was interesting,” Tom said from his spot by the dishwasher as he stared at the empty space in the doorway where Lucy had been only moments before.
Yeah, that was one way of putting it. Frankie was suddenly very anxious to meet this Constance chick. With four sisters, he’d learned a long time ago how to fight like a girl, and he was more than ready to rack up some points in Lucy’s honor.
…
Lucy set her now-empty cereal bowl on the desk and
looked around at the untouched memorial that was her childhood bedroom. Everything was exactly as it was the day she’d left after college graduation for Waterbury—including the debate trophies lining the top of her headboard. Yeah, some people had notches in theirs, she had little metal gavels. A set of quick raps at the door followed by the insistent scraping of doggie nails against the wood tugged the corners of her mouth upward. When she opened the door, Gussie burst inside, vaulted up, and landed in the middle of her bed. The little guy went straight to work, messing up the made bed to create a little nest of pillows and fluffed-up comforter.
Her dad, though, stopped just inside the doorway. “Something you want to tell me, Muffin?”
Besides to stop calling her that? “Not really, Dad.”
Nodding, he walked into the room and picked up her empty bowl. He didn’t have to do that, but she’d given up years ago on telling him that she could, would, and did pick up after herself. The man couldn’t stand having anything out of place.
“You know,” he said, looking down at the empty bowl. “It would be a nice gesture for Frankie if you put on a robe before coming down to the kitchen tomorrow morning.”
What was everyone’s problem with her cat pajamas? “Why’s that?”
“Frankie seemed a little distracted by your outfit.” Her dad looked up from the bowl and gave her a small, understanding smile. “I know it might seem silly to us, but he’s trying to work some things out that obviously he’s buried deep for quite some time.”
