Muffin Top

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.”