Muffin Top

If there was one thing every picked-on kid ever learned in high school, it was not to wave a red flag in front of the bullies’ faces, which was exactly what he’d done. There was a difference between standing up for herself and antagonizing the woman who’d been a total bitch to her for four years straight.

“Why?” He slid on his sunglasses and grinned down at her. “It sounds fun, and it’s not like you aren’t competitive.”

“I am not.” She wasn’t. There was a difference between wanting to win everything and wanting to win when you were right.

“Really?” He chuckled. “Miss Always Has To Have The Last Word is a passive player? I’m not buying that for a minute.”

He had her there. Damn it. “Fine. I like to win.”

“So, let’s go show that bitch queen how it’s done.” Frankie took the welcome packet from her hands and pulled out a piece of paper with the words Antioch High Decathlon written across the top. “Let’s go figure out where the 1843 cornerstone is.” When she didn’t move, he turned on the charm, lowering his sunglasses so she couldn’t miss the amusement in his blue eyes. “Come on. Play with me.”

“Have you ever see me run?! It is not a pretty sight.”

His gaze zeroed in on her boobs. “Looking forward to it.”

She sighed. “I’m only doing this under protest.”

He pushed his sunglasses back up. “Whatever it takes to help you sleep at night.”

Oh, she knew what it took to really help her sleep after last night’s epic sexually frustrated tossing and turning. However, since riding Frankie wasn’t on the list of activities for the Antioch High School reunion   decathlon, she was going to have to make due with her hand and her imagination. In last night’s fantasy, they’d been back at the B and B. He’d walked out in just the towel, dropped it, gotten on his knees, and feasted between her thighs. She’d come so hard all over her fingers that not making noise had not been an option.

“You look guilty,” Frankie said with a smirk, as if he knew exactly where her mind was.

Ignoring his statement and the heat it brought to her cheeks, she said, “I know where the cornerstone is.”

She took off across the street and toward downtown at a brisk pace. Sure, it was July, but a little power walking in the heat was better than that cocky look in Frankie’s eyes right now. She just had to make sure they found every item on the scavenger hunt as fast as possible so they could get back to her dad’s house and she could hide in her room.

Jeesh. What was it about going back home again that turned a person into who they were at twelve?

Lucy was not a nice person. How did she know this? Because she was enjoying herself way too much as she watched Frankie try to charm the location of the next item, a golden wolf’s tooth, out of Henrietta Campher.

For her part, Henrietta was having none of it.

Henrietta had run the Wolfsbane Antiques and Collectibles on Main Street since the La Brea Tar Pits were trapping saber-toothed tigers, and she’d heard every tall tale and sales pitch that had come with folks selling off Grandma’s spoon collection that had been used by one famous person or another. So the more times Frankie complimented the steel of the woman’s spine or the way her hair had maintained such a striking shade of red—his favorite color—the more she rolled her eyes at him from behind her thick glasses.

“Now tell me again how you got saddled with this goliath?” Henrietta asked Lucy.

The look of shocked disbelief on Frankie’s face almost made the fact that they’d been busting their asses for the past four hours on the scavenger hunt from hell worth it.

“His name is Frankie Hartigan, Mrs. Campher,” Lucy said from her spot by the stuffed squirrel dressed up to look like a pirate. “He’s a firefighter back in Waterbury.”

From her spot behind the counter, Henrietta sipped from the straw stuck through the opening of her can of Diet Dr. Pepper before responding, “I’m not asking for a résumé, I want your meet-cute. Isn’t that what they call it in the movies?”

Just the idea of Henrietta sitting down and watching rom-coms on Netflix was blowing Lucy’s mind, making it difficult to remember their cover story. All she could think about was how embarrassed she’d be if she got outed for bringing a fake date to her high school reunion   to Mrs. Campher of all people. It would be epically bad.

“This is a great story,” Frankie said, jumping in to fill the dead air. “My brother, who unfortunately did not see the light and join the fire department but instead became a cop, met a woman.”