She wasn’t born brassy, mouthy, balls-to-the-wall tough. It had been how she’d survived.
She must have been silent for too long, because her dad got up from his seat and walked around to her side of the table.
“You know I love you.”
“I know, Daddy. I love you too.” Damn, and there was that clogged throat again, this time with the uncomfortable sensation of unwelcome tears in her eyes. Blinking the wetness away, she stood up and hugged her dad just like she used to on those bad days—the ones when the kids in her middle school had asked her if she’d eaten her mom and that’s why she was gone. “Do you think she ever realized what she was missing?”
Her dad gave her an extra squeeze, then took a step back, lifting her chin so she had to look him in the eyes.
“If she didn’t, then she was a fool.”
In twenty years, that was as close to a bad word as she’d ever heard her father say about her mother. Her chin was just starting to quiver when Gussie went nuts, scampering across the kitchen floor like a bullet shot from a .44. She and her dad turned just in time to see Gussie launch himself at Frankie, who protected himself by catching the flying French Bulldog and holding him out at arm’s reach.
“Am I interrupting?” he asked as the dog wriggled in his grip.
The dog was distracting, but not enough for her not to take in the sight before her. He stood in the kitchen doorway, running shorts riding low on his hips and a sweat-soaked T-shirt clinging to his washboard abs.
“No,” her dad said. “Just a little father-daughter bonding.”
Frankie squatted and released the dog, then stood before Gussie could make a run at his face. “Well, I’m just going to head upstairs to shower and then I’m good to go to kick Constance’s butt today.”
Now wouldn’t that be nice. She wasn’t above a little revenge in the form of idiotic picnic games.
“Sounds like a plan,” she said.
He opened his mouth as if to say something else but must have changed his mind, because instead of saying something he gave her a look she felt down to her toes. Then he turned and walked down the hall.
She shouldn’t have leaned a few inches to the side to watch him walk away. She shouldn’t have…but she did.
“Just friends, huh?” her dad asked with a chuckle.
She hustled over to the kitchen table, where her coffee loaded down with a Mountain Dew’s worth of sugar waited. “Yeah, Dad. Just friends.”
The kind who gave each other knee-knocking orgasms and drove cross-country to act as fake dates at a high school reunion . What could possibly go wrong?
…
Everything went straight to shit the moment Frankie picked up the potato sack from the pile at Constance’s feet.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, holding up the narrow bag chest high. “I can barely fit one of my legs in here, let alone one of mine and one of Lucy’s.”
Constance made a tsk-tsk sound. “Well, we can’t have different sizes for different teams, that would just be preferential treatment and we like things to be fair. That’s the size that fits the majority of people, so that’s the one we went with.”
Yeah, it would fit the majority of people who were twig-sized and short. The bag covered his knee and that was it.
“You know, there’s two words for someone like you, Constance.”
She stiffened and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “What’s that?”
Leaning in close enough that the cloying scent of her flower perfume just about cut off his oxygen, he said, “Second place.”
Then he turned and started toward where Lucy stood across the Antioch Park by the potato sack race starting line. The sound of Constance’s outraged gasp put a smile on his face that he couldn’t have hidden even if he wanted to.
When he stopped by Lucy, she took one glance at him and shook her head.
“What have you been up to?” she asked, looking like one of his fantasies come to life in a red top and a red skirt that swirled around her thighs at even the hint of a breeze.
“Psyching out the competition.”
It must have worked, because they managed to make the stupid narrow bag work and ended up coming in first place. The fact that the bag was such a tight fit actually worked in their favor because they could concentrate on speed rather than trying to hold up the potato sack. Of course, the downside to that was that he didn’t have an excuse to put his hand anywhere near the hem of Lucy’s skirt.
He didn’t get the opportunity during the next game, either. That was blind building, which meant he was blindfolded and tasked with building a replica of Antioch High School out of popsicle sticks with Lucy’s verbal directions being his only guide. They probably would have done okay, but ended up coming in at second place behind Constance and her pencil-pushing husband, Bryce.