Muffin Top

“Oh, for the love of Sunday mornings,” she grumbled.

Sure, she sounded frustrated—and she was, but not the way some may have thought. When she grabbed a step stool that raised her up to his height, plunked it down behind Frankie, and then took her place behind him, her entire body was humming. She had to step close to him, so much so that her breasts pressed against his back, so she could reach around him and put her arms in line with his as he held the air rifle.

“See that little thing that sticks up from the barrel?” she asked, her lips practically touching the shell of his ear.

He took in a ragged breath. “Yeah.”

“Line that up with your target.” She waited a few beats. It was about time he was the one suffering with the whole patience-makes-it-hotter thing. “Let out a breath.” She blew against his ear, just to demonstrate proper technique, of course. “And pull the trigger.”

Just as he was about to fire, she licked his earlobe. The man jumped. The shot cracked. The paintball pellet exploded out of the barrel and splattered against the giant stuffed llama hanging in the corner of the booth.

Quicker than she could let out a breath, he turned around and curled an arm around her waist so she didn’t fall off the stool. They were face-to-face like this, and she could take in every detail of him up close from the dusting of freckles across his nose to the small, faded scar on his chin to the heady promise in his eyes that he would get her back for that in the most patient way possible.

Her pulse went haywire as anticipation skittered across her skin until her entire body felt like a live wire.

“You did that on purpose,” he said, his voice low and his mouth almost close enough to kiss.

“Yeah.” Okay, that’s what she meant to say, but it came out as more of a sigh. What could she say, getting the full force of Frankie’s attention when you were pressed against him in the most intimate way possible with clothes on was a lot for a woman to process.

She could barely hear the tinny sounds of the carnival music or the crowd filtering past. Everything had been muted as she stood there on that stool, with Frankie’s arm around her, filled with the certain knowledge that a kiss—and not just any kiss, but a brain-wiping, oh-my-God-don’t-ever-let-it-end kiss—was coming.

“I said, here’s your prize,” the older man wearing an Antioch First Baptist T-shirt who was working the booth practically shouted at them from all of two feet away. “There’s no way I can give it away to someone who actually earned it now.”

The rest of the world came screaming back into existence. There were more people in the world than just her and Frankie. Huh. That was a little bit of a surprise until she got her brain back online.

She stepped down from the stool, slipping out of Frankie’s grasp, and picked it up. “Sorry about that.”

The booth man, who like everyone else working the carnival was a local, accepted the stool and handed her the llama in return, amusement glittering in his eyes. “Not to worry, I was young and full of sass at one point in time during my life, too.”

She and Frankie were laughing and arguing about which one of them was sassier while walking between the Tilt-A-Whirl and The Hammer toward the Ferris wheel when they were stopped by an unmistakable voice.

“I didn’t realize they made stuffed animals that big,” Constance said, her words slurred. “It’s almost as big as you are, Muffin Top.”

Lucy and Frankie turned. Constance, per usual, looked absolutely perfect, from her casual yet cute outfit to the waves of her blond hair—right up until a closer look exposed the pained tightness around her mouth, the sheen of perspiration making her forehead dewy, and the glassy look in her blue eyes. Perfect Constance was drunk as hell—and back to her high school mean-girl self.

Next to her, Bryce blanched and shot them an apologetic look. “I think it’s time to head home, honey.”

Constance didn’t even acknowledge what her husband had said. Instead, she looked up at Frankie. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but it’s gotta be big if you’re with her. Why else would someone like you be with someone who looks like that?”

A punch in the gut wasn’t the right metaphor for how Lucy felt at that moment. Run over by a train? That was closer, but still not quite right. Whatever it was, the pain of it shocked her into silence.

Next to her, Frankie wasn’t suffering from the same affliction. “You fucking bit—”

She put her hand on Frankie’s arm to shush him. There wasn’t any point. Bryce was dragging Constance away, his head close to hers as he said whatever it was that kept the other woman’s feet moving.