Muffin Top

“Our fantasies really go together,” she said as she uncapped her favorite shade of red.

“Hell yes, they do. Just like us.” Frankie nodded in agreement as he zipped around a slow-moving sedan that thank God hadn’t been around them a few minutes ago. “You are a real wild one. I can’t wait to find out what other wild things you want to do.”

She almost went outside of her lip line with that quip, her pulse picking up speed and her body temperature rising. How many times had she heard something close to that? The first time had been in high school, and it had been repeated again and again in college. The thing about fucking fat girls, the saying went, was that you were always guaranteed a good time for half the work because they were just so damned grateful for the attention that they’d let you do whatever you wanted, any way you wanted, and you didn’t even have to worry about getting the chubs off.

“You’re wild.”

Is that what he meant? She took a deep breath and let it out before she finished putting on her lipstick while trying to work it out. Nothing that Frankie had done so far had come anywhere near that kind of thinking. Surely, he wasn’t one of the assholes who’d brag to his friends about what he got the big girl to do. She snuck a peek at him. The permagrin on his face wasn’t tinged with snark or nastiness. It was just happy. He turned, catching her undercover glance, and winked.

“I can’t wait to get you in my bed at home,” he said. “That sucker is custom-made and so big you can get lost in it.”

Her pulse picked up again, but for a different reason. She was being ridiculous. Frankie wasn’t like those other assholes. Still, she couldn’t ignore that part of her that acted as an alarm system, the one warning her that things were going to be different once their real lives got involved.

“How are we going to make this work back in Waterbury?”

His mouth flattened into a line. “Same way we did in Antioch. Why?”

Damage control. It’s what she did for a living. There was nothing wrong with applying the lessons she’d learned from years as a crisis PR maven—and, get real, what she’d seen growing up—to her personal life. The last thing she wanted was to make the people in her life she cared about have to pick sides between her and Frankie when the whole thing ended. If her parents’ marriage had taught her anything, it was that opposites didn’t make for forever.

Lust with Frankie she could deal with. Love? That was begging for trouble.

“Are you over there already planning our breakup?” he asked, the words coming out sharp and pointed.

Yes. No. Maybe. Just preparing for it. “It’s not that—”

“Good,” he said without looking her way.

Lucy stared at his stubborn profile, set like granite, for a few seconds and then turned her attention to the highway in front of them and the approaching interstate on-ramp that would get them back to Waterbury within a matter of hours. Unless the fuel pump went out again. They could get lucky that way.

“You aren’t having any doubts about if we can make this work outside of the Antioch bubble?” she asked.

“Not a single one.”

Good. That was good. Right? Yes, totally…except there was no missing the way his entire body was tense, the way he hadn’t looked at her when he’d responded, or the way he’d started drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel again.

None were the sign of a man confident in his declaration.

But she’d keep her mouth shut, take the good times while she still could, because she knew better than anyone that they never lasted.

Chapter Nineteen

Usually after a long trip home, there was nothing better than starfishing on her own bed in her own apartment, doing only what she wanted to do on her own. Yeah, she had a pattern after a long period of peopling, and it was pretty much not peopling for as long as humanly possible—or when she had to get up and go into the office again, whichever came first.

This time, though? Her bed felt too big. It was weird. It felt totally normal-sized before she left, and now that there wasn’t a six-foot, six-inch hot ginger firefighter next to her—there was just too much space.

He hadn’t been in her bed since six this morning. That’s when he’d gotten called back into work, his forced vacation cut short, because another firefighter had gotten injured during training exercises and they needed coverage. While he hadn’t been excited to leave, there was no denying that the man was jonesing to get back to the job he loved. How could she tell? The fact that he got dressed and was out the door in five minutes flat.

Of course, he only made it as far as the hallway of her condo building before he rushed back in and kissed her like a man possessed for about ten minutes, got her all hot and bothered, and then told her she needed to be patient, he’d be back in twenty-four hours. The man was evil, totally and completely.