Muffin Top

Fallon rolled her eyes. “We’re here to kidnap you.”

Not surprisingly, that didn’t make anything any more clear. Another time she would have wanted to play along, but not right now.

“I love you, but I have to go find Frankie.”

“Oh,” Tess said, her shoulders sinking with relief. “That makes things so much easier.”

“Unless she’s looking for him just to try to whack him,” Gina responded with a melodramatic evil laugh.

“She wouldn’t be the first, and I’m just speaking for me and my siblings,” Fallon said.

Lucy looked from one of her friends to the other. They had seriously all lost it. “How many Bloody Marys have you had today?”

Gina’s face lit up. “None, but that’s a great idea.”

Fallon and Tess nodded in agreement.

Okay, there was no way she was getting dragged into whatever shenanigans this was. She was a woman on a mission. “You go ahead without me. I have to get to Frankie.”

She loved her girls, but there was no way she was letting them slow her down. She pulled her front door shut behind her, dodged the threesome, and hightailed it for the elevator.

“You’re not going anywhere without us,” Gina said

The woman moved much more like a ninja than Lucy had expected.

Nerves plucked to the very last fiber, she turned to her girls, who were walking onto the elevator with her. She counted to twenty and exhaled, reminding herself that she loved these absolutely annoying women. “Seriously, I have to get to Frankie.”

“We know, that’s who we were kidnapping you for,” Tess said. “And that’s all we’re telling you about that until we get to Marino’s. Don’t worry, Frankie will be there.”

And that was the last the evil little threesome would say about it, no matter how much she asked, begged, or threatened. Even when they had to drive around the block Marino’s was on three times to find a parking spot.

Whatever was going on, the bar was packed at ten in the morning on a Sunday. Walking inside, surrounded by her girls, she scanned the crowd and saw about a million people but no sexy-as-sin, tall, ginger firefighter who could turn her panties to ash with just a look.

…

Frankie was going to puke his guts up.

Okay, he wasn’t really going to do that—he hadn’t been able to eat since the whole Frankie-is-a-dumbass intervention yesterday—but his stomach was still rocking one way and shaking the other. He’d never been nervous to talk to a woman in his life. Ford had been right, everything had come too easy for him before. But getting Lucy to agree to talk to him again, let alone to give him a second chance? He was definitely going to have to work for it.

Shannon poked her head into the supply closet. Was he hiding from Lucy so she wouldn’t walk out the door as soon as she spotted him? Hell yes, he was.

“She just walked in, you ready?” she asked.

He wiped his sweaty palms on the sides of his jeans. “I don’t know.”

“Frankie Hartigan, you tripped and fell hard, didn’t you?”

He had. So bad he probably had a concussion or twelve. “But what if you were right, and I’m not the guy anyone wants for happily ever after?”

“Honey, you may not be the kind of guy who could deliver a happily ever after to me or a dozen other Waterbury women, but you were meant to do so for Lucy.”

It sounded good, but it was hard to shake off the doubt that he’d fuck things up in the end. “How do you know?”

“You get scared running into burning buildings?”

“No.” Why did people always ask that question? With the right training, the fear didn’t factor in. “It’s more of me knowing what I need to do and doing it.”

“Uh-huh.” Shannon brushed back her long dark braids, which had fallen forward when she nodded her head. “And using that big saw thing they call the jaws of life?”

“Not a big deal.” It was just a tool. One that could sever a limb, sure, but it was still just a tool.

“And showing up at the total insanity that is your family’s version of a nice Sunday lunch?”

Okay, now that wasn’t dangerous at all. “What’s insane about my family’s lunch?”

“Exactly. None of those things make you think twice.” She gave him a pitying smile because she must have sensed that he was totally fucking lost. “But when it comes to telling Lucy you want to be her man, you are scared out of your giant head. That’s how you know it’s important. That’s how you know you’re going to do whatever it takes to be her happily ever after—because you love her.”