Muffin Top

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

“No.” He grinned at her. “I’m enjoying it too much.”

Since sliding through the doorway while he blocked 90 percent of it wasn’t an option, she put one hand on her hip and gave him her best don’t-waste-my-time glare. It usually made her clients—even the fuming mad ones—step out of her way. Frankie just folded his arms across the wide expanse of his chest, totally unperturbed. Of course he did.

“May I come in?” she asked, resisting the urge the play with the hem of her shirt to give her hands something to do. “We need to talk.”

“That sounds serious.” He took a pivot step, giving her enough space to pass by him and walk into the room.

To distract herself from taking an extra sniff—and yes, she was still horrible, and no, there wasn’t anyone who could judge her more harshly than she was giving herself the side-eye at that moment—she looked around the room. It might be above the garage, but it was a great space, the back wall composed of windows overlooking the woods that in a few miles became a part of the Dogwood Canyon Nature Park.

The view outside was almost as good as the one inside the room.

Not that she was looking, because that was a very not-good idea. She liked sex as much as any other woman—maybe a little more compared to some folks—but making a run at someone like Frankie Hartigan wasn’t smart. Taking a few steps away from him meant getting closer to the bed, but it was better than standing next to him and having her pheromones going crazy.

“It’s about you talking to my dad,” she said, stopping a few steps shy of the bed. “I really think he could help. You’ve got to admit, you’ve gone from one extreme to the other.”

He snorted. “No offense, but I’m not talking about my sex life with your dad.”

What was it about sex therapists that freaked people out so much? It wasn’t like 95 percent of the population was allergic to orgasms and the kind of intimate connection that came from sex.

“Why not?” she asked. “It’s his job, and he could help.”

“I’m pretty sure I can do that on my own,” he said and looked purposefully at the open door. “But thanks for stopping by.”

There was no missing that don’t-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass-on-the-way-out dismissal, but she wasn’t giving in that easy. If she was that kind of woman, she wouldn’t have been able to get Harbor City’s most hated hockey player to agree to doing a series of visits to sick kids at St. Vincent’s Hospital. There was definitely a reason why Zach Blackburn called her B.B. after he finally agreed to her plan to start rehabbing his image so the team wouldn’t kick his tattooed self to the curb come free agency time. They both knew B.B. stood for Ball Buster. She didn’t give a shit. She embraced the nickname a lot more than the one everyone had called her since she was a kid—Muffin Top. Her dad hadn’t meant it to be mean and had given it to her when she was just a baby. He just had no clue what it was like to be a fat woman in society’s eyes—which brought everything back to the whole reason why the redwood of hotness known as Frankie Hartigan was standing in front of her.

“Fine, we can talk about the plan of attack for this week.” She made her way farther into the room, moving toward that wall of windows while stating her point that she wasn’t going until she was good and ready without saying a word about it. “We need to walk a fine line between being believable and shutting up everyone’s mouths.”

He crossed his arms over his bare chest and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean by believable?”

What did he think she meant? That people were going to take a look at her and then at him and then figure something was rotten in Antioch—and they’d be right. If going to her reunion   alone was going to be bad, going to her reunion   with Frankie and having everyone realize it was a farce would be about a million times worse. Humiliation was very much not her thing.

Her shoulders sank, but she refused to look away from him. She’d own it and take its power, just like she had with her size. “The last thing I want is for people to realize the truth.”

“The truth?” The vein in his jaw twitched as he stalked toward where she stood with her back to the windows, annoyance as plain on his face as the dusting of pale freckles across his shoulders. “That I’m just arm candy?”

It came out more like a curse than a question—as if it was the last thing he wanted to be, which it probably was. Who wanted to be her arm candy? Definitely not someone like him.