Muffin Top

“Ladies love me.” He winked at her.

She snort-laughed. “That sounds like the title of your autobiography, Ladies Love Me: The Story of a Former Sex Fiend.”

Oh yeah. There was that. Good for a lay, but not good enough to take home to Mom. That wasn’t exactly how Shannon put it, but it was close enough.

He adjusted his grip on the bowl without lowering it. “It wasn’t always sex.”

“Oh yeah, what was it?” Her question was as brash and to the point as usual, but there was more than a hint of concern and empathy in her eyes.

“It’s different for every woman,” he said, trying to put it into words for the first time. “Sometimes it’s the smell of her perfume or the way she struts through a room. It’s the little things that you don’t notice right away, like the way someone adjusts her walking speed to stay on pace with someone else instead of speeding ahead. Other times, it’s the little things you have to earn—a secret she’s never told before, or way she lets go and laughs without worrying about what it might sound like to someone else.”

“Holy shit, Frankie.” Lucy stared at him, her eyes wide with shock. “You’re a romantic.”

Whoa. That was not where he’d been going with that. He was an appreciator of women, all women, not some dweeb who wrote bad, sappy poems and spent nights in watching chick flicks and did stupid shit like profess his love in front of the entire world. That was not him.

“Did I mention the sex?” He puffed out his chest, a move he realized too late just made keeping the heavy-ass concrete bowl in the right position above his head even harder. “That part is really fucking good, great, the best.”

“Calm your gonads, I’m not going to let your secret out.” She didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she was laughing at him as she glanced down at her phone, then back at the spot on the shady ground where the sun spilled through the cutout in the bowl. “And that’s it.”

“Thank God.” He sat the bowl back down on its low pedestal.

Really, it was a pretty brilliant way to end the scavenger hunt. The final item, programs from the class’s graduation, were hidden in different spots around the park. Each of those spots could only be found following a path illuminated by the sun through the hole in the bowl at a certain point in time. He marked off the time 4:10 p.m. on the clue sheet left by the concrete bowl so others trying later in the week would know that the program hidden in that location had been claimed. So far only one other time had been marked off the list. Not bad odds for placing high in the competition.

For her part, Lucy was marching north in accordance with the written directions for the last clue on the scavenger hunt.

“Ten, eleven, twelve,” she counted out loud with each step forward. “Thirteen.”

That brought her to a rose bush with about a million red blooms. Frankie watched as she pondered the situation, too distracted by how the breeze toyed with the hem of her bright blue skirt and showed off a couple of more inches of sexy, thick thighs to think about where someone could have hidden the program. Lucy obviously wasn’t as distracted, because it took all of ten seconds of concentration before she bent down and retrieved a rolled-up graduation program from a box hidden underneath the rose bush.

She held it up above her head, using both hands as if the piece of paper was as heavy as the fifty-pound concrete bird bath bowl. “Victory!”

“Good thing you’re not competitive.” He strode over to where she stood in the shade of the trees bordering the walking path and the rose bushes.

She gave him a cocky grin and fanned herself with the program. “It’s one of my best qualities.”

“Now, that’s a long list,” he said, stopping next to her in the shade so there was only an arm’s length of space between them.

She turned to face him, tossing her long brown hair over one shoulder and rolling her eyes at him. “Henrietta’s not around to hear you.”

“Doesn’t make the truth any less so.”

And it didn’t.

Without considering if it was a good idea, he stepped in so close that if there’d been any sun shining through the thick tree branches it would have had to fight to get between them. The urge to touch the silky strands of her hair hit him hard enough that he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from doing it.

The woman was pretty damn amazing—not that he needed to confirm that, but yeah, thinking that had him checking her out using his peripheral vision. It was a mistake, but what a sweet one to make. What she did to that shirt tucked into her swirly skirt was fucking phenomenal.