Muffin Top

That’s when the cheering and clapping started from the other side of the wall. Had they been that loud? She looked down at Frankie, who was wearing a satisfied, cocky grin. Oh yeah, they were very much that loud.

Oh my God.

She looked at Frankie. “Does this happen to you often?”

“Only with you.”

Collapsing with giggles and exhaustion, she was careful to make sure she didn’t land on him as she laid down, but he just grumbled something she couldn’t quite make out and pulled her close.

With her cheek pressed against his chest, she lay there and listened to the steady thrum-thrum of his heart beating. His springy chest hair tickled her nose, but she refused to give into the sneeze threatening to ruin the moment because it was a perfect moment. The kind of snapshot in time where absolutely everything seemed possible, where the idea of her and Frankie being together as a couple in Waterbury seemed plausible.

When they got back to Waterbury, they’d be out of the vacation bubble and their real lives would intrude. He’d have a bazillion women who wanted him, tall women with appropriate curves in the appropriate places, the kind who wore skinny jeans that still managed to droop, the kind who never got the wow-she-really-let-herself-go look from strangers. Would he still want her then? Would she be the one waiting, just like her dad had been? That’s the way these things worked, the opposites-attract newness wore off and when it did it would be too late for her. Hell, it was too late now. She’d fallen for him, like a lemming rushing off a cliff and into a big fluffy cloud of love.

All she could do now was prep for the inevitable ending and try to enjoy what time they had together while it lasted.

…

Frankie could hear her thinking, it was that loud in the totally silent room.

So he gave in to the urge to wrap her tighter in his arms, but managed to keep his mouth shut. Telling her everything he was feeling now would only freak her out even more than she was already. He’d keep the news to himself that she was completely right. Sex wasn’t just sex, not when it involved someone he loved. It was a dumb, cheesy thing to say, even in his head, but it didn’t change the fact that it was true.

But since he wasn’t planning on turning in his stubborn Irishman card today, he’d keep that to himself, instead he closed his eyes all he could picture was the future waiting for them both in Waterbury.

Chapter Eighteen

The next day, after saying goodbye to Tom and Gussie, they hit the road. For his part, Frankie had been hoping Scarlett’s fuel pump would go out again for the past million miles. The car gods, however, had other plans as the miles flew by one field of crops after another until they were almost back in the Eastern Time Zone.

And with every small town they passed and interstate gas station they stopped at, he could see the truth that they were leaving some sort of alternate reality sink into Lucy a little bit more. She’d gone all silent and contemplative a half hour ago—a fact made more apparent because this part of the country seemed to get exactly zero radio stations.

He had to do something, or she’d change her mind about giving them a chance back home. It wasn’t that Lucy wanted to sabotage them, but he could feel that big, bad something lingering in the air as apparent as the changing scent of a fire that warned of imminent danger. It had him drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and grasping at mental straws of ideas that could pull her back from the edge.

That’s when it hit him.

“What’s your biggest fantasy?”

Lucy pivoted in her seat, her beautiful face totally neutral as if she didn’t know exactly what kind of fantasy he was asking about—which she totally did. “Having Wonder Woman’s invisible plane.”

He turned his attention back to the road and passed a tractor on the back-country highway shortcut with ease, and they were again the only ones on the lonely stretch of road. “I thought you hated flying.”

“No, I hate the teeny-tiny seats,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

“So you mean I could actually stretch my legs out and not turn into the human pretzel in Wonder Woman’s plane?” Diana was an Amazonian princess, after all. Leg room had to matter to her.

Lucy nodded. “Yep.”

“That’s my new second favorite fantasy,” he said, his thumbs tapping on the steering wheel to keep from reaching over and tracing a line across the slice of thigh visible below the hem of her skirt.

“Only number two?” she asked, her voice getting that husky edge that made his dick sit up and listen. “What’s number one?”

He’d spent the past hour thinking about it and had developed something that was halfway between heaven and hell. “It involves you naked.”