Shit.
Her friend Gina was right. She really needed a filter.
“I’m sorry. For everything,” she said quickly.
Slipping around him before she could say anything else stupid, she hustled out of his room, down the stairs, through the small hall that connected the guest suite to the kitchen and to her own childhood bedroom, trying her best to outrun the embarrassment burning her cheeks.
It didn’t work. It never did.
Of course, she might get lucky and the house could get hit with a meteor tonight. Or aliens could invade. Or, you know, Godzilla could attack. All were preferable at the moment to the sun rising on a new day that would involve sitting across the kitchen table from Frankie Hartigan.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, Frankie set his bowl of cereal on the small kitchen table and sat down across from Tom. Lucy was nowhere to be found. She’d come into his room last night in that form-fitting tank top and short shorts, and his brain had taken a distant second place to his cock. All he’d wanted to do was everything, and he couldn’t. The fact that he’d reacted that way to Lucy was just one more mark against his ability to think about a woman without his dick getting involved.
She’d made some ludicrous comments about him not liking cats or something. Honestly, it’d been hard to follow what she was saying over the sound of his heartbeat hammering in his chest. He’d focused all his attention on willing his little head not to make his attraction to her known. It wasn’t like she’d given him any signals she was into him, either. Jesus. Get a grip, Frankie.
Before Shannon had dropped her little truth bomb, if she’d given him the slightest green light, he would have just fucked Lucy six ways to Sunday, gotten her out of his system, and moved on. Now, instead of waking up with a sexy woman and breakfast in bed, he was pouring almond milk into his organic, multigrain cornflakes. His dick and his stomach were very disappointed with the entire situation.
“What is it that you do in Waterbury, Frankie?” Tom asked as he took a drink from a brownish-green smoothie in a plastic cup with a picture of a French Bulldog in sunglasses on it. “Do you work at Lucy’s firm?”
“No, I’m a firefighter.” He took a bite of the cereal. Okay, it wasn’t dusted in sugar and floating in whole milk, but it wasn’t cardboard, either. He could live with that.
Tom steepled his fingers and tapped them against the dimple in his chin. “And how did you choose that line of work?”
“It’s a family tradition.” He shrugged and took another bite. “Every Hartigan male, with the exception of my brother Ford, has joined the fire department for three generations.”
The only noise in the kitchen was the sound of the cereal being crunched up in Frankie’s mouth and the stuttering slurp of Tom getting up the last of his smoothie through the extra wide straw. Weird? Not at all. Frankie had breakfast with the dads of all the women he almost kissed and then spent the night fantasizing about. Didn’t everyone? Wow. That much mental sarcasm was usually Fallon’s territory. He needed to shovel the organic flakes down before he got hangry and things really went off the rails.
“Ahh,” Tom said in that way that just screamed, lay on my couch and tell me about your mother. “You’re not a risk-taker.”
Frankie almost choked on his cornflakes. What in the hell? “I run into burning buildings for a living, I wouldn’t say that.”
“I’m talking emotional risks,” Tom said. “That would explain the sexual situation you find yourself in.”
And this had just gone from weird to totally bizarre. He was not afraid of risks and he was not having this conversation with Lucy’s dad at the breakfast table. He was not afraid of women or relationships. He loved women and knew he wasn’t relationship material. That’s the part Shannon had gotten right. He was his father’s son—the part of his dad no one knew but him.
Still, Tom’s statement sliced through him like an ice pick between the ribs. His throat closed up, his gut churned, and his pulse pounded in his ears like it hadn’t since that day when he’d walked in on— No. He wasn’t going to go there. Not now. Not ever again.
“No offense,” he managed to get out between clenched teeth. “But I’m just here for the cornflakes, not therapy.”
“You’re right.” Tom pushed his chair back and got up. “Sorry. Occupational hazard.” He picked up his cup and took it to the sink, where he rinsed it out and put it in the dishwasher while saying, “Never mind my questions. I’m sure you’ll work it all out on your own.”