Page 20 of The Good Guy on My Porch

“None.”

Her smile widened. “Perfect.”

She returned five minutes later, her hands full of two of the largest waffle cones I’d ever seen, with about five scoops of ice cream in each cone. And it looked like each scoop was a different flavor, all crazy neon colors. I stood and took my cone and she sat with hers. It was bigger than her head.

“What is this?” I asked.

“The reason I love Maxwell’s. They’ve got all the crazy weird ice cream flavors kids love, superman, birthday cake, cotton candy, pop tart.” She bounced a bit in her seat. “So much fun.”

“I’m concerned I’ll be glowing if I eat all this.”

“Nah. You’ll just poop funny colors for a while.”

She attacked her ice cream with an impressive hunger. I took a cautious taste of the neon blue, yellow, and red top scoop, the superman flavor, I assumed. It tasted like sugar and my stomach growled with hunger. I might try to eat healthy, but my body appreciated quick and easy calories as much as the next body.

We ate in silence for a few minutes. I was dying to ask about her phone call, to warn her away from any guy that controlling and possessive, but I didn’t want the sadness to return to her face. “There’s no way you’re going to eat all that ice cream,” I said instead.

She paused in her sugar consumption and looked at me, then back to the ice cream. “It is kind of a lot, isn’t it?” She batted her eyelashes and pitched her voice higher. “Maybe my eyes were bigger than my stomach.”

“I don’t know about your eyes, but that cone is definitely bigger than your stomach.”

She took a long lick that had me forgetting what we’d been talking about. “Do you think so?”

I chuckled. “Yep.”

“Want to make a bet?”

“A bet?” I was so surprised, I forgot to eat and a drop of ice cream landed on my hand. I licked it off and took a big swipe of my cone before I faced her again. Her expression had gone a bit glazed. Clearly, she was already in a sugar coma. No way would she finish that cone. “What did you have in mind?”

“We could bet money, but that’s boring. I think we should wager favors.” She ate some more ice cream and then a smile spread slowly over her face. “How about this? If I finish this cone, you cook me dinner for a week. If I don’t, I’ll do your laundry for a month.”

“You don’t want to cook me dinner for a week?” I wasn’t sure I wanted her washing my boxers and sweaty socks. She’d hardly think I was sexy after that.

She scrunched her nose. “I’m a terrible cook, sorry.”

I nodded and considered. “How about if you don’t finish it, you’ll wash my dinner dishes for a month?” That way she’d be in my house every night for a month and I might just find my way to having her eat dinner with me every night, too.

She spit on her hand and extended it across the table. “Deal.”

We spit-shook on it and went back to eating our ice cream. I managed about five more bites of my cone before I admitted defeat. I wasn’t worried that Dilly would finish.

I threw out the rest of my cone and watched with increasing surprise and a bit of nausea as she ate her way through every last bite of her dessert. When she was done, she threw her arms in the air and did a little victory dance in her seat.

“How did you fit that in your belly?” I asked. She slid out of her seat and stood. She lifted her shirt, poking her slightly rounded stomach out.

“I’ve got an ice cream baby. And it feels so good.”

I shook my head. “You have untold depths.”

She grinned. “You have no idea. Get over here. I want to show you something.”

She led me to the front of the restaurant and a line of framed photographs on the wall I’d walked right by on the way in. She pointed to the first one, of a little girl with thick hair and big brown eyes, grinning in front of an empty glass bowl. “I won for the first time when I was ten.”

“Won?” I leaned in and looked closer. Yep, it was a mini-Dilly. The wall was covered with framed photographs and, as I looked them over, I saw that most of them were pictures of Dilly.

“If you finish the biggest ice cream options on the menu,” she said. “Max gives you a coupon for a free ice cream. I’ve won every year since I was ten. Now, I get free ice cream here for life.”

“No wonder it’s your favorite place.”

---