“You could have met me halfway,” Lynda said mildly when she joined him.
“And miss watching you walk all the way over here?”
“How’s your hand?”
“Sore, but better.” He leaned close enough to smell her perfume, to see the dim light glisten on her lipstick. “Do I get to kiss you hello?”
She avoided answering, but she couldn’t stop the flush that crept up her neck. “I—I really appreciate your doing this. I had no clue they were going to show up with law-boy in tow.”
“ ‘Law-boy’?”
“Richard Andrews. He’s a lawyer. Not that I have anything against lawyers in general …”
“Except the one you used to be engaged to.”
“But his handshake is limp, and he kept looking at my house as if he were appraising it. I left them downstairs while I changed, and when I went back down, he was measuring the doorway into the living room.”
“Fifty-eight inches.” She gave him a startled look, and he shrugged. “The pocket doors are warped. They need to be replaced, and of course it’ll be a custom order.” He glanced across the room again. “Are your parents going to hate me?”
“Dad thinks you do good work, and that counts for a lot with him. Mom … She’ll probably try none too subtly to show that what’s-his-name is the better catch.” Her smile looked more like a grimace. “We’d better join them before she pushes Dad out of the booth trying to get a better look at you. Feel free to talk. A lot.”
As they approached the booth, Ben’s gaze shifted to the lawyer. His tan looked as if he spent hours in a tanning bed, and his teeth were too white and even to be natural. Ben would bet money that his perfectly sun-streaked hair was out of a bottle, the intense blue of his eyes was courtesy of contacts, and what muscles he had came from a gym, not from real work like hauling 75-pound bundles of shingles onto roofs. The guy probably took longer than most women to get ready to go out and apparently relied on lots of help to look his phony best. No doubt, most women considered him handsome. Hell, even Ben could admit that he thought the guy was handsome.
Even if he was about as real as a three-dollar bill.
Lynda slid onto the bench beside the lawyer, and Ben had barely gotten settled beside her when her mother, sitting opposite, spoke. “So … Ben … I understand you’re a carpenter.”
Lynda hastily performed the introductions. Did she know she sounded nervous? Her parents didn’t seem to realize it, and Richard Andrews wouldn’t figure it out until she started stammering and broke out in a cold sweat. Whatever kind of law he practiced, he didn’t appear to be particularly astute.
Janice Barone was an attractive woman—small, blonde, pampered. In his one-minute analysis, she struck him as high maintenance, well intentioned but too certain she was right. After all, hadn’t she brought law-boy here, when anyone could tell just looking at him that he wasn’t Lynda’s type?
Oh, yeah, like you are?
Maybe not … but he came closer than Richard Andrews ever could.
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” he said in response to Janice’s statement.
“How … helpful. My grandmother always said if you can’t marry a man with money, marry one who’s handy around the house.”
“My grandmother always said there’s no shame in honest work. Speaking of honest work … Lynda says you’re a lawyer, Rick.”
“It’s Richard,” the man said pompously.
“Honest and lawyer. Now there’s two words you don’t hear together very often, do you, Richard?” Phil Barone teased.
Janice gave her husband a sobering look, then turned on Ben a smile as phony as the lawyer. “You have quite an accent. Where are you from?”
“The great state of Georgia.”
“Home of Georgia peaches, rednecks, the Atlanta Braves, and Coca-Cola.” Andrews laid his hand over Lynda’s and leaned unnecessarily close to scornfully add, “And some people actually think”—he shifted into a really bad Southern accent—“the South’s gonna rise again.”
Ben could think of one Southerner who just might rise and undo a small fortune in dental work on one obnoxious Yankee … but McCauley’s wasn’t the place for a brawl, and Lynda wasn’t the type to take it in stride like most of the women he knew back home. But if the guy didn’t let go of her hand …
Before the thought was finished, she eased free of Andrews and scooted an inch closer to Ben. Her father didn’t notice. Her mother did, and her mouth tightened.
“Tell me, Ben,” Janice began, her voice purposeful. “Where did you go to school? Richard graduated from Yale, of course. All the men in the Andrews family attend there. All the men in the Andrews family are lawyers.”
“Really. You’d think one lawyer would be more than enough for any family.” He smiled as if he felt like it. “I was lucky to finish high school. But then, I chose a field that didn’t require seven years of additional schooling.”
“And how did you happen to choose that field? Did you grow up wanting to be a carpenter?”
Yeah, sure. And did you grow up wanting to be a bitch? Of course he didn’t ask that. Instead, he leaned close to Lynda, bringing his mouth into intimate contact with her ear. “You owe me big-time, darlin’,” he whispered, then turned back to her disapproving mother. “No, ma’am, I didn’t. But when I graduated from high school, I had to do something.…”
When Ben was nine years old, his mother had gotten herself in enough trouble to bring social services into the picture. They’d placed him in the temporary custody of his grandmother, and subjected Emmaline to interviews, investigations, and home inspections. The social worker, a thin, sour woman, had come to Emmaline’s house and criticized damn near everything. She’d been rude, obnoxious, arrogant, and condescending, and Emmaline had taken every insult without comment. Why? he’d demanded when the woman was gone, and she’d replied that there was nothing to be gained from sinking to someone else’s level. Sometimes the best action was to smile, be polite, and keep your opinions to yourself.
Ben did a lot of smiling and being polite that evening.
Lynda had done her best to redirect the conversation, and so had her father—though Phil, Ben had noticed early on, coped with his wife mostly by backing down. Janice Barone didn’t back down at all, and she didn’t have a passing acquaintance with subtlety. She liked Richard Andrews and didn’t like Ben. She thought Andrews was more suitable, more likely to make her daughter happy and produce lovely grandchildren for her to spoil. Ben thought he was a first-class idiot. But to balance things out, Janice thought Ben wasn’t good enough to share her daughter’s table … although, being a lowly carpenter, he could be allowed to build it.
In the past few minutes, Janice had fallen silent—probably looking for something else about him to insult. She’d taken shots at his background; his education—or lack of; his prospects—or lack of; his income—or … Hell, apparently she found everything about him lacking, except possibly his table manners. He figured the splint was all that had saved him there. She didn’t want to seem politically incorrect in criticizing the temporarily disabled. She hadn’t minded at all, though, making it very clear that she didn’t consider him suitable for her daughter—not as a date, not as a lover, and certainly not as a husband.
And the hell of it was, she was right. He wasn’t suitable. Lynda was filthy rich, while people in his end of the construction business did good to get by. They didn’t drive Mercedes or live in big expensive houses or jet halfway around the world on a moment’s notice … or get involved with women who did.
But that was okay. He wasn’t looking to get involved. Dinner Wednesday night had been the boss feeling sorry for the injured employee. Tonight was just the employee doing the boss a favor. And the kisses …
They’d been a mistake.
Some part of him wanted to protest. Maybe kissing her hadn’t been his brightest idea. Maybe it had been foolish, tempting himself with something he couldn’t have. Definitely it had been sweet. Hot. Greedy
. Tantalizing. But it hadn’t been wrong.
Just … not wise.
When the waiter brought the check, Lynda took it before anyone else could. She glanced over it too quickly to read anything, then handed it back, along with a credit card. “This is my treat,” she said with an uneasy smile, “since I can’t offer you a place to stay tonight.”
“Oh, the inn will be fine,” Janice said. “Once Ben has completed the work on your house, you can invite us for a visit. When do you think that will be, Ben?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. With a lazy grin, he parroted Miss Agatha’s words. “Work on an old house is never done. As soon as one thing’s fixed, another starts showing its age.”
“Yes, but sooner or later, all good things must come to an end. You’ll be wanting to return to Atlanta before long. Surely you have family and friends there.”
“No, ma’am. No family I claim, no friends I miss.” He watched her jaw tighten and figured she had noticeably ground down her teeth in dealing with him for an evening. If he were married to Lynda, what fun he could have in a lifetime of tormenting Janice.
If he were married to Lynda.…
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Janice asked dryly as they prepared to leave.
“Because you’re an intelligent woman.”
Her only response was a snort of the kind Emmaline had given when she’d known he was manipulating her.
Outside the restaurant, they came to an awkward stop, the five of them standing in a loose circle, pretty much not looking at each other. Finally Phil offered his hand. “Nice meeting you, Ben. A lesser man would have left halfway through Janice’s assault.”
“Phil!” she exclaimed in dismay.
Ignoring his wife, he turned to Lynda. “I’m guessing you want to catch a ride home with your young man. Sorry we surprised you like this.”
“I’m glad I got to see you, Dad.” Lynda hugged him, then her mother, and politely shook hands with Andrews.
“We’ll stop by and say good-bye before we leave in the morning,” Janice called as the three of them headed for the Barones’ car.
Ben slid his hands in his pockets, then quietly said, “Want to make your mother freak out in the morning? Let me show up before they do. I’ll take off my shirt and shoes and come downstairs as if I’ve just gotten out of bed.”
Lynda smiled faintly. As her parents drove past, Phil tapped the horn and she lifted her hand in a halfhearted wave.
Once the car was out of sight, they began walking toward the GTO, parked half a block away.
“I am so sorry,” Lynda said.
“For what?”
She gave him a disbelieving look. “The last two hours of smug condescension and insults.”
“You insulted me? I must have missed it.”
“My mother did, practically nonstop.”
“Then let your mother apologize.”
She gave the same little snort. Was it a woman thing, or a woman-dealing-with-Ben-Foster thing? “I dragged you into this, and I’m sorry. All I could think about was not spending an evening with Mom pushing law-boy at me the whole time. I didn’t realize she would be so rude to you.”
“You may not have noticed this, but I’m a big boy. I’ve been saying no for about thirty-one years now. Parental disapproval is nothing new to me. If I had minded facing your mother’s, I would have told you no thanks, and stayed home.”
She stopped beside the GTO. “Why didn’t you?”
He stopped, too, and for a moment just looked at her. He could tell her that he’d had to eat anyway, so he might as well do it with her family, and it would be the truth. Or that he’d wanted an excuse to spend a few hours with her. That was also true. That he’d been thinking about her way too much since Wednesday—truth. “I figure it can’t hurt to have the boss owe me a favor.” Also true.
“I think this equals two or three favors.”
He glanced at the keys he held, then gestured down the sidewalk. “How about cashing one in? Let’s take a walk.”
Her smile was surprisingly sweet and pleased. “I’d like that.”
They automatically continued the way they’d started, heading toward downtown and the square. “I liked your dad,” Ben remarked after half a block.
“Everyone likes my dad. Believe it or not, my mother loves him dearly.”
“I believe it.” Janice’s hostility had all been directed at him. Occasionally she’d grown impatient with Phil, but what wife didn’t get annoyed with her husband?
“Tell me about your parents.”
Ben gave her a wry look. “My family’s not like yours. Our lives didn’t remotely resemble The Donna Reed Show. We’re a bit more dysfunctional.” After a moment, he took a breath, then launched into a subject he’d never voluntarily discussed with anyone other than Emmaline. He figured he was better off not looking too closely at why he was doing so now.
“My parents got married, had me, and got divorced in less than a year, and they lived apart most of that time. My father had less desire to be a father than he did to be a husband, which was about zero. I’ve seen him fewer than two dozen times in my life, and then only when he needs something from me—usually money for bail, booze, or to pay off his gambling debts. Jewel Ann, my mother, played at being a mother when it suited her, which wasn’t very often. The rest of the time I stayed with her mother, Emmaline. She pretty much raised me and kept me out of serious trouble and out of jail, at least until I was grown. I haven’t seen my father in at least five years, and Jewel Ann in … maybe three years, and I haven’t missed either one.”
“Didn’t your mother go to your grandmother’s funeral?”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t locate her. She was always taking off, hooking up with some guy or looking for some dream.”
“You must miss Emmaline a lot.”
“I do. She had always been there for me, and I’d thought she always would be. I mean, logically, I knew she wasn’t going to live forever, but I never really accepted that someday she would be gone.”
And he for damn sure hadn’t been prepared for the knowledge that she went to her grave knowing that he was less a man than she’d taught him to be.
As they reached the corner, children’s voices sounded in the night. The square was just ahead, with parents on the park benches and kids playing in the grass. On the bandstand steps, a young woman with a guitar was giving an impromptu concert to an attentive audience of kids, and on the far side of the square, the lights of the ice-cream parlor shone brightly in the dusk.
“Want an ice-cream cone?”
Lynda smiled. “Do I look like the sort of woman who would pass up ice cream?”
He let his gaze slide over her perfectly proportioned body, from just-right breasts to slender waist to shapely hips, and he slowly smiled. “You look as if not one single sweet has ever crossed your lips. Did I mention you look lovely tonight?”
“No.”
“You do.”
She murmured thanks as they cut through the square, then crossed the street. They stood in line in the ice-cream parlor, the only adults unaccompanied by kids, then took their cones to a bench in a quiet corner of the square.
The night was cool, the music soothing, the sounds of the children at play oddly relaxing. Occasionally a bird in the trees trilled while lightning bugs flashed in the dark.
They sat in silence for a time. Then Ben leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, and studied his ice cream as if finishing the cone required his utmost attention. “Why me?” He felt rather than saw her questioning look. “You know other men. Why did you call me this evening?”
Was it because he was so obviously ill-suited that she’d known her mother would spend all her energy getting that fact across and never get a chance to push law-boy on her? Had she been afraid that inviting some other guy who was suitable would succeed only in transferring Janice’s matchmaking efforts from Andrews to him?
“Which answer do you want?” she ask
ed quietly. “The brush-off? The excuse? The face-saver?”
“How about the truth?” Just as with his answer to her question earlier, he knew there were various truths. He wanted to know with which one she trusted him.
A minute or two passed while she finished her ice cream. She dusted her fingers, blotted her lips, then crumpled the napkin into a tiny ball before facing him. “I called you because I wanted to see you.” A pause, then, “Is that honest enough for you?”
It certainly was, and to prove it, he leaned forward, pulled her close with his good hand, and kissed her. And maybe it was foolish and unwise. Certainly it was sweet, hot, greedy, and tantalizing.
And it was also right.
Amazingly, impossibly right.
Melissa’s Garden was one of Agatha’s favorite places in town. The nursery always seemed cool and welcoming, even on the hottest of days, and being surrounded by beautiful growing things soothed her spirit. She’d often thought that if she hadn’t taught school, she would have opened her own nursery. But teaching school had been a wonderful career for someone who would never have children of her own. It had been a substitute for the life she’d planned for herself when she was young and unaware of what lay ahead. She’d intended to marry and to devote herself to being a good wife and mother, as her own dear mother had done. She’d thought she would be active in the community, would volunteer at the hospital, the library, the schools, and the church, but most of all she would be a loving wife to Sam and a doting mother to his children.
It was natural to be thinking of Sam that Monday afternoon. After all, if fate hadn’t intervened, Melissa Thomas, owner of Melissa’s Garden, would have been a cousin by marriage … and, after all, she was at the nursery to talk to Melissa about flowers for her wedding to Bud.
The ceremony was less than two weeks away, and at times the reality of it boggled her mind. After Sam’s death on Omaha Beach, she had quickly become Bethlehem’s resident old maid. Oh, she’d had her share of suitors, but Sam’s dying had changed something inside her. She had loved him so completely and mourned him so deeply. She simply hadn’t been able to summon such passion or devotion for any of the men who had come around. She’d thought she would never care so intensely for anyone else ever again.
Getting Lucky Page 17