by Ren Benton
Julie elbowed her in the side. “Clearly, he’s repulsed by your disgusting toes. You kids have fun.”
He opened the door for her exit without taking his eyes off Tally.
She had always been freakishly tall by Westard standards. The day she’d bumped into Ben coming into sophomore English class as she was leaving and had to look up to meet his eyes, she hadn’t felt like Sasquatch for the first time in her life. Since then, taller guys with bigger muscles hadn’t made her feel the same. Only Ben. Her heels put them eye to eye tonight, but she still felt delicate beside him.
His scrutiny revived the urge to fidget. “You clean up all right, Fielder.”
His hair perpetually looked as if he’d just run his hands through it, but he’d shaved and traded his jeans and T-shirt for trousers, a button-down shirt, jacket, and tie. Maybe it was her inner stripper talking, but more articles of clothing made for a sexier presentation — more to peel off later.
“I forget how beautiful you are. Every time I see you, you take my breath away like it’s the first time.”
She went warm all over, especially her cheeks. She stifled the reflex to point out her bare toenails, the dark circles ringing her eyes, her lack of accessories. It wouldn’t hurt to let him be wrong this one time.
Besides, she was obligated to be charming for two more minutes. She retrieved her backpack. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
Ben eyed the worn nylon bag that had seen better days. “That reminds me of the backpack I gave you a million years ago.”
She shifted it behind her back so it interfered less with the sophisticated date look she was trying to project. Her roommate had tried to persuade her to upgrade to a designer version that was a dead ringer, except for being made of calf leather and the two-grand price tag, but Tally meant to hold onto this one until it disintegrated. “It is. Well, more patches at this point, but in spirit.”
He waited while she locked up, then took her hand as they crossed the street. “Why haven’t you gotten something better?”
“It has everything I need. What’s better?” His weighty gaze made her eyes roll. “Let me guess. You’re one of those people who buys every new cell phone that comes out.”
“Because I have to keep abreast of the latest developments in mobile technology. For my job.”
He seemed really proud of that excuse. “You said ‘abreast.’”
He slung an arm over her shoulders and pressed a kiss against her ear. “I tried to think of a way around it, but the only alternative I could come up with was ‘on top of,’ which struck me as even dirtier.”
She nestled against his side and let him be stricken.
The rented Buick gleamed under a streetlight like a showroom model. She scanned the exterior for damage and saw none. “The car looks none the worse for wear.”
“The thieves were decent enough not to crash.”
She transferred her gaze to Ben when they walked past the car.
He stopped at the door of the bar and held it open for her.
After one numb moment, she stepped over the threshold.
Two dozen familiar faces turned to stare at her.
Her boobs were popping out. Her skirt showed too much thigh. Her shoes looked like wardrobe from a bondage porno.
Why had she imagined he’d take her somewhere respectable?
Chapter 29
Ben cupped Tally’s bare elbow, to which she responded with a deer-in-headlights look that jabbed him right in the guts. “Are you all right?”
Her lips formed a familiar beaming smile — the fake one. “Of course.”
It had been a mistake to give her the option of denial. In all the years he’d known her, she’d let him see her hurting twice. The rest of the time, she retreated to the protection of her fortress and left him guessing how she felt.
He’d thought, because of those two vulnerable moments, she finally trusted him, but not this time. Not with all these witnesses. If putting on that mask made her feel safe when he didn’t know how to, what right did he have to call her out for lying?
He lifted his hand to return a greeting from Wayne. Tally stiffened further when she saw her father sitting at one of the tables with Jed. Jesus, this had gone sour in a hurry. “Do you want—”
“Buy me a drink?”
His gut warned that the second his back was turned, she would vanish, but how far could she get in those heels before he caught up to her? “What’ll you have?”
“Diet Pepsi or the nearest equivalent on the rocks. And if food’s included in the offer, anything breaded and deep fried.”
He stepped away from her, resisting the urge to drag her along with him or at least walk backward so he could keep an eye on her whereabouts. He ordered the food and picked up a couple of drinks at the bar, then took a deep breath and hoped he’d get a chance to deliver them.
He found her yanking darts from a board. “I thought you’d go for pool.” If not the fifty-yard dash. She was wickedly smart at math. She could probably calculate all the angles and clear a billiard table in a minute flat.
She took a sip of her soda. “There would be a riot if I bent over in this dress and started playing with sticks and balls.”
When she put it that way, it was impossible to imagine the sight of her not being overtly provocative, but outside of his imagination, a lady in a classy dress with her hair all done up was unlikely to actually do any of the overtly provocative things therein. There was just no reason for her to climb up on the table to make a shot outside of a music video or an adolescent fantasy — not that there was any difference. “I promise to comport myself in a gentlemanly fashion.”
He intercepted a leer from a man at the bar and stared him down. He couldn’t fault a guy for admiring a beautiful woman, but he needed to keep his tongue in his mouth.
Wayne stepped in front of the asshole, and Ben decided to leave the glaring contests to her very large, very protective father. He had more important things to do, such as wooing his date.
She planted her toes at the line, cocked her arm, and speared the bullseye with a dart.
“Now might be a good time to mention that I never, ever gamble.”
“That’s okay. I left my disposable income in my other G-string.”
Her next dart bounced off the end of the first. He wondered if those shoes added some sort of weight-distribution advantage to her aim. “I’d count that.”
“If it doesn’t stick, it doesn’t mean anything.” She buried the third dart tightly against the first. When she spoke again, the frayed edge had been trimmed from her voice. “I forgot to ask how your date with your mom went.”
If she wanted reassurance that he could spoil an evening with any woman, he could give her that. “We spent seventy whole minutes together before everything went to hell.”
She gave him a mock-stern look. “What did you do, Benjamin?”
The combination of amusement, disapproval, and gorgeous woman teased up a yearning for discipline that he stashed next to the pool-table fantasy. Neither had any place in the vicinity of a conversation involving his mother.
He didn’t particularly want a conversation involving his mother in the vicinity of Tally right now, either. He inadvertently initiated the fight about moving the other night, but he’d apologized for being pushy. His mother had succeeded in avoiding him since her latest attack on Tally, and that conflict remained open and sore. “She pissed me off, actually.”
She massed the fourth dart with the others. “I didn’t know you could do pissed off.”
“I used my outside voice inside and thought about slamming a door and everything.”
“Sounds intimidating.” Her lips puckered from the effort of trying to spare his feelings by not laughing at his warrior spirit. “Like a grumpy corgi puppy.”
It felt uglier at the time. He wasn’t good at anger. He was a peacekeeper by nature. By the time he arrived at Tally’s window, he’d just wanted to be petted and cuddled and done with
it so the sick feeling in his gut would go away.
Petting and cuddling her had the same effect on him.
“How did she provoke your mighty wrath?”
We fought about you put the burden of his mother’s unfairness on Tally’s shoulders, and he wouldn’t pile any more weight on that narrow, overloaded shelf. “She doesn’t approve of my life choices.”
She arched a brow. “How did she find out about the bondage dungeon?”
“Internet.”
That won him a tiny, genuine smile, but she fought to keep it for herself.
Something had broken. It was intact when he met her at the bakery. He’d felt it when she tucked her hand in his like holding hands on Main Street was something they did every day, something natural. Now, that ease was gone.
This was almost as bad as when she’d come out of the grocery store in tears and he didn’t know why. Scratch that. This was worse because he’d done this to her, somehow, between the bakery and walking through the door of the bar.
It couldn’t be something he said during that brief journey. The five sentences he’d uttered seemed harmless from every angle. What else had happened in the space of a hundred steps?
Shit. He hadn’t considered the inadvisability of bringing the child of an alcoholic to a bar. Wayne hadn’t, either, when they’d worked out the details of the plan, but Wayne didn’t have to worry about killing Tally’s feelings for him if he made a stupid mistake.
That hell was Ben’s alone. “Do you want to get out of here?”
She filled in the remaining sliver of the bullseye with her last dart. “Smart move, walking away before you lose.”
He’d leave this dive, but he would never walk away from her as long as any hope remained that he might not lose her.
Chapter 30
Posture straight, chin high, eyes not blinking, Tally walked out of the bar while Ben paid the tab for the drinks and uneaten food. She hurried out from under the streetlight bathing the front of the building. She felt safer in the relative darkness outside that circle, shrouded in shadows. Her skin no longer crawled from unwanted eyes trailing over it.
And her dad got to witness the phenomenon firsthand. She’d seen him have words with one of her admirers. One more reason to never go out in public: her father was in no condition to defend her shopworn honor from the leering horde.
Ben fell into step beside her, finding her despite her effort to be invisible. His hand on her elbow slowed her march as they drew even with his car.
“This was fun, thanks, but I have the truck.”
All the words ran into one, so it was a miracle he understood any of them. “Wayne’s going to drive it home later.”
Then it was no coincidence her dad was having his first night on the town since the accident. Had he been staying home every night, isolating himself from his friends all this time, to babysit his sad sack daughter? No wonder he’d latched onto Ben. Anybody who got her out of his hair for a couple of hours must be a godsend.
What could she do but go along with the plan? It was all arranged, out of her hands. “You’ve taken care of everything, haven’t you?”
He held open the passenger door. “Not yet, but I’m sure going to try.”
She took her seat and held her breath until he got behind the wheel. “That is a lot of Febreze.”
“I’ll roll down my window.”
She couldn’t see the multitude of buttons on her armrest clearly enough to discern their functions. “Mine too, please.”
He made good on the promise of ventilation before pulling into the street. “Do you think the rental company will suspect?”
“They’ll know. The only people who use that much air freshener are potheads, people with lots of cats, and serial killers. But what can they say? Unless there’s a body rotting in the trunk I don’t know about, the kids did a good job cleaning it.” The dashboard glistened as they passed beneath a street lamp, and she’d sell a kidney to pay for the secret of getting windows so haze-free. Could she trade the lawn service and have them clean the bakery every night instead? “It hasn’t been this spotless since it rolled off the assembly line, and it will air out in a month or two.”
“They’ll have to settle for nailing me on mileage. Damn these newfangled fuel-efficient engines. Back in my day, a tank of gas only took you twenty miles.”
“And you were thankful because otherwise you’d be walking those twenty miles.”
“Barefoot, in the flood rains.”
“Carrying an elk you had to kill with your bare hands.”
“Where’d I get bear hands?”
She smiled at the hands balled in her lap. “Same place you got the bear foot.”
If they’d done this tonight — the two of them, alone, being silly — it would have ended so much better than tampering with the natural order by pretending to be a couple.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda, if only. The damage was done, and she didn’t know how to make restitution. “You did the right thing with the boys. A dumb teenage prank with no harm done isn’t worth having a criminal record hanging over them the rest of their lives.”
“I’m not so sure. A little lawn work won’t be enough to deter them from future shenanigans.”
“Ben Fielder, local legend, shamed them. Officer Beaver will be watching them to monitor their compliance. Their parents will be on their asses now that the law has paid an official, embarrassing visit. Reverend Dunn will be giving them his Jesus-wept stare every time they pass.” Being the object of that much scrutiny was suffocating. “Any of their spirit that hasn’t been crushed by now will be better directed. You did the right thing.”
“You expected otherwise?”
“Considering the way you reacted at the scene of the crime—”
“I appreciate how you didn’t say ‘overreacted.’”
“I would never. But I did expect you to come down hard on them.”
“Someone improved my disposition by the time I caught up with them. They owe you for every grumpy corgi bite they avoided.”
“If they keep the driveway shoveled this winter, we’ll call it even.”
“I’ll tell them to make it their priority. What went wrong?”
She didn’t have the energy to pretend to misunderstand. She’d hoped he hadn’t noticed, but of course it was hard to miss your date being a bitch — again — because life hadn’t measured up to her persistently unrealistic expectations — again.
If she couldn’t have what she wanted, shouldn’t she make the most of what she could get? A gorgeous man telling her she was beautiful and giving her orgasms was the high point of her existence since... oh, the last time he’d told her she was beautiful and let her give him orgasms. It was self-defeating to ruin the few opportunities remaining with him by being dreary and uptight. “Sorry. First-date jitters.”
He adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “It had nothing to do with taking the child of someone who died driving drunk to a bar?”
That had been the last thing from her mind. She had worked every night around free-flowing liquor and never made an association with her mother. Most people could have a drink or two without turning into Bonnie Castle. She had done her nastiest work sober, anyway. “So that’s why you were drinking Sprite in a bar.”
“I planned on driving you home, so I wouldn’t have been drinking alcohol anyway.”
“Because of my mother?”
He turned his head to frown at her. “Because I’m not an irresponsible fuckwit.”
“Sorry.” Of course the implication he’d drive drunk would be insulting to someone who would never do so, whereas with her mother, it had been a matter of how impaired, not if. “I hate it that she’s here. Pulling strings from beyond the grave. Especially yours.”
“Why especially mine?”
“She wasn’t your problem. She shouldn’t be allowed to touch you.”
“She touched me every time she hurt you, even if I couldn’t see her.”
He saw the bruises. She burdened him with the unwanted knowledge of her domestic troubles. She hadn’t done enough to protect him. He bore her mother’s taint because of her selfish desire to be near him. “I should have kept my clothes on so you saw less.”
She should have stayed away.
“The bruises were the least of her impact.”
She wished she could blame her mother for her emotional defects. But her mother had been dead for two years, and Tally hadn’t seen or spoken to her for a decade before that. She couldn’t use her mother as an excuse anymore. All her bad moves came from within her. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“I don’t want you to be sorry, Tally.”
Of course he didn’t. Like mama always said, sorry didn’t compensate for failure. The damage was done.
“I’m pretty sure we’ve put in enough time for this to qualify as a second date, at least, so what’s wrong, really? Please.”
I’m wrong. I’m not the kind of girl you’d take to a nice restaurant or theater or museum.
She was a high-school-educated stripper on the cusp of thirty living with her father. There were a million decisions she could have made differently that would have made her a successful, respectable, classy woman he could trust not to embarrass him in public. It was no one’s fault but hers she’d made a million decisions in the opposite direction.
But she couldn’t tell him that. She didn’t want him to lie to her because he thought she was fishing for platitudes.
He’d already made up one excuse for her. One more should cover it. “My dad was there, so I couldn’t climb all over you like I wanted to.”
“Right.”
That one word conveyed both disappointment and lack of surprise. The guy who wanted to know how she went from not wanting to talk to him to wanting to screw before he took his dick out of his pants was not a guy who would forgive and forget awful behavior as long as she dangled sex in front of him.