“Let’s talk about life as Efi first.”
Her niece sighed in a way only an angst-filled fifteen-year-old could. God, Reilly would never relive that time in her life if you paid her a million dollars.
Efi laid her head back against the sofa. “Which part do you want to hear? About how I can’t play softball with the rest of the girls in my class because I have to go to Greek school on Wednesdays to learn how to say ‘I want a loaf of bread’ in Greek? This when my mom can’t speak a word of Greek to save her life? No, wait, let’s talk about how I can’t go to my best friend’s house because her father’s a minister and Dad’s afraid it will confuse me? Then there’s how I’m in a class at Greek school with kids of all ages and the only others even close to me in age are Shy Sotiria and Fat Fodos, and both of them think I’m weird.”
Reilly picked at the spikes on Efi’s head. “Sorry, honey, but I think everyone probably thinks you’re a bit on the strange side right now.”
She remembered the day last week when Efi had dyed her hair with some sort of home kit she’d bought from the drugstore. Her sister had called to blame her for the overt act of rebellion. “You encourage her! Talking to her like she’s an adult. She’s just a kid, Rei. She needs guidance.”
Reilly believed that she got enough guidance from her parents. What this girl needed was a little unconditional TLC. And she provided it whenever she could.
“Then, of course, there’s Jason,” Reilly prompted.
Efi groaned. “You would have to bring him up.”
“And what about the boys at Greek School?”
Efi crossed her arms over her modest chest. “There are no boys at Greek school. None worth mentioning. Anyway, they all think I’m weird, too. Besides, I don’t put out so I’m not even popular in that way, either.”
Reilly nearly choked on her soda.
Efi patted her on the back. “Are you all right?”
She nodded and took several deep breaths. Is that why she hadn’t been popular in school, either? Because she hadn’t “put out,” as her niece had so not nicely put it.
No, it had been because she’d been fifty pounds overweight.
And, she realized, she still dressed like she was that fat girl…at least up until last night and Ben Kane.
She felt like groaning right alongside her heartsick niece.
She remembered Layla saying once how she believed childhood was something to be survived. Thinking about it now, she wondered how much of the child still resided in herself. Was she, deep down in her heart of hearts, still that fat girl hoping to stay under the radar, who panicked when anyone noticed her?
She and Efi looked at each other.
“DVD,” they said in unison.
And that’s where the conversation about Jason and thoughts of Ben ended.
Well, for the next five minutes anyway.
6
TWO DAYS LATER, Reilly ducked out of sight where she sat in the driver’s seat of the shop minivan, peeking through the window where Ben stood in the backdoor of Benardo’s Hideaway accepting a shipment from a beer supplier. It was 6:00 a.m. on a Monday morning, and her only hired help, Tina, had called in sick. In fact, Efi had told Reilly that Tina and a few friends had gone on a spur-of-the-moment road trip to San Francisco, ditching classes and work. So there Reilly sat hiding from the one man she didn’t want to see her so early on a Monday morning.
Who would have thought Ben Kane would be up so damn early, anyway? Surely he had people who saw to this kind of business for him? Who made it possible for him to sleep in? To live the life of privilege every magazine and newspaper suggested he lived?
And her? Well, one of Tina’s stunts was enough. She was going to advertise for a part-time deliveryman the instant she got back to the shop. All of this running around when she should be back at the shop getting ready to open the doors was hell on the nerves.
A brief rap on the window. “Reilly?”
She snapped upright so quick she hit her elbow on the steering wheel. Standing next to her door was none other than Ben Kane himself, looking twice as delectable as anything her shop had to offer. Which was bad enough. What made it doubly worse was that she knew she looked like death warmed over. Three nights without much sleep, and lying next to a cat that purred louder than a Mack truck, could do that to a person.
A man like Ben Kane could do that to a person.
She rolled down her window and pushed her disheveled hair from her face. “Uh, hi!” she said with forced cheer. “Imagine seeing you here.”
His half grin hit her with full impact. “I, um, own the joint. Where would you have me be?”
Oh, I don’t know, Reilly thought. Home in bed with whatever model you picked up last night, maybe?
“Right,” she said instead, nodding stupidly, feeling even dumber yet that she’d been hiding in the front seat of a van that was clearly marked Sugar ’n’ Spice.
She pushed open the door of the ten-year-old minivan painted white with pink lettering and nearly caught Ben clean in the stomach. “Oh, God! Sorry,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“Believe it or not, this isn’t my first experience with a rogue delivery truck door. Only usually the other guys mean it.”
Reilly returned his smile, feeling all sugary inside now that she was standing next to him.
She had forgotten how tall he was. How utterly yummy. Especially when he was looking at her like he had forgotten all about the granny underpants and could only think about what lay underneath.
She scrambled to recall which panties she’d put on this morning. The ice-blue ones. The thin, satiny ice-blue ones that kept disappearing up her butt cheeks and that she kept having to dig out.
She caught her hand moving to do just that and stopped herself. First granny panties, now grabbing for her butt. Boy, was she ever making a good impression.
“I, um, have today’s orders,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Where’s Tina?”
Ben easily closed the door and followed her quick steps with a long, leisurely, all-too-handsome stride. “AWOL. And since someone has to be there to man the shop, now is the only time I had available to bring this over before the lunch crowd hits you and…” Reilly realized she was babbling and snapped her mouth shut. She didn’t babble. She never babbled.
And what was that odd sound? Her arm hairs were standing on end at the hum of a skilled saxophone player. Making her want to run in the other direction, away from the sound, away from the reaction.
Or was she just imagining it?
“Are you playing music in the bar?”
Ben blinked his light, light blue eyes at her. “No. And it’s a restaurant. Not a bar.”
They both looked around. The last truck had already pulled out leaving them standing alone in the lot with nothing but the sound of the ocean over the side of the hill.
So what was that sound then?
Ben shrugged and said, “I could have sent someone over to your place to pick up the delivery.”
But then I wouldn’t have had a chance to sneak around, Reilly thought.
“I didn’t want to be a bother,” she said instead. She waved her hands as she continued to try to outrun the sound of the sax. She ducked behind the van. “Anyway, I have a couple of other deliveries to make, as well, so this was on the way.”
Benardo’s Hideaway was not on anyone’s way. It was a destination, not a journey.
“I just didn’t expect to see you, that’s all,” she said, then widened her eyes at the blurted words. She hadn’t meant to say that. So why had she?
She moved to open the back van door. Ben rested his hand against it and held it shut. “Yes, but you were hoping you would, weren’t you?”
Were all men made as sexually confident as Ben Kane, or were they trained somewhere to be that way?
Reilly swallowed hard when he hooked the index finger of his other hand in the front of her jeans. “Have you taken a good look at me this morning? Do I loo
k like a woman on the make?”
He slowly shook his head. “Which makes you all the more provocative.”
Provocative. No one had ever used the word to describe her before. And while she would never have described herself in those terms, Ben’s saying the words made her feel that way. Made her pout her lips in a way she hadn’t realized she knew how to do, thrust her breasts out just a tad more and widen the stance of her feet.
Provocative…
Boy, did she ever want to provoke a reaction in Ben Kane in that one moment.
He tugged on the waist of her jeans as if trying to get a look inside.
Provocative evaporated leaving humiliation behind. Reilly swatted at his hand. “What are you doing?”
His grin widened. “Trying to get a peek at what you have on under there today.”
“Normal underwear,” she managed to squeeze out of her tight throat. The truth was, the back of his finger was resting against her bare stomach, causing all kinds of unfamiliar chaos to swirl around in there. “Normal underwear that you’re not going to see.”
He curved his finger tighter into her jeans. “Oh, come on. Throw a man a bone, Reilly. I haven’t been able to get your underpants out of my mind since I saw them.”
Her face burned hotter…along with other parts of her she was determined to ignore. “Bones are for dogs. So stop acting like one.” She cleared her throat. “And I hope you have a good memory, because it’s going to have to last you.”
Was it her, or had he moved closer to her?
“Until when?”
Oh, boy. He had moved closer. And he was eyeing her pouting mouth like he was a millisecond away from kissing it.
Reilly licked her lips. “Until the next Ice Age, at least.”
“Mmm. At least we’ll know that with the kind of underpants you wear, you’ll be warm enough.”
Reilly’s bark of laughter surprised even her.
She hadn’t wanted to laugh. When she laughed, she dropped her protective barriers. And did she ever need all the help she could get when dealing with the irresistible likes of Ben Kane.
He rested his forehead against hers, mesmerizing her with his eyes. “Tell me, Reilly, why are you so determined to deny the attraction between us?”
“I don’t know…because you’re double chocolate cheesecake and I have a cavity?” Oh, how she wished he would kiss her already. “Actually, when it comes to you I have a whole mouthful of cavities.”
His gaze dropped to her lips. “Sounds painful.”
“You have no idea…”
She felt the finger inside the waist of her jeans dip lower…and lower still, stealing her breath away.
“So why not go to the dentist and have them taken care of?”
She shook her head as much as she could while they were still connected at the temple. “Because…because…because dentists scare the crap out of me.”
You scare the crap out of me.
And I’m tired of waiting for you to kiss me so I’m going to kiss you.
Then Reilly was draping her arms around his neck, lifting up on the tips of her toes, and plastering her mouth against his.
A groan wound around the inside of her body, a sigh that served as a buffer between them and the rest of the world. For that one moment, what she was doing felt so damned right it was hard to believe it could be wrong. But it was that wrongness that made her heart ache even as the rest of her cried out for more of the man pressing against her.
The sound of that smoky sax seemed to grow louder as she licked his top lip, then his bottom, then set out to devour his entire mouth.
Mouths didn’t come more decadent than Ben Kane’s, she decided. She could stand there kissing him for hours. Days, even. A languid desire swam through her veins as she turned her head this way and that, licked and kissed and nipped. Then the finger at her waist dove even lower until it finally hit pay dirt in the form of her tiny panties. She shivered, wanting him to move lower still. Yes, yes, that’s it. Just a little to the right and…
His finger burrowed into the top edge of her panties, brushed against her tight bud, then slid into the wetness beyond.
Oh, yes…
“Boss, there’s a guy on the phone who says someone’s… Oh, sorry.”
While Ben hadn’t made a move to break the connection, Reilly leaped away from him like she’d just suffered an electrical shock. The sax abruptly stopped playing. His finger disappeared from her jeans. But unfortunately the heat he’d ignited continued to burn, even more brightly than before. She glanced at the guy in the doorway of the restaurant, then back at Ben, only vaguely noting that the guy had disappeared back inside.
Ben’s gaze hadn’t budged. “Get back here,” he murmured.
She shook her head. “I take it your staff is used to you mauling women in the parking lot.”
He chuckled quietly, making her shiver all over. “If I recall correctly, you were the one mauling me.” He glanced down to the front of his slacks. “As for my staff…he would be very happy if you continued.”
Reilly was glad he was facing away from the restaurant because the front of his slacks was tented out so high she had to swallow a gasp.
He said, “No? I was afraid you’d say that.” He dropped his hand to the van’s back door handle and pulled it up and open. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything frozen in there, would you?”
Reilly reached inside and took out a tub of French vanilla ice cream she’d brought along to go with the caramel drizzled apple pie. “Here. Try this. Oh, wait.” She found an apron off to the side and wrapped it around the sweating carton. “We, um, wouldn’t want to cause a wet spot or anything.”
Ben threw back his head and laughed so heartily she couldn’t help but laugh with him. “True,” he said. “Not with ice cream, anyway.”
The very air between them seemed to shimmer with longing as Reilly gazed at him. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d felt so…connected to another human being. So on the same page. Of course it would help if she could get rid of the survival instinct to grab an eraser.
“Come in for coffee,” Ben murmured.
“I…can’t.” She broke the connection. “Besides, you forget that I have to get back to the shop to serve coffee to others.”
“Maybe you should consider changing your hours.”
She raised her brows. He wasn’t…surely he couldn’t be…was he suggesting something that would stretch their connection beyond this one moment of attraction?
“Hmm,” she said, pushing the ridiculous thought aside. He was teasing her. He always seemed to be teasing her. “I don’t think my customers will go for being served morning coffee at three in the afternoon.”
“Noon, then.”
Reilly took a step backward before the desire to kiss him could hit her full force again. “Are you trying to run me out of business, Ben Kane?”
“Nope. I’m just trying to chase you closer to me.”
She searched his eyes. A cheesy line, no doubt. But did he mean it? He couldn’t possibly mean it.
She figured the safest possible reaction would be to ignore her first reaction. “Help me carry this stuff inside, will you?”
He shook his head. “Leave it.” He tucked her left hand into his right arm. “I’ll send a couple guys out to get it. You—” The way he effortlessly led her toward the door to the restaurant, you couldn’t tell that he was nearly dragging her. “I want to show you something.”
Reilly gave up and merely dragged her feet. “Does it involve your staff?”
He chuckled warmly. “Only if you want it to.”
“SOMEBODY’S BEEN tampering with our orders.”
The instant Ben and Reilly had entered the back of the restaurant, Lance had descended. “Explain ‘tampering.”’
Lance tapped a pad he was holding. “Simple. Somebody—outside—has been accessing our orders via the Internet and changing them with our suppliers. At first I thought it might be someone here, but I
got a hold of a friend of mine at the brewery who knows his way around a computer and he said that the Tia Maria order that was changed was done from a remote terminal with no footprints, not from his computer or ours.”
Ben had to tear his gaze away from where Reilly had wandered into the restaurant proper. “Interesting. Do you have any idea who would do that?”
“Nope. I was hoping that’s where you would come in.”
He didn’t have a clue who would want to do something like that.
“At any rate, I have an understanding with our suppliers that they’re to print out our orders the instant they receive them and that they stand as initially put through unless they hear directly from us with an invoice number.” He tucked the pad under his arm, following Ben’s gaze to Reilly. “Who’s the lady?”
Ben blinked at him. “Ask me again later.”
Lance held up his hands. “Hey, you don’t have to ask me twice to leave you alone.” He grinned. “I’ll be out back.”
After Lance made a silent exit, Ben stood back and watched Reilly walk through his restaurant, his one obsession, his pride and joy. The only thing in his life that had meant anything to him for so long—outside his father—that it felt unusual to want her to like it. To want Reilly to approve.
She seemed to look with her fingers, running them along the smooth line of the bar, the fine wood of the tables, over the silk of the red and gold tablecloths. Vintage posters of 30s and 40s movies hung on the roughhewn wood walls, multicolored crystal beads draped around them. Mini-electric lamps with fringed, red velvet shades sat in the middle of each table. The decor had changed over the years, but he’d always stuck to a 30s prohibition era theme. A true hideaway from the world outside.
All but for the wall of glass at the other side of the restaurant that offered up a panoramic view of the Pacific.
Reilly came to a stop at the glass. And Ben’s gaze had never left her profile as he slowly followed her through the place. His place.
“It’s breathtaking,” she whispered, hugging her arms around herself.
He nodded. “It is, isn’t it? I remember going there,” he said, pointing to a spot at the bottom of the cliff, “to fish with my father when I was kid every Sunday morning. Back then, this place was little more than an abandoned fishing shack. I used to spend my time looking up at it, dreaming, thinking of all the things I’d like to do with it.”
Flavor Of The Month (Kiss & Tell Book 2) Page 6