Tripp grinned. “Message received.”
“Good.” Bennett grabbed his clean shirt and put it on.
“Though you’d think he’d be a little bit more relaxed given the circumstances,” Shep said.
“Nah,” Preston said. “Gentlemen, what we’re looking at here is a man who’s falling hard and doesn’t know what to do with himself.”
“We aren’t talking about that, either.” Bennett grabbed his bag and headed out of the locker room.
But damn if Preston hadn’t hit the nail on the head.
* * *
After lunch Mel went to the Piggly Wiggly to get groceries. She was making dinner for Bennett at her place. The menu was a whole roasted chicken, rice with gravy, and artichokes. Okay, so she was still trying to impress him with her cooking. Whatever—she felt no shame.
She was just pulling the chicken out of the oven when her cell phone rang.
“Hey, Mom,” she said as she leaned her head to the side. She used her shoulder to hold the phone to her ear while she went to the fridge and started pulling out ingredients.
“How was your date with Bennett?” Corinne asked, not even bothering with saying hello.
“It was good.” Mel couldn’t help but smile. It had been way beyond good, but Mel wasn’t going to go into those details with her mother.
“Where did he take you?”
“To lunch at the Floppy Flounder and then Jet Skiing. He made me dinner, too.”
“Oh did he now?” Corinne’s voice went up a few octaves. “He’s been making dinner for you a lot lately. So is there anything else going on? Is it getting serious?”
Well, they were sleeping together, but that was information her mother just didn’t need to know.
“I think it’s getting there.” Dear God, she hoped it was. The doorbell rang as Mel dropped butter into the pan.
“When are you seeing him again?” Corinne asked as Mel walked to the front door.
“He’s coming over for dinner now,” Mel whispered right before she opened the door.
Bennett grinned at Mel as she stepped aside to let him enter. She shut the door behind him and turned.
My mother, she mouthed, and he leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to he lips.
“Oh, really!” Corinne said excitedly.
Bennett put his mouth close to the receiver. “Hi, Mrs. O’Bryan.”
“He’s there now?” Corinne asked, positively giddy. “Tell him I said hello and ask him what he’s doing tomorrow night. You should bring him to dinner with you.”
“She says hello,” Mel said. Then she grabbed Bennett’s hand and led him into the kitchen.
“You didn’t tell him what else I said. Invite him to dinner.”
“Mom, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up and put the phone down on the counter. “Hey,” she said to Bennett.
“Hi.” He put his hands on her waist and pushed her back against the counter. “Dinner smells good.” He pressed his mouth to hers and nibbled on her bottom lip. “You smell better.”
Mel’s phone buzzed on the counter. Instinctively both she and Bennett turned to look at it, and there prominently displayed on the screen was a message from Mel’s mother.
Invite him to dinner tomorrow!!!
“Crap,” Mel said, reaching over and flipping the phone over. She turned back to Bennett and looked up at him nervously.
“You don’t want me to come to dinner?” He tilted his head to the side as he reached up and ran his finger down the side of her face.
“You want to come? To dinner? With my parents? More importantly, with my mother?” she asked, unable to stop her eyebrows from going up. “She’s going to try to get as much information out of you as possible.”
“Is there something we should be hiding?”
“Well no, but…I didn’t know we were there.”
“Where?”
“At ‘dinner with the parents.’”
“It isn’t like we haven’t met each other’s parents before. Tell her I’ll be there.” He reached for her phone and handed it to her.
“O-okay.” Bennett didn’t move as she took the phone and texted a quick response to her mother: We’ll be there at seven. She hit Send and put her phone on silent before she set it back on the counter facedown.
“You need help with dinner?” He was acting so cool and collected. Like having dinner with her family wasn’t a big deal at all. Like it wasn’t a huge step. They’d only just started seeing each other. But fine, if he was going to be calm, she would be, too. No problem.
“No, you can just stand there and look pretty.” Mel reached up and patted his face.
“Look pretty?” he asked as his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“Mmm-hmm.” She put her hands on his chest and pushed him back. She stepped around him and went to the stove. The butter was almost melted, so she scooped out some flour and added it to the pan.
Bennett casually leaned against the counter, one leg crossed over the other and his arms folded across his chest. He looked at her, grinning.
“What?” she asked as she stirred the flour in.
“Nothing. I’m just standing here and looking pretty.”
That he was. That he was.
* * *
Bennett was really beginning to appreciate the wonder that was a warm, soft, naked Mel in his arms. She was curled against his side, one of her legs thrown over his and her hand lazily moving around his chest.
They’d had another rather exciting go-round in Mel’s bed, and it was almost eleven. They both had to get up early the next day, but Bennett really didn’t want to go to sleep yet. He was enjoying this way too much to miss a moment of it.
“So what happened to the teddy bear?” he asked, moving his hand down her back.
“Hmm?” She looked up.
“The teddy bear I got you when you were in the hospital. I saw it on your bed a couple of weeks ago—”
“I knew that was why you freaked out.” She put her hands on his chest and pushed herself up into a sitting position.
“I didn’t freak out.”
Mel just raised her eyebrows at him.
“Okay, maybe I freaked out a little bit.”
Her eyebrows climbed up even higher.
“Fine. A lot. But I wasn’t prepared for that.”
“Prepared for what?” she asked.
“You.”
He grabbed one of her hands and pulled her back down to him. She was now splayed across his chest. She moved her legs so that she was straddling him. Her face hovered just inches above his, her hair spilling forward like a curtain on either side.
“I wasn’t prepared for how much I liked you. But I was able to distance myself from it a little bit. Or so I thought,” he told her. “And then I saw that bear and it made everything real.”
“And when exactly did you accept reality?”
“When I realized that not figuring out what was going on between us would be one of the biggest mistakes of my life. Life’s too short.”
“It is.”
“So where’s the bear?” he asked again.
“In my closet.”
“You didn’t get rid of it?”
“No. I thought about it for a minute. But it meant a lot to me,” she said, kissing the tip of his nose.
“And why’s that?”
“Because you mean a lot to me.”
Bennett wasn’t sure how it was possible that Mel’s words could simultaneously leave him warm and satisfied, but also just a little bit unsettled. But he didn’t want to think about the latter. Not right now.
He rolled so that they were on their sides, then he tucked her in next to his body, wanting her to be as close to him as possible.
* * *
On Monday morning, Bennett headed home. He hadn’t brought a change of clothes so he needed to run back and get a quick shower. He left as a very sleepy Mel was getting in her shower. He would have liked to have joined her, but then th
ey would have been late. Plus, she wasn’t exactly coherent. The girl really wasn’t a morning person, but she was pretty adorable in her tousled state.
It was six thirty when Bennett pulled up to the wood shop building. He noticed Dale Rigels right away. The kid was hanging out by the door, and he was staring down at his shoes.
“Hey,” Bennett said as he got out of his truck. “You’re a little early today.”
Dale just shrugged his shoulders, still not looking up at Bennett.
“Since you’re here, do you want to help me set up?”
Dale just shrugged again. Bennett went to the front door and put the key in the lock. He went inside and turned on the lights. When he turned around Dale was standing in the doorway, his hands shoved in his pockets. This time he was frowning at Bennett.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can you put two pieces of plywood from that stack over there at every station?” Bennett asked, pointing to the corner.
Dale just nodded and got to work, not saying a word as he went back and forth across the room.
Bennett had known Dale’s father. Vince Rigels had been a good guy, even though he was a marine. Bennett and Vince had shared a couple of beers with each other over the years when they’d been home on leave at the same time. Bennett had been in the hospital from his own near-death experience when he’d found out that a roadside bomb had killed Vince.
Dale wasn’t a bad kid, he really wasn’t. But he needed a role model to look up to, one who didn’t wear his pants around his knees. Bennett had seen him hanging out with some of the older kids at the school—the same kids who continually got busted for drugs and alcohol.
“Do you stay after school every Wednesday to help out in here?” Dale asked after about ten minutes.
Bennett had been pulling out the tools they were going to need for the day and setting them up on the station. He leaned back against the table and looked at Dale.
“Yeah. Some of the groups need a little bit more time to keep up with the schedule.”
“I heard you were letting kids work on some things that weren’t related to the bookshelves. Like personal projects or whatever.” Dale shuffled his feet back and forth on the dusty concrete.
“I am. Was there something you wanted help with?”
“Nah. Just curious.” Dale turned around and headed back for the pile of wood.
“You know, you’re really doing good with this project. You listen to what I say and figure out what to do before you act.”
Dale paused for a second as he reached for two pieces of wood. “You should tell my mom that. She doesn’t think I can listen for shit.”
“Well, do you?”
He didn’t say anything as he walked to another station and put the wood down. He looked at Bennett before he answered. “I hear what she says loud and clear. I just choose not to do what she says.”
Bennett had to resist the urge to smile. “I’d argue that isn’t listening. You have to follow through with it. What else does she say?”
“She doesn’t like my friends.”
“Do you know why?” he asked.
“She thinks they’re bad influences. But she doesn’t get it.”
“What doesn’t she get?” Bennett asked.
“That sometimes you just have to forget.”
Well, Bennett understood that perfectly. “Maybe you should try doing something that doesn’t mess with your mind.”
“You telling me you don’t have a beer every once in a while?” Dale asked, narrowing his eyes.
“No, I do. But I’m also an adult.”
“You don’t get it, either.” Dale shook his head at Bennett, frustration evident in every feature of his face.
“Kid, I get it more than you could imagine.”
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes as he turned away from Bennett again.
Bennett really hated that I don’t care attitude, and he really wanted to say something but before he could a group of girls came into the room talking and laughing. One of them was the little blonde in Dale’s group, Kylee something. The second Dale saw her his shoulders straightened and he made an attempt to pull his jeans up. Now Bennett only saw half of the skull and crossbones that were across his butt.
Well, that was interesting. The little punk had a crush on the girl. Maybe if he took those damn earrings out and wore pants that weren’t five sizes too big, she’d give him the time of day.
Maybe.
Mel walked into the room a minute later, looking rather bright-eyed with two cups of coffee in her hand. She smiled as she crossed the room and handed him one.
“Well, you look wide awake,” he said, taking the cup.
“The coffee just needed to set in first.”
Bennett looked around to make sure that none of the kids were around them. “I don’t remember you needing coffee yesterday to wake up,” he whispered before he took a sip.
“Well, yesterday I had a very different wake-up call,” she whispered back.
“That you did. We missed out on that this morning.”
“If we’d only gotten up twenty minutes earlier.”
“That was an oversight on my part. It won’t happen again.”
“Good to know.” She smiled mischievously as the first bell rang. “I’m going to go get ready for class. I see that you’ve already got everything ready. So you can just stand there and look pretty again.” She patted his shoulder before she walked away.
Bennett couldn’t help but grin like an idiot.
“Dude, you’ve got it bad for my sister.”
Bennett looked to his left to find Hamilton shaking his head.
“And?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Didn’t you want to know what my intentions were?”
“Your intentions are written plain as day on your face, and it’s rather disturbing as it’s directed toward my sister. Maybe you should calm it down there, buddy.”
“‘Buddy’?” Bennett asked. Geez, these kids liked giving him a hard time.
“Yeah, you should get some practice in before you have dinner with my parents. I don’t think my mother would appreciate you drooling over Mel instead of the meat loaf.”
“Don’t worry, little man. I’ll learn to control myself.”
“Little man?” Hamilton asked, getting all puffed up.
“Yup, you’re smaller than me.”
“Everyone is smaller than you. You’re freaking Goliath.”
“I wasn’t always. I was kind of small until I was around your age. And then I started lifting. You can work out with me sometime.”
“Seriously?” Hamilton asked, looking just a little bit excited.
“If you want.”
“Hell, yeah,” he said loudly.
A couple kids looked over at them, as did Mel from the other side of the room. She merely raised her eyebrows at him.
“Sorry,” Hamilton said to Mel, somewhat abashed, before he turned back to Bennett. “Hell, yeah,” he said again, so only Bennett could hear.
“Sounds like a plan.” He clapped Hamilton on the back and looked up to find Dale watching the two of them. If Bennett didn’t know any better, he would have sworn that Dale looked envious.
* * *
Bennett’s mother had a bit of a green thumb. Jocelyn was out in her garden every chance she could get. She’d just picked a ton of peppers, squash, tomatoes, and eggplant, and she’d told Bennett he needed to come by the house so she could give him some. He hadn’t been by the house in a couple of days, so he stopped by on Monday after work. He wasn’t supposed to pick up Mel until six, and then they’d head over to her parents’ house together.
“Mom. Dad,” Bennett called out as he walked in the front door.
“In here, Benny,” Jocelyn called out from the kitchen.
It didn’t matter how old or big he was, Jocelyn still called him Benny.
He walked down the hall to the back of the house to find his mother at the stove stirring a pot. The smell
of marinara sauce hit him, and his stomach growled audibly.
“Hey, sweetie.” She beamed at him as she covered the pot and wiped her hands on her apron. It was the same apron Bennett had sent her his first Christmas away from home. It said: I’d tell you the recipe, but then I’d have to kill you.
“Hey, Mom,” he said, crossing the kitchen to her. She took his face and kissed his cheek before he wrapped her up in his arms. “Dinner smells good.” He let go of her and took a step back.
“You want to stay. I have more than enough.”
“Nah, I’m good. I’m going over to Mel’s parents’ house for dinner.”
“You’re what?” she asked.
“It isn’t that big of a deal, Mom.”
“Isn’t that big of a deal?” She was beyond incredulous. “Have you ever gone home to a girl’s house before?”
Bennett raised his eyebrows. He’d been to plenty of girls’ houses, but he wasn’t about to discuss that with his mother.
“I meant to meet her parents,” she said, smacking his shoulder. “Because I know for a fact that you’ve never brought one home to meet us.”
This was true. He’d never been serious enough with anyone in high school, and bringing a girl home after he’d joined the military would’ve involved some traveling, since he’d never been stationed close to home.
“I know, I know. But again, I don’t see what the big deal is. You knew we were dating.”
“I knew you went on one date.” She glared up at him. “I want you to bring your girlfriend here for dinner. And soon.” She poked him hard in the chest.
Girlfriend? Yeah, that seemed like a pretty accurate title for Mel. It was just a little weird for Bennett, because he hadn’t referred to a woman as his girlfriend in about five years.
“All right, all right,” he said, holding up his hands in defense. “I’ll invite her over here.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“We can’t tomorrow. It’s the last karaoke night at the bar.”
“Wednesday?”
“I have baseball practice.”
“Thursday?” she said through narrowed eyes.
“Thursday should be fine. Let me just check with Mel.”
The severe look disappeared from her face. “Good,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Is there anything I should make specifically? Or not make? She isn’t a picky eater, is she?”
Unstoppable (A Country Roads Novel) Page 17