“I’m not looking for anything,” she said. “Except a new volunteer opportunity. Look at this.” She slid her phone across the smooth copper bar top, and he caught it reflexively.
“Another one?”
She frowned. “I have plenty of time. I don’t overcommit.” If there was one thing her father had drilled into all of his children, it was the importance of time management. Whiskey took patience.
He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Just look, Max. It’s a nonprofit that does mentoring for at-risk youth who are interested in entrepreneurship. They set up one-on-one interviews for the kids with local business owners.”
He glanced at her phone. “They could use a new website.”
“They’re right in town.” She plowed on. “I was thinking I could volunteer both as a mentor and in the office, help them get a little more organized. And maybe you could—”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Talk to a kid who wants to be a chef? Anytime.” Max smiled at her, and she remembered with a start how handsome he was—even if he didn’t do it for her, she could appreciate sexy when she saw it.
They would never be more than friends, and she was perfectly fine with that. In fact, it was kind of nice having someone other than her brother here in River Hill looking out for her. She’d always be thankful to Max for letting Iain crash in the apartment over his garage when he’d first arrived in town.
Ben lived there now, she remembered. The thought of her new friend made her smile. A barely-passable barista wasn’t going to be much help in mentoring at-risk youth, but she had a feeling he’d be supportive when she told him about it.
Wait, what? Telling him about her idea required her seeing him again.
It appeared some part of her brain had already decided that was going to happen. For coffee, of course, she quickly told herself. After all, he’d invited her, and she was going to take him up on it. Who was she to turn down free coffee?
“I just think maybe you’re doing the right thing for the wrong reason,” Max was saying.
She snapped back to attention, the image of Ben’s muscled forearms holding a cup of coffee fading from behind her eyes. “Excuse me?”
His lips thinned as he handed her phone back. “You’ve volunteered at the pet shelter, the library, the tourism board, and now this.”
“I like cats. And books. And River Hill.” She didn’t know why she was feeling defensive. It wasn’t like volunteering in her community was wrong.
“Do you remember when you started volunteering at the shelter?”
She shrugged. “A while ago.”
“It was when your brother moved in with Naomi.”
“So?”
“You started spending time at the library when your mother told you about some girl you know back home having a baby.”
Maeve shifted uncomfortably. Who knew Max was paying such close attention to her life? His eye for detail apparently extended beyond his food. She had indeed started working at the library when her friend Aoife had given birth to her second baby. Not that it mattered. She was too busy to think about it, obviously. What with her work at the library and all. “So?” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“The tourism board?”
She felt heat rising in her cheeks. “A few months ago. Angelica mentioned they needed help.”
“Nice try.” He leveled a finger at her. “Iain let it slip. Some old boyfriend got engaged.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Maeve.” Max blew out a sigh. “I’m not saying you’re bothered by that sort of thing. You’re a genuinely nice person; I know perfectly well you’re really happy for all of these people.”
“So what’s your point?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest as though she might be able to ward off whatever attack he was preparing. A truth attack. The worst kind, honestly.
“You’re using all these volunteer opportunities to distract yourself,” he said firmly. “It’s some kind of coping mechanism.”
“For what?” She dared him to say it.
There was silence. “You know what,” he said finally.
“Because I’m single, sad, and lonely in my little house?” She scowled at him and pushed her plate aside. “Listen, Mister Vergaras, I’m perfectly happy. I’ve got my own business, and it’s well on its way to winning awards just as prestigious as yours. I’m making plenty of money, and I have more loving friends and family than anybody would know what to do with.” She realized by the end that she was standing, leaning over the bar, poking her finger into his chest. “If anybody has a coping mechanism, it’s you.”
“Me?” He scoffed, and picked up her plate to put behind him in a bin for dirties. “Not likely.”
“Keep telling yourself that, workaholic,” she said as viciously as she could manage. “Seen daylight recently?”
With that parting sally, she swept out of the restaurant, leaving him blinking in surprise behind her. She had mentoring to do.
4
Ben stifled a sigh as his mom regaled him with stories about his brother Nick, his sister Marjorie, and his cousin Neil’s beautiful new wife. Not that he begrudged any of them their success or happiness. It was just hard to get excited when the subtle subtext of the entire conversation was that he should be doing something worthwhile, too.
Not that his mom had ever stuck to subtlety for long.
“I’m concerned about you, Ben,” she said. “It’s not like you to run from your troubles.”
“I’m not running, Mom. I’m just taking some time to figure out what I want to do next.”
“I know, honey, I just worry.”
“I appreciate that, but you don’t—”
“Have you given any thought to what we talked about last time? Your father and I could move the exercise equipment back down to the basement and you could move in with us.”
“Mom,” he groaned. “I am not moving back to Portland to live with my parents.” The fact that she thought this was a reasonable suggestion continued to blow his mind.
“I just think—”
“Stop. Please, just stop.” Ben hated to be rude, but they’d had this conversation three times in as many weeks, and it was clear she wasn’t going to let it drop without him getting firm with her. “It’s not happening. Please don’t bring it up again.”
Through the speaker he heard her huff and then sniffle.
Shit, now she was crying. He hated it when she cried. He’d watched her wring her hands for years over Nick’s foibles, and he hated that he was now their parents’ problem child. They were good people who deserved to have a few years of peace and quiet where they didn’t worry about either of their sons. Marjorie, of course, had been the perfect daughter—or so they believed. Just once Ben would like to fill them in on the epic parties she’d thrown back in high school when they were out of town.
“Look, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I just—”
“I’m am not crying, Benjamin Andrew Worthington.” She sniffed audibly. “Where do you get such fanciful notions?”
Rather than arguing with her, he decided to move the conversation along. The quicker the topic passed, the quicker he could get off the phone. He loved his mom, but these calls always stressed him out. It was one thing to be a disappointment to yourself; but to disappoint your biggest supporter was even worse.
“Sorry, I must have misheard. Anyway, I have to go, Mom. I’m meeting up with Max for dinner.”
“Ooh,” she cooed. “Send Max my love. Such a sweet boy.”
Ben tried not to vomit. When they were kids, his mom had fussed over Max like one of her own. As an adult, that fussing had taken on an entirely different tone. It made him slightly nauseated to think that both his mother and his sister had an inappropriate crush on his best friend. Just last month, Marjorie had called him “a hunk of grade A prime beef.” Ben had ended that call fairly quickly, too.
“I will, Mom. Bye.”
“Bye, Ben. Talk to you next Sunday.”
He hung up the phone and dragged his eyes back to his open laptop. His LinkedIn profile picture stared accusingly back at him. The headshot showed him with close cropped hair and a stern expression—he almost didn’t recognize himself. Since walking away from corporate America—or, ahem, being escorted away—he’d taken an entirely new approach to his appearance. His hair was longer now, and he frequently had more scruff than not. He still wore the Oxford shirts he’d once lived in, but these days the sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and he wasn’t sure he’d picked up an iron in months.
But what if his mom was right? Was it was time to stop pretending he was anything but what he was? After all, it wasn’t like he knew how to be good at anything other than being a lawyer.
With a sigh of resignation, he clicked on his inbox. In seconds, the page was populated with messages from headhunters and in-house recruiters looking for someone with his particular skills and experience. Subject lines of “I heard you’re a shark in the courtroom” and “Your take-no-prisoners approach is what we need” stood out, along with offers of more money than one person reasonably needed to live on.
Just thinking about the deadlines, hostile takeovers, and angry faces exhausted him. It was precisely because he’d been a shark who scented blood in the water and went in for the kill that he’d burned out in the first place. A person couldn’t work eighty hours a week and still pretend he had a life. Something had to give, and unfortunately for Ben, that something had been his patience and his ability to deal with the bullshit.
Still, he couldn’t lie. He’d liked the money. A lot. Especially now that he had none. Oh, he wasn’t destitute or anything, but when you’d spent the majority of your savings on a gut renovation of a condo with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge that you’d had to sell less than a year later at a significant loss ... well, he definitely missed all those extra zeros in his bank account. His salary from The Hollow Bean barely covered his car payment (something he should also seriously consider selling) and, when you considered both his school loans and the mortgage on his parents’ house, what remained of his savings wouldn’t last long.
Which was all the more reason to seriously consider one of these jobs, right?
Unbidden, his mind drifted to Maeve, and he wondered what she would say if he told her he was thinking about going back to San Francisco. Maeve, who was the sweetest, nicest person he’d ever met, would probably stare at him in horror—especially if he ever worked up the nerve to confess the details of some of the cases he’d worked on over the years. He shook his head. No. He could never tell her about the wife of a small town grocer whose store he’d facilitated the buy-out of. Against his will, an image of the woman silently weeping in the background as her husband had signed the papers flashed through his mind and nausea twisted through his gut.
Ben slammed his laptop screen closed and dropped his head into his hands. At this point, he might as well just skip the corporate middleman and sell his soul directly to the devil.
“What’s the craic?”
“The craic?” Ben didn’t recognize the word, but he tried to copy Maeve’s lilt as he passed her a coffee, which she accepted with only the slightest bit of hesitation.
“Whoops. Hard habit to break, I’m afraid. It just means, like, what’s up, or how’s it going.” She paused and pursed her lips. “Come to think of it, ‘craic’ has a lot of meanings.”
“Ah,” he answered as he waited for her to take a drink. Not that he was bragging, but it was the best cappuccino he’d ever made. When she didn’t immediately raise the cup to her lips, he added, “Don’t worry. I did it right this time.” He lifted his right hand and showed her three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
She winked at him over the plastic rim as she took a sip.
Ben looked swiftly away. He and Maeve had agreed to be friends, but lately his thoughts had turned decidedly non-friendly. Since that first disastrous night at The Oakwell Inn, he’d run into her at Frankie’s, at the farmer’s market in River Hill’s historic town square, and then again in line at the hardware store. The more time they’d spent chit-chatting, the more he’d realized that he genuinely liked her. Which was why he needed to curb these lustful thoughts.
Or get laid.
He didn’t even want to think about how long it’d been since he’d been with a woman. At this point, he was pretty sure he’d qualify for Born Again Virgin status. And thinking about having sex had led him right back to thinking about it with Maeve. Goddamnit. He wanted to be her friend, not jump her bones. Right?
“So,” he said, clearing his throat and turning back to her. “Better than last time?”
“Much,” she answered before glancing back over her shoulder, presumably to make sure that she wasn’t holding up the line.
That’s Maeve, Ben thought. Considerate, kind, and sweet. All the things he wasn’t. Also, he reminded himself, three very good reasons why they’d be a nightmare if they ever did get together. He liked his women with an edge. Harder, less vulnerable. And yet, he told himself with his very next breath, maybe that was the old Ben. Maybe the new Ben deserved someone like Maeve?
No, he’d done nothing, ever, to deserve anyone. And he’d done a lot that would drive her away.
All this internal back and forth meant he’d missed whatever it was that she was saying— and she’d noticed. A small wrinkle appeared between her fine red eyebrows. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you. I’ll let you get back to it, then.”
She moved to step out of the non-existent line, but without conscious thought, Ben’s hand shot out over the counter and gripped her hand in his. They both stared down at where their skin touched until his brain caught up with his hand and he quickly snatched it away. “Sorry.”
Her eyes flicked between his face, their joined hands fingers, and then back to him again. “No, that’s okay.”
“It’s not. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You didn’t do anything. Not really.”
They stood staring at one another for a few protracted seconds. Ben was just about to apologize again when Maeve pulled a deep breath into her lungs and said, “What time do you get off today?”
And just like that, his mind was back in the gutter.
He knew that wasn’t what she was asking, so he quickly pushed those thoughts to the back of his head. “I finish up here at one. Why?”
“Well … since we’re friends and all, I was wondering if you wanted to get lunch?” There was the slightest emphasis on ‘friends,’ and he wondered if he was being reminded.
“Lunch?”
“It was just a thought. Never mind. Pretend I never mentioned it.”
He stared down at the pint-sized pixie who confused the ever loving hell out of him, and smiled. Sure, he might frequently wonder what color lingerie she wore under her utilitarian uniform of jeans and black t-shirt, but they were friends.
Plus, he was starving.
And, if he were being honest, the idea of heading back to Max’s garage apartment to spend the rest of the day alone with only his thoughts and all those recruiting emails for company was the last thing he wanted. So yes, lunch with the beautiful and sweet Maeve Brennan sounded terrific. Torture, likely, but terrific all the same.
“I know it’s sacrilege to even suggest it, but I stumbled upon a taco truck out by the highway we could hit up. How does that sound?”
Maeve released a pent up gust of air and chuckled, her eyes glinting with mischief. “Max would kill you if he heard you say that.”
“Yeah, he probably would. But I’m willing to risk it. What about you? Want to take a walk on the wild side with me?”
A strange look crossed her face for the briefest of moments, but then it disappeared nearly as fast as it had come on. “It’s a date.”
Except it wasn’t, Ben quickly reminded himself. He needed to nip these wayward feelings in the bud. They weren’t real. And even if they were, he
would never act on them. Maeve needed someone good, someone worthy. Someone who was the exact opposite of himself.
“See you out front at one.”
It was only once she’d pushed her way through the door and had stepped out onto the sidewalk that he let out the breath he’d been holding for the last thirty seconds.
Shit. He was in so much trouble.
5
“It’s here! It’s here!”
Maeve looked up from her logbook and grinned at Aimee Sanchez, her new production assistant and favorite employee. Not that she was supposed to play favorites, but it was hard not to. Most of the guys she’d hired liked whiskey well enough, but they came to work to do a job and left at the end of the day without thinking about it further. Aimee threw everything she had into everything she did. Maeve suspected there were a lot of promotions in her future.
Now, the tall brunette was waving a sheaf of mail at her. She’d played softball in college, Maeve knew, so it seemed wise to duck. Just in case. Aimee snorted. “I’m not throwing it at you.”
“The new Whiskey Times is here?” Maeve stretched out her hand.
“Oh, it’s here. And you’re in for a surprise.” When Aimee passed her the magazine, Maeve found her own face staring back up at her. She yelped. “I’m on the cover?”
“I thought you said it was just going to be an interview for a feature about female distillers,” Aimee said accusingly. “I would have come in for the photoshoot if you’d said it was for the cover.”
“I thought it was just a headshot,” Maeve said, dazed. She flipped open the magazine and found the table of contents. ‘Female Distillers Flying High. Maeve Brennan and the New Faces of Whiskey.’ “Holy shite,” she breathed. Then she stood abruptly and strode to the door of her tiny office and shrieked her brother’s name at the top of her lungs.
Iain came running from his own office down the hall, where he led their marketing and sales efforts. “What? What is it? What broke? Who’s hurt?”
The Barista's Beloved (The River Hill Series Book 4) Page 3