Briefly, Ben entertained the idea that if the scruffy, buff, blonde look was what did it for Maeve, then he might stand a chance with her after all. But as quickly as the thought popped into his head, he reminded himself it was ridiculous to get his hopes up. They’d been clear from the beginning about what this was between them—friendship, and nothing more.
It was too bad, then, that he wanted more.
“It’s not The Hut,” she was saying as she slid from her stool and dropped a five dollar bill on the counter, “but you’re welcome to head back to the distillery with me. I could give you a tour and let you taste the some of the stuff my dad sent to tide us over until our first whiskey properly matured.”
“I don’t want to put you out,” Ben answered.
She shook her head and smiled at him. “It’s no trouble, really. It’ll give me a chance to practice the messaging Iain’s been trying to drill into my head since that article came out.”
“What was wrong with the article?” He slid off his own stool and pulled out his wallet to pay Max for the food and drinks he’d had.
Before Maeve could answer, Max held up his hand. “What did I tell you? Your money’s no good here.”
Ben sighed and pushed the money across the copper bar top. “And I told you I’m no charity case.”
Max scoffed. “You think that’s what’s going on here?”
“Isn’t it?” He widened his stance and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Dude. Put your fucking money away.” Max pushed the bills back across the counter. “Your mom fed Isabella and me more times than I could count when we were growing up. If anything, I still owe you.”
Ben didn’t buy that line of reasoning for one second, but he didn’t want to draw any further attention to his diminished financial state either. Maeve didn’t need to know his salary from The Hollow Bean couldn’t cover even his most basic needs. Sheepishly, he settled the cash back inside his wallet and turned to her. “You were saying?”
She stared at him like he’d sprouted two heads.
“About messaging?” he reminded her.
She shook her head. “Oh, right! Apparently I talked a lot about distilling processes and maturation and all this other industry stuff without ever really plugging the distillery itself.”
Ben waved to Max as he followed Maeve out of the restaurant, blinking when they stepped out into the harsh sunlight of mid-day. He tugged his sunglasses from the neck of his t-shirt and settled them over his eyes. “I’m no expert, but it didn’t feel that way to me.”
She shrugged and rocked back on her heels. “Marketing is Iain’s thing, so he’s more sensitive to it than I am. I’m still shocked they chose to put me on the cover out of all the other badass female distillers they spoke with.”
Reflexively, Ben reached out to take her hand. Squeezing it, he said, “I’m not. And it’s probably because you didn’t drone on and on about Whitman’s that you made the cover. They wanted to profile the people—not the product. You done good, kid.” He should have dropped his hold on her, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Idly, he rubbed a path over the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb.
She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, and her breathing grew ragged.
Ben took a step closer, just aching to tug her into his arms and taste that lip. But he couldn’t, so he stepped back and dropped her hand. “Anyhow, that’s just my opinion.” He focused his gaze over her shoulder instead of on her flushed, beautiful face. A beat of silence descended, and he didn’t know how to fill it. He was just about to turn and walk away—creating yet another awkward goodbye—when she sighed, pulling his attention back to her.
“So, about that tour?” she asked, her earnest gaze hopeful. She was a better friend than he was, it seemed. All he could think about was getting into her pants, but she was still willing to spend time entertaining him to keep him from being alone and bored.
It was probably a bad idea to spend any more time with Maeve today. He was already feeling confused about his burgeoning emotions and how to handle them. There was an increasingly real possibility that he’d do something he’d regret later—like pull her into his arms and ruin their friendship. But somehow, he still found himself saying, “Lead the way.”
Ben woke to the sound of glasses clinking somewhere off in the distance. He rose blearily up onto his elbows to try and get his bearings. From what he could tell, it was late. Very late. Across the small two-room apartment, Max was in the kitchenette mixing up something in a pitcher.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, tossing his legs over the side of the couch and sitting up with a groan. He really was way too old—and tall—to be sleeping on this small thing.
“Making sure you’re not hungover tomorrow.”
He pushed up off the sofa and made his way to Max’s side in a few uneven strides, sniffing the air. “With more booze?”
“Just a shot. It’s mostly tomato juice and tabasco. In my experience, this’ll either sober you right up or have you puking your guts out. Either way, you’ll wake up in the morning right as rain.”
Ben accepted the glass with some amount of trepidation. He didn’t feel particularly drunk, but he had an early shift at the coffee shop and he couldn’t afford to show up the worse for wear. He lifted the glass to his mouth and swallowed down Max’s homemade hangover remedy with a few deep swallows.
“What happened?” he asked, setting the empty glass down onto the butcher block counter. As he did, he caught sight of his legs. Legs, he was pretty sure, that had been covered in denim a few hours earlier.
“How much do you remember?”
Ben combed through his memories. There’d been that moment just outside of Frankie’s when he’d wanted so badly to kiss Maeve that he thought he might die of longing. Then they’d gone back to the distillery where she’d given him a tour. Afterward, she’d opened a few bottles of gin and had given him a lesson in how to properly identify which botanicals she’d used. And then, somehow, they’d moved on to pounding shots. She’d warned him it was a bad idea, but it seemed Ben was all about bad ideas these days.
“I’m an idiot,” he observed, stabbing his fingers into his hair and making his way back to the sofa. “What kind of a moron challenges a whiskey maker to shots?”
Max chuckled and plopped down across from him on the single chair the room could hold. “Apparently one who was trying to impress said whiskey maker.” He paused and caught Ben’s eye. “Maeve mentioned you being very adamant about that.”
“Impressing her?”
Max nodded, and his gaze turned speculative. “Apparently, you thought it was important to prove that you had redeeming qualities since you suck at making coffee.”
Ben groaned again and dropped his head back against the sofa cushion. Of course he’d said that.
Max coughed, and Ben brought his face forward again. “You might have also said you’d be happy to show her your other redeeming qualities—if you get my drift.”
“No.”
Max nodded. “That’s when she called me to come get your sorry ass. Said you were talking crazy, and she thought maybe she’d poisoned you.”
He remained silent, even though he knew Max was looking for some sort of answer to that. But what could he say?
“What are you doing, man?” Max’s voice was kind, but there was an underlying hardness to his question too.
Ben leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs, dropping his face into his open palms. After a few long seconds where he tried to figure out how to explain what he was feeling, he rolled his head to the side and angled a beseeching glance his friend’s way. He knew Max cared for Maeve like a little sister, and Ben sometimes wondered if he wasn’t trying to work through some of the guilt he felt for not doing enough for Isabella. But that was a problem for another day.
“I’ve got it bad, man.”
Max nodded again. “I kind of figured. You looked like you wanted to puke when she came
into the restaurant. I’ve only ever seen that look once before—the day Noah realized he didn’t actually hate Angelica.”
Ben pushed to his feet and paced the room. “It doesn’t matter, though.” He came to the wall and turned. “I have nothing to offer her.” He hated the flatness in his voice. It reminded him too much of the empty days after he’d been fired, when he’d struggled through numbness to figure out what to do next with his life. Unfortunately, he still didn’t really know. He couldn’t imagine a future for himself, let alone one where Maeve might be in it. Successful, sweet, perfect Maeve.
Max opened his mouth to speak and then abruptly closed it. Opened it again. “Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do. All I’ll say is be careful there.”
Ben halted his pacing. “I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” With that not-too-subtle reminder, he stood and brushed past Ben, clasping him on the shoulder as he went. “She’s not someone you mess around with. Maeve’s a forever kind of girl.”
“I know,” Ben said as his friend made his way to the door.
Then again, once he’d gone: “I know.”
7
Maeve stared at the notepad in front of her. It was covered with scratched out notes and half-formed ideas. She scrubbed a hand over her face and groaned. She’d planned to dedicate this morning to working out a plan to help Youth Mentors, but drinking Ben under the table last night wasn’t exactly the best preparation. She was glad she’d called Max when Ben had glanced up at her from under those thick dark blonde eyelashes and a slow, sexy grin slipped across his face. Loose-limbed from the alcohol they’d been drinking, he’d been more than appealing when with a wink he’d asked if she’d like to take their conversation horizontal.
And oh, god, had she wanted to.
Certain parts of her body were still screaming about the fact that she hadn’t taken him up on the offer. A round with her vibrator after she’d sent Ben home hadn’t done much to take the edge off. And a second round this morning had only reminded her just how long it had been since she’d been with an actual, live human man. And just how big Ben’s hands were. She’d pictured them on her as she’d come, biting her lip to avoid whispering his name out loud.
She was a mess.
And now she was trying to figure out how to save a nonprofit while her entire body screamed at her to pick up the phone and call Ben. Except he’d been drunk, and he hadn’t quite seemed… himself. Not the pleasant, easy friend she’d come to know. More intense, and hard-edged. He’d once told her a few things about his life as a hotshot corporate type before he’d come to River Hill, and now she wondered if it was that Ben she’d gotten a glimpse of. He never seemed particularly proud of his past, and she remembered again that he’d told her that he was a d-bag the second time they’d met.
Sleeping with a drunk douche wasn’t quite Maeve’s style, no matter how many cobwebs she was brushing out of her unused lady parts these days. She liked her friendship with Ben, and sex was pretty much guaranteed to ruin it. She’d much rather have the guy who’d been thrilled about her success as a friend than one night of incredibly hot sex with the guy who wouldn’t call her afterwards. Right?
She rested her chin on her open palm and stared down at her notes again. Thinking about Ben wasn’t solving her problems. She sighed. There was only one person she could think of who was mean enough to give her advice on how to fight fire with fire. She picked up her phone and dialed the international number, waiting the standard two rings before it was answered with a brusque greeting.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Hello, Maevey.” Cathal Brennan was the only person who called her that. She rolled her eyes.
“I have a question for you.”
“Well, I didn’t think you were calling just to say hello to your old dad.” He snorted. “You’d better call your mother after this. If she hears you talked to me and not her, neither one of us will hear the end of it.”
Maeve laughed. “She’s next on my list, but I have different questions for her.”
“Tell me what you need. And I’m not sending you any more whiskey, you hear me? If yours can’t stand on its own, you can move yourselves home to Ireland and come back to work for the family.”
“Dad, I don’t need any whiskey. I haven’t needed any in more than a year. In fact, I just gave away the last of it last night.”
“You gave it away? Maeve…” The warning note in his voice was unpleasantly familiar.
“My private store, Dad. Can we not fight about whiskey today?” He was still none too pleased that his two youngest children not only had no intention of coming back home to work with the family, but were achieving far more success with their own whiskey than any of them had ever dreamed. After her mother had backed Maeve’s decision to strike out on her own with a generous gift of her own money, Cathal had reluctantly agreed to support them. But he still wasn’t thrilled about it. Maeve was used to the weekly digs about her moving home, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed them. Having an ocean between them for these conversations was far preferable to having them in person, though. “I didn’t call about the business, actually. I have a different question.”
“What have ye gotten yourself into now?”
She sighed and powered through. “I’m volunteering with a nonprofit—” She ignored his audible snort. “And they’ve just gotten word that a developer intends to buy out their building and force them to stop operating.”
“That’s a shame.” His voice indicated that he didn’t really care.
“I want your advice. How can I stop it? You’re the one who taught me how to fight back.” She still remembered his large hands over hers, gently curving her fingers into tiny fists. “If they give you hell, Maevey, you give it right back.” She didn’t like giving hell. She’d given hugs instead, and he’d despaired of her long ago.
“Maevey, sometimes it’s not worth fighting.” He sounded tired.
She felt tears sting her eyes. “There’s always something worth fighting for, Dad.”
“Some old building? Fight for yourself, Maeve. You don’t need to go up against some developer. You own your place outright. Focus on the whiskey first; help others second. You can’t move forward without a place to stand.”
“I have a place to stand, Dad! Whitman’s is fine!” She felt her voice rising and her stomach twisting. God, she hated arguing. “I just want to know what you would do if you were me.”
“I wouldn’t be spending all my time petting cats and kissing babies, that’s for sure.”
“Dad.”
“Maevey, I don’t have any advice for you. Sometimes this is just the way of the world. Progress waits for no man. Or woman, in your case, I suppose.”
“It’s not progress, Dad; it’s condos.”
“So buy one. That dinky little house you rent is no place to raise a family.”
“A family?”
“You’re not getting any younger, Maevey. Your mum wants more grandkids.”
“You have three other children. And I don’t see you nagging Iain.” Her brother and Naomi were happily childfree. How they’d managed to get both of their families to stop asking them about it was beyond her. Just imagining the conversation made her break out into a cold sweat, and she wanted kids someday. “We’re not talking about this. We’re talking about how to help an organization that doesn’t deserve to get shut down for no reason.”
“It’s a nonprofit. I doubt they have the firepower to fight back in any meaningful way, no matter how hard you might wish for it.” She pictured him shrugging. “Best find a new place to spend your free time.”
She gritted her teeth and gave up. “Never mind. I’ll find another way. Say hi to the lads for me.”
“Call your mam,” he said.
The phone went dead and she resisted the urge to throw it across the room.
Well, that had been a supreme waste of effort. Maybe she’d feel better after talking with her mother.
An hou
r later, refreshed by Colleen Brennan’s genuine glee about the article—and the smug knowledge that her father would be annoyed not only by her being on the cover, but also that she hadn’t told him about it herself—she realized that her stomach was growling. She’d skipped breakfast in favor of brainstorming, but it hadn’t helped at all. Maybe food would help her think.
She headed down to the deli on the corner a block away and ordered her favorite sandwich—half turkey, half roast beef on one slice of rye and one of whole grain, with gouda cheese, tomatoes, pickles, and mustard. It wasn’t on the menu, but she ate here at least once a week and they were willing to make it specially for her.
As she paid, she heard a deep voice behind her. “That sounds amazing. Can I have what she’s having?”
She turned, and a stranger grinned at her. Sandy brown hair carefully mussed, and an intriguing cleft to his chin. He had on a polo shirt that stretched tight over his chest muscles, and his fitted jeans didn’t leave much to the imagination. Well, hello. She smiled. “You have good taste.”
“So do you.” He moved to stand next to her and took out his wallet. “Can I buy you lunch?”
“Oh, I’ve already paid. Thanks, though.” She watched as he handed over a ten dollar bill and accepted his change. He dropped the coins in the tip jar and turned to her.
“I’m Steve.”
“Maeve.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Impulsively, she gestured to a table. “Are you eating here?”
He glanced at his watch. “Actually, I can’t. I have a meeting.”
“Ah.” Must not be meant to be, then.
“But…” He searched her face, then smiled. “Could I get your number?” She stared at him, and he must have thought she was about to pepper spray him. He raised his sandwich to his chest as though it might protect him. “Sorry! I’m not creepy, I swear! I’m just new here, and I don’t usually meet people who like the same sandwiches I do. And you’re really pretty.” He bit his lip, like he hadn’t meant to say that last part. She didn’t miss the fact that his eyes flicked down to her chest before they popped back up and met her gaze.
The Barista's Beloved (The River Hill Series Book 4) Page 5