The Promise(45)

I felt my brows draw together. “Cal didn’t text you to let you know when they’d left?”

My question made him smile huge. It was white. It was gorgeous. And it made his eyes warm with humor in that way I liked so much.

Witnessing that up close and personal for the first time, I had no choice but to wrap my arms around his middle and hold on.

“I’m not sure Cal does the text thing, Frankie. More, I’m not sure it’s humanly possible for Cal to check in with anybody about any of his activities.”

“He’ll have to learn. He has a woman in his life.”

His smile stayed white and gorgeous, and even as I felt the ground quake beneath me, I kept right on enjoying it up close and personal.

“Strike that,” he stated. “I’m not sure it’s humanly possible for Cal to check in with anybody about any of his activities unless that anybody is in his bed and he likes what she gives him there.”

My eyes drifted to his ear. “This is probably true.”

Ben gave me a squeeze and regained my attention.

“You got everything you need in that bag?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered.

“Now’s the time to stock up, babe. We’re here.”

“I’m stocked up.”

“Right,” he said, then bent in and went deep. I held my breath and kept holding it when he brushed his lips against my neck.

I also kept holding on because I had to in order to stay standing.

Then I had to let him go because he let me go. He moved away but caught my hand, the handle of my bag, and he pulled me to the door, rolling my bag with us, saying, “We get home, I’ll clean out a drawer in the bathroom.”

My eyes hit the ceiling.

Lord, I hope you’re paying attention, I silently prayed. That was Benny’s idea.

Ben kept speaking.

“And in the dresser in the bedroom.”

My hand spasmed in his.

He ignored it and pulled me out the door.

* * * * *

Likely speeding up my trip to hell, an hour and a half later, I was curled on my side on Benny’s couch, head to his thigh. Benny was sitting on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, eyes to a game on the TV.

Incidentally, a TV that was eighty inches.

Eighty.

The thing was so huge, it took up nearly the whole side wall of his living room.

And the surround sound rivaled those found in cinemas.

Even so, Theresa could be heard over the surround sound, banging around in the kitchen.

I had learned when I was with Vinnie that Theresa didn’t do this because she was making a point that she wanted you to get off your ass and help her. She didn’t. She wanted you nowhere near her when she was cooking or cleaning up after. She wanted no disruptions or distractions because only she could do whatever she was doing in a way she liked. If you tried to help, it only messed with her mojo and put her in a bad mood.

Theresa in a bad mood was not good.

So, even if I hadn’t been shot in a forest a couple of weeks earlier and Theresa was banging around in the kitchen, I would have stayed in the living room.

Though how I got in my current position, I was still hoping God was paying attention because I didn’t put me in it. Benny did. And when I’d protested, he muttered, “Quiet.”

I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, lying with my head on his thigh, not ever. But with his parents in his house, and after I had participated fully in the kiss he laid on me, definitely not then.

I also didn’t think it was the right thing to do to get into an argument about it with his parents in the house.

This was something we’d come home to an hour ago. They were in the kitchen as we came through the back door—Vinnie sitting at the table drinking a cup of joe; Theresa bustling around a bevy of grocery bags on the table, bags whose contents I had no idea where she would put, seeing as Benny’s fridge was decidedly full.

Vinnie had fallen on the donuts like he didn’t have the huge-ass breakfast I knew Theresa cooked him before they went to church.

Theresa had shooed us out nearly the minute we got in the door and definitely the second Benny dumped the donut boxes on the counter.

Not long after, I found myself lounging with Benny on the couch.

In the end, his jeans were soft, his thigh was hard, so I told myself I was being polite and I’d give Benny hell later.

But in reality, it was just that I liked where I was.

“Ben, your ma wants to know where your casserole dish is,” Vinnie Senior said, and I shifted my eyes to the side of the couch (but did not lift my head from Benny’s thigh) to see Ben’s father come to a stop there.

“I don’t have a casserole dish,” Benny answered.

Vinnie looked in the direction of the door that led to the foyer, muttering, “That’s not gonna go over too good.”