I moved between his SUV and my Z, which was backed into the garage, and found him under the hood.
There were things a man could do that were normal things to him that he would have no idea would give a private happy flutter to girls like me.
Working under the hood of a car was one of them.
I controlled the flutter and called, “Hey.”
He lifted up from what he was doing and rested his forearms on the filthy blanket he had draped over the side of the car. His hands were greasy, he held some tool in one of them, he turned his eyes to me, and the flutter became harder to control.
“You need a jacket,” was his greeting.
“I’m not gonna be out here that long,” I shared.
“You need a jacket,” he repeated.
Suddenly, the flutter became a whole lot easier to control.
“Or I wasn’t gonna be out here that long. Since you obviously need to make a point Benny-style, I might be out here a year.”
His eyes smiled as his mouth muttered, “Benny-style.”
I amused him.
That made me happy and mildly ticked—a contradiction of emotions that I was finding Benny was skilled at evoking.
“I will point out you’re in a t-shirt,” I stated for reasons that were beyond me, since it was chilly and I didn’t need to start squabbling with Benny. That’d mean I’d be out there a lot longer than I expected, which would make him right about me needing a jacket.
“I’m a guy.”
At his words, I blinked, then stared, forgetting about getting to the point, mostly because he was annoying, and when he was, I had all the time in the world to squabble.
“A woman needs a jacket, but a guy is immune to cold?” I asked.
“No. My woman needs a jacket ’cause I don’t want her uncomfortable or to catch a cold. I don’t give a shit about other women. They can run around when it’s fifty degrees and do it naked for all I care. But you need a jacket.”
“There you go, making protective annoying again.”
His lips quirked. “Told you it was a gift.”
I lifted my brows. “Do you think if I threw down a challenge and the person who fails to get in the last word loses, we’d be out here an eternity?”
“Probably.”
“Let’s not do that,” I suggested.
“I’d be up for it, if you went in and put on a jacket.”
Now I wasn’t happy, I was just ticked.
That was why I tipped my head back to look at the garage door rolled up on the rail and cried, “Arrrr!”
“Babe,” he called.
I looked back to him.
“Let’s get to the part about why you’re out here,” he suggested.
I took in a deep breath and asked, “You need a drink or something?”
He grinned and answered, “Nope.”
I nodded. Offer to do something nice for him while he was doing something nice for me extended and declined. Now it was time to move on to why I was really out there.
“Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working.”
He looked perplexed for a second before he asked, “What?”
“Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working. I’m trying to get my laptop connected so I can check my email. The password you gave me to do that isn’t working.”
“You type it in right?”
“Seein’ as I typed it in forty-five thousand times, I’m guessin’ one of those times I got it right.”
“Forty-five thousand?” he asked, eyebrows going up right along with the tips of his lips. “I been out here for twenty minutes, babe. You must type fast.”
I rolled my eyes before rolling them back to him and saying, “Ben, if I can get on my email, I can sort some shit out, do some work, get back into the swing of things, feel like my life is back in my control. I can do that on my phone, but it’d be a whole lot easier on my laptop. It’d help out if you could scan your brain to let me know if you gave me the correct password.”
“Honestly, I have no clue,” he replied. “Only got Internet for the TVs and set that up at least a year ago. But the password I gave you is what I remember the password to the router bein’.”
Since his password was 13579000BB, although this would be hard to forget, and although I put in one less 0, two more 0s, and left out the 0s altogether, something was not right.
“Did you write it down somewhere?” I asked.
“Yep,” he answered.
“Where?”
“No clue about that either,” he said on a grin.
I looked down to my car, then back to him, beginning to feel the chill seep through my thin sweater. I needed to get this done before I shivered noticeably, giving Ben the opportunity to pounce right on that, something to be avoided.