A Matter of Trust (9 page)

“So what brings you by this morning?” he
asked. He seemed distracted, and she wondered for a moment whether
he even welcomed her interruption. Maybe he wanted her to
leave.

“I wanted to thank you for dinner last
night.” She was such a liar. Would her burning cheeks give her
away? Her restless sleep had been filled with the desire to be with
Ben, wondering what it would be like to be touched by him, kissed
by him. She couldn’t stop the way her thoughts had drifted after
what he’d shared with her the night before. It had been so
personal, as if he’d shown her a hidden side of him. Knowing he was
as flawed as she was, that his family had faced struggles, too,
made him seem so…human.

The easy smile that touched his lips as he
crossed his arms didn’t help to calm her nerves. She was shaking
inside, and it wasn’t from fear. “You’re welcome,” he said. “You
thanked me last night, though, Carrie, so what are you really doing
here?”

Oh, he wasn’t making this easy at all. She
realized she was biting her lower lip. His eyes went right there,
and the dark way he watched her made her swallow a gasp. “I wanted
to return the favor.”

“Oh?” was all he said.

This was ridiculous, the way she was
sweating like a nervous schoolgirl, fidgeting. She wiped her palms
together to try to tamp down her insecurities. He was way out of
her league, and maybe he was silently laughing at her. She couldn’t
bear the thought of him humoring her. That would be so demeaning.
Please don’t make fun of me!
She shut her eyes and then
blurted out, before she had a moment more to think or race out the
door like a fool, “I’d like to cook dinner for you tonight.”

The way he was watching her, she worried.
Was he trying to find a way to let her down easy? After all, she
hadn’t made things easy for him here in Kit Cove. She was still
embarrassed over her juvenile behavior, and she wished she could
take back spitting on him that first night, go back and be
responsible and think things through before she acted. She could
beg his forgiveness, but she was too embarrassed to ever bring it
up again. She prayed he’d forget it had ever happened.

When he stepped toward her, closing the
distance between them with a confidence she would have killed for,
her heart did a backflip, and she had to swallow again. He slid his
hand under her chin and lifted it so that she was forced to look
into those eyes, which were searching her out. They were so
mysterious and deep, and she wanted to get to know him so much
better.

He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers in
a light, tender kiss that jolted through her right to her toes and
shocked the hell out of her. When he pulled away, his hands were
still on her, and he said, “Yes.”

***

If there was one thing Carrie knew how to do
well, it was cook. After all, she’d had the best teacher, Alice.
She’d cooked beside her for years, the only times that brought any
solace between the two of them. She didn’t know why, but there was
something comforting about sharing a kitchen with Alice, who could
cook anything and create the most mouthwatering, delicious dishes.
The only problem was that Carrie had never cooked for a man
before—well, at least not someone like Ben, who she was pretty sure
had dined at some of the finest restaurants in the world. Would he
expect something amazing and flavorful and creative?

A high-pitched beep from the smoke detector
had her shrieking as she realized that smoke was coming from the
oven. She raced into the kitchen. “Oh no!” she shrieked as she
pulled the oven open, smoke billowing out as she lifted out the
butter chicken lasagna that was now black on top. She dumped the
pan on the stovetop. There were flickers of fire on the bottom of
the oven, and she blew on it in a panic before reaching for baking
soda to sprinkle on the flames. This was horrible—the worst
disaster! She coughed and waved her hand in front of herself as she
raced to the windows, opening them to clear the smoke that filled
the room.

“Shit! Shit, Carrie, what the hell?” She
grabbed a chair and had just set it under the shrieking smoke
detector, which was beeping like crazy, when someone started
pounding on the door.

“Carrie, you all right in there?”

It was Ben, of course. She heard the door
open.

Why did he have to be so punctual? She
reached for the top of the smoke detector to twist it off, and she
didn’t have to look to see that he was coming her way. She could
hear him and feel his heat. She pulled the top of the smoke
detector down and ripped the battery out, and there was silence
just as Ben appeared beside her. When she went to turn around, the
chair tipped, and she lost her balance. She didn’t have time to
panic or scream, because Ben had her in his arms, holding her close
to him, as if she weighed nothing. She couldn’t remember ever being
so nervous or embarrassed in her life, and instead of sucking it up
like a big girl and making the best of one of her most embarrassing
moments, she groaned and leaned her face against his chest.

“I’m sorry I burned dinner!” she cried out,
wanting to kick herself for turning this night into a disaster.

And what did he do? He started laughing. She
could feel his chest shaking as he held her against him, his arm
under her knees against her bare legs, as her dress had ridden up.
She didn’t know what to do as she pulled away, her arm still
comfortably wrapped around his neck. He put her down in a room that
was still filled with smoke, though it was clearing quickly through
the open window.

“Well, I could take you out again,” Ben
said, but the thought of going out and not having him alone here
saddened her. It was then that she noticed a bottle of wine sitting
on the table. He must have done that before she'd landed in his
arms.

“Oh, you brought wine!”

He was now in the kitchen, looking at her
burned black creation. “What was it?” he asked, and she wondered
for a minute whether he was going to make fun of her.

She couldn’t help feeling like a failure.
She had searched the internet for hours, trying to find something
different and creative, something that would impress him. “Butter
chicken lasagna,” she muttered. It was a difficult dish, a cross
between Indian and Italian cuisine, with so many steps and
ingredients that she’d spent hours cutting, stirring, and
arranging. What had she been thinking? She wanted to cry. Maybe all
of the nerves she’d bottled up from being around Ben were finally
breaking free. “I’m sorry. I was trying to impress you with
something fancier than plain old meatloaf.”

“But I love meatloaf,” he said. She could
see him taking in her tiny and very plain kitchen. It was a small
apartment, a walk-through with no dishwasher and a small
four-burner stove. The cupboards were chipped pressboard with what
appeared to be cheap, white paint slapped on.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said. “You’d
choose meatloaf over something fancy?”

He shrugged and gave her his dashing smile.
“What can I say? I’m a homegrown boy. Besides, I’ve eaten in some
pretty nice places and tasted some of the best food in the world,
but there’s nothing like a good meatloaf if you know how to do it
right.”

She tried to figure out whether he was
making fun of her or trying to make her feel better, at the same
time trying to understand how meatloaf could possibly top his list
of favorite foods. “There aren’t many things I’m great at, but, I
swear to you, I make the best meatloaf,” she said, holding up the
flat of her hand. Her confidence was returning as she thought of
the pound of hamburger in the fridge, to which she had originally
turned up her nose, thinking meatloaf was beneath him. She tapped
the counter with her fingers, taking in his expression, which
seemed to say,
Okay, prove it to me.
She yanked open the
fridge and pulled out the ground beef, setting it on the
counter.

“You had hamburger in the fridge all along?”
he said, shaking his head, the teasing smile still there. “I take
it that’s a no, you don’t want to go out for dinner.” He was so
close to her that she could have leaned into him.

“Well, there’s only one restaurant in town,
and although Hank’s meatloaf is good, mine is better. And
besides”—she gestured nervously to the table—“I’d kind of like a
glass of wine.”

Ben put the smoke detector back together,
taking a closer look at how dated everything was. The windows slid
open but didn’t appear to have any locks, and he found himself
taking in a lot of the red flags that came with older units like
this. Maybe he’d have a word with Jack, see if he knew what sort of
place his daughter lived in. Kit Cove wasn’t a booming community,
though, and newer buildings didn’t seem to exist here.

He made his way back into the kitchen, and
he thought he heard Carrie humming softly under her breath. As he
leaned against the counter, he took in Carrie and her
transformation from blue jeans to a simple sheath dress. It was
unsettling. She had a slim figure and a great ass that made up for
her lack of breasts. He should have been okay standing next to her
in this cramped kitchen, watching her knead ground beef after she'd
added all kinds of ingredients—onions, garlic, bread crumbs, and
red sauce from a jar, which she said was a homemade barbecue
marinade—but he felt strange. Maybe it was because she was standing
barefoot, and she had these amazing feet that he longed to get his
hands on. It was so domestic, too, in an odd, barefoot-and-pregnant
sort of way. He had to clear his throat. He couldn’t believe his
thoughts had gone there! Carrie didn’t seem to have a clue, as she
looked up and smiled.

He took another swallow of wine, realizing
this was another first, standing in a kitchen while a woman made
him dinner. The only women who had ever cooked for him were his
mother and his two brothers’ wives, and that had been a different
experience altogether. No, he had never allowed any woman that he’d
dated, bedded, and flirted with to cook for him. He wined and dined
them at some of the best restaurants around before taking them home
to their place so he could leave after the fun was done. He found
this situation unsettling.

He was seeing a different Carrie, together
and confident. The way she mixed the raw meat and ingredients with
her small hands was nurturing, and it made him want her hands on
him. He wanted those tiny, delicate fingers touching him where he
hadn’t been touched in a while. The fact was that Ben had a healthy
sex life, but it lacked intimacy. He didn’t date exclusively, and
he liked variety, telling himself it was to keep things fresh. In
truth, closeness terrified Ben. He’d never experienced that feeling
of not being able to wait to be with someone, to hear their voice,
to see them smile, to just touch them. Carrie was such a pain in
the ass, but he hadn’t been able to wait to be around her again.
There had to be something wrong with him.

Ben took a swallow of the Malbec he’d picked
up from the liquor store just outside of town. He hadn’t had much
of a choice, as their selection had leaned toward the boxed
variety, but he considered the Malbec a score, as he knew this
brand of Argentinean wine. Carrie’s eyes widened when he held up
the small wineglass and put it to her lips so she could take a sip
while her hands were buried in the raw meat.

“So where did you learn to cook?” he asked.
He wondered what her response would be, remembering all too well
Alice’s shared confidence from earlier that morning.

Carrie reached for a glass casserole dish
and dumped the meat in, patting it down until it was flat and
touching all the edges. “Alice taught me,” she said. When she
looked up at him, there was something in her expression that gave
away her softness and care toward Alice.

He wondered whether Carrie really understood
her feelings about the situation. Would she ever get past this
misguided sense of betrayal? “Alice is a very good cook,” Ben said,
wondering how she’d react. She could be so hot and cold about Alice
and Jack.

Carrie washed her hands under the tap and
then dried them before putting the meatloaf in the tiny oven.
“She’s very good in the kitchen. My fondest memories of Alice are
being there with her. We didn’t talk—we were just together,
cooking, baking.” She smiled wistfully and then leaned over the
stove, turning the faded dial, which bore black marks in place of
numbers for the temperature. She seemed to know what she was doing,
though, as she muttered, “Well, that should do it. Should be ready
in about forty-five minutes.”

She then peeled the potatoes and put them on
to boil. With nothing in her hands, she started fidgeting with the
belt on her gray sheath dress. She looked cute, slim, and she slid
her fingers through her hair and brushed it back, revealing two
gold hoops in her ears. Her bare feet were causing him some grief.
Even though she was short, not at all the tall, leggy kind of woman
he always went for, she had the most amazing, shapely legs.
Considering her dress stopped a few inches above her knees, he was
getting quite an eyeful.

“So should I give you the tour?” she said
nervously before reaching for her wine and leading him from the
kitchen. She gestured to a short hall with two doors. “Bathroom and
my bedroom, and this is the living room and dining room. You saw
the kitchen.”

The entire apartment couldn’t have been more
than five hundred square feet. Her living room held a light brown
cloth loveseat, a small flat-screen TV, a plant in the corner, and
a coffee table he could have sworn was similar to what his family
had had while he was growing up. Her kitchen table was a small pine
with two chairs. It was kind of homey, but there were no pictures
on the plain, white walls, and boxes were still stacked three high
in the corner.