Brooke & Ben: Before Fate Interrupted (13 page)

Caught off
guard, he resisted for only a second before sweeping her up in his arms and
kissing her back. They held each other tightly, heads swimming back and forth
to compliment the other as light music rained down from the recessed speakers
above. Brooke broke for air and tore free of his embrace, reality slowly settling
in with each racing breath she took.

“I’m sorry,” she
panted, wiping her lips. “That wasn’t fair. I don’t know what…”

He reached for
her. “Never apologize for that.”

She let him take
her hand as if she had no control over her own body, like she was watching
everything happen from above, powerless and adrift, pushed out by another life
form. His thumb swiped across her skin, sending electricity zinging throughout
her nervous system. Her eyes waded into his, seeing something in there she had
never seen before. The next thing she knew, her lips were on his once again,
softly nibbling with no control over her body.

“Brooke?”

Her heart skipped
a beat. She spun around. Eyes bulged from their sockets. “Dad?”

Chapter
Twelve

An uncertain
smile wiggled across Will’s face as he eyeballed Ben from his blue Nikes to his
black ball cap with no logo. He glanced at Brooke and looked back to Ben. “Hey,
honey.”

“What’re you
doing here?”

Without taking
his eyes from Ben, he jerked his chin to a heavyset man – decked out in khakis
and an orange Callaway windbreaker – talking on his cell phone and absentmindedly
sliding into a booth against the wall. “Jason and I cut out of work early and
hit the links.”

“Can’t beat that
on the first day of November.”

Will honed his
gaze, examining Ben like he was a new species. “No, you can’t.”

“Last year at
this time it was twenty-eight degrees with four inches of fresh powder on the
ground.”

Will stepped
forward in his khakis and lime green golf shirt. “Will Burnett.”

Ben shook his
hand and opened his mouth to reply.

“You remember
Tony, don’t ya, dad?” Brooke blurted, slapping Ben on the arm.

Will tightened
his grip along with his gaze. “
Tony
?”

“Yeah, we dated
for a little while last spring. I think you met him once or twice.” She rubbed
Ben’s arm affectionately.

Will barely
nodded, not taking his eyes (or hand) off Ben. “Oh yeah, I remember.” He
finally released his grip and turned his attention to his youngest daughter.
“Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He hedged. “Are you two…”

“We are,” Ben
said, beating Brooke to the punch this time. He wrapped an arm around her
shoulders. “Now that we’ve had some time to think things through, we both came
to realize this deserved another chance.” He could feel Brooke’s fluttering
breaths storming her lungs.

Will put his
hands on his hips, car keys dangling from his fingers. “So how long have you
two been…”

“Couple few
weeks,” Brooke said.

Will’s head
bobbed up and down.

She fidgeted
under her father’s scrutinizing gaze and Ben’s heavy arm.

“Well, that is certainly
some exciting news,” Will finally said, trading a look with his daughter she
couldn’t read. He glanced over his shoulder to his buddy, who was off the phone
now and watching them. “I should get going but it was good to see you again,
Tony.”

“Likewise,” Ben
said, shaking his hand again.

Will smiled at
Brooke and turned for the booth. Part way there he stopped and turned. “Hey,
you know what? Laura is making her world famous lasagna tomorrow night. Why
don’t you stop by, Tony.”

Brooke’s eyelids
flipped back inside her head. “He’s busy tomorrow night, dad.”

“No, I’m not.”

She turned to
Ben with as fake a smile as she could muster. “Isn’t tomorrow night your bowling
night, sweetie?”

Will’s face
stiffened. “You bowl, Ben?”

“I do.”

“Oh, I love me
some bowlin.”

Ben looked down
at Brooke. “League is the next night, sugar pie.”

“I’m pretty sure
it’s tomorrow night, doodle bug.”

He spoke slowly,
yet firmly. “Every Wednesday night, honey bunches of oats.”

“Maybe you
should check again, sweet potato.”

Will shook his
head, a smile pulling into one side of his face. “You two are so stinkin cute.”
He backpedalled to his friend, pointing at Ben along the way. “You remember the
address?”

“Of course he
does!” Brooke laughed out loud at such a ridiculous question, waving goodbye a
little too fast.

Ben thumbed to
the east. “Off Urbandale Avenue, right?”

“You got it! Twenty-nine
hundred, forty-fourth street.”

Ben snapped his
fingers. “It’s been too long.”

Will held up a
hand. “Tomorrow at seven?”

“Sounds great.” Ben
waved back and watched Will join his friend in the booth.

“Are you mental?”
Brooke whispered. “You can’t come over to my house tomorrow night.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a
trap. He’s obviously plotting to kill you.”

Ben looked down
at the leather coat hiding his sleeves of ink. “He has no idea I’m the guy from
Mandy’s closet.”

“You never know
with him. He’s sneaky like that.”

Ben watched her
father like a hawk. “He just thinks I’m some guy named
Tony
. Apparently, you’ve had so many boyfriends he can’t keep
track.”

“That is not
true!”

 
Ben watched Will and Jason place their orders
with the waitress. His eyes thinned. “My plan is working all too perfectly.”

“
Plan
? What plan?”

“The one to
steal your heart.” He turned to her and smiled. “And it shall be the greatest
heist of all time, my lady.”

A low groan
rattled loose from her lungs, making her shrink.

Ben tipped his
cap to her. “See you tomorrow night, shortcake.”

Brooke watched
him strut out the front door, trying not to notice the juicy butt filling out
his jeans. She sighed, knowing she had better get a good night’s sleep tonight
because tomorrow she was about to be homeless.

Chapter
Thirteen

Brooke was
thankful Mrs. Randall was preoccupied with three different meetings scattered
about town this morning. She was a sweet old lady but her prying eyes could be a
real pain in the ass – as if Brooke’s mom wasn’t bad enough already. Brooke
could just imagine what her mother’s interrogation would turn up when Ben (
Tony!
) showed up tonight. If he showed
up. She prayed he wouldn’t and guessed that, in the end, he wouldn’t have the
balls to go through with such a charade. Why chance it? He probably has a
hundred girls in his contacts.

She flipped on
the industrial-sized dishwasher and went to the silver workspace to open a new
bag of flour. Another groan (maybe the twenty-third or fourth one of the day)
rolled from her lips as she scooped measured cups of flour into a large mixing
bowl. She should’ve told Ben about her dad’s nine millimeter he keeps under the
bed in case of a home invasion. He clearly didn’t know what he was getting
himself into, and it wouldn’t take Will long to sniff out the truth either.
Sooner or later, he always did.

Brooke stopped
scooping and stared off into space. Maybe he suspected nothing. Maybe he was
just eager to have a son-in-law around to help fill the void of the son he
never had. She snorted. No, he was probably onto them. She went back to
scooping out cups of flour, confident this was all a big mistake. Her laugh
echoed off the walls. How could anyone start a relationship with someone who
had cheated on his girlfriend with another woman in
said girlfriend’s
closet? Brooke did her best to paint herself as
the victim in her mind, which felt much better than being labeled an accessory
to the crime. After all, she didn’t know he was Mandy’s boyfriend. And he had
conned her with that look in his eyes, the one that stole her breath.

She imagined Ben
at the dinner table tonight, struggling to hide his tattoos and win everyone
over with his charm and witty conversation. A light laugh slipped out as she
pictured it clear as day.

“What’s so funny?”

Brooke screamed
and shook a cup of flour all over the place. “Evy!”

“Jeez, jumpy
much?”

She looked down.
In addition to resembling a ghost, she also realized she had unknowingly scooped
a mountain of flour into the bowl. “What’re you doing here?”

Evy sauntered
closer, swinging one high heel in front of the other like a runway model, her
eyes roaming the place as she went. “Where’s Mrs. R?”

“Meetings.”
Brooke scooped flour off the table into her hand.

“So, what were
you laughing at?”

She dumped the powder
back into the bowl. “Nothing. What’re you doing here?”

Evy set an oversized
purse down on a stool and unzipped a brown leather jacket. “You remember those
messages I found on Richie’s Facebook page? The ones with the blond named Emma?”

Brooke brushed
her hands together and looked up. “Yeah.”

“I confronted
him about it.”

“He was cheating
on you, wasn’t he?”

“No, he says he
was…”

Brooke stared at
her through impatient eyes as Evy tried to spit it out, wiping her hands on her
apron. “He was what?”

“He says he was going
to apologize to every girl he had dumped before. Says it came to him in a dream
and that if he doesn’t do it bad things will happen to him.”

Brooke inhaled a
prickly breath, her eyes bulging. “Shut! Up!”

“Right?”

“Who makes up
stuff like that?”

“Apparently, he
has a list.”

A short laugh
slipped from Brooke’s mouth. “Oh, I bet he does.”

“And he can’t
rest until he’s:
corrected his wrongs
.”

“Oh my God, he
is so cheating on you, Evy. No one does that kind of stuff in real life.”

Evy flattened
her lips and scanned the room through glassy eyes. “Maybe I wasn’t servicing
him enough.”

Brooke took a staggered
step back. “
Servicing him
? What are
you a Jiffy Lube?”

“You know what I
mean.” She turned to look out a window overlooking a grassy area out back with
a red picnic table and a yellow umbrella planted though its middle. “It’s just
that sometimes when I get home from work I’m tired and hungry and just want to
slip into my sweats and I’m not always…”

“Don’t start
making excuses like you’re the one in the wrong here, Evy. You have to dump
him. How many times do I have to tell you this?”

“But what if he really
is trying to
atone
for his…”

Brooke raised a
hand. “Stop. You have been dating the wrong guy for your entire life.” The low,
constant drone of the dishwasher filled the quiet between them. “I keep telling
you to get out there and see what else is available.”

Evy discreetly dabbed
at the corner of her eye. “There’s no one else out there for me.” She turned
from the window to face Brooke. “No one like Richie.”

“You won’t find
out if you never try, sweetie. For all you know, there could be a guy out there
right now who would love you so much he’d walk on fire just to be with you, a
guy who would sacrifice everything to put you first.”

Evy laughed her
off. “I don’t know about that.”

Brooke took her
hand and squeezed. “Of course there could be. His name is probably
Luke
or
Ramsey
or something sexy like that.” She looked down to their hands
and took a moment to pick her next words before looking up. “My gut says Richie
would run the other way at the first sign of trouble, and you know my gut is
always right.”

Evy tilted her
head to the side. “The same gut that told you low-rise jeans were cool?”

“They were cool.”
Brooke dropped Evy’s hand and returned to the stainless steel table, which now
looked like it had just been dusted for prints. “So what did you end up telling
Richie anyway? About the IMs.”

A coy grin
pulled at the corner of her lips. “I told him to stock up on batteries for his
electric cock-ring, because I’m going to make him forget all about his
ghosts of girlfriends past
.”

Brooke stood shell-shocked.

Evy nodded with
a confident gleam in her eye.

“Well, hello,
Evy.”

Evy whirled on
her heels, her face already flushing. “Hey, Mrs. R, how are you?”

Mrs. Randall set
her purse and a stack of mail on a nearby chair. “Apparently not as good as you.”

Evy covered her
mouth, face beet red now. “Oh my God, I am so sorry. I didn’t see…”

“Don’t be sorry,
dear.” She plopped onto a stool with an exhausted sigh and rested her bony elbows
on the table, getting flour on her sleeves. “Sit down and tell me all about it.
I wanna know everything. How does this cock-ring thing work? What kind of
batteries does it take? How long do they last?” She stared at Evy through
expectant eyes.

Evy swapped a
helpless look with Brooke, who got back to work on her almost famous maple
bacon cupcakes.

“First you have
to have a cock,” Brooke muttered, grabbing some cupcake pans.

Mrs. Randall
winked at Evy. “It appears I have my work cut out for me already.”