Surprise Double Delivery

by Therese Beharrie

  ‘I’m sure they’re proud of you.’

  ‘Maybe.’ She reclined the seat with her free hand. Settled both their hands on her stomach. ‘I guess they are now. Though they would most likely prefer me to be a business mogul like Lee is. One successful business pales in comparison to that.’

  ‘Which is what he intended,’ Benjamin said softly. When she lifted her gaze to him, the edge of his mouth lifted. ‘You’ve told me a lot. I can piece together the rest.’

  ‘So it seems.’ She ran the index finger of the hand that wasn’t tangled with his over his skin. ‘Lee’s ambitious. Smart. I like to think those things were the primary motivations.’

  ‘But you know they’re not.’

  She couldn’t admit it out loud, so she hedged. ‘Our parents taught us to be the best. I took that to mean people outside of our family. Lee took it to mean...me.’ She swallowed. ‘But it gave us both motivation, thinking that. If I’m part of it, it’s only because of that.’

  He tugged at her hand. Frowning, she looked at him. His face was serious, but other than that, she couldn’t read his emotion.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Why are you protecting him?’

  ‘I’m not...’ She broke off at his look. ‘I’m his sister. His older sister. That’s what I’m supposed to do.’

  ‘By that logic, he should be looking up to you, his older sister. Not competing with you so much you’ve lost your ability to trust people who care about you.’

  The shock had her pulling her hand out of his, grabbing a hold of her stomach with both hands. She wasn’t sure whether she thought she was protecting herself, or her children. Didn’t know why she thought she had to do either.

  ‘Lex—’

  ‘No, give me a moment.’ Purposefully, she leaned back against the chair, relaxed her body. She smoothed her clothing, took a couple of deep breaths, let her mind settle. When she was ready, or as ready as she would ever be, she nodded.

  ‘You’re right. I realise this. Which is why I’ve chosen not to have him in my life.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Stop apologising, Ben,’ she said softly. ‘You keep doing it.’

  ‘Because I keep messing up.’

  ‘Being honest, caring... That’s not messing up.’ She bit the inside of her lip at his expression. Tried to fix it. ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s very inconvenient. Especially when you’re trying to avoid your issues. Don’t you dare apologise!’ she said when he opened his mouth.

  He gave her a wry grin and she laughed.

  ‘It’s like a disease with you.’

  ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘Sure you can. Just stop doing it.’

  ‘I’ve been doing it my entire life.’

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t reply immediately, his expression contorted in confusion. ‘I don’t actually know.’ He tried to hide the panic that answer brought by giving her a smile. She wondered if he knew how horribly he was failing.

  ‘Okay, we’re going to play a game.’

  ‘A game?’

  ‘It’s a distraction, Foster.’

  ‘In that case, tell me,’ Benjamin said with a smile. It was more genuine now.

  ‘Well, I’m going to try to get you to apologise to me, and you’re going to resist.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing specific,’ she replied nonchalantly. ‘You know that game where, when you’re on a road trip, you pick a colour and have to count the number of cars in that colour?’

  ‘Yeah...’

  ‘That’s how it’s going to be. When the opportunity arises.’ She brought a finger under her nose, pretending to stifle a sneeze. ‘Oh, my sinuses are acting up.’

  ‘Should I close the windows?’

  ‘Just a little.’ She pretended to stop another sneeze. ‘Do you have tissues or something here?’

  ‘Yeah, I do,’ he said, just as she knew he would.

  He reached for the pack of tissues in his door, reached out to give it to her. She held out a hand, but moved it slightly when he tried to drop the tissues into it. The pack fell between the seats.

  ‘Oh. Sorry about that. I thought...’ He broke off when he saw her shaking her head. When he saw the smile on her face, too. ‘You planned that?’

  ‘Yes. And you failed. Terribly. In the first minute of the game.’

  ‘But that wasn’t fair!’

  ‘All’s fair in love and war.’ When there was an awkward silence, she wrinkled her nose. ‘This is war, in case you were wondering.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  But, if she was being honest with herself, she was.

  Chapter 16

  What was the saying? Going to hell in a handbasket? If so, that was exactly what was happening. The handbasket was filled with delicious food courtesy of Cherise, but the tying of the bow, the giving? That was all Lee.

  ‘You invited your sister?’ Benjamin hissed the moment he saw Alexa walk into the hotel ballroom.

  Okay, not the moment he saw Alexa. The moment he saw Alexa he stopped, his brain stopped, and he was pretty sure his heart stopped. She looked...amazing. It was too inadequate a word, but he clung to it. The gown she wore was somewhere between coral and peach, the colour of it magnificent against the bronze of her skin. It was a halter-neck dress that clung to her chest, ending just below her breasts in a cinch, before flowing down over the rest of her. The material was pleated, and when she moved, it moved with her. When she was still, those pleats created the illusion of space. All for the benefit of hiding the bump he knew was growing by the day.

  The reason he knew it was because he’d found a reason, every day since they’d been to Lovers Lane, to see her. He didn’t once go to her restaurant—he worried that would be invading her personal space—but he visited her flat under the guise of bringing more food. He asked her to go out for tea under the pretence of picking her brains about something. It had been a week and a half of this, where he was clearly making up reasons to see her, but she never once called him out on it.

  He told himself that if she’d wanted to, she would have. She wasn’t the kind of person not to. The fact that she wasn’t saying anything told him she wanted to see him, too. As did the small, private smile she smiled every time she saw him.

  The days she invited him in were the ones he liked best. Her flat was fast becoming his favourite place, in no small part because they could be whoever they wanted to be there. Turned out, they wanted to be friends. The kissing that happened quite frequently—and sometimes progressed to other things, but never far enough to undermine their friendship—was merely a bonus. But things were so easy between them when they were there. He told her about how he’d grown up trying to help his parents; she told him how she’d grown up trying to make hers proud. They comforted one another, teased one another, and, yes, kissed and touched, and it was all magnificent.

  And it was going to end.

  ‘I didn’t invite her,’ Lee said slowly. ‘She wouldn’t have come if she’d known the invitation was from me.’

  Benjamin resisted grabbing the man at the front of his collar. ‘What did you do?’ he said through his teeth.

  ‘Used the grapevine.’ Lee smirked. ‘It still works.’

  It took Benjamin a long time to remember what he was like when he wasn’t so damn angry. Not that anger was such a bad thing. It gave him a clarity he hadn’t had before. Sure, some of that clarity was also because of his conversations with Alexa, but it was clarity nevertheless. And he knew exactly what he had to do.

  ‘I quit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Resign, effective immediately.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Lee spluttered. ‘Your contract says you have to give me at least a month’s notice.’

 
‘Then you have it.’

  ‘What the hell?’ Lee’s expression was stormy. ‘This is because of my sister, isn’t it? She poached you.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You let her? You let her because you’re sleeping with her?’

  ‘Lee,’ he warned.

  Lee took a breath, clearly trying to get hold of his emotions. ‘You can’t do this, man. We’ve been working together for years. I gave you a chance. You can’t walk out on me.’

  ‘I’m grateful for what you did for me.’ And he meant it. But the weight that had lifted from his shoulders the moment he’d quit told him he’d needed to. ‘Truly, I am. You’re an incredible businessman. I’ve learnt a lot from you. I have no doubt I could have learnt more.’

  ‘Then why are you leaving?’

  ‘Because you used me to beat your sister.’ Saying it out loud made Benjamin feel in control. As if finally, after all those people had used him, he’d regained what they’d taken from him. His pride, perhaps. Or perhaps it was that he was no longer scared of saying it. ‘And you’re malicious. To your own sister, who’s done nothing but love you.’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ Lee scoffed. ‘She must be really good in...’

  He broke off when Benjamin, quick as lightning, took his arm. ‘I’m warning you about what you say next.’

  Lee’s chest heaved. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

  He let go. ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘You’re serious about this?’

  ‘Deadly.’ He straightened his tie. ‘I respect who you are in business, but not as a man. I can’t, knowing how you’ve treated the woman I... I love.’

  He’d hesitated in speech, just as he had with his feelings. But he could see they’d been there long before the last month. The moment he’d seen her in that class, he’d tumbled. Knocked his head in the process, it seemed, because he went back to being a kid and tried to compete with her so she would notice him.

  But she’d never allowed him close enough to see that she had noticed him; not in the way he’d intended. He’d reminded her of her brother, the man, he suspected, had hurt her most. She seemed to have some kind of resignation about who her parents were, but not with Lee. With Lee, she’d tried, and he’d brushed her away. When she let Benjamin in the last few weeks, he could see how much it hurt her—and how much he had hurt her, simply by acting like a teenage fool.

  Now what he had seen, what she’d allowed him to see, convinced him that if he hadn’t been a fool, he would have had these feelings aeons ago. She might not have iced him out, and he might have seen who she really was. That was who he was in love with. The woman who wasn’t even a little cruel. Who was passionate and driven and who cared about people.

  It was the biggest honour of his life that she’d chosen to open up to him. She’d let him see her vulnerable, and he hoped with all his might he’d done enough to show her she could be vulnerable with him. He knew she struggled with it, and if he had to be patient he would be, simply because she was worth it.

  If he had to spend his entire lifetime proving that she could trust him, he would. Because he loved her. And she deserved it.

  He had to tell her.

  ‘Benjamin!’

  The exclamation came from a short distance away. When he turned towards it, he saw Cherise.

  ‘Thanks so much for coming,’ she said, stopping in front of him. ‘I thought I should show you what I can do, too, since I hope we can work together.’

  It was what he’d wanted to hear most, once upon a time. Now, what he wanted to hear most was Alexa’s voice, saying anything, really, but mostly talking about them sharing a future together. He turned, barely thinking about the fact that Cherise was there, waiting for an answer.

  He didn’t think about it at all when he saw Lee follow Alexa out of the ballroom.

  * * *

  The moment she saw him walking towards her she knew.

  It was silly of her to think that she could walk into an event being catered by Cherise to get another opportunity to speak with her. To perhaps even see her in action. Alexa had found out about the charity event through an acquaintance, thought it would be harmless and beneficial, considering she hadn’t heard from Cherise for over a week. When she saw Lee, it all fell into place: she hadn’t heard from Cherise for a reason, she’d been set up, and she shouldn’t have come.

  She didn’t give the gorgeous ballroom and its glistening lights and formal guests any more thought. She walked out, down the brick steps, past the fountain. She was on the small stretch of grass between the fountain and the car park when Lee caught up with her.

  ‘Leaving so soon?’

  She stopped. Closed her eyes. Turned to face him. ‘Sorry I didn’t stay for the gotcha. That’s what you wanted to say, isn’t it?’

  ‘No one forced you to be here,’ Lee said calmly. ‘Although I’m surprised you didn’t accompany Ben.’ He pretended to think about it. ‘Is it that he didn’t tell you about this, or that you really are trying to keep your personal and professional lives separate?’

  He hadn’t told her, though she didn’t need to tell Lee that. Nor did she have to figure out why Benjamin hadn’t said anything. He was protecting her, or maybe himself, and though she understood it—he was so used to protecting the people in his life—it bothered her on a deep level. But that wasn’t important now.

  ‘Look, Lee, I don’t want to stick around for the gloating, okay?’

  ‘Not even your own?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh, you’re going to pretend you didn’t ask him to do it. That seems like an odd position, all things considered.’

  ‘Tell me, or let me go,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Your boyfriend quit.’

  ‘He what?’

  His brows rose. ‘Nice acting, Sis. Didn’t know you had it in you.’

  ‘He quit? Why?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘What the hell did you do?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’ Though she could barely see it, she knew he was biting the inside of his lip. He used to do it when they were younger, on the side. ‘He told me it’s because of the way I’ve been treating you.’

  She caught the swear word before it left her lips. Mentally, though, she let the curses fly. The idiot! It was fine if he kept things from her because he thought he was protecting her—okay, not fine, understandable—but this? This was stupid. This was his entire future. It was his life. And he was doing it for her! It seemed much too much for people who’d been close for less than two weeks. This felt more like a gesture; something someone did before proclaiming their love or something.

  A thin thread of panic wove between the synapses in her brain. It threatened to overcome her, and for a second she thought she would fall over. But that would hurt her babies, and she had to be strong. She couldn’t let them suffer for things she was responsible for.

  She looked at her brother. Realised she needed to sort this out if she wanted to keep that promise to her kids.

  ‘If I talk to him, convince him to go back to you, would you leave me alone?’ She could already see, before he even said it, that he was going to make some stupid remark. ‘I’m being serious. If I get Ben to go back to In the Rough, I don’t want to see or hear from you again. Unless there’s a family function, which, fortunately, doesn’t happen often. But outside of that. No surprises. No manipulation. Nothing.’

  ‘You really want that?’

  He’d taken the stance of a victim, his voice hurt and surprised, as if he had no contribution to why she wanted this. It made her snap.

  ‘What I want is to have a brother who doesn’t make me feel as if I have to walk carefully everywhere I go in case he pulls the rug out from under me. I want to have a brother who doesn’t enjoy pulling the rug out from under me. Who, when I fall, asks me why I’m on the ground. Who gets upset when I refuse his help.’


  She’d never spent enough time with Lee to learn how his expressions revealed his emotions. Or maybe it was that the only expressions he wore around her were variations of smugness or satisfaction or a combination of the two. So she couldn’t tell how he felt now, because none of that came through in his expression.

  ‘I thought... This is what we do, Lex. We compete with one another. We make one another better.’

  ‘What? That’s what you think this is? No—how do you think that is what this is?’ Her voice was high with disbelief. She didn’t try to temper it. ‘You competed with me, Lee. I congratulated you for beating my records, or scoring higher than me.’

  ‘You were conceding.’

  ‘Conceding...’

  Now she recognised the look on Lee’s face: bewilderment. He genuinely didn’t understand why she was so upset. She nearly laughed. He was the least self-aware person she knew.

  ‘I wasn’t conceding. I was sincerely wishing you well because I was happy for you. At first. I could see competing with me made you happy and gave you purpose and I wanted you to have that.’ She took a steadying breath. ‘But you didn’t want me to be happy. If you did, you would have supported me the way I supported you. You would have taken the hand I held out every time I asked you to go to a movie with me, or watch a show, or do whatever stupid things brothers and sisters do together. But you said no. Instead you tried to beat me at things that didn’t even matter.’

  She folded her arms, suddenly cold.

  ‘And you tried to beat me at things that did matter, too.’ She blinked when that made her want to cry. ‘You bought the building I spent months trying to find. Months,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘I did research into who I was buying the building from, into the neighbourhood, into how much it would cost to renovate, how long it would take. Then you swooped in and stole it. Just stole it.’ She lifted a hand, dropped it. ‘The only thing you knew about it was that I wanted it.’

  ‘I... I didn’t realise.’

  ‘You didn’t realise that you’d destroyed my dream?’ she asked. ‘Of both that restaurant and ever having a normal relationship with you?’