Three Little Words

by Jenny Holiday

  “What happened to Mr. Fancy Chef, ‘of course the dough won’t be right because it’s not properly fermented’?” Gia teased.

  “I may be a ‘fancy chef,’ but I have a healthy respect for the marketplace. And Mister Tony says he sells two hundred orders of the Wall of Cheesy Garlic Bread a night—and this is not a big town. How could I possibly resist that?”

  “You can probably write it off as market research. Anyway, are we going to talk about this food or actually eat it?”

  They were going to eat it. She was going to eat it. She was.

  She drained her glass of cheap wine first, because apparently she was the kind of person who needed Dutch courage to eat Neapolitan pizza.

  But then, oh, but then.

  She could taste every flavor—the mozzarella, the tomato, the basil, even the olive oil. It was delicious. Not otherworldly amazing like the food Bennett had fed her last night, but super tasty. A couple more bites, and she felt the life flooding back into her shaky limbs. Or maybe that was just the wine on an empty stomach. Either way, she felt good.

  Mostly good. She took stock of her entire body. The shower had helped, but she was still stiff from the train trip followed by the long car ride. One knee in particular was sore. It had been dogging her since the contortions they’d made her undergo on that last shoot. So she picked up the entire box of pizza and went to stretch out on the bed, only belatedly realizing that Bennett was just watching her eat, that he hadn’t had any himself.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” She started to get up and move back toward the table. “I’m hogging it all.” What was the matter with her? She’d done that with the oysters, too.

  He held up a hand to signal that she should stay, and came around and stretched out on the other side of the bed. It wasn’t a come-on. He’d made his feelings on that topic quite clear. It was more a companionable familiarity.

  Which was…nice, even as it made her wary. Gia didn’t really do companionable familiarity with anyone except her girls.

  “Yeah,” he said after his first bite. “Not the best pizza you’ll ever eat, but totally enjoyable for a random small-town effort.”

  “Hey, don’t knock small towns,” Gia said, but then she let loose a big yawn. The long day and the wine had conspired to make her sleepy.

  “You’re a small-town girl?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, given my obvious veneer of big-city sophistication.” He snorted. It was so satisfying to be able to amuse someone like Bennett Buchanan. And he had such a nice smile. “But yes. I’m from outside a small town called Belleville, Ontario. It’s northeast of Toronto. Farm country.”

  “Your parents were farmers?” Bennett turned toward her, the chef in him obviously interested. “What did they farm?”

  “Down, boy. It was farm country, but no. My dad was the principal at the local high school. My mom was a teacher there until they had kids. I was the baby, and she never went back after me.”

  “Too busy taking food off her kids’ plates?”

  Normally that remark would have rankled, but for some reason Gia didn’t mind it from him right now—possibly because of all the heavy stuff he had told her about his youth. In fact, she was kind of gratified by the annoyed tone he’d used. It was nice, if odd, to have a champion who wasn’t one of her best friends. They just reflexively fell into that role. Bennett, on the other hand, felt more impartial; he didn’t owe her anything.

  “Just me.” She thought back to those fraught family dinners. “She never did it to my brother. But yeah, domestic stuff sort of expanded to fill the time available, so she did tend to fixate. She had me in the child beauty pageant circuit.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Yeah,” Gia said. “It was actually…pretty awful.”

  She had never said that out loud to anyone before. She felt guilty verbalizing that thought, because there was a clear path between all her pageant experience and her modeling career. It had taught her a lot about poise and how to carry herself. It had taught her how to shrug off ruthless assessments of her appearance, how to listen to people criticize her for traits she had no control over.

  And she’d been good at it. She’d won most of them. And that had been…well, not fun. Grimly satisfying? Maybe that was the right phrase.

  “You said in the car that your mother was obsessed with appearances.”

  “I’m not sure if the pageant thing was the cause of that or an effect. But yeah.” He was looking at her intensely, like he was waiting for her to keep talking, but what else was there? Yeah, it really sucks when your mom makes you start plucking your eyebrows when you’re five?

  When she didn’t say anything more, his expression changed from intense to thoughtful. “The thing about being obsessed with appearances is, on the one hand, it’s shallow. It’s about how people will respond to the way things look. It’s superficial.”

  She nodded since he seemed to be awaiting her agreement. She wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but he wasn’t wrong.

  “So how come, if it’s all about the surface of things, it hurts so much?”

  Gia sucked in a breath. It was like he had punched her. But it was a truth punch.

  He must have sensed that she was bowled over, because he smiled, pointed at her, and said, “You don’t have to answer that. It’s more of a rhetorical question.” Then he held up the remote. “You mind?”

  She shook her head, grateful for the reprieve but still amazed at the accuracy of his observation. She sank a little farther back into her fluffy nest of pillows, ate some more pizza, and drank some more wine. They watched the news in companionable silence, making amused eye contact when a reporter interviewed stranded travelers at Newark Airport.

  She felt…good. Reassured in the knowledge that they’d outrun the storm and were well on their way to the wedding. Satiated. Sleepy. Calm.

  It was weird.

  After the news was over, Gia took control of the remote and settled on the Food Network, which was playing a restaurant makeover show.

  “I can’t watch this,” Bennett kept saying, rolling his eyes over the changes the makeover team was proposing. “That there is a perfectly fine restaurant. Not everything needs to be high end. They’re going to ruin it.”

  Gia pointedly didn’t change the channel, enjoying his indignant commentary on the transformation. And, though things had gotten kind of serious earlier with the talk about appearance-obsessed mothers—not to mention his big confession in the car—it felt like they’d come through all that and emerged into something…lighter. Easier.

  “Honestly, they deserve what they get,” he said as the TV restaurant proprietors oohed and aahed at the big reveal. “No one wants to eat pho on silk-covered banquettes. You can’t slosh broth on silk-covered banquettes. They’re going to lose their existing customers, and they sure as hell aren’t going to gain any new ones.”

  “What those people should do if they want to expand is get a food truck,” Gia said. “They’re in Ann Arbor, right? That’s a college town. Keep the prices low, park near the university. They can call it Pho on the Go or something cute like that.”

  He rotated his head to look at her. They had both slid down on the bed a bit after eating—Bennett seemed to be victim to the same food coma that had hit Gia.

  “That’s exactly what they should do.”

  She started, surprised at the praise.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You should be a restaurant consultant.”

  “Huh?”

  “After you left the restaurant this morning, some of the guys and I dragged a refrigerator outside and plugged it in. They’re going to stick tonight’s leftovers in there.”

  Oh, right. “Well, who knows if it will work?”

  “It’ll work.”

  Gia tried to think of the last time someone had expressed such firm confidence in her. It had been the girls, probably—last time they’d all seen each other, she had confessed some trepidation over the Vogue shoot, an
d they had given her a pep talk. It was nice to hear someone else expressing faith in her, though, especially someone like Bennett. Bennett didn’t seem like the kind of guy who did false praise.

  “Oh no! No!” he shouted at the TV. She’d tuned out, but someone was making some kind of chocolate mousse thing. “You can’t serve that with pho!” He turned to her, mock alarm in his eyes. “These people are monsters.”

  She cracked up. She wished she had a remote control for reality. Because she wanted to pause this entire moment, this feeling of camaraderie. The simple happiness of a joke, a full belly, and progress toward a shared mission.

  But wait. She could capture it, if not pause it. She scrambled off the bed, got her camera from her bag, then returned.

  “Since there won’t be any Florida shots today, can I take your picture? I want to get you with the TV and”—she shoved the pizza box toward him—“dinner. The Mister Tony’s logo, specifically.”

  He turned around so the TV would be in the background of the shot, but then he patted the spot beside him. “Only if you’re in it, too.”

  “I told you I don’t do selfies.”

  “But whatever you’re trying to capture about this moment, you’re part of it.”

  “Bennett, I get my picture taken all day long.”

  “Okay, okay. Compromise.” He grabbed one of her feet—she’d been sitting cross-legged—and tugged. He seemed to want her to extend her leg.

  Warily, she did. Then he tapped the other shin, so she unfolded that leg, too.

  He was sort of…arranging her. Taking her feet onto his lap.

  His hands were warm and strong. Tingles danced from her toes to her center, like someone was pricking the entire length of her leg with thousands of tiny acupuncture needles.

  Once he’d composed her to his liking, Bennett contorted himself, bending over her feet but also propping the pizza box up. “Am I blocking the TV too much?”

  Ah, he was making a picture with all the things she’d said she wanted in it—plus her feet. Smiling that lopsided smile that did things to her. Intensified the tingles.

  When she didn’t answer right away, he said, “Come on. It’s not a selfie if it’s just your feet in the shot.”

  She shook her head indulgently. “Okay.” She paused as she looked through the viewfinder. Her orange-painted toes next to his calloused hands made for a strangely compelling image. The way he was lightly holding her ankles suggested familiarity. She thought of those hands at work—shucking oysters, handing a cup of coffee to a homeless man, gripping the steering wheel as he drove in the storm. And now they were on her ankles as if that’s where they were supposed to be at the end of a hard day.

  She wasn’t really thinking when she shifted to get a picture of just her lower legs and his hands.

  As soon as the camera spat out the photo, she realized her mistake. If she’d been using her phone, she could have surreptitiously taken a bunch more images with the TV and the pizza in them, or she could have stealth-deleted the original shot.

  But there was no hiding this. She didn’t even try to get it away from him as he twisted to grab the photo and stared at the blurry blob that would sharpen into her suspect image.

  She leaned back against the headboard and looked out the window at the storm, waiting to get busted. She would tell him it was a last-minute artistic choice. It was. It didn’t have to mean anything. He certainly wouldn’t read anything more into it.

  Or maybe he would, because, suddenly, he was kissing her. Because she’d been staring out the window, she hadn’t seen it coming.

  And to be fair, he hadn’t given her any warning. It wasn’t the kind of gentle, incremental kiss Reese Witherspoon’s rom-com love interest would’ve planted on her. There was no lead-in; no tucking of stray hair behind her ears, no endearingly earnest speech, not even any eye contact. It was at once smaller and hotter. He just appeared in her space and covered her mouth with his, pressing his thumbs into her cheekbones as his tongue swept into her mouth. He tasted like pizza, of course, but also, underneath that, like tea.

  She felt immediately like they’d been kissing for an hour. It wasn’t that she was suddenly, violently awakened. She didn’t feel a spike of need. It was more that the need inside her had expanded, like a thing that was too large for her body to contain, so it started spilling out the edges of her skin.

  She moaned and opened her mouth wider for him. The need continued to expand even as, paradoxically, it coalesced between her legs.

  They were lying side by side now, having slid down the headboard a bit as they kissed, so she swung her top leg over his hip, and one of his hands left her face and clamped down on her thigh, wrapping it around his waist as much as was possible given their position.

  He was hard against her belly, so fantastically hard.

  This was such a shock, but it also felt inevitable. As if that hand had belonged possessively on her ankle.

  And now it belonged on her thigh.

  “Fuck,” he muttered against her lips, as the hand, once it had her leg where he wanted it, traveled back up her thigh, grabbed an ass cheek, and squeezed—hard. “Fuuuck.” That was followed by an indistinct sound that was a cross between yet another fuck and a growl.

  His lips had left hers as he let fly that string of curses, and she took advantage of the freedom and pressed her lips against his jawline. Darted her tongue out and licked it, loving the drag of his stubble against the sensitive flesh of her tongue.

  The repositioning shifted her, moved her down his body, and it had the effect of lining his cock up against her center.

  “Oh my God!” The sudden pressure was so exquisite, it was almost her undoing.

  It usually took Gia a while to come. She was good at it. She wasn’t afraid of some nonverbal guiding—and when that didn’t work, she outright instructed her lovers in the fine art of making it happen. But it didn’t just happen, was the point. She had to concentrate. She needed a specific kind of not-too-hard pressure.

  “Oh my God!” she said again, writhing against him, astonished at her still-expanding need. Was there no end to how good this man could make her feel?

  “Fuck,” he said again, but this time it was different. It wasn’t an expression of lust anymore, but one of genuine regret. Maybe even…disgust?

  “I can’t do this,” he said, and just like that, her need stopped expanding. He pulled away, leaving her confused. Stuck. Turned on but abandoned.

  But then he was back, or at least his fingers were. “I’m sorry,” he said as he shoved his hand down her pajama bottoms, his fingers skimming over her heat.

  “Sorry?” she echoed. That wasn’t helping with the confusion.

  “Shhh,” he soothed, his fingers starting to make circles. He watched her intently, kneeling over her but not touching any part of her body with any part of his, other than those fingers.

  She wanted to object, to demand that he explain what the hell was going on, but— “Oh!” Her hips bucked against his hand. Still watching her like she was about to reveal the answer to an ancient mystery, he retuned his touch, working with the rolling of her hips and tightening the circles he was making over and around her clit.

  The impending orgasm was climbing so high inside her. All that expanding desire from earlier had made so much room in her body. Pleasure kept expanding into that space, up and up and up. Out, too. In all directions at once. She held her breath. It was almost painful. She needed it to stop, even as she never wanted it to.

  “That’s it,” he crooned. “That’s it. Come for me, Gia. Be a good girl and come for me.”

  And she did—gasping as her body exploded, even as part of her hated how easily he could control her response.

  He left his hand on her through a long series of aftershocks, still watching her intently.

  Eventually, the attention shaded into a scrutiny that felt more invasive than she was comfortable with. It was starting to feel like he could actually see inside her.

>   “What was that?” she demanded as she scrambled away from him and sat up. Her instinct was to cover herself, but of course she wasn’t naked. How was it possible she’d just had the most intense orgasm of her life while fully clothed? And more to the point, why had he jumped ship halfway through?

  “I’m sorry.” He raked a hand through his hair, and his face twisted into a grimace. “I got carried away. I forgot myself.”

  “You forgot yourself?” What did that mean?

  “I don’t do casual. That should not have happened.”

  “You don’t do casual?” She had been reduced to repeating his sentences back to him, but in her defense, that was because nothing he was saying made any sense.

  “Yeah, I don’t sleep around.”

  Oh my God. The Bible verse he’d quoted at her yesterday. His devotion to pay-what-you-can night and the way he’d helped that homeless man. And he’d mentioned that his chef-mentor was Catholic. It all made sense now. He’d probably found Jesus as part of his recovery. Well, at least there was a reason he’d rejected her last night. “You’re some kind of religious nut.”

  That made him smile, which in turn made her realize how serious his face had been previously, while he’d been getting her off.

  “No. I was raised Southern Baptist, but I haven’t set foot in a church or opened a Bible since I left home. It’s just that casual sex is not…something I allow myself to indulge in.”

  She scrambled under the covers, suddenly feeling too exposed, which was ridiculous because she wasn’t naked, and anyway, he’d had his hand down her shorts just moments ago. “But not because the Bible tells you it’s a sin.” She was still struggling to make sense of all this.

  Another smile, but it was a wistful one. “No. It’s more a matter of personal ethics. I keep sex confined to serious relationships. Or at least relationships that seem like they have the potential to become serious.”

  “What are you saying? You want me to date you?” Because that was not happening. No matter that they’d reached a kind of truce earlier, or that she’d been getting stupidly moony over his hand on her ankle. Just like Bennett apparently didn’t do casual, Gia didn’t do anything but casual.