Bijou swanned over to them. “Oooo, bébé,” she said in a French accent as she ignored Liz altogether and went for Poppy, who, of course, lapped up all the attention she could as Ben handed the dog over. Weird how his arms felt a bit emptier after she was gone.
But he wasn’t exactly bereft. Clearly, Poppy had done her part in immediately winning over his father’s new missus. Now, on to Dad and Jameson.
Yet before Ben got that far, he noticed the laptop computer on the glass table, and he glanced at his brother, who’d just turned the screen toward him.
“For Lincoln.” Jameson was still strung together tight. “He’s negotiating a property deal in Tuscany, but we knew you wouldn’t mind if we recorded the happy moment.”
Dad stepped in. “Of course Bennett doesn’t mind sharing this historic event with his brother. This is one for the books!”
If Liz thought it odd that no one had hugged or expressed much affection toward Ben, she didn’t let on. She only unwound her arm from his and went to Dad, bending to where he was sitting and extending her hand to shake his. “It’s so nice to— Oh!”
As his father grasped her hand and pulled her closer down to him, she caught her balance. And when he kissed her knuckles, she laughed. Ben’s stomach fisted.
Why? Was he wondering if his own father was about to creep on his fake wife?
Dad lifted his gaze to her, the eternal Romeo. “Welcome to the family . . .”
“Liz,” Ben said again.
“Liz.” Dad kept holding her hand, making her still bend over. “Lovely name for a lovely woman.”
You’ve got to be kidding, Ben thought, walking over to liberate Liz’s hand and ease her back to a stand. He’d never felt territorial about a woman before, but there was a first time for everything. Then again, he thought as he guided Liz over to Jameson while cooling off in the meantime, maybe showing he gave a shit about her would even help with selling the marriage.
Yeah, that was it. That was why he was so puffed up about Dad’s attentions to Liz—it was the disrespect. It was . . .
Maybe because he did care?
Dismissing that, he enveloped her hand in his free one. United we stand against Jameson, who knows a little more about Liz than I wish he did. In fact, when Ben thought about what his brother had probably known of her, he bristled.
He even thought he felt her go a bit tense as Jameson’s gaze bore into her, then Ben.
Ben smiled, trying to make the awkwardness float right off of him. He was halfway successful. “Jameson, this is Liz. Liz, Jameson.”
His brother was all ice as he shook her hand and quickly let it go. With one glance, Ben reminded Jameson that he had as much to gain by welcoming Liz as Ben had by “falling in love” with her.
Jameson fixed a smile on his own face as he rigidly lied through his teeth. “So, Liz, you’re the special woman who captured Bennett’s heart. You’ll have to tell us how you managed to do that. Really, I’d be very interested to hear the whole wonderful story.”
Liz kept smiling. Jameson’s sarcasm was light enough to fly under the radar, but Ben still glared in the most secretive way he could. In the meantime, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bijou dancing with Poppy by the piano, oblivious to all the simmering drama.
Dad seemed just as out of the loop. “Armstrong!” he called from his spot on the couch. “Martinis for the newlyweds!”
But the valet was already on his way, appearing out of the thin air with a tray spiked with drinks. Ben gave one to Liz, then took one for himself. He’d need it tonight.
Dad held up his cocktail in a toast. “To marriage! I knew that, someday, Bennett would apply himself to something, and proof of that is finally standing before us, even if our boy did it in his own, rather frustrating, yet not surprisingly maddening way. Far be it from him to think of how his family might’ve appreciated being there for such a momentous occasion, but hell—he pulled the trigger, didn’t he, Jameson? So here, here!”
A blast of shame hit Ben at his father’s chiding toast, but the journey to respect wouldn’t happen automatically. It’d be a long road ahead.
Too bad Liz was giving him a look that said she was wondering if the words had hurt. Ben thought her expression might be even worse than hearing his family disparage him, although her sympathy shouldn’t matter. Not with a business partner.
They all drank, maudlin jazz music tinkling away in the background, Bijou still slow dancing with Poppy.
Liz upped the wattage of her smile and, in her own admirable way, tried to spin the situation. “I’m glad you toasted Ben’s ability to apply himself. I’m so impressed with his mind for business. . . .”
She was giving him an opening to tell them about her dinner club, wasn’t she? Good move.
But before he could take the ball and run with it, Dad was patting the sofa next to him, then crooking a finger at Liz. She moved over to sit next to Dad as he addressed Ben.
“I tell you, son, you inherited some good taste in woman. It took me a while to develop that talent, but I got better and better as the years wore on.”
It wasn’t the first time Dad had slammed Mom, and Ben was just about to defend her memory like he always did. But wasn’t this one of the usual ways they started arguing? Wasn’t this one of the reasons he’d holed up in Rough & Tumble in the first place, because he was sick of the friction?
Ben contained himself as Dad forged ahead.
“You’re only lucky I didn’t see this one first, Bennett!”
Okay. Now Ben’s hackles came up full force. Jameson couldn’t even hide his wide-eyed reaction as he sat on the sofa, claiming a front-row seat. Oddly, Bijou was still dancing with Poppy, not seeing any of this.
Liz, bless her, stepped in.
She laughed. “Mr. Hughes, you do make a woman feel welcome to the clan.”
“It’s Harrison,” Dad said. “Call me by my given name. We’re a close family.”
Hah.
As his father and Liz clinked glasses with each other, Ben calmed himself down even more. His wife had this in hand and, thank God, he’d chosen his partner well, hadn’t he? As he watched her sit and chat with Dad, working more of her charm on him, Ben’s chest actually warmed. It had to be out of appreciation, though.
Ben slid a glance to Jameson, whose looks had turned from ice into something else entirely. A different kind of the patented Jameson stiffness. A steely stare directed right at Dad, then at Ben.
Was he unhappy because Dad was happy with Ben’s choice of a partner?
As Ben considered that, his gaze wandered to the piano, where Bijou had finally stopped dancing with Poppy, locking onto the sight of her husband fawning over his new daughter-in-law. Like a mist of perfume, she floated over to the sofa, sitting between Jameson and Dad, still holding the dog as she leaned against her husband.
Dad didn’t seem to notice, instead reaching over to the computer on the table and making sure it was recording him and Liz. He spoke to the screen while leaning closer to her. “For posterity, Liz is going to tell us what made her fall in love with Bennett, aren’t you, my dear? God knows I love a good story along with my drink.”
Jameson threw back the rest of his martini and loosened his collar as Liz spoke.
“What made me fall in love with Ben?” she said softly. Then she looked over to him, her eyes shining with such clarity that it almost cut him off at the knees. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think she did love him.
And, for a second, he let himself think it. Let himself glow from the inside out before he’d have to shut it down again, having no use for it.
But the light in her eyes didn’t die. “It was love at first sight. It was me, knowing right away that he was The One. Call it chemistry, call it voodoo, I just knew.”
From the way she said it, she sounded . . . convinced. And he was almost persuaded, too. That warmth flowing around his chest was doing its best to make him feel like love at first sight could exist for normal people wh
o’d grown up watching parents stay together and never talk shit about dearly departed spouses.
Bijou interjected. “So romantic.” She laid a hand on Dad’s arm. “Isn’t it, my darling?”
“Just like me and you,” Dad said, grabbing Bijou’s hand and kissing it.
The man who loved women, but didn’t actually love them, Ben thought. Like father, like son.
But with another glance at Liz, another explosion of comforting warmth he got just by knowing that she was on his team, his defenses faltered.
What if . . . he thought.
He shut that train down, though. Things were going too well with them for complications to rear up. They already had teamwork, great sex, everything. Why did they need love?
Jameson had summoned Armstrong for another martini, and after he grabbed it from the tray, he took a long sip, then said, “So true love at first sight, huh? And Ben turned it into a quickie wedding.”
Ben decided to take the high road. “It might happen to you one day, Jameson. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“No, marriage is not for me.” Jameson toasted Dad with his new cocktail. “I’m married to work and very content in my holy state of matrimony. Besides, not to be a fly in the ointment, but you two had better find something more substantial than love at first sight if you’re going to avoid the D word.”
Divorce. It was a touchy subject around Dad, and Ben was surprised as hell Jameson had the balls to bring it up. Maybe he was just pissed because of Liz being here, a former “girlfriend” who was suddenly his brother’s wife. It had to wound the ego.
But Dad didn’t acknowledge Jameson. Right now, he only had eyes for Bijou, much to Ben’s relief, and he was kissing her hand again, holding her gaze. Liz gave Ben a very sly thank-God glance. “Jameson,” Dad murmured while still staring at Bijou, “someday, when you find a woman to care about, you’ll understand.”
Jameson gripped his glass so hard Ben thought he might bring it to shards.
Meanwhile, a satisfied Bijou kissed her husband on the lips, got up and winked suggestively at him, then minced with Poppy back to the piano, her stake in her property reclaimed. Dad gestured to the open spot next to him, inviting Ben to take it.
Jameson deserted the sofa without a word, but Ben didn’t mind. He took position next to his father as Liz smiled at him, proud of his progress.
Ben smiled back, thinking of how he was definitely going to reward her for all the good work they’d accomplished so far.
Thinking of the softness in her eyes, too, and how he was falling a little deeper into it with every glance.
***
What made me fall in love with Ben?
After Harrison Hughes had asked Liz the question, it hadn’t left her alone all night. It had whispered to her throughout the rest of cocktail hour, while she’d talked to her father-in-law, sharing stories with him about old Vegas. It had haunted her during dinner, too, as Daddy Hughes had quizzed her about being an ex-showgirl with big dreams of opening a dinner club. Thank God for Bijou on that front, because she’d hopped into the conversation at that point, telling Liz about how she’d once been a model who’d worn just as few clothes in fashion magazines as Liz had worn onstage, so if Liz had expected any guff to come from the family for her ex-profession, it hadn’t happened.
Anyway, the question—what had made her fall in love?—never did disappear, and it was eating at her now, as she and Ben walked through the door of Boomer’s house, Poppy relaxing in her arms, all tuckered out.
Ben had already shrugged out of his suit jacket. “Talk about home, sweet home. That suite may have been decorated like a palace, but this is more of a haven. A place without any daggers coming out of the walls.”
“Exaggerate much?” She laughed.
“You just couldn’t see the blades. I was dodging them all night. But, hey . . .” He rolled up his sleeves so she could look at his forearms. “No cuts. See?”
He was like an excited little boy, his hair carelessly ruffled and gold, his blue eyes so alive and spark-blue that they nearly made her burn from the outside in, just like flame put to a piece of thin paper covered with the same kind of curly writing a crush-prone teen girl would use.
Why did I fall in love with him . . . ?
“You did real good, Ben.” She smiled and went over to the pile of blankets she’d put on the floor earlier, before life had gone into high speed after Ben had gotten the news about his family’s visit. She laid Poppy down and sat near her, even if it meant wrinkling the creamy gown. It was worth a few wrinkles to pet the dog, her heart full as Poppy’s big brown eyes closed.
But when Ben plopped onto the couch, Poppy sprang up, prancing over to him with her tongue lolling. He scooped her onto his lap, absently stroking her ears, putting the puppy into canine heaven. Liz watched them, feeling slightly left out.
Ben said, “If I’d have known that all it took to win my dad over was marriage, I’d have done this years ago.”
His words nailed Liz, but what did she expect?
He was too caught up in his success to notice how she’d flinched. Or maybe she was so used to acting already that she hadn’t shown a reaction at all.
“You,” he said, pointing at her, “were absolutely brilliant. Everything Dad asked, you answered, just like you were Maria Sharapova–ing a ball back onto his side of the court.”
“I’m a pro, all right.”
He laughed. “What I’m trying to say is that you presented a perfect first impression. We’ll have to keep working at Dad while he’s here through tomorrow, though. Can’t give him a chance to get bored with our marriage, because he will, and that’s when he’ll start asking the hard questions. Like any Hughes man, he’s entertained first and foremost, until he’s not entertained.”
Was this advice meant for her in some way?
Liz wasn’t sure. “Your dad is definitely affectionate.”
“And you wonder why I never brought a woman home to meet him.”
Her ears perked up at that, but he continued before she could start up with personal questions.
“Not that I ever had a steady girlfriend,” he said lightly, “even when I was younger.”
“Did you think your dad would steal all your women?”
He frowned. “I never looked at it that way, but now that you say it . . . there might’ve been some doubt that he’d have honorable intentions toward anyone I liked. To my father, women are prizes. That’s what I saw in him growing up. That’s how I . . .”
Treated women, too?
He laid a hand on Poppy’s head as the dog slept. “In any case, Bijou even liked you as much as she did Poppy, by the end of the night.”
Okay. So he didn’t want to talk about anything but business. “I guess so. We bonded over our old jobs. I even got the feeling that she genuinely likes your dad, that it wasn’t only money that attracted her to him, even though . . .”
“Money was what attracted her? You can say it.”
She hadn’t wanted to, because The Question—what made you fall in love?—was circling her again, and she was wondering if she’d faced everything there was to face within herself about why she’d stayed in this marriage.
Her own best friend had told her that love at first sight was superficial, that there should be something more to it. What if Anita was right? What if Liz had only been attracted, but she was only here right now because of the money?
What if there was actually nothing else between them, and she’d end up like Mom, never connecting with anyone?
Liz looked at Ben, who was lavishing an adoring gaze on Poppy as the dog breathed evenly, out like a string of show lights. His affection seemed real enough for the puppy. But what about his other girl?
Would he come around to loving Liz at some point, too?
She realized that he was watching her, and she glanced away, her skin heating—but not in a sexual way. In a way that made her feel like he’d seen beneath her surface.
&nb
sp; His voice was so low that it strummed her. “I can’t help thinking that there’s something in you that was born to this life. Our life for the next year and a month.”
Was it because she’d always been meant for him?
“Maybe I was made to order, Ben.”
They watched each other for a moment more, the night quiet outside the house, inside the house, the only sound her heartbeat thudding in her ears.
Tenderly, he picked up Poppy, putting her drowsy body on her blankets, petting her to sleep again. All the while, Liz’s pulse kept shattering her.
What made you fall in love with Ben?
He looked at her once more, his eyes an irresistible blue that pulled her in, and that’s when she knew that the answer had been there all along.
18
The answer was so simple, too.
Even if Bennett Hughes had a playboy reputation, there was more to him that no one else in his life had bothered to see, and it seemed that Liz was the one person who was bringing out the best in him. With her by his side, he had the potential to be so much more than the black sheep of the family, and she could see that he was aching for someone to recognize that.
He needed her in that one tiny but oh so major way, and she’d never been needed. Maybe it was a selfish reason to fall for him, but she wanted to see him succeed, wanted to be a team with him in a way she’d never been before.
But there was more to what she was feeling than this. With Ben, there’d always been a connection, a link that had struck her immediately. So what if Bennett Hughes came from a filthy-rich family—he was a lot like her, living on the outside, looking in for most of his existence. Even at first sight, she’d known he was a person who walked alone, seeming to be a part of a crowd while never quite fitting in and finding his place.
So didn’t it make sense that two people who’d never really had a family or someone to genuinely love would somehow find each other eventually?
As they both sat by their sleepy dog’s blankets, her thigh so close to his, her arm just a gentle touch away, words pushed at her, confessions that she was afraid to say, mostly because she wasn’t sure how he’d react to them.
Down and Dirty Page 22
