The people in her past, who’d had the chance to know her, to love her, but instead made her feel so unworthy, deserved to be quartered.
Clancy had given him that at least. Safety, laughter, and confidence, and the assuredness that whatever he wanted to do with his life, it was his for the taking.
He slowed to a stop. Maybe he couldn’t give her the dirty truth, but he could give her this. “You know how little I wanted to be here.”
Her nostrils flared, ever so slightly.
“You know I’d have let the place sit, untouched, unwatched, for who knows how long, before I found the wherewithal to deal with it. So then, you must know, the only reason I’m here, now, at all, is because of you.”
Nora’s eyes were now huge in the half-light. “Ben—”
Ben stepped into her space, reached out, trapping her cheek in his palm.
She leaned into it, her eyes dropping half closed, her brow furrowing, before she seemed to gather herself, lifting her face free from his touch.
“Just... The reason I asked... I can’t...”
“I know,” he said, his voice gentle. He didn’t want to spook her. He wanted to kiss her, and hold her, and exalt her.
“It’s not you. You’re gorgeous. And successful. And so sure of yourself. While I’m... I’m stronger than I’m sounding right now. But it’s taken work to get here. I know I’m not nothing. I do. But I have nothing to offer. Apart from this. Being here. Helping you find a way back to Clancy.”
Ben reached out for her hand, turned it over so he could see her tattoo. Ran his thumb over the words: Footloose and fancy-free.
She believed it too. She’d have to, in order to engrave it into her skin. Problem was, seeing her curled up on the couch, by the fire, book in hand, all rugged up in a soft blanket, dogs at her feet, to Ben she’d looked...
She’d looked like home.
Ben tossed the book onto the nearby hall table.
When he looked back at her, the blanket was falling from her shoulders as she was all but vibrating.
“So, you think I’m gorgeous, do you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t become pen pals with just anyone, you know. There’s gotta be something in it for me.”
“Stop your sweet nothings,” he murmured, moving closer. “I might get ideas.”
Her hand lifted to rest against his chest. Right over the now thunderous beat of his heart. She was close enough he could happily have drowned in the clean tangy sweetness of her scent. In the silken fall of her hair.
Her eyes lifted heavily to his. Drugged with heat. Need.
“So we’re clear. It can’t mean anything,” she said with a half-hearted press of her hand.
Too late, thought Ben. It already does.
He kissed her and she threw herself into his arms. Bodily. Up on her tiptoes, her hands flung around his neck. Her eyes slammed closed and she kissed him back.
He felt the shudder of her breath. As if she’d heard the words he’d not been able to say and they’d loosened all kinds of things inside her. As if she needed him to hold her together, just as she’d been holding him together.
Bending, he slid an arm behind her knees and swept her off her feet, literally, and carried her up the stairs to her tower.
When he slid her gently, preciously, to the floor, she pushed him back onto her bed.
The old mattress bounced and shifted beneath his weight as Nora crawled on her knees towards him.
He let her think she was in control, till she was over the top of him, her hair sweeping the pillow beside him. Then with a growl he flipped her over, catching her laughter with a kiss that sent bursts of something that felt a hell of a lot like pure and simple joy right through him.
And then, after a day of trying to find something, an answer, a path, a plan, he gave up, gave in, and lost himself in her, all night long.
* * *
Nora was mindful to remember herself as they continued making their way through the house. Tidying. Cataloguing. Bagging. Stopping if Ben looked as if he might implode, such as when they happened upon Clancy’s well-thumbed collection of Men’s Health magazines. Or when Nora had found a box of cookbooks in the back of the pantry.
Nora started putting out feelers as to where she might end up next. And made sure to spend decent time on finalising her local client work, and posted plenty on her own Instagram page—fun, friendly shots for the Pizza Place, dark, moody, come-get-me vibes for Shenanigans, a most adorable picture of Ben nose to nose with Pie while tagging Playful Paws Puppy Rescue. Because how could she not?
And while, in that one inexplicably lovely moment, Ben had said “all I need is for you to be you,” she knew, in her heart of hearts, what they both needed was closure.
So Nora told stories from the last couple of years, trying, gently, to fill in the blanks, to build a bridge back to wherever things had fallen apart between Ben and his adopted grandmother.
In an immensely satisfying move, Ben started telling stories of his own. First there was the calculator he’d found on her bookshelves. He told her how he’d loved the thing so much he used to sleep with it at night. Then there was the fire poker with the missing tip. A fight between Luke Skywalker—Ben—and the Emperor—Clancy—was to blame for that one.
Then there was the subtle easing of his furrowed brow. The way he whistled when making their morning coffees while she buttered their toast. He even spent one whole day in his striped flannelette pyjamas. Man, he looked fine in those things; especially when he ditched the top and padded around barefoot in only the pants.
There was also the lack of hesitation in taking her hand and curling her in for a kiss any time they ended up in the same space for longer than a minute. The way he lingered when kissing the top of her head as he passed her in the kitchen, his arm slung around her shoulder, almost as if he were breathing her in.
A small part of her wondered if it all had more to do with her than the house, but there was no point in going down that path.
When night fell, they often ate in, Nora cooking, as she was good at it and loved the way he hummed when he ate the things she made. Ben, on the other hand, was no cook. “Like grandmother, like grandson,” she’d said, to which he’d smiled a little tightly. But it was still nice to discover he wasn’t brilliant at everything.
And while every day that Nora stayed was another day on the wrong side of leaving, every day also added more strands to the web from which she’d have to disentangle herself when she eventually did go.
She consoled herself with the fact that the memories she was making, and tucking carefully away, were the kind that would keep her warm for a long, long time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A KNOCK SOUNDED at the front door.
Nora looked up from her spot at her laptop by the window to find rain creating rivulets down the window. Huh, it was the first time she remembered seeing rain in weeks.
Ben—asleep and snoring on her bed, arms akimbo, big feet poking out the ends, which had made her inordinately happy for some bizarre reason she had no plan on going into—didn’t stir.
Another knock, and what sounded like a “Yoo-hoo!” floating up from downstairs, had Nora leaping from her chair, wrapping a cardigan around her shoulders, and padding down the stairs, Cutie and Pie in tow.
The dogs disappeared into the back of the house—Pie in search of a hidey hole, Cutie in cahoots with Pie—while Nora found a cacophony of older women piling into the foyer. Umbrellas dripping, shaking water droplets all over the floor, they forced Nora back up the stairs.
“Uh...ladies?” Nora said, gripping the railing.
Phyllis—the holder of the spare key, and Clancy’s oldest friend, as well as being the doctor who’d been with Nora during Clancy’s last days—gave Nora an apologetic smile. “Sorry, love, you weren’t answering the door. And there was rea
lly no stopping them.”
Beryl gave Nora a mutinous glare. “It was Clancy’s turn, you see.”
“So here we are!” Janet added, waving a book and a bottle of wine.
Sylvia followed. Then Carol. Misty came last, shut the door behind her and shooed everyone deeper into the house.
“Widows’ Book Club,” Nora realised.
“Yup,” said Misty. “Do you still have that bottle of Scotch Clancy opened last time we were here?”
Nora muttered, “A heads up might have been nice.”
Misty shrugged, rubbed her hands together, and grinned. “Where’s your dastardly landlord?”
It took all of Nora’s powers not to glance towards the stairs, where she’d left Ben, face down, naked atop her sheets.
“You okay, honey?” asked Beryl. “You look a little flushed.”
“I’m fine. Just great.” She angled herself behind the noisy group and hustled them into the sitting room, a couple already sitting on the couch on which she and Ben, just the night before, had—
The women stopped as one, eyes lifting, as if sensing a shimmer in the air, a rush of testosterone flowing through the house, just before Ben’s heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.
“Nora? I thought I heard—” Ben walked into the entrance to the sitting room still tugging his moss-coloured Henley T over his jeans.
“Oh, if it isn’t little Ben Hawthorne!” said Phyllis, breaking the loaded silence, her arms stretched out as if for a hug. “They said you were back but I didn’t believe it!”
Ben—whether by way of politeness, or habit, or instinct—held out his arms and gathered her in. “Hey, Dr Rand.”
Over the top of the doctor’s head, Ben’s gaze caught on Nora, eyebrows lifting at the situation in which he found himself. Nora simply shrugged. Not enough fairy dust in the world to help him now.
“That man ain’t little by any stretch of the imagination,” a dismembered voice whispered somewhere behind Nora.
“I hear that,” murmured another.
“Who is he?” asked the whisperer.
“Clancy’s grandson.”
“Oh. I thought they’d fallen out after he found out she was—”
“That’s the one.”
“Ladies!” said Phyllis, making Nora jump as her ears had been so attuned to the whispers behind her. She’d told herself Ben and Clancy’s past was none of her business. But clearly her curiosity was still piqued.
One arm still around Ben’s waist, Phyllis said, “Everyone, this is Ben, Clancy’s grandson.” With that she did introductions all round, finishing with Nora. “Nora, you know Ben? Of course, you must. You’re staying here. And he’s staying here.”
“Um, yep.”
Phyllis’s eyes opened a fraction wider before glancing towards the stairs. “And... I think it’s time we eat?”
Food. If anything was to distract a room full of octogenarian widow book-clubbers from possible sexual intrigue, it was food.
“Settle in. Leave it to me,” said Nora, most glad to slip out of the room, with all the unspoken questions hanging over her.
“I’ll help,” a deep voice rumbled behind her.
She made it into the kitchen before she turned to find Ben standing before her. The top buttons of his Henley were undone, a shadow of dark hair peeking out of the top. Her favourite jeans of his moulded to his strong legs. His feet were bare.
“Hi,” she said, her voice barely more than a breath.
“We have visitors.”
“The Widows’ Book Club. It’s Clancy’s turn to host.”
“Of course it is.” His face creased into a long, slow smile, still soft with sleep. With stubble covering his jaw he looked good. He looked happy.
“Teacups!” she said, her voice cracking. “Trays. Do you remember where Clancy kept the—?”
She turned to find Ben with a pair of Wedgwood platters in hand.
“It’s all right with you if they stay for a bit?”
“Of course,” he said, moving to kiss her, lightly, as he slid a hand under the centre of the tray of cookies she was holding and took it out of her hands. “I’ll take this in before they start eating the furniture. I’ve come to like that sofa and would hate to see it disappear.”
The flush flowing through her turned her up to eleven, even as he left her alone in the kitchen.
By the time she collected herself, and enough plates and napkins for the group, Ben had settled into the single armchair in front of the fire.
Nora perched on the edge of the sofa near the entrance, as glasses and cups were raised to Clancy. Then the Widows’ Book Club moved on to talking about the books they’d read: everything from self-help, to horror, to young adult romance.
Before long, the women began to creak and groan and rearrange themselves in their chairs, and start muttering about heading home, making her wonder if they’d come for tea and cake and books, or if they’d come to check out little Ben Hawthorne.
Nora, with Ben’s okay, told them to raid Clancy’s bookshelves, to take as many as they liked.
Phyllis gave her a hug on the way out. “Again, apologies. Lovely to see you looking so well though, love.”
Nora felt the tears burning the backs of her eyes all too late. “Thank you.”
“Bennett,” Janet said, her voice carrying. “Your falling out was the one great regret of Clancy’s life. Well, that and losing Gerald, of course.”
“Thank goodness for Nora,” said Beryl. “Gave your grandmother such joy in the last couple of years. A distraction from her broken heart.”
Nora glanced back to find Ben seemed to have developed a tic in his cheek muscle. He murmured something conciliatory, but Nora missed the details as Misty stepped in her path.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Nice book club.”
“Thanks?”
“Shall I stay and help clean up? Or do you have plans for the leftover whipped cream?” Misty tipped her head sideways, in Ben’s direction.
Nora held the front door open wide. “There was no whipped cream.”
“Check again,” said Misty, bringing a tube out of her bag and forcing Nora to take it.
Nora whipped the whipped cream behind her back as they turned to find Ben in the arch of the sitting room, arms crossed, big body holding up the wall.
“Being good, Hawthorne?” Misty asked.
Ben grinned. Nora swooned. Misty turned to Nora with a grin, blew her a kiss and was gone.
Nora slowly shut the door behind her, then turned, leant back on the wood, closed her eyes, and breathed out. She opened one eye, then the next, to find Ben still leaning in the doorway to the sitting room. Looking at her in a way she hadn’t seen before.
As if he were seeing her for the first time.
“They’re lovely,” she said, “but, gosh, they’re a whirlwind.”
“You held them hostage with muffins.”
“I did not. You’re making me sound like Little Red Riding Hood.”
He clicked his fingers at her as he followed her into the kitchen. “That’s exactly it. You head off into the woods, muffins in tow, looking after everyone—the widows, the local shopkeepers, Misty. Does it occur to them that you might need someone to bring muffins to you once in a while?”
“Why would I need muffins when I’m perfectly capable of making my own?” said Nora, wondering how they’d suddenly become so caught up on muffins.
Ben plucked a tea towel from the bench and tugged it through his fingers, again and again. “You’re missing the point.”
“Which is?”
Ben paused, as if considering whether or not to go on. Whatever he saw in her face decided it for him. “You wanted to help me make peace with Clancy. I want to make sure, when you leave, you don’t let the n
ext lot take advantage of you.”
Nora shot Ben a look. “Excuse me?”
Ben ran a hand over his face. “I’m going about this all wrong. It’s just, watching the dynamic in that room, watching you with Clancy’s friends, I wondered, and not for the first time, if Clancy treated you the same way.”
Nora coughed out a breath. Then, trying really hard to tap into her well of sunshine, she came up empty. Which meant the only place to turn was Survival Mode.
“If I’m Little Red Riding Hood, surely Clancy was the sweet old grandmother. So that only leaves the big bad wolf.”
“Come on, Nora. Clancy was no sweet old grandmother.”
Ben was right. Clancy was mad and obstinate and opinionated, but she balanced that out with the ferocity of her support. But what if...? Nora suddenly thought. What might make her take that support away?
“Why didn’t she tell you she was sick?”
Ben breathed out hard through his nose.
“Because you didn’t call her, right?”
“It was her turn to call me.”
“That’s your excuse. It was her turn? Who takes turns calling family? If she missed a call, why didn’t you reach out?”
“You don’t think I’ve asked myself the same thing every damn day since?”
As Ben’s words echoed in the kitchen, Nora’s ire dropped a good ten degrees.
This was Ben. Lovely Ben. Measured Ben. The man she... She trusted, and respected, and liked a hell of a lot. Like-liked. Was like-like-liked a thing? It should be.
“How did this go from muffins to a battle?” she asked.
Ben gave her a measured look, and said, “Clancy. That’s how.”
“I know you guys had issues, but Clancy was good to me. She didn’t take advantage of me. We found one another at the perfect time in our lives and I’d not change a single second of it. Not even those final weeks.”
“Do you have any idea how sweet you are?” said Ben, turning to face her.
“Pfft. I’m not sweet. I’m tough. I’m smart. I choose my actions. I choose my responses. I’m in charge.”
He tossed the tea towel to the bench and held out both hands as if about to hold her by the upper arms, but instead he hovered, just out of reach. “Why didn’t you get the alarm on the house sorted?”
Harlequin Romance September 2021 Box Set Page 44
