by Misty Simon
I kept quiet because, as much as I hated this, it was also fascinating to hear how far some of these women would go to get to my Ben. Plus, he was still talking.
“Talk about performance anxiety. But all I could think about was you. None of those other women even made me slightly interested.” He looked back into my eyes, searching for something I hoped he’d find. “All I wanted was you, and you wouldn’t have me.”
“I—”
“No, let me get this all out. I don’t know what happened to us.” He grabbed my hands, looking like he was about to cry. I left them there for the moment.
“Thanks for not pulling away.” His mouth quirked up for a second but in a parody of his real smile. Toying with my ring finger, he said, “I know something’s been wrong lately. I finally figured out what you were talking about with all the women coming after me. I can’t believe what an ass I’ve been. It’s like I had blinders on, but the naked woman in my apartment and the way the receptionist went after me weren’t so different from before I met you.”
I yanked at my hands and sputtered, but he held on, leaning forward to kiss me into silence. It worked long enough for him to start talking again. This time I listened without interrupting.
“It’s like I have some huge sign on me that says ‘available.’ I’m being accosted by women I don’t even know. One woman said she was Thelma Boden’s great-grandniece and she was told to come get me because I was absolutely dying to meet her and ripe for the picking for marriage.”
“She told you that?” I grabbed his arm.
“Ow.” Maybe I grabbed a little too hard. “Yes, she told me that. Can you let go a little, please?”
“Oh, yeah, sure, sorry.”
He rubbed his arm, then ran a hand over his face. “She wouldn’t get off my lap and kept saying she knew I wanted her, and wouldn’t a cute little white fence look good around our front yard.”
“She didn’t.” I gasped and covered my mouth.
“She did. And all I could think about was your yard and how perfect it is, and how I’d hate to rein it in with a white fence.”
Awww. That was so sweet. But it didn’t answer what had started this whole thing and how to stop it, though I was beginning to see that maybe Ben hadn’t been the culprit at all. That could be a little troublesome when trying to get by without really apologizing for my own behavior over the last few days.
He leaned over toward me and put his head on my shoulder. “This last week has felt like a terrible dream. I’ve missed you so much, but I couldn’t figure out what was going on with you, or with me. Then I completely left you alone with this investigation, and now I’m going to have a headache to kill me in the morning. When did life get so screwed up?”
“I’m not sure. But it has something to do with mamas sending their babies to get you back from the interloper. Namely me. Martha heard several of the ladies talking, and it appears they have all decided you’re getting too serious with me. So they called all their unmarried girls under the age of forty and sicced them on you.” I stroked his spiky hair, then moved his head from my shoulder to the upper part of my chest.
He started humming, and a tingle shot straight through my stomach into my nether parts. We still had some more talking to do, but my body was telling me verbal understanding could wait for a little while longer. At least a half an hour.
My finger trailed down his chest and dipped down to his waistband without my permission. I didn’t try to tell it to stop its delicious wanderings because, really, what would be the point?
And then he looked up into my eyes from his perch on my shelf (read: breasts that catch any food I ever drop), and I was lost all over again.
Lots of great stuff followed. I won’t bore you with all of the touching, but there was one important moment when Ben’s gaze focused on my face, he cradled my head with his two hands, and gave me the softest, most lovely kiss before telling me there was only me in his world forever and to never forget it.
That thirty minutes went very fast, and we were still going at it forty-five minutes later. I was sweaty, rugburned, and nearly comatose, but I’d never felt better in my whole life.
I was also starving. Once we raided the refrigerator for some snacks, we retreated to the living room again to snuggle on the couch with my afghan over us. We’d put our clothes back on because you still never knew who might try to peek into my windows again.
“So,” Ben said, after swallowing a piece of cheddar cheese I’d sliced up to go with some Ritz crackers. Apparently it was a cracker kind of night. “I’m assuming you’re still trying to figure out the whole Horace thing and find the culprit.”
“You assume right, but I’m not getting much of anywhere.” I filled him in on my drive out to the near wild earlier and how frustrating it was to still not have anything to go on. He soothed me by feeding me another cracker and resting his back on my couch.
“Do you want my help?”
That he even had to ask made me aware we still had some issues to work out. Life was not all fancy and rosy now that we were finally back together. Life didn’t work that way.
I guess I hesitated too long, because he dragged his hand down his face again. “If you don’t want my help, I won’t be offended, but I really feel like we make a good team. I know I can be a big help in research, if you’ll give me a list of names you want delved into.”
“Nice use of delve.”
“Thank you.” The corner of his lip went up, and I almost got a full-fledged Ben smile for the first time in a long time.
“I do need your help,” I said, finally caving. I knew I couldn’t solve this all on my own, even with the other help I was receiving. Beyond that, I wanted him to help. I wanted him period.
“What can I do?” He sat forward with his elbows crooked over his knees and his head turned toward me. He was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in an afghan and a pair of sweats.
“Well, I could think of a thing or two.” I gave him my cheeky grin and waited.
“I’m sure you can, you naughty girl, and we’ll get to that in another ten or fifteen minutes when my stamina is back up. But for right now why don’t you take me through the whole thing again from the beginning, so I can get up to speed. I really do want to help, Ivy, and I think I may know where to start.”
Well, that made one of us.
After another round of questions and answers, and two more of the sexual variety, Ben and I finally fell into an exhausted sleep in my bed. Not so exhausted, though, that I didn’t register how nice it was to be back in his arms, and how safe and right my life felt with him next to me. It was pure bliss.
Until the phone rang at three a.m. No good calls come at this time of the morning. With a killer still on the loose, I feared this wasn’t going to be the exception to the rule.
“’Lo,” I said into the correct end of the receiver after turning it over a couple of times.
“I have information.”
I scrambled to sit up in bed and managed to nail Ben in the nads with my foot. I covered the talking part of the phone and apologized profusely while trying to follow what the raspy voice on the other end of the wire was saying. Not an easy task.
“Are you listening to me?” The caller.
“Yes, yes, I am. I’m sorry, I was sleeping.”
“No excuse.” There was a pause, and I feared the person had hung up on me and my inattentive self. But then he, or she, came back on the line. It was hard to tell gender since the voice was so low I could barely make out the words. “Do you have a pen?”
“Give me a sec.” I scrabbled through the bedside table and threw matches, a hairbrush, and a steamy romance novel to the floor before locating a Sharpie marker. “I’m ready. Shoot.”
“Bad choice of words.”
“Right. You’re right. I’m sorry.” I ground my teeth together.
“Now, write this down. Write it down exactly as I say it. Don’t miss a word.”
“Will do. I mean, I
won’t. I mean, okay. Go ahead.” By this time my brain cells were barely starting to function, so I wrote exactly what was said and didn’t ask any relevant questions before the caller hung up.
I stared at the black ink lining my arm from hand to elbow and wondered where to start. Ben nibbled on my fingers; I jerked them away. I didn’t want him to mess up all the words I’d painstakingly written down.
“Hey,” he said. “I didn’t dream we’d worked things out, did I? You’re not a figment of my overactive imagination, are you?”
“No, I’m not.” I kissed his mouth to let him know it was all real, and we got sidetracked for a nice little while. Once we both had our breath back, I asked if he was sporting a hangover.
“No, I think all your wonderful attention last night did the trick.” His leer popped out on his face. It had half its normal power, but he wasn’t as incapacitated as I’d thought he’d be. I’d had to do quite a bit of the work last night while he lay there, but it still happened. Ferreting out a killer was a whole different ball game than taking care of his sexy needs. He’d taken care of me often enough that one night for his pleasure worked fine for me.
But getting back to the task at hand. I sent him to do his techno-geeky, computer, private investigator thing. We needed info on all the players involved up to this point—Doris, Horace, Nathaniel, Lauren—and I even threw in Rhiannon, just in case. She might cook like an angel, but that didn’t mean she was one. I had no idea what I expected him to find, but anything would be better than what I had at this point, which was a handful of nothing.
****
I gave Bella until seven that morning to get out of bed and be moderately decent. For what I needed, I hoped she had a ton of coffee already.
The door was locked when I got there. I didn’t think the same rule as last night applied at this point, but I knocked anyway. If she and Jared were already up and having sex again this morning, I was going to check Bella’s back for Energizer batteries.
“I’m coming,” I heard her yell through the door. Jeez, I certainly hoped not.
The door flew open, and Bella stood in the doorway, wrapped tightly in a fluffy green robe with great big spotted cow slippers poking out under the hem. I did my best to muffle my giggle with a cough, but I failed miserably.
“Do not laugh.”
“I’m, uh, trying not to. I really am.” I snickered. “Give me a second.” I held my breath. I really didn’t want to piss her off when I was about to ask a favor, but cow slippers? On Bella? Too damn funny.
I lost the battle and guffawed.
She pulled her lapels tighter at her neck and stood to her full height, which was still shorter than me. She used her most dignified voice when she said, “I’ll have you know they were a Christmas present from Jared, and I love them. Thank you so very much.”
“Oh, that is so sweet. He got those for you? You needed a little whimsy in your life, and I’m so glad he’s giving it to you.” I smiled at her, then waited for her to smile back.
It didn’t take long. “All right, you big doof, come in.” She clasped her hands to her chest. “Aren’t they adorable, though? I really think he took a long time picking out the right ones. I love wearing them, they make me feel so warm and fuzzy.”
I loved her smile and the fact that Jared could put it there. It was wonderful to see her so happy and finally letting loose a little. She was always so in control of so many things. This bit of fun on her feet was exactly what she had needed. Bless Jared for knowing how and when to give it to her.
Bella stepped back to let me in from the cold. “I’m sure you’re not here to discuss my slippers, though.” We went into the kitchen, where coffee burbled into the pot on the counter. “Tell me what’s up and why you didn’t call me last night.”
Where to start? I decided on telling her about getting back together with Ben and thinking I might have actually figured out part of what was going on with him and the whole incredibly pushy town full of women. After one cup of coffee and several high-fives, my giggles got too loud and Bella tried to shush me.
“Jared’s still asleep, and you really don’t want to wake him and have him walk out here.” She smirked. “You’d get an eyeful, and then you’d be jealous.”
I laughed, as I think she intended, but when she continued to give me the secret smile I hustled through what I needed from her, overrode her protests, and begged and pleaded for her to do the horrendous task. Finally she agreed, after I promised to name any children I had after her.
I saw myself out as Bella continued to sit at the kitchen table with her third mug of coffee, muttering to herself.
I escaped just as I heard the back bedroom door creak open and Jared say, “Officer Jared is ready to do a cavity search, baby.”
Gad, I hoped he didn’t always refer to himself in third person. How weird is that? But then, if Bella was to be believed about form and technique, a little third person never hurt anybody.
****
“You never refer to yourself as Ben outside of identifying yourself when someone asks your name, do you?”
“Um, not that I know of. What do you mean? Like do I ever say, ‘Ben likes to have eggs for breakfast’? Because that would be weird.”
I laughed and hugged him. “You don’t even know how much that means to me.”
He squeezed my butt. “Enough to get you back into bed?”
Heat rose up my chest. “Ahem, maybe later.” I moved his hands to my waist and anchored them there with my own hands when he tried to move them back down to my derriere. “I can’t mess around when I sent Bella on her horrendous errand. It’s not exactly fair for me to be having a good time while I’ve consigned her to hell.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re making her give Doris a free spa day. I thought you didn’t like Horace. Why would you give his wife that much attention?”
I pulled out a brown paper bag from behind my back and shook it at him. “Because, Sherlock, I have a plan that will not fail.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“This is your plan?” Ben asked while I pulled on a shiny, black Morticia Addams wig and made him don a pair of glasses.
“I don’t know if anyone is watching Horace’s house, and we can’t be seen there. So, yes, this is my plan. No one ever answered my ad for a killer time with a lot of blow, and I’m out of options.”
“I can’t believe the paper let you print that ad in the first place. Why did you think it would work?”
“Do we have to get into all this right now? I never said it was a good idea. It was an idea at the time.” Yeesh, so not everything I did came up with stellar results. Sue me.
“I’m going to need you to dash into Martha’s and grab the keys from her without Horace seeing you. Can you do it?”
His face drew down into an affronted look, and I leaned over and kissed him. “Come on, big boy, I know I can always count on you, even if you are a babe magnet.”
“Let’s not talk about that anymore. Please.” He dropped his glasses-ed face in his hands and groaned. “I’m hoping that is all behind me now.”
“Yeah, right. I think you’ll have to take out your own ad in the paper to get them all to stop.”
“If it comes down to it...”
We pulled up in front of Martha’s house, and I sent him scurrying inside. I used the time he was gone to think about what kind of ad he could put in the paper to get the ladies to leave him alone. Not that it would necessarily work, but it did make the time fly by and gave me a little giggle to lighten the mood.
Ben jumped back into the car and said, “Go, go, go! Now!”
“I got it the first time.” I stepped on the gas as a curtain twitched at the front of the house. I caught a quick glance of a bad toupee a moment before I squealed away from the curb.
Getting to Horace’s house took less than ten minutes. I marveled again at the fact that the man wouldn’t go home when it wasn’t far away at all. The road had been completely smooth th
e whole way. There was no good reason why he had stayed at Martha’s. She’d probably be completely pissed when she knew for sure that Horace could have gone home without a single problem. Well, hopefully, I’d solve this whole thing, and then it wouldn’t matter one way or the other.
I maneuvered my vehicle into a spot two blocks down from Horace’s ranch-style house. It looked deserted, but I called Bella to make sure she was still with Doris before going in.
“What more could you possibly want from me?”
“Nice way to answer the phone,” I said.
“I have caller ID now, so I knew it was you. But you better not have a single other favor to ask me. In fact, I think you’re going to owe me for the rest of your life for this. Doris is not worth only the name of your future children.”
I snickered; she snarled. I contained myself before she reached through the phone and pulled my hair out by its roots.
“Sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I take this to mean she’s still there.”
“Yes. Yes, she is, and my sanity is going with each minute. Are you almost done doing whatever it is you’re doing?” She paused for a second, then came back with a suspicious voice. “You’re not making time with Ben are you? You better not be.”
“Please, Bella, I would not need you to watch over the Dragon Lady for me to have sex with Ben.”
“You should definitely be having sex with Ben, though.” No, Bella did not say that, but Bella did hear Ben say it and squawked in my ear right before I hung up on her.
“Thanks so much for that little bit of interruption.” I smacked him in the arm. “Now Bella’s going to be pissed at me after I already promised her the names of my children,” I growled.
“You promised to let Bella name our children without consulting me?”
I stared at the brown grass under my feet with studied concentration while I got my heartbeat back under control and away from galloping horse speed. Was he teasing? We were back together and back on track, he’d said before that he loved me, but the subject of children had never, ever come up.
