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It wasn’t the only thing I wanted to hold against him, which was exactly how I knew this was a bad idea. A terrible idea, in fact, but somehow I found myself taking one and then two steps back and motioning him inside.
“No need. Friends don’t know everything about each other. Right?”
“Right,” he said on a snort and stepped inside. “How about a tour?”
“You only get a tour if you show up during daylight hours with an invite.” Ben’s laughter was deep, and it ricocheted through my already tense body. “Let’s eat.”
“I could eat, then again I can always eat. My mom says I have a wooden leg. Haven’t found it yet, but it’s the perfect excuse to eat my weight in pizza.” His words made me realize that while I’d been crushing on Ben for more than a year, I didn’t know much about him outside of school.
“Are you and your parents close?”
“My dad and I were very close, but he passed away a long time ago and Mom, well she’s a meddling mother so yeah, we’re close.” The affection in his voice was undeniable, which only made him more appealing.
“Meddling as in matchmaking?”
He barked out a laugh and nodded. “Exactly. She’s the one who bought the Time for Love gift certificate because, ‘it’s time’,” he said in a voice I assumed was meant to be hers. “It doesn’t matter that my younger sisters, twins, have five kids between them, all that matters is that I don’t have any, and no good prospects.”
“Sounds like she just wants to see you happy.”
“Of course she does, but when and where that happiness comes, and with whom, is my decision.” He shrugged it off, and it sounded like a conversation they’d had more than a few times. “What about you, close with your family?”
“Nope. My dad left when I was pretty young, and he was mostly absent from my life. My mama is gone, but when she was alive our relationship was…complicated.” Mama was the last thing I wanted to talk about so I grabbed plates, a wine glass for him and a bottle of beer for me. “My mama was very traditional she would call it, I’d call it old school.”
“Is her death what brought you to Texas?”
I looked up from my slice of pizza, surprised. “Who says I’m not from Texas?”
Ben laughed and pointed at me. “That thick Mississippi twang does.”
“Guilty.”
“Do you miss it?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess, sure. I try not to think about it too much since my life is here now. But when homesickness strikes, I go in search of good ol’ soul food, and when times are really desperate, I try to make it myself.”
“Not a proficient cook, Ms. Callahan?” Why did his voice have to be so smooth and buttery when he called me that? It was a sound a girl could get used to hearing, but not from a friend.
“Not really, no. Disappointed?”
He shrugged and leaned back in his chair, pizza grease making his lips slick and noticeable. Very noticeable. “Kind of. I love to drop by when there’s food cooking.”
I laughed at his honesty. “Me too, but Mara doesn’t really cook. She bakes, and it is nice to stop by when bread or cookies are fresh from the oven.”
Ben stared at me for a long moment with a smile, and I wondered what he was thinking, but before I could muster up the courage to ask, he lifted his wine glass and his green eyes sparkled. “To finding common ground.”
I lifted my beer with a laugh. “To being ineffective home cooks and not starving.”
“Cheers.” His gaze heated and held mine until my body overheated and my nipples beaded, forcing me to look away. Sometime later we’d finished off half the pizza and all of the wings and Ben smiled at me. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I shrugged and stood, grabbing both plates. “The food was delicious and the company was all right too.”
“Just all right?”
I nodded and kept my back to Ben so he couldn’t see the smile on my face, because, sadly, this was probably the best date I’d had in a long time. Too long, in fact. “Acceptable.”
His deep rumbling laugh echoed in the kitchen and my smile grew. “Now who’s lying?”
His voice, so close, along with the heat of his body, drew a shocked gasp from me. I turned with a look of absolute innocence on my face. “Are you calling me a liar? How very un-Texan of you, Principal Rutherford.”
He laughed again and shook his head. “I see what you’re doing.”
“Yeah?” I blinked innocently. “What am I doing?”
“Denying this, the heat and the chemistry between us. What I want to know is, why?”
Self-preservation. “Because I’m not entirely sure of your motives, Ben.”
He took a step closer and put his hands on my waist. “My motives are innocent, I swear Joss.” His thumbs hooked into the waistband of my yoga pants and slid back and forth along the skin there.
