Page 20 of The Bartender Special

Did she imagine it too?!

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” Jack replied.

And whatever it was that he had confirmed, it did a number on the current situation. Carol’s smile went megawatt bright, she actually clapped, and then she was nearly skipping off the porch with only one last look back.

“Great,” she called over her shoulder. “Then we'll see you in two hours! See you two lovebirds then!”

Carol became a flash of spandex and blond hair across the sidewalk, turning back toward Main Street. Benny stood stock still in his PJs.

When she was out of sight, Jack dropped his arm and sighed. He swiped the coffee cup from Benny's hand and moved past him into the house.

“I think Carol drugged me.”

“What?!”

Benny shut the door behind them and locked it—no one was going to catch him underestimating Carol—before scurrying after the man to the living room, no longer caring about his slapdash appearance.

Jack's attitude towards the woman in question was transforming into obvious frustration.

“One second I'm standing in line for my coffee, and the next she has me walking a million miles away with it in this damn humidity to see you.” Jack motioned around the room. “I had no idea in hell where you lived, and I know she knew that. But she just kept talking and walking and suddenly we were on your porch while my truck is still at the café. And—” He cut himself off and put his hands behind his head. “She had to have drugged me, right? I mean how else did she manage all of that when I’ve barely been awake for an hour?”

He made a face, brow furrowing.

Then he took a drink from his coffee and that brow found even more room to furrow.

“And now I can't even enjoy my coffee. I'm just too damn hot.”

The image of himself on a leash again flashed through Benny’s mind.

Talk about hot.

His need to understand the rest of the conversation between Jack and Carol outweighed the desire to explore all that that image implied.

“What is happening?” he finally broke, throwing his hands wide. “Why didn’t you stop her? Where are we supposed to be in two hours and why?”

Jack met his reaction with another loud one.

“Like I said, that woman is what happened! I woke up, went to get a coffee, and now we’re going to the damn Robertson cult compound in two hours.”

“What?!”

Apparently Benny’s reaction was too much and only one of them was entitled to properly have a moment. Jack waved a hand dismissively at him before moving to the fireplace and eyeing the framed pictures on the mantel.

Benny didn’t need confidence to intervene.

He was now running on rising panic.

He moved between Jack and the fireplace and nearly tripped over his own words.

“I was ready to tell her us dating was all a joke—a bad, dumb, stupid little joke—because this—us—isn’t going to work,” he hurried. “Fake dating is something that happens in the movies, it’s not decided on a whim behind some bar on a Wednesday afternoon! I-I appreciated the help then and the offer after but— Well, I didn’t need you to make couple plans with her two seconds after we sealed the deal!”

Benny worried that he’d overstepped the second he paused for air.

Jack’s eyes had narrowed, and he looked down his nose at Benny with an expression that didn’t seem any less annoyed than when he’d been sparring with Carol.

“I figured that’s what you might try and say, just like I’m figuring now that you haven’t actually been online yet, have you?” Jack pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and shook it. “Half the reason I needed this fancy sugar coffee was to give me the energy to ignore all of the messages I've been getting.”