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Chapter Eleven
Tristan
“Is there anything else I need to attend to before dinner?” I asked Ben.
“Not that I can see,” he replied.
I closed the files I had been looking at and stared off into the distance for a moment, contemplating the unusual situation I found myself in. I was afraid to have dinner at Albero’s nowadays, and that fear had everything to do with a certain Grace Kelly lookalike.
“Something the matter?” Ben asked, breaking through my haze of self-pity.
“No,” I said abruptly.
One of his eyebrows rose slightly, and I noticed one corner of his mouth turn up, as well. “What?” I demanded, with irritation.
“You’ve been a bad mood this last week,” he observed, completely indifferent to how rude I was being. Instead of shaming me into behaving, it made me feel as though I had the license to do so.
“I’m working around the clock,” I pointed out. “If you worked like I do, you would be, too.”
Ben narrowed his eyes at me. “I do work like you do,” he said. “In fact, I would argue that some days, I work harder than you.”
“Ha!” I said sarcastically.
“Scoff all you want,” he said, with a shrug. “It’s true. And I’d like to point out that despite my work ethic, I don’t make the kind of money that you do. So logically you should be happy all the time.”
“Not everything is about money, Benjamin,” I said, using his full name purely because I knew he hated it.
Ben rolled his eyes at my childish attempts to get a rise out of him. “Then why are you working yourself to the bone?” he demanded. “If money isn’t everything, why are you chasing it?”
“What are you?” I asked. “My shrink?”
“I don’t mind taking on the job,” he said sheepishly. “Provided I get paid for it.”
I cocked my head to the side and surveyed Ben carefully. “You’re an honest guy, aren’t you, Ben?”
“I’d like to think so, yes,” he nodded.
“Would you say that the two of us are friends?”
I could tell immediately that the question caught him by surprise. He processed it for a moment before he spoke. “Honestly… I think it’s hard to maintain a friendship when one person is providing the other’s salary.”
“Is that a no?” I asked bluntly.
“Not necessarily.”
I frowned. “Sounds like a no.”
“There are different kinds of friendships,” he said. “I think ours is simply…non-traditional.”
“Okay then, as my friend, I’m going to ask you a few questions,” I said. “And I expect you to answer them honestly and then keep my confidences.”
He rolled his eyes. “Do these questions have anything to do with Molly?”
I paused for a second, wondering if Ben knew me too well or if I was just that transparent. I decided I didn’t want to know. “Maybe,” I said, and then I corrected myself immediately. “Okay, fine; they are about Molly.”
“Go ahead.” Ben sounded bored already.
I ignored him. “Has she brought any of her dates up to her room with her after dinner?”
