15 JANIE #2
“Oh, stop,” I look out the window at the photographers and townspeople gawking across the street.
Two people I recognize from high school.
Jack’s old baseball coach. Another guy whose name I can’t place but I think he owns the main gas station.
Classic. They all look away suddenly. I almost chuckle at their audacity.
My gaze pans back to my billionaire to see him chugging water, face red.
“Will you quit? You’re overselling it. It’s not like you’ve never fed a woman a dessert. ”
“Not only that, I probably shouldn’t look so shaken at my own wife eye-fucking my brains out, yet, here we are,” he goes back to chugging. I laugh and he eyes me at the sound, finally putting his drink down. “Don’t do that again. I’ve yet to start my kickboxing.”
I laugh again and again, he beams at me, all smug and handsome.
No, not handsome this time.
I can admit it, this time the beam is smug and hot.
_____
“So, back to Mellman’s?”
“Yup, my lunch break is over,” I answer.
Benedict grunts, “It’s only been an hour and a half.”
“What! I’m only supposed to take an hour!”
He shifts to face me in the back of the car’s plush leather seat. “When will you relax? You’re a Clark now. You can take a whole day for lunch. Take a bloody week for lunch. Ellie would.”
“I’m not Ellie,” I say, suddenly irritated.
“I’m glad for it, she’s somehow both boring and annoying. Where’s the fire, darling? Because billionaire’s wives don’t rush, you know?”
I cock my head, “Maybe, but I care about my team. I…I joined in a time of crisis,” I explain.
I start to talk fast, thinking out loud.
“The stupid CFO is asking us to fix his mistakes, find missing money, save a whole product line, it’s just an equation I need to solve and I was made to solve problems. Seriously.
Any numbers problem, I can freaking solve it.
I just need more time. A couple people might get fired if we don’t figure it all out.
So, I’m not going to ditch them,” I sound a little panicked.
I feel panicked as I keep talking, “I can help. I can fix it. I know I can.”
“All right, Janelle, all right,” he says, softly putting a hand over mine on the seat.
I pull my hand away, “Don’t call me that.”
“All right.”
“Stop saying all right!” I yell, my eyes burning at his comforting tone.
“All right!” he yells back, smirking.
I smirk too, then stifle it. This is embarrassing.
“Sorry. I’m being intense, I know. Couldn’t solve my brother’s problem…all that. Again, pretty textbook. Misplaced guilt, duty, projecting, and so on.” I explain, but I say it for me. He didn’t need an explanation. He doesn’t seem confused or even concerned that I just came a tiny bit unglued.
“Sure. Just don’t snot all over the leather, please,” he says, handing me a tissue from the sideboard.
I smile, grateful for the comic relief.
We pull up to the office park side of Mellman’s huge factory.
“So, I’ll see you next week for some horrible, adorable fall activity?” I ask as the car stops.
Benedict frowns, “The house closes Friday, so…”
“You’ll be back then? Do you want to do something over the weekend? I’m sure we can find something. Even just strolling through the farmer’s market will make a pretty great photo.”
“Right, yeah, brilliant,” he says, leaning further back in his seat. He looks away and is…is he blushing?
“Benedict?”
“Ben.”
“Why are you acting weird?”
He huffs, “I’m not acting weird, you’re acting weird.”
“Real mature.”
“I’m too pretty to be—”
I whack him gently in the chest to cut him off. “Come on, tell me.”
“I suppose I…just expected you’d want to come by and see the house I bought y—er, us, er myself. The house I bought for myself for this ruse.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling bad. He did buy a house here, even though he’d rather be in the city. And he bought it just like that, like it was nothing, because I don’t want to leave my job or move away from Gran yet. “Sure, I can come by.”
“No need, it’s not as if we’ll really use it anyway. I can stay in the city, it’s just a quick drive over.”
“I can—”
“Stop. It’s done. Now, tell me what we’ll be doing next. You texted you had a good idea for a harvest fest something or other?”
“Yes, the first festival,” I say, deciding to just roll with him. He still seems off, but I tend to agree that the house is unnecessary and irrelevant. Why would he come back to town again in a couple days just for me to look at it? I go on, “And I hope you’re ready.”
“For the harvest?”
“For the town. The people—aaaallll the people. Up our butts with questions and selfies and barely any filters and even worse boundaries.”
I open the car door and give Nigel a wave in the rearview mirror.
“Ah, the townies! Lovely. And what will we be doing with them?”
I shudder, “Let’s just say I hope you’re good with a hot glue gun.”
As I shut the door I hear him call out, a little concerned, “I’m absolutely not!”
I sigh as I enter the first set of doors.
Brilliant.
Wait, what? Now I’m thinking in Benedict?! I mean, great.
Just freaking great. Because I’m not really crafty either.
I chuckle as I head in and see Gloria sit down, to cover the fact that she was just standing to peer at us—at Benedict—through the front windows.
Well, this is going to be interesting.