10. SOFIA
10
SOFIA
T he hotel was magical—the dining room was like something from a dream scene, and I don’t think I’d ever had such a good meal. I loved salmon, but Oh. My. God.
I didn’t know if I would ever be able to eat salmon the way I usually ate it again.
“I had dessert planned,” Ben said when he sat down again after Richie left. “We might as well have it without him.”
“Yeah? What did you have planned?” I sipped water with ice and fresh lemon. I didn’t want to drink too much wine. The wine had been incredible, but if I had too much of that, I was going to get loopy and it was only lunchtime.
Besides, with Ben I needed all my wits about me. I couldn’t afford to drink around him, or I would do something stupid.
Like openly drool over him.
Ben waved at the server, who reappeared a moment later with two plates of dessert.
“Chocolate cake with raspberry coulis,” Ben said and took his dessert fork, taking off the tip of his slice of cake. I did the same and when I put it in my mouth, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
The chocolate cake was decadent, dense, and moist with a deep cocoa flavor and topped with a drizzle of tart raspberry coulis that added a fresh contrast to the chocolate. Fresh raspberries had been added on top of the cake, with a dusting of powdered sugar.
I couldn’t help but groan with delight.
Ben looked up at me, surprised.
“Good?” he asked dryly.
“You have no idea,” I said. “I could take this cake to my room and make love to it.” I blushed the moment I said it. Elena and I said stuff like that all the time, but in front of Ben… he had a quizzical look as he studied me and took another bite of the cake.
“It’s good cake,” he said.
I chuckled. “Very eloquently said. Straight and to the point. I can see why you’re the one to spearhead the meetings.” I was teasing him, I knew, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe it was the wine that had gotten to me despite limiting myself. Or maybe it was his terseness that just awoke something in me—I wanted to draw him out of his shell.
At the very least, I wanted him to crack a smile.
He rolled his eyes.
The servers brought strong coffee to go with the cake. The coffee was very dark, and it had a smokey scent.
“Have you ever had French roast coffee?” Ben asked.
I shook my head and reached for the sugar.
“You don’t want to do that just yet,” he said. “It has a very smokey, bittersweet taste that balances out the sweetness of the chocolate. Try it as is before you add sugar.”
“I always add sugar.”
“So, try something different.” His eyes filled with something I struggled to put my finger on. It was determination, or competition, or… something .
I lifted my cup and breathed in the scent of the coffee. I got a lot of smokiness and char, that was for sure.
When I sipped it, it had a strong, bittersweet taste. It wasn’t quite to my liking but Ben wasn’t wrong about it countering the sweetness of the chocolate cake. Not that I ever had a problem with decadence.
When I swallowed the coffee, I pulled a face.
“It has a burned aftertaste.”
“It should,” Ben said. “The dark roasting process caramelizes the sugar in the beans. You should be getting hints of dark chocolate, caramel, maybe some spice.”
I didn’t get any of that. “You really know your coffee.”
Ben nodded. “It’s an art not a lot of people appreciate. Coffee can be paired with a lot of different things in the same way people pair wine.”
It was nice to see Ben like this—talking about something that interested him. Not only was he crawling out of his shell and talking to me like I was a human being, he came alive when he talked about something he cared about. His eyes became brighter, turning almost to the color of honey, and his face lit up.
His phone pinged, and when he glanced at the screen, his face clouded over again.
“It’s Alex. Asking about the meeting.” He turned his phone over. “I’ll reply to that later. He doesn’t need to know right now that I didn’t get the deal.”
“What do you mean, ‘you didn’t get the deal’? Richie said he was going to think about it.”
“That usually means no,” Ben pointed out, and all that brightness, the spark, the passion was gone. “I’ve been in this business long enough to know that when people say they need time to think they’re just taking the time to think of a way to let me down easy.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that was what he was trying to do. I mean, I had a look at your proposal and it’s financially sound for the long run. You did it all right and not investing in the project would be stupid.”
Richard Thompson had been the kind of polished rich guy who looked like he moved in the same circles as Ben, with his immaculate haircut, his graying beard and the suit that fit him like a glove. If he was the kind of person to dress like that, to live like that, then he would be the kind of person to invest like that, too.
Ben blinked at me, surprised. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be? I’m as invested in this project as you are.”
Ben only studied my face, his expression unreadable again. It was unnerving how quickly he could slip back behind that mask of his and hide everything he was thinking. It was such a well-practiced mask, he wore it with ease. That made me think that he never had a chance to just be himself.
That was sad.
“This project is as good for my name as it is for yours,” I elaborated. “We both have a lot riding on this, you know. I could get a raise, and I know that this kind of development will stick with a Blackwood name for decades, if not generations.”
Ben looked pleased. “Well, that’s the plan. I hope it will. If this thing actually goes through.”
“I still don’t see how it won’t,” I argued.
“Richard doesn’t give a shit about the money aspect and the long-term profitability, the sustainability about it all. He’s just focused on helping the people, doing what his wife would have done.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Isn’t the whole point of reviving the town to help the people?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, it’s job creation and whatever. But it’s also about money. If it’s not, it’s not good business, and Richard doesn’t seem to think that money matters. Charity is all well and good, but it doesn’t get anyone anywhere.”
I shook my head, shocked at his words. “You can’t mean that.”
“Okay, okay. Let me rephrase,” Ben said, holding up one hand in defense. “I’m not saying charity is bad. By all means, people who work to help others are great, and the world would be a horrible place if we didn’t have them. Hell, my sister-in-law is an environmental activist and all about non-profit, and she makes a hell of a lot of changes in the world. I don’t mean that at all.”
“Then what do you mean?” I was getting irritated with Ben. He was so set on everyone seeing his point of view that he refused to do the same and see what someone else was getting at.
“All I’m saying is that in this project, giving all our money away isn’t going to help anyone in the long term. Richard seems set on doing just that—helping everyone in any way he can. Sometimes, you have to establish a big business by putting a lot of money into that to make the differences everyone is so set on making.”
I understood what Ben was trying to say. Sort of. But God, he talked about money a lot.
“You’re missing the point,” I said.
“How?”
“I get what you’re trying to say about the money and focusing on the business aspect, but you’re set on ignoring the human side of it.”
“Because right now, the human side of it isn’t going to get this project up and running,” Ben countered.
“Yeah, but without the human side of it, the project wouldn’t exist in the first place.”
Ben opened his mouth to argue, sawed it without finding the words, and closed it again.
“You’re very much against Richie for being so set on helping people, but I think it’s admirable that he wants to keep the work his late wife did going. Besides, you’re so worried about the scale tipping too far to one side that you’re just asking for it to tip too far to the other side.”
Ben gasped. “Are you telling me I’m wrong?”
“Everyone is wrong once in a while, Ben. Even a Blackwood.”
I didn’t get the idea that anyone had ever talked to Ben like that. His eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted as he stared at me.
“You know you’re working for me, right?”
“I’m here as a partner on this project, not as someone you get to boss around,” I said firmly. “We’re here to make things work, and without understanding Richie’s outlook on human involvement and giving the people not only what they need but also what they want , nothing’s going to happen.”
Ben was getting angrier and angrier. He’d lowered the cup he’d been sipping his disgusting coffee from, and what was left of both our slices of cake remained untouched. The tension was thick in the room, our anger crackling around us like static.
I wasn’t sure who was more pissed off, but I wasn’t going to back down from Ben, no matter who and what he was in this world.
At the end of the day, just like anyone else out there, Ben was also human.
It seemed like he’d forgotten that or saw himself as some kind of Blackwood god or something.
“You’re not wrong,” Ben said, and for a moment, I felt the thrill of victory in this argument. “But without the money Blackwood Inc. brings to the company, it won’t matter how many people Richard wants to help. It won’t happen, either.”
“For someone with as much money as you have, you talk about it an awful lot,” I snapped. “Is that all that matters to you? Money?”
“Of course not,” Ben said, glancing around, angry.
There weren’t other patrons in the dining room, and I was glad about that.
“But since this project does lean heavily on financial input, money is a big factor and I’m not going to tiptoe around it like it doesn’t exist. You see, the difference between people like me and people like you is that money doesn’t scare me.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like you and people like me’?” I challenged.
“I mean someone at the top of the financial and social food chain and someone scraping around the bottom.”
I gasped. The audacity!
I stood up and pushed back the straight-backed chair. It would have been more dramatic if the chair had fallen back with how quickly I’d stood, but the chairs were too heavy.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I spat at him. “You think one night between the sheets gives you the right to talk to me like that, but I know who I am and what I’m doing.”
I grabbed my bag with my laptop that I’d brought along just in case and hoisted it onto my shoulder.
“That goes both ways, you know,” Ben said. “You don’t know me, either.”
“And the more I spend time with you, the more I realize I don’t really want to know more.”
I turned on my heel and marched away with the last word. Ben didn’t say something to my back or call me back to the table, and I kept walking.
I should have felt vindicated by how I’d snapped at him and put him in his place with my well-aimed insult there at the end.
But all I felt was sick.
The truth was that I did want to know him better. Even if he was a pain in my ass, even if he was the grumpiest man I’d ever met. There had been parts of him showing earlier that were nothing like the grumpy Blackwood brother I’d just left behind.
When I’d shown him how to make his wineglass sing.
And when he’d talked about coffee.
I’d caught a glimpse there of something more, something I had a feeling Ben Blackwood hid very far down.
That was the part I wanted to reach. That was the part I wanted to get to know. But if he was going to be an ass about it, then I wouldn’t dig through all the drama to get there.
I told myself that that was the way to look at things. I was justified.
And still, I felt like shit for saying what I had, and I wish I’d done things differently. But still, I had my pride and turning around to apologize now would just look pathetic.
My pride and my conscience warred with each other until I locked myself in my room and slid to the ground with my back against the door, allowing my pride to win out.
I ran over the argument in my mind again and again. The one thing that made what I’d said worse was Ben’s unbreakable poker face. The one he used to hide all the soft, bright parts of him that I’d seen flashes of. The one he used to keep the world out, I was guessing.
The one he’d used now to keep me out, too.