Chapter Fourteen
Watching Elle with my family brings back so many memories I don’t know how to deal with them. My brothers all welcomed her, introducing her to their wives and kids. Mom sat with her for an hour talking about what I can only assume is her books. I didn’t know she’d read any of them, not sure how I feel about mom reading that kind of thing, but apparently she has.
I help dad at the grill, making more than enough food to feed an army. But this is my family. We practically ate them out of house and home when we were growing up.
Denny spent most of the afternoon sitting on the bench near the grill wearing sunglasses and complaining. He has the hangover from hell, but my nieces and nephews aren’t giving him a minute’s peace. Neither is Jedi, who Lewis picked up on his way here.
My dog keeps clambering up on him, only to be pushed off. Funny, Jedi thinks it’s a game. He is usually the one to entertain the kids, and they can’t understand why Uncle Denny is borderline catatonic and grumpy as hell. He’s run inside twice to puke. Every time he came back, mom whisper-shouted at him, making him cringe. He is being teased mercilessly by our older brothers .
After we ate enough to make us burst, everyone is sitting around chatting and drinking, having fun. Things are always light and easy at my parents’ house.
Jared keeps eyeing me and then looking at Elle. I grab another beer and glare at him.
“What?”
“She keeps looking over,” he tells me.
I turn just in time to see Elle look away, ducking her head slightly. Claire, Zach’s wife and Natalie, Lewis’s wife, are with her and they’re all laughing, though I’m sure it isn’t because she just got caught looking at me. However, I can see Elle’s blush from here. When I grin, Jared gives me a knowing look.
The weather has brightened up a lot, and it’s hot in my parents’ backyard. Elle did what I suggested, wearing layers, but even though she only has a thin strapped top on, she’s still in jeans and boots, though she has removed the boots and socks, so she is barefoot. I had been feeling it too in my jeans and sneakers, but had clothes here to change into. I know mom offered Elle some shorts, but she politely declined, saying she was okay.
“How’s the charming going?”
“I’m not doing that,” I groan. Not intentionally, at least. I’ve re-played that kiss in my head over and over since we got here. So much so, I had to go inside for a little while, on the pretense of getting changed. I’d stood in the en suite bathroom of the bedroom Jared and Lewis used to share and jacked off, thinking of her and what I wanted to do to her, to alleviate some of the pressure, and prevent embarrassing myself. A raging hard on is not something any of my brothers would let me live down.
I can’t fucking believe I was hiding in the bathroom, jerking my cock while my entire family is in the backyard and house. But that is what Elle is doing to me.
“Yeah, right,” Jared interrupts my thoughts.
“Not intentionally, anyway,” I relent .
“Meaning?” he raises his brows. “Although I can guess, I see the way the two of you are looking at each other. And don’t think I didn’t notice you disappear for a good ten minutes.”
“Fuck off,” I push him, but he just laughs. “I’m not gonna do anything underhand, Jared. She doesn’t deserve that. If she agrees to this deal, it’s going to be because she wants to. Not because I tricked her into it.”
“And what if she doesn’t?”
I shrug. It pains me to say it, but in the back of my mind, I guess I have been thinking about what I can do if the business is taken from under me. “The carpentry has been going pretty well.”
Jared frowns, but before he can get into lecturing me about Daniel’s men never giving up, I drop a punch into his gut and walk away, leaving him wheezing.
“Bennett Kyle Daniels.” Mom has eyes in the back of her head, I swear. “Stop hitting your brother.”
“Yeah Bennett ,” Jared mocks.
“Fuck you,” I whisper under my breath, because mom will kick my ass if she hears me cussing.
I glance over and see Elle watching me again. She has a smile on her face. She was around my family a lot growing up and always had enjoyed the dynamic between my brothers and me. At least until she lost Darren, then things changed. It just made her sad.
A little while later, when the sun starts to dip, Lewis and Natalie leave with their three kids. Denny disappeared inside a couple of hours earlier, saying he needed to sleep. Dad is inside too, watching the game with my other brother, Zach and his teenage son, Patrick.
Elle was with my mom, but I noticed her going to take a call when her cell rang about ten minutes ago. I look over at her again. She’s sitting on the Jack and Jill bench mom has for her and dad out here, two seats joined by a small table. Jedi is at her feet, and she is absently stroking his head .
Again, the dog is getting much more attention than me. I wonder who she is on the phone to, given it’s been a while. I keep one eye on her and one on my mom as she tells me about our grandmother, who is currently on a European trip with her two sisters. She sends mom postcards from every stop.
“You’re staring,” mom says, putting the postcards into a pile on the table and straightening all the edges so they’re in a perfect pile.
“No, I’m not.” I look back at her and sip from my beer bottle.
“Ben, I am not blind. Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I’m not doing anything,” I argue.
Mom gives me that knowing mom look, like she doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. “Is it really a good idea?”
“Not talking about this with you.”
“I just don’t want to see you hurt again,” she says mildly.
“Still not talking.” I give her a look. She gives me one right back. Dad always says we’re like two peas in a pod. “Mom, just let me handle this my way, okay?”
“If your way involves either one of you being hurt, you can see how I don’t want to just sit back and let it happen."
"One of us is going to get hurt no matter what," I tell her with a rueful smile. When she frowns in confusion, I explain. “The whole thing with George’s. It is always going to end badly, for one of us.”
“I understand that. I just want to know how far you’re willing to go to save it.”
“You been taking to Jared?” I narrow my eyes at her.
“I know my boys. Please, Ben. Just be careful. With her too, she’s suffered a lot.”
“I always am,” I tell her. That’s me. Mr Careful. She leaves me to it then and I sit silently and finish my beer, deliberately keeping my back to Elle. I’m clearly not as careful as I think, if everyone seems to know I’m staring.
“Hey. ”
I glance up as the woman herself touches my shoulder. She moves around and sits where my mom was. Jedi is right behind her. I give him a deadpan look. He whines a little and wisely plops himself by my feet this time. Elle laughs down at him.
“He misses his dad,” she tells me.
“Nah, he just knows who feeds him, and he’s probably hungry.” Elle rolls her eyes, making me laugh. “Important call?” I ask.
“Oh, that. No, it was just my researcher. I sent him some ideas through yesterday and he wanted to talk about a few things. I didn’t mean to go off and talk shop, but when I have these thoughts in my head, I need to get them out.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“Characters and… Scenarios.”
“Oh yeah,” I arch a brow. “Recently inspired?”
“Shut up,” she laughs. “And… Maybe,” she lowers her eyes bashfully.
I glance around and see for the first time since we got here, we’re alone in the backyard.
“Today was fun,” she says, drawing my eyes back to her.
“Which part?”
“Most of it,” she says, touching Grandma’s postcards, straightening the already straight pile. She sighs. “Okay, full disclosure.”
I wait, not sure what she is going to say and whether or not I’m going to like it.
“I had Kevin look into Day Away Fishing.”
“You could have just asked me,” I say. I have no idea why she did that. What was she going to find out that I couldn’t tell her?
“You have a… bias, I guess.”
“You mean you don’t trust me?”
“I didn’t say that, Ben. I’m just getting all the facts. It’s the way I work. If it helps,” she goes on before I can voice my opinion on that. “What I saw today made me change my focus. Initially, I just asked him to get me information on the company, you know, where it started, its growth, what it does for the communities it operates in.”
“So you were checking to see if it was going to ruin businesses here in Mystic, if they took over?” I can’t help the scowl forming. God, had I really read her wrong?
“Yes,” she shrugs. “How can I make an informed decision if me selling to them means that business here is going to suffer? And by that, I mean more than… What dad is threatening us with. I mean, is it going to hit the economy? Is it going to ruin the tourism trade? Stuff like that,” she is wringing her hands together now.
“So, what is the new focus?” I ask, holding her eyes, doing my best not to let the anger through.
“Are they all assholes destroying businesses for the power trip, or just the guy here in Mystic?”
“Well, I can tell you that,” I drawl. “The guy from the head office has been out to schmooze me. More than once.”
“Really? What’s he like?”
“He’s a prick.”
“So worse than an asshole.”
“Depends on how you look at it.”
“I’d rather not look at either,” her nose wrinkles and I bark out a stunned laugh.
I don’t know how she manages to quell the anger in a short back and forth, but she did.
“You can’t blame me for looking into it, though, right?”
“Guess not.”
“Ben, come on. Just like I’m letting you show me how to love Mystic again, I’m finding out about them. I have to look at it from all angles. And, well, it got me thinking.”
“Well, that’s dangerous.”
“Asshat.”
I roll my eyes. “Go on,” I wave a hand.
“You should come to New York. Like I suggested before. ”
“Sorry, what?” I lean back. “How’d you get from checking out Day Away to me coming to New York? What for? I don’t want to go to New York.” I stop talking and look at her with a knowing glare. “Ha, you think you’re clever.”
“I know I am,” she says smugly.
“Yeah, except it won’t prove anything. It’s not the same thing.”
Her mouth drops open, but she leans forward. “From my perspective, it is. It’s putting you out of your comfort zone, going somewhere you never thought you would ever have to go, only I’m not asking you to make a commitment that will change the course of your life.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard you say. Besides, I can’t do it even if I wanted to. I can’t leave the business with a man down. I don’t have enough staff for that.”
“You must have days off, Ben.”
“One, maybe.”
“I don’t believe you work six days a week. You weren’t working today.”
“I was,” I huff out.
“Oh, so this was work? All this?” she waves her hand around my parents’ back yard. There is a look of disappointment in her eyes.
I blow out a breath. She’s twisting my words. “Maybe it started that way…” My brow creases and I look down at Jedi, he whines, probably picking up on the tension that’s growing between us. “But it’s been kinda fun.”
“Could you sound anymore begrudging,” she arches a brow at me.
I laugh and pat Jedi’s head when he gets up and stretches, with a huge yawn.
“Maybe the point of the whole thing is for you to realize there is more to life,” Elle suggests. “Maybe us sharing a moment of each other’s lives shows us we’ve both been standing still and maybe it’s time to shake things up. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I’m wondering if that wasn’t dad’s plan all along .
"So, why shouldn’t I turn the tables? If you want me to experience it, to make the choice you want me to make, then you should return the favor. And yeah, you might have no intention of ever moving to New York,” she chuckles at that. “But you might like it. Why should I be the only one to try this? Fairs fair, Ben. Don’t you think?”
I hadn’t thought about any of this the way she has. Would Acer really be that devious or have seen anything that deeply? We didn’t talk about Elle much, but Acer kept a photograph of her in his office. It wasn’t in plain sight, but I knew it was there. He’d taken me under his wing when I started working there.
Could this really be about him trying to get us to mend fences? But why let this be easy on her? Why let her think her little idea to give me a glimpse into her life is a good one? I’m not gonna make it that easy.
I stare straight into her eyes, remaining completely still, then smile slowly. “Nope.”