Then I was pressed against the side of my car, Ben pressed into me, one hand at my ass, one hand curved around my side at my breast, thumb stroking this close to ground zero, tongue in my mouth.
When he lifted his head (and after my eyes fluttered open), he said, “Welcome home, Frankie.”
I pressed deeper into him and smiled.
Ben smiled back, let me go, grabbed the handle of my case in one hand, my hand in his other, and he dragged us both up and into his house.
Ben left my bag in the kitchen and kept dragging me up to his bedroom.
But not before I saw it.
Right there, out in the open, for anyone to see.
A white sheet of paper, on the top in bold script, Francesca, and on the bottom in slashed scribbles, dates and times.
My schedule.
On Ben’s fridge.
Yes.
I was falling in love with Benny.
And fast.
* * * * *
I felt Ben get close to my back.
The good part about this was that he lifted up the hem of his tee that I was wearing and cupped my ass over my panties when he did it.
The bad part was him looking over my shoulder at what I was doing at his kitchen counter and promptly asking, “Tuna casserole? Seriously?”
I twisted my neck to look up at him and pointed out, “Your cupboards were bare, Benny. I had two options. Tuna casserole or lasagna made out of chicken and cream of mushroom soup.”
He’d moved his eyes from the casserole I was assembling to me as I spoke, and when I was done, he started.
“Drawer’s full of delivery menus.”
“And my life is full of eating out, room service, getting home late and doing it with takeout in my car. I wanna cook,” I replied.
Ben’s face got soft as I spoke and he muttered on a squeeze of my ass, “Whatever you want, baby.” Then he moved away, stating, “We’ll go to the market tomorrow.”
“Works for me,” I told the casserole.
It was after spending all day in bed with Benny.
Not true. He got up and made us sandwiches while I snoozed, since I’d gotten in my car at six in the morning, hightailed my ass up to Chicago, and, upon arrival, got laid thoroughly and energetically by Benny Bianchi. He came back to his bedroom with two sandwiches filled with salami, turkey, and provolone, covered in mayo and Dijon.
He also came up with three bags of chips.
Benny and his chips.
I loved that.
Now we’d surfaced. It was the dinner hour. Ben had arranged for the night off, so it was him and me.
And I was cooking.
I quit grating cheddar cheese into a bowl and opened the tub of Pringles. Then I poured the remains of the tub into the cheese.
“Pringles?” Ben asked, and I twisted my neck to see him lounging in nothing but his jeans at his kitchen table, beer in hand, eyes on me.
Benny Bianchi, lord of the manor, watching his woman cooking.
Why was that so hot?
“Pringles,” I replied, then turned back and grabbed the metal spoon to start stirring and scrunching. “We aren’t having tuna casserole. We’re having cheesy, crunchy, Pringle-topped tuna casserole á la Frankie.”
“I’da known about the crunchy top, I wouldn’t’ve bitched.”
I looked over my shoulder to see if he was giving me shit and grinned at him when I noted he was serious.
A man who appreciated a crunchy-topped tuna casserole.
I liked that.
The insanity in that was, I was thinking about tuna casserole, which meant I had officially entered woman-falling-in-love zone, a zone that made women crazy.
Since I was already crazy, this was a dangerous place for me to be.
As if reading my thoughts about being crazy, Ben said, “Three weeks.”
At first, I didn’t get him, so I looked back to what I was doing and asked, “What?”
“The answer to your ‘I don’t know.’”
That was when I got him.
I stopped smushing the Pringles and cheese and, spoon in hand, turned to Benny and asked, “Can we talk about that when the casserole is in the oven?”
“You get I’m into you?” he asked back crazily.
I thought about the four orgasms I’d had that day and answered slowly, “Uh…yeah.”
“Okay, you get that. Do you get that I’m into you?”
My breathing stopped coming easy.
Still, I managed to get out, “Yes, Benny.”
“Right. So you get that, then you’ll get that you came to an understanding about yourself that was meaningful. I’m into you, so whatever that was means something to me too. I gave you time to give it to me. I can give you another ten minutes, babe, what I’m askin’ is that you don’t make me.”
What he was saying was that when I freaked out on him, we nearly lost what we were enjoying right then, the hours before, and even apart, the weeks before that. I had no reason to give him that explained what I did to tear us apart. I hit upon part of that reason. And he needed that reason in order to have some hope that I was working on it so I wouldn’t do it again.
I’d made him wait.
He was done waiting.
Getting all that, I was powerless not to blurt, “No one gave a shit about where I was or what I did growin’ up.”
“That part I got, and in gettin’ it, realized I pretty much knew it already,” Ben replied.
I drew in a breath and turned back to the Pringles.
I went back to smushing but did it speaking.
“It was my life. I didn’t really think about it until you said that to me over the phone.”
“Okay,” he said when I stopped speaking. “Now, where does that lead you, cara?”
“It leads me to the fact that I don’t have the training to be good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“Anything,” I whispered to the bowl, then saw the pot with the noodles was near to boiling over, so I went to the stove and turned it down.
On my way back, I ran into Benny.
His hands came to my h*ps and I tipped my head back to look at him.
“You know that’s whacked, right?” he asked softly.
“Rationally, maybe. Crazy-Frankie, which is who I happen to be, no way.”
“Rewind,” he stated. “You found a man you fell in love with, shacked up with, and stood beside, even when he decided to get involved with the mob.”
I pressed my lips together.
Benny kept going.
“Through that, though, you lived clean. You stood beside him all the same.”
I unpressed my lips to remind him, “I already admitted to you I was givin’ up on Vinnie.”