Flavor Of The Month (Kiss & Tell Book 2) (11 page)

He meowed caustically at her.

“Fine? How about Satan then?”

She made a face at him then put him back down. He followed her toward the back of the shop where she opened the door and put some dry food out for him in the alley. Efi had bought him a bowl with cat paws all over it.

As Reilly leaned against the open doorjamb and watched him eat, she wondered why she had never considered that the cat was black before. What did they say about black cats crossing your path?

She headed back inside and slammed the door. What did they say about single women with cats who couldn’t seem to get their shit together?

She scrubbed her hands then set about immersing herself in her work. At least that was one area of her life that never let her down.

“T
HE LINE WAS CUT
at the pole,” the electrician told Ben and Lance a little while later. “Clean cut, too. No mistaking this was done purposely.”

Ben rubbed the back of his neck. That didn’t make any sense. Who would want to cause him trouble?

“I ain’t gonna be able to fix it, either,” the electrician went on. “Edison’s gonna have to send someone out. That’s their territory. I mess with them, I get my license revoked.”

Ben thanked the man then left him to work out whatever business remained with Lance. He pushed open the door to his office then sank into his plush leather chair. Lord only knew when Edison would have someone out there. Given the remoteness of the restaurant, and the fact that the outage didn’t affect other nearby residents, he probably ranked pretty low on the priority list.

Then again, if anyone could figure something out, Lance could. He leaned forward and looked at the invoices on his desk. Invoices for the wrong orders. He flipped on his computer then entered the online ordering system. You needed to have the correct user-name and password in order to access their account. And only Ben, Lance and the accountant had access. Lance had gone through and changed both passwords the day before and his accountant had recommended they change them daily until they could clear up the problem.

He stared down at the log that outlined the change of orders. All appeared to be made from the restaurant computer. And all during the time either he or Lance or both of them had been there.

It didn’t make any sense.

He eyed the telephone receiver.

Of course, Reilly’s strange behavior when he called a little while ago didn’t make much sense, either.

He put his hand out and touched the receiver, then tapped on it and pulled his hand back. He couldn’t call her again. He’d look…desperate.

He grinned. Well, that was only fitting because he was increasingly becoming more desperate—namely to spend more time with Reilly.

When he’d awakened that morning to find her sweet body curved against his, he’d had an epiphany of sorts. Rather than the immediate panic that usually filled him when he woke up to find he’d spent the night with a woman, he’d felt…at peace. Whole somehow. And so damn happy that it had taken an hour to wipe the grin from his face.

Something like that had never happened to him before.

While the thought should have scared him, it didn’t. Instead, it made him even goofier still. Finally he was finding out what it meant to love somebody.

Not just somebody but Reilly Chudowski.

He now understood what his father had felt when he met his mother and married her three weeks later at an Elvis ceremony in Las Vegas.

How every last one of his friends had felt when they’d given up bachelorhood for the chance to wake up next to that one woman every morning.

How it felt to know that you’d found that one person in the entire world who simply got you.

The telephone rang. He sat up in his chair, hoping it would be Reilly. He picked it up on the second ring without looking at the caller ID display.

“Ben, baby, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you forever.”

Heidi Klutzenhoffer.

Where hearing from the leggy redhead would have made him happy just the week before, now it only made him feel…uncomfortable somehow. Now that he knew the difference between what he could feel for a woman, and what he had felt before, it didn’t matter that Heidi was every man’s wet dream. The only person who could do that for him anymore was Reilly.

“Hello, Heidi. I’m sorry you’ve had so much trouble getting through. There’s been a lot going on here lately.”

“And here I thought you were trying to avoid me,” she purred in a voice that had landed her some commercial voice-overs and had just gotten her a role in an upcoming Colin Farrell movie involving vampires. The sexy redhead would be the perfect foil for the latest Hollywood bad boy, especially if she were cast as one of the bloodsucking vampires.

Last Saturday had marked their third outing together. A match made in PR heaven. Literally. His publicist had met up with her publicist and all had been in agreement that since both of them were currently in between steadies it would help them to be seen together. So he’d taken her first to a charity event, then to a golf outing and finally to the feature film wrap party last Saturday night. Sure enough, on all three occasions they’d landed a photo in nearly every paper in L.A. and he even understood one of the national rags had picked up a shot or two. Of course the headline in the national rag nearly made him choke—something about the two of them adopting pets from the city pound to satisfy certain…sexual appetites—but as his publicist told him, only no publicity was bad publicity.

He absently scratched his chin. What was it that made his reaction to Heidi so different from his feelings for Reilly? Okay, so it didn’t help that on all three of their outings Heidi obsessed about the way she looked every other second, and demanded his attention on the offbeat seconds. She had a dry sense of humor and he suspected she was more intelligent than your average model. He had even enjoyed her company. On strictly a friendship level. He hadn’t slept with her on the first two occasions because he’d needed to get back to the restaurant—or had that been an excuse? And last Saturday…well, all night his mind had been on another woman he had just met and who had captivated him.

Who continued to captivate him.

He rubbed his brow line, wondering what Heidi wanted. “How could you ever think I would want to avoid a wildcat like you?”

She appeared to like the comparison and laughed throatily. “Well, then, I take it you’d be up for taking me to the Affleck-Damon premiere next weekend, then?”

The word “no” sat on the tip of his tongue. And remained there. It wouldn’t be proper etiquette to turn her down flat immediately after her proposal. He glanced at his calendar and noticed that the following weekend was Thanksgiving.

Of course. The beginning of the Christmas movie season. And seeing as the latest Ben Affleck and Matt Damon collaboration had the biggest box office buzz this year, the premiere would be well covered….

Reilly
…a voice whispered in his head.

“As luck would have it, I have something on my calendar for that night, Heidi,” he said.

“Oh, no!”

He dry washed his face, hating the sound of disappointment in her voice. It wasn’t her fault that she just didn’t do it for him. Maybe he should let her down a little more gently. “But let me call my publicist and see if there’s some way I can get out of it.”

“That sounds more like my Benny,” she purred.

Ben cringed. His only intention was to call his publicist and have him make his apologies to Heidi first thing tomorrow morning. There was no way in hell he was going to that premiere with her. Not when he could be spending the time with Reilly instead.

After talking about mundane things like the warm weather and the latest Hollywood gossip, he ended the call and was just about to put another in to his publicist when Lance appeared in the doorway. “You’re not going to believe this order….”

M
ALLORY’S WORDS
of warning against Ben haunted Reilly throughout the rest of the day. Of course it didn’t help that Layla had called at around three to repeat, albeit in a more civilized way, what Mall had said. Reilly was absently surprised that Jack hadn’t said anything when she’d called him and asked if he was available to make some deliveries for her in the morning because Tina had an early class. Then again, Jack wouldn’t say anything. Rather his words would be stamped all over his handsome face.

She should have hired the pimply kid she’d interviewed that afternoon for the delivery position who’d only had his license for a week. Anything would be better than having to see Jack’s frown of disapproval.

But, more than anything, the fact that it was half-past six and Ben was late lent a credence to Mallory’s words that Reilly was loathe to admit, but recognized just the same.

She was upstairs in her apartment, having showered and changed then worked herself into another sweat with all her pacing. Usually the movement helped her think. But not now.

She eyed the clock. She had said six, hadn’t she? Yes, she had. While everything else about the day emerged a chaotic blur, that part she remembered clear as a bell.

She’d asked him to come over at six.

And it was now six-thirty.

Damn.

She grabbed her apartment keys then slid into her flip-flops. If she was going to be restless, she might as well be restless downstairs where she could put it to good use. She had an order for tomorrow afternoon that she could get a head start on. Then there was the mess she’d left because she had finished up later than she had anticipated. What did Ben think? That she didn’t have anything better to do than sit around and wait for him? She was a busy woman. A busy businesswoman with lots to fill her time with. She wasn’t about to sit around waiting for whenever he could spare her a minute.

She reached for the door handle at the same time someone knocked on the door.

She jumped back to stare at it. Okay, that was creepy.

In fact, there were more than a few things that gave her the creeps lately.

A quick clearing of her throat and then, “Come in.”

Her visitor—she hoped it was Ben—tried the handle with no luck. Reilly had forgotten she had locked it.

She stuck her thumbnail between her teeth. Was it a sign, maybe? That perhaps she should leave Ben on the other side of the door and tell him she couldn’t see him again?

She rolled her eyes as she stared at where Luis was winding around her ankles. What was it with her and signs lately? She wasn’t superstitious. She wasn’t even particularly religious.

She unlocked the door then allowed him to open it.
I’m not a doormat, I’m not a doormat,
she repeated to herself.

But the moment she saw him she felt like lying down in front of him and inviting him to wipe his feet on her. That was her physical reaction. Then she noticed his drawn look, his five o’clock shadow, and just felt concern.

“You look awful,” she said.

He gave her a half smile. “Yeah, well, I feel pretty awful, so why shouldn’t I look it?”

A small voice in her head demanded to know why he was late, why he hadn’t had the courtesy to call and who in the hell that Heidi woman was anyway. But it wasn’t her voice. It was Mallory’s.

Her voice? It made her invite him to sit down, made her go into the kitchen for an ice-cold beer, then sit down next to him.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said after he’d taken a healthy sip. “I would have called, but by the time I realized I was so late I was almost here.”

“You don’t have to explain,” she said, cringing the instant the words were out of her mouth.

He offered up a genuine closed mouth smile. “Yes, I do.”

“Okay, yes, you do.”

“It’s just…”

She waited for him to continue, resisting the urge to gesture with her hand in a prompting manner. Like a wheel regaining momentum.

Then it struck her. The reason he was late. The reason behind his not looking at her the way he usually did.

Oh, God. He was going to dump her.

“It’s just…” he said again.

“It’s Heidi, isn’t it?” Reilly took his beer and downed half of it. She realized he was watching her and she smiled foolishly then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

She had
not
just done that!

“Heidi? Oh, you must mean Heidi Klutzenhoffer. No, this isn’t about her. Heidi was nothing but an occasional appearance companion. Nothing more.”

“Was? As in past tense?”

“Was.” He chuckled quietly. “Looks like you had the kind of day I did.”

“Depends on what kind of day you had,” she said carefully.

Well, chalk one up for Mallory. She would get a chance to tell her “I told you so” sooner than even Reilly had believed. Ben was about to dump her. Then again, could she really blame him? Here he was one of the most eligible bachelors in L.A. and this morning she had raced from his place like a bat out of hell with barely a wave after having had one of the most incredible nights of her life. Then to top all that off she’d pretended he was a client when he called later because Mallory had been in the shop and she hadn’t wanted her friend to know she was talking to him, even though Mall had figured it out anyway.

And now she was an out-and-out doormat just waiting to be replaced by a newer model.

“This was one of the most difficult days of my life,” Ben said.

Reilly’s throat closed and she had to force herself not to reach for his beer again and drain the rest of it.

“For the first time in seven years I had to close the doors to Benardo’s Hideaway due to circumstances beyond my control.”

Reilly blinked once. Twice. Her heart beat an unsteady rhythm in her chest.

He wasn’t telling her to get lost.

He was sharing a difficult moment with her.

“Is that all?” she blurted.

Ben blinked at her.

Reilly smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It has been a difficult day for me, too. Although not as difficult as your day, apparently.” She rested her hand on his shoulder, feeling his taut muscles beneath. She began to knead them. “What happened?” she asked.

He grinned at her. Not a half-assed attempt, but a full-out Ben Kane knee-wobbler. Reilly caught her breath. “You first.”

She shook her head. “No. I didn’t have to close shop. You had to close your restaurant.” She worked her fingers along the ridge of his neck. “Is it because of the electricity?”

“No. Yes.” He sighed and sank down farther into the cushions. “The power’s still out, but that’s not the reason I closed the doors.” She watched as he closed his eyes. Was it her, or was he relaxing under the simple power of her touch.

Oh, she liked this.

She scooted a little closer so she could better work the muscles of his left shoulder.