“Morning, Astaire! There’s donuts and coffee in the staff room,” Conrad, a fellow volunteer, tells me when I make my way across the lobby. “Help yourself.”
“Thanks, Con.” I acknowledge him a smile and nod, grab a few supplies from the cleaning closet, and head to the balcony to get started. My stomach is so tied in knots, I couldn’t eat if I tried.
I never should have gone to his place.
It was clearly a trap, a setup.
He knew exactly what he was doing luring me there under mysterious pretenses, apologizing like a perfect gentleman, then making his move when he was sure he had me where he needed me—open, vulnerable, confused by our mutual hypnotic attraction.
I’m not sure what came over me last night when I let him kiss me and then proceeded to jump his bones like some sex-famished lunatic, but when he told me he wanted to bend me over the couch, I suddenly felt more like an object than a human being.
His words catapulted me back into reality.
For some women, being objectified is a turn-on, but it’s never been my thing.
As a person who spent the first decade and a half of her life craving connections of any kind, I can’t do the casual sex thing.
And I sure as hell can’t do it with Bennett.
With his wolf-like glint and his mile-wide cruel streak, getting mixed up with him is the last thing I need. But I still can’t get over the fact that he had someone check into me.
The thought of Bennett Schoenbach taking the time from his busy schedule to solicit someone to look into my background …
He thinks about me. When we’re not together wonders about me. He wanted so badly to know more about me that he hired someone to do his leg work.
But why?
The man could have easily deleted our string of emails and left it at that.
After all, he made it clear that he had better things to do with his time. But he took it a step further. He went beyond what most people would do.
I must have intrigued him.
I’d be lying if I said he didn’t intrigue me.
There are layers upon layers beneath his galvanized façade.
More depth than he lets on.
He has more demons than a man should.
And for that reason, I need to let him go … because no good can come from this.
20
Bennett
“Bennett, aren’t you going to tell your brother and his wife ‘congratulations’?” My mother bats her mink lashes, hands cupped beneath her pointed chin as the four of us are seated beneath a crystal chandelier at Peridot Saturday morning.
Normally I’d have declined the invitation, but she lured me here under false pretenses, claiming she needed me to sign off on a corporate tax document—which she did.
Once I was finished, she asked me to join her for a “quick brunch.”
No sooner did I reluctantly oblige (due to the rumbling in my stomach and the convenience factor) did my brother and his wife mosey into the dining hall and sidle up to the table.
I’d been set up.
And for good reason.
The Schoenbach family is expanding.
Beth offers a warm smile. Errol clears his throat, gaze darting from the green hydrangea centerpiece to me and back.
“I’m sure it’s a bit of a shock,” Beth speaks to me but looks to her husband. “We weren’t expecting it to happen this quickly. The adoption agency said it could take years to get a healthy domestic infant.”
Her fuchsia lips teeter.
I don’t buy her excitement.
From the beginning of their marriage, she’s done everything she can to avoid starting a family with Errol.
First, there was the whole “we’re too young” excuse. Then it was “we have plenty of time.” When they hit thirty and apparently were in full-fledged “trying to conceive” mode, it was month after month of mysterious negative pregnancy tests. She claimed her doctor said they should wait two years before seeking the help of a fertility specialist.
Beth waited two years to the day. I imagine Errol was hounding her and she knew she was running out of excuses.
Errol, for reasons I’ve yet to comprehend, is dead set on having a family.
Beth (for reasons of her own, I presume) has never stopped taking her birth control pills.
I know this because in the middle of last year, they happened to be in town and there just so happened to be a mix up at the pharmacy. We share the same initials. The clerk at the counter grabbed her paper bag by mistake. I was halfway around the block when I realized the mistake and returned to swap out her Yasmin compact for my antirejection pills.
Not that she’s aware of any of this, but her secret is safe with me because I couldn’t give a shit less.
“It’s a boy,” Errol says. “Due the second week in May.”
I reach for my ice water.