He couldn’t argue with it. She’d learned to be a decent sous chef in ingredient prep, but entirely under his direction. She just didn't have the soul of a cook, but that was fine, and he told her so now.
“It’s kind of a relief that you’re bad at something else. Because you’re damn near perfect. Just like that woman said when I was with Rachel. And she wasn’t just talking about how beautiful you are.”
Marcie’s eyes narrowed. “Something else? What else am I bad at?”
He should have left that word out, he knew he should have, but he had to give her an honest answer. “Listening to what’s good for you.”
“I listen.” She stepped closer, laying her palm on his chest once more. He saw the steel in the set of her mouth. “And what’s good for me is something just the right side of bad.”
He gripped her face in fingers that held her a little too hard. “Do you ever behave?”
“No.” She lifted her chin in his grasp. He could see the challenge, and she knew what that did to him.
“Keep goading, little girl,” he muttered. “You’ll know what it feels like to be caned two nights in a row.”
Something he’d never do, because it would break those welts open on her backside and be too much, but she didn’t need to know that. There were other things he could do to punish her, things that captured his mind way too urgently for their public environment.
Hell, he’d meant what he said in her ear. She had him looking for a bathroom, a broom closet, a freaking alley. Yeah, he could see how that would go. Soon as he had her bent over a sturdy surface, Dana would pop up like a jack-in-the-box and say something like, “I need to buy this. Can I grab your credit card?” Sure. It’s in the pocket of my jeans, halfway off my ass.
His lips twisted. Marcie must have seen the flicker of humor, because her brown eyes glinted with a reflection of it. She slid her arms around him, nestling her head under his chin. He sighed when she pressed her lips to the base of his throat. “Sorry,” she whispered. “I should have asked if it was okay to do this, but I just love it when you hold me.”
She was so young sometimes. So impulsive, so open. Those very qualities somehow leapfrogged her over his walls of jaded cynicism, so he could feel and act almost the same way. Closing his arms around her, he inhaled her scent once again. He might just stretch her out on the bed tonight and move over her flesh an inch at a time, detecting the lingering scents of all the places they’d visited today. This store. The candy store. The limo. Her soaps and lotions. That unique and addictive honey between her legs, the intoxicating scent of her aroused sex. Himself, because she always bore his scent in some way.
“You are spoiled rotten,” he said.
“Whose fault would that be?” Pulling back and giving him an enchanting smile, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and left his arms, sashaying across the aisles to rejoin Rachel.
As he moved to follow them, his attention was caught by something else. Cass was buying her mixer, telling the cashier their driver would be coming in to get it after she texted Max. Ben came to the counter. “This isn’t for a wedding,” he said mildly. “Because I already have a mixer.”
Yeah, he was doing a return volley on that earlier comment about whoever the groom might be. Ease it back, he warned himself. “You all are supposed to be letting me foot the bill today,” he reminded her.
“No,” Cass said, signing the receipt and handing it back to the cashier. She met his gaze. “Not for me.”
He deserved the ball busting, so he’d taken the previous comment with what he thought was good grace, but the implication here had his hackles up. Did Cass think this outing was about buying her off? Because it wasn’t, in any way.
Savannah had come to Cass’s elbow, as if she thought her support might be needed. Her expression said this wasn’t the place or the time. That Ben needed to hold his temper and figure out what was going on. What Cass needed from him to fix it.
He knew that. Yet he couldn’t deny the earlier comment had struck a nerve. Yeah, he hadn’t gone down on one knee or wrapped his head around the whole marriage deal, but Marcie was his. He was going to be there for her, take care of her, no matter what. For Cass to imply otherwise? That dog didn’t hunt.
“I’ll text Max to come pick it up,” he said. “If you’re okay with me handling that.”
He tried to keep the edge out of his tone, probably unsuccessfully, but Cass nodded. “Thank you. I’d appreciate it.” She put enough warmth in her voice to ease the tension. Cass was a superb corporate negotiator, and she knew how to flip a room with merely the right selection of words and tone. With that and the brief meeting of their gazes, she told him she didn’t want trouble either. She just didn’t want him to buy her anything.
He wondered how she’d feel about the two-thousand-dollar painting he’d just bought her. He’d let Marcie handle that when it arrived at Cass’s door. Probably by courier. A man knew when it was good to be prudently absent.
As they emerged from Ingredients, Rachel pointed out Baby Mine, a store for all things short people, and they headed that way. Ben took a moment to help Max put the new bags and Savannah and Cass’s boxed appliances in the car.
As Max straightened and closed the trunk, he watched the women, descending on the store like an army at the quickstep. “You want a protein bar, to help keep up your energy?”
“I don’t need help keeping anything up, thank you,” Ben retorted. At Max’s grin, he added, “You know, Jon’s been looking at auto-drive cars. You may be obsolete before you know it.”
“Good. Can focus on my fishing.”
“The first time Janet lets you clean a stinky fish on her Southern Living style back porch, I want video.”
Ben had expected the suggestion Max might be a regular visitor to Janet’s home would get him to clam up and retreat. This time he fired a decent return volley, which made Ben wonder if things were progressing faster than they knew.
“Love to chat, but I have to go sit in the car and nap. While listening to the game.” Max nodded toward the baby store. “You better hurry and catch up. They might need your opinion on baby rattles.”
The former Navy SEAL laughed and ducked Ben’s feigned punch. Reviewing a number of ways to take his revenge on the smug bastard, Ben headed for Baby Mine. He quickened his step so that he could hold the door open for an Asian mother coming out with a stroller. She had a phone tucked under her ear and a Louis Vuitton bag over the other shoulder he expected any of his women would have mugged her for. It looked big enough to be doubling as a very stylish diaper bag.
She nodded a harried thanks, but smiled as he made a face at the monument to cuteness in the conveyance, a toddler with silky black pigtails and laughing eyes who waved her drool-sticky fist at him.