Over the past three weeks, this had become our gig. He worked when I was not working. I worked when he was. This meant brief snatches of conversation when I had time at work and phone calls on weekends, if we were lucky.
But Ben knew my travel schedule because he demanded to know it.
Of course, thus ensued me explaining to him that if he had email, I could easily email my schedule to him rather than reciting it over the phone while he wrote it down. He replied that he didn’t get to hear my voice through an email so he’d take the cramp in his hand so he could listen to me talk.
I quit giving him shit after that.
Now Benny expected me to phone when I boarded before takeoff and phone again when I landed. He didn’t mind me phoning again when I got home or to my hotel, but he didn’t have the schedule memorized to that point or his phone on him so he could take my call, even if he was making a pie. Which he always did when he knew I was hitting a flight and when he knew when the wheels would hit land.
I loved this.
I loved it because I loved connecting with Benny any way I could. I loved it because Benny wanted it. I loved it because when he demanded it, I knew he was demanding it because I’d opened the floodgates to him doing something like that when I told him I was glad he gave a shit that I was safe. I loved it that he had been holding it back to spring on me when we were more solid, and doing that with a mind to the woman he knew me to be.
Last, I loved the fact that I was falling in love from (mostly) afar with Benny Bianchi.
I was doing it so fast, from my previous experience after Ben took me home from the hospital, I knew if it wasn’t from afar, it would happen a lot quicker.
Maybe instantly.
“You’ve spotted the marshal?” Ben asked, taking me from my thoughts.
“Yep. He’s hot.” I felt unhappy vibes from Ben over the phone, which made me smile but they also made me say, “You’re hotter, obviously.”
“A save, but not a good one.”
“Whatever,” I muttered.
“Call me when you get home,” he ordered.
“You got it, capo.”
“And call me before you leave in the morning.”
“You’re on my speed dial.”
“And bring that nightie, the purple one with the pink at the tits. I’m feeling nostalgic.”
That order caused a lovely ripple and me to hiss into my phone, “Ben, don’t turn me on when I’m fifteen minutes away from thirty thousand feet.”
He didn’t miss a beat as he replied, “First chance we got, vacation, plane ride, mile-high club.”
God!
Benny.
“Are you listening to me?” I snapped.
His voice was nothing but sweet when he whispered, “Get home safe, Frankie.”
I huffed out a breath, not enjoying his increasingly utilized tactic of quelling my attitude by bringing out all the awesomeness of Benny. Even so, I had not yet figured out recourse other than to have my attitude quelled.
Falling in love with Benny was knocking me off my game.
Whatever.
“I will, honey,” I told him. “And I’ll call.”
“Right. Later, cara.”
“Later, Benny.”
He disconnected.
I eyed the hot guy, who perhaps only in my fertile imagination was the air marshal, and put my phone into flight mode.
* * * * *
I parked my Z in the space off the alley at the back of Benny’s place.
I grabbed my big suitcase out of the back, dropped it to its rollers, extended the handle, and barely cleared the back of my car before Ben was there.
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 hips 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.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” he returned.
“Do we have to go through this again?”
“I don’t know, do we?”
“She bailed,” I declared, and Ben’s brows drew together.
“Come again?”
“Ma. She bailed,” I told him. “Repeatedly. On Dad. On her other husbands. Boyfriends. It wasn’t the same, but it was in a prolonged way, a very prolonged way, bailin’ on her kids.”
“Keep goin’,” he urged.
“Same with Dad. Women in, women out.”
“And?”
“No connections. No roots. Nothin’ to drag them down.”
“I’m tryin’, honey, but I’m not followin’.”
“That’s what I learned. That’s how I was raised. That’s what I know.”
“Fuck,” he whispered, getting it.
“Yeah,” I replied.
He put it out there verbally, “So that’s why you’re kickin’ your own ass, thinkin’ before he was killed of givin’ up on Vinnie.”
“I didn’t want to be like them.”
“And you think you’ll do the same to me?”
I shook my head but said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You need to reason that out, honey.”
I didn’t know what he meant, so I asked, “What?”
“First, your folks, they were shit parents. I know they’re yours, babe, but evidence suggests they’re straight-up shit human beings.”
“Ben—” I started, but he was not done and he talked over me.
“Heard from your ma or your dad since you got out of the hospital?”
“Well, Ma phoned to ask me to her wedding.”
His mouth got tight but he still managed to say, “Classic.”
“It’s who she is,” I informed him.
“Yeah, and the fuck of it is, you got no choice but to accept that. You can cut her out or you can take her as she comes. She was my ma, she’d have seen the back of me a long fuckin’ time ago. What does that say about you, Frankie?”
His words penetrated, they did it deep, and I went completely still.
Ben, eyes on me, hands on me, caught it.
That was why he said, “Right.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, something fluttering in my chest.
“Right,” he repeated. “Nat fucks up, she comes to you. Your ma gets hitched a-fuckin’-gain, she invites you to the wedding. Heard from Enzo Junior?”
“He calls. Not often, but regularly,” I said quietly.
Benny nodded once, shortly. “Yeah, pours his shit on you. His life’s a fuckin’ mess, but you do not tell him to sort his shit out. You do not tell your mother she shit all over you growin’ up and you don’t wanna watch her marry another schmuck whose heart she’s gonna crush. You don’t do any of that shit ’cause you’re Frankie. You stick.”
All he was saying struck so deep, I had to lift my hands and curl them around his wrists to stay steady.
But Ben didn’t stop talking.
“You know, babe, it is not okay for a woman to live thirty-four years without one person in her life givin’ a shit. I was workin’ through my shit with Vinnie, seein’ as I had no choice; the man’s dead and I gotta let it go. But heard that and got pissed at him all over again.”
“He knew I could take care of myself. It was respect, him giving that to me,” I explained.
“Bullshit,” Ben bit out. “I get you get that I can take care of myself. I know how to drive a car so I can get places safe. Someone gets in my space, I can handle the situation. But it still would feel good you showed you were happy I got home safe, even if I went to the fuckin’ grocery store. You do that no matter it’s dick or pussy, if you care about somebody. That said, a man has a woman, he sees to that woman. He doesn’t leave her to see to herself. It’s not disrespect to do that. It’s disrespect the other way around.”
I stopped breathing.
Ben kept going.
“Pissed at your parents for doin’ that to you. Pissed at Vinnie for doin’ that to you. Contrary to that, I’m glad I got to give it to you, because you gettin’ it now means you’ll appreciate it. It also means I don’t have to put up with your shit when I do what I gotta do to look after you.”
That thing in my chest stopped fluttering.
“You’ve got a good roll going here, honey, don’t fuck it up,” I warned.
“Impossible,” he shot back instantly. “You’re into me. You’re Frankie. I could treat you like shit and you’d stand by me. But lucky for you, I have zero intention of doin’ that.”
That flutter came back and it wasn’t a flutter anymore.
It was shaking me to the core from the inside.
I held on to his wrists and stared into his eyes and knew in that instant exactly why I was falling so fast for Benny Bianchi.
Because he had zero intention of treating me like shit and every intention of caring about me.
“See I scored with that,” he said softly, staring right back at me.
“Big time,” I replied softly too.
“You’re worried about hurting me,” he kept talking softly. “Doin’ the shit you grew up watchin’ your parents do.”
I nodded uncertainly. “I think so.”
“So, in order to protect me, you instigated a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
I just kept nodding.
He lifted his hands and mine went with them, even as he cupped my jaw and bent close so his face was all I could see.
“Baby, let that shit go.” His fingers dug in. “It’s not in you.”
/> “What if it is?” My voice sounded tortured.
“How could that be?” he asked gently.
“It’s who I am.”
“If it was, think about it, Francesca, when would you have left Vinnie?”
I didn’t answer, just held on to his wrists at my jaw and stared in his eyes, knowing it would have been early.
After the franchise idea crashed and burned, possibly.
After the sandwich shop tanked, probably.
The minute he started things up with Sal.
Definitely.
“You got it good. You got someone who looks after you; you got someone who gives a shit. Livin’ the way you lived, losin’ shit you didn’t even know you should have, do you ever think you’d leave?” he pushed.
“No,” I breathed.
“No,” Ben agreed.
I kept holding on, staring into his eyes while I said, “I think the noodles are gonna turn mushy, Benny.”
“I don’t give a fuck, Frankie.”
“I also think I need tequila with dinner,” I went on.
“Lucky for you, cupboards are bare, but I got that.”
“You’re the shit, Benny Bianchi,” I whispered and watched him close his eyes.
Then I felt his hands pull me to him. He kissed my forehead before he moved me back and, again, looked at me.
“You gonna let me give you good?” he whispered back.
God.
Benny.
“Yes.”
“You gonna freak and bail on me?”
“No.”
His fingers dug in again as he said, “That’s my Frankie.”
I wanted to, I really did, but I couldn’t stop them. The tears hit my eyes, one dropping and sliding down my cheek.
Ben saw it, pulled me by my jaw into his chest, and let go only to wrap his arms tight around me.
I did the same to him.
Another tear slid down, but I held tight to Ben and got control.
While I did, Ben held tight to me.
Minutes later, he moved to put his lips to my hair and said there, “I’ll get the noodles, babe. You deal with the rest.”