throat again when it came out raspy. “Did you?”
“I did, baby. Thanks for asking.”
“I—”
He waited.
She had too many thoughts and emotions roiling within her to give voice to them all, to give voice to even one of them. Her mind was a whirling dervish—Fred, directions, pass, dinner last night, Sweetheart, coffee, kisses, and—
“I’ll see you soon,” she eventually murmured.
“Okay, Stef. Drive safe.”
They hung up, and she crawled her way through the traffic.
Toward Ben.
And for the first time in her life, she had to wonder if she’d finally found herself moving in the right direction.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ben
The security office had called up the moment Stef drove through the gate, giving him time to take the elevator down to the garage.
She parked next to his SUV and his sedan, her tiny little hybrid’s back seat full to the brim of Fred’s fuzzy, golden body.
He waited until she opened the driver’s side door then stepped close.
“Ben,” she whispered.
“Hi,” he said, brushing back her hair. “Want me to get Fred?”
A nod. “O-okay.”
He wrangled the pooch while she reached in for her purse, and by the time both doors were shut, Stef seemed a little more relaxed. Enough, at least, to lean close and kiss him on the cheek. “Hi.”
“You good?”
Her eyes were soft. “Yeah.”
“Good,” he said, slipping his arm around her and leading her toward the elevators.
“How did your meeting go?”
His heart squeezed that she’d remembered, that she’d asked. “Typical bullshit. No big problems, but endless droning on.”
“Meetings,” she said on a sigh.
“You have your fair share?”
“Unfortunately.” A smile. “Though, Heidi has more of them than me, much to her chagrin.”
Heidi her boss. Heidi her friend.
“When am I going to meet your friends?”
Her steps hitched, and she glanced up at him. “You want to meet my friends?”
Again. He wanted to murder that fucker, Jeremy. To have deposited the insecurity so deeply into her, who’d had her doubting that he wanted to do something as simple as meeting her friends, who’d had her shocked that Ben remembered how she took her coffee or would make breakfast for her and her dog.
At first, he’d looked at Stef and had seen red lips and curves.
Then he chatted online with her and thought she was funny and smart, someone he wanted to know better.
So getting to meet her in person, seeing how sweet and lovely she was, then knowing that someone had dimmed that, made her doubt herself, absolutely killed him. Especially when he got those glimpses of her humor, of the fire that was often banked inside her, and he knew that if she hadn’t been smothered, they would be there all the time.
That she wouldn’t still be carrying all those shadows in her eyes.
The elevator doors opened, and he ushered her onto the cart, punching in the code that would take the car up to his floor, asking, “Are they important to you?”
“My friends?”
He nodded.
Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip, a flash of white digging into red. “Yes, of course they are.”
“Then I want to meet them.”
Her throat worked, and she released her bottom lip. “I . . .”
He shifted Fred’s leash to the other hand so he could cup her cheek. “I want to meet them, but only if you’re okay with it.”
A pause, her eyes searching his until the elevator opened up into his entryway. He held the door as they stepped off, and then her gaze came back to his, studying until Sweetheart heard them and came running.
Fred wiggled like he was full of jelly, and Ben bent, undoing Fred’s leash, biting back a smile when Stef winced as he traipsed across the white rug.
Sweetheart jumped up to kiss Fred’s face, the pair of them circling each other before taking off, nails clicking on the floor.
Stef winced again.
“What?” he asked.
“He’ll scratch your floor.”
He snagged her purse from her, dropping it onto the table where he left his keys. Then he wove an arm around her waist and tugged her close, his other hand slipping into her hair, tilting her head back. “Baby,” he said, “I’m only going to tell you this once.” Her throat worked, and he ignored the temptation of that creamy skin, continuing, “Fred could chew up the couch cushions, could shit on this white rug. He could scratch the floor and dump over the garbage, and I wouldn’t care.”
A breath shuddered out of her, coating his lips.
“Everything here is replaceable. It’s all just stuff. He and you are more important.”
A slow blink, her brown eyes chock full of emotions. “But