of how his morning began irked him all over again.
“Have you had lunch?” he asked Sherie, his assistant.
Bennett knew she sometimes left directly from her college classes to come to work and she wasn’t always mindful about eating. She thought she was too big so she was always dieting or fasting. He knew better than to try and reason with her, because he didn’t really understand women much and he didn’t want to put his foot in it. Instead, he took care of her without her realizing it…she’d hand him his head on a platter if she ever found out that that was what he was doing. He did understand women enough to know a modern gal like her wouldn’t appreciate being coddled in any way.
“Yes, Boss,” she replied with a smile and pointed to the brown paper bag marked with the logo of a coffee shop a couple of doors down from his studio.
“Good. Okay. I’ll be back in a jiffy,”
His studio was located in a trendy side street not far from the busy heart of the town. He went into Carlucci’s Pizza Pie Parlor — yes, believe it or not, that was its honest-to-goodness name — and ordered two slices to go. Maybe he’d pick up a couple of pies for dinner later. And maybe, so he could get more work done, he’d have Sherie place his shopping order online so all he’d have to do once this day was over was drive by to pick them up after work.
He checked his messages as he scarfed down the two slices of hot and spicy pizza. Aidan couldn’t come for dinner — “Sorry, bro. I'm working a case” — but the others could. Bennett smiled. At least the day would end well. He tried to feel better than he actually did, because that small kernel of emotion wrapped around thoughts of Jordan still lingered like an open wound. He shook his head at himself. If he was this bent out of shape after only one date, how the hell would he have felt if they’d actually been in a relationship?
Pushing his distraction to the back of his mind, he worked the rest of the afternoon, set the studio to rights after his second set of clients had left, replied to a couple of phone messages and bid Sherie farewell as she was leaving before closing up and heading out to the store to pick up his food order. The trunk was loaded and he was getting back into his car when a familiar figure appeared in the distance, getting out of his SUV.
Jordan. Bennett drank in the sight of him, tall, hunky, the silver at his temples glinting in the fading light of early evening and the floodlights from the supermarket. Damn, he was good-looking. More, he was too sexy for a guy who was entering middle age. Mere mortals didn’t stand a chance against his potent charisma. Not that Jordan seemed to be aware of it…he’d just acted like any other guy.
Which was part of what made him so attractive to Bennett. He always liked the men who were outward-focused, the ones who weren’t hung up on themselves, their achievements, their possessions, their good looks. The ones who cared about other people more than they did about themselves. Men like Jordan O’Leary seemed to be.
Bennett watched him walk into the supermarket and sighed heavily. All the swirling emotions from their earlier phone conversation came back full bore, but Bennett pushed them away. He didn’t have time for this, not now. Not ever, if he were to be honest. He had things to do, a life to live. This was just a hiccup…he could handle it. He drove home determined to forget about Jordan, and if they ever met again, he’d treat him like the friendly acquaintance he was. That seemed like a great plan.
An hour later, as he was letting his best friend and his husband in, Bennett was glad he had settled his mind about how to handle the Jordan episode. Because he had missed Ry and needed to reconnect, especially now he was a married man.
“Damn, Ry! You look really good!”
Ryland Tucker, Jr., was blind, but that didn’t stop him from being all man, confident, secure, and the best friend anyone could ask for. His husband Chandler was, coincidentally, one of Jordan’s best friends, and over the past two years, Bennett had come to know him well enough to know he was the sweetest, kindest human