smile curled his lips when Matt walked through the back door seconds later and the scene played out exactly as he had predicted. Ben shook his head as Matt proudly held his salad in his hands as if it were the showcase of today’s gathering.
Suppressing a chuckle, Ben returned his attention to the book in his lap, reading up on the baking technique Natalie promised to teach him on Monday. He rested his elbow on his knee as he read, memorized, and visualized himself in her kitchen, practicing every step of the process detailed in the book.
Two large, rugged, thick-soled boots appeared at the edge of his vision. Ben furrowed his brow. Those weren’t Calvin’s shoes.
He glanced up, blinking up at the large man standing in front of him, backlit by the sun as if he were some mystical being. Ben absently closed the book and watched the man carefully sit across from him on the ground, struggling to cross his thick legs to match Ben’s sitting position.
This close, the man from the bakery looked more striking, broader, more…larger-than-life. The scratches had diminished, and the bandages were gone, leaving behind a few marks that were all nearly healed. But it was the clean shave that made his single dimple stand out and Ben’s pulse race.
He wondered what other dimples existed on the man’s body.
“Hi, I’m Gabriel,” the man said as he signed, fingerspelling his name. “Gabe for short. But everyone calls me Bull.”
Ben straightened and smiled. He hadn’t expected the man to know ASL. Maybe he only knew enough for a basic introduction. But it was enough for Ben to know the man was trying to understand him.
“I’m Ben. It’s nice to meet you,” he signed in response, likely a little more eager than he should have been.
The man’s smile was more brilliant than the Miami sun. “I didn’t know you couldn’t hear me when we first met. I’m sorry - - not asking - - Natalie - - said nothing - -. If you had heard me, you might have told me to shut up - - talking too much. We can forget - - have a first introduction do-over.”
Whoa, that’s fast. Ben rocked backward, surprised by how quick those large hands moved with each sign, almost too fast for him to follow. The man knew more than just a few words. “How long have you known sign language?”
“My grandfather was deaf,” he signed with a warm smile. “I learned how to sign almost as soon as I spoke my first words.”
It was no wonder his hands moved so quickly, far too fast for Ben to keep up with him. “Why do they call you Bull?” he signed, curiosity getting the better of him.
The corner of that wide mouth curled. “My last name is del Toro. Toro is Spanish for bull. The nickname started because of my name, and then I grew into it.” He shrugged his big shoulders almost as if to emphasize the point. “It just stuck with me since.”
Ben noticed Gabriel’s hand movements slowed a tiny bit, enough where he no longer worried about missing something. He chewed his lip, mustering up the nerve to ask the question that had nagged him since he first saw him. “How do you know Natalie?”
Gabriel cocked his head. “She’s my sister.”
He should have known the moment Gabriel mentioned his last name.
He blamed it on that dimple.
He wanted to ask a million different questions.
They stared and smiled at each other. At this rate, Ben would have tons of memory pieces to last him for a while. Gabriel’s eyes were rich brown but lightened to bright amber when the sun hit them just right, almost like the cognac Natalie used in some of her special recipes. There was a sprinkle of gray hair in his sideburns that faded into the darker hair at his temples. It was barely noticeable, but enough to make Ben’s heart skip a beat.
He hadn’t expected to like an older man, but maybe it was just this man that piqued his interest. He didn’t believe in love at first sight or insta-anything. Even friendships took time to build. But there was something about this man and the growing five-thousand-piece fantasy puzzle of details that threw every one of his beliefs out the cliché window. Those lips alone would supply about a dozen of their own memory pieces. They were full and wide yet unmistakably masculine. Ben wondered if they were just as soft as they looked.