So I breathed a sigh of relief when he gave me a squeeze and said, “Yeah.”

I tipped my head back and, again, slid my hands down to his chest. “They’ll be here soon and we need Fanta.”

“Babe, they’re comin’ up from Brownsburg with two teenaged girls. Teenagers don’t get out of bed on a Sunday at the crack of dawn and it’s a four-hour drive. They won’t be here until noon, earliest. We got an hour and a half, at least.”

I felt my brows draw together. “Cal didn’t text you to let you know when they’d left?”

My question made him smile huge. It was white. It was gorgeous. And it made his eyes warm with humor in that way I liked so much.

Witnessing that up close and personal for the first time, I had no choice but to wrap my arms around his middle and hold on.

“I’m not sure Cal does the text thing, Frankie. More, I’m not sure it’s humanly possible for Cal to check in with anybody about any of his activities.”

“He’ll have to learn. He has a woman in his life.”

His smile stayed white and gorgeous, and even as I felt the ground quake beneath me, I kept right on enjoying it up close and personal.

“Strike that,” he stated. “I’m not sure it’s humanly possible for Cal to check in with anybody about any of his activities unless that anybody is in his bed and he likes what she gives him there.”

My eyes drifted to his ear. “This is probably true.”

Ben gave me a squeeze and regained my attention.

“You got everything you need in that bag?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered.

“Now’s the time to stock up, babe. We’re here.”

“I’m stocked up.”

“Right,” he said, then bent in and went deep. I held my breath and kept holding it when he brushed his lips against my neck.

I also kept holding on because I had to in order to stay standing.

Then I had to let him go because he let me go. He moved away but caught my hand, the handle of my bag, and he pulled me to the door, rolling my bag with us, saying, “We get home, I’ll clean out a drawer in the bathroom.”

My eyes hit the ceiling.

Lord, I hope you’re paying attention, I silently prayed. That was Benny’s idea.

Ben kept speaking.

“And in the dresser in the bedroom.”

My hand spasmed in his.

He ignored it and pulled me out the door.

***

Likely speeding up my trip to hell, an hour and a half later, I was curled on my side on Benny’s couch, head to his thigh. Benny was sitting on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, eyes to a game on the TV.

Incidentally, a TV that was eighty inches.

Eighty.

The thing was so huge, it took up nearly the whole side wall of his living room.

And the surround sound rivaled those found in cinemas.

Even so, Theresa could be heard over the surround sound, banging around in the kitchen.

I had learned when I was with Vinnie that Theresa didn’t do this because she was making a point that she wanted you to get off your ass and help her. She didn’t. She wanted you nowhere near her when she was cooking or cleaning up after. She wanted no disruptions or distractions because only she could do whatever she was doing in a way she liked. If you tried to help, it only messed with her mojo and put her in a bad mood.

Theresa in a bad mood was not good.

So, even if I hadn’t been shot in a forest a couple of weeks earlier and Theresa was banging around in the kitchen, I would have stayed in the living room.

Though how I got in my current position, I was still hoping God was paying attention because I didn’t put me in it. Benny did. And when I’d protested, he muttered, “Quiet.”

I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, lying with my head on his thigh, not ever. But with his parents in his house, and after I had participated fully in the kiss he laid on me, definitely not then.

I also didn’t think it was the right thing to do to get into an argument about it with his parents in the house.

This was something we’d come home to an hour ago. They were in the kitchen as we came through the back door—Vinnie sitting at the table drinking a cup of joe; Theresa bustling around a bevy of grocery bags on the table, bags whose contents I had no idea where she would put, seeing as Benny’s fridge was decidedly full.

Vinnie had fallen on the donuts like he didn’t have the huge-ass breakfast I knew Theresa cooked him before they went to church.

Theresa had shooed us out nearly the minute we got in the door and definitely the second Benny dumped the donut boxes on the counter.

Not long after, I found myself lounging with Benny on the couch.

In the end, his jeans were soft, his thigh was hard, so I told myself I was being polite and I’d give Benny hell later.

But in reality, it was just that I liked where I was.

“Ben, your ma wants to know where your casserole dish is,” Vinnie Senior said, and I shifted my eyes to the side of the couch (but did not lift my head from Benny’s thigh) to see Ben’s father come to a stop there.

“I don’t have a casserole dish,” Benny answered.

Vinnie looked in the direction of the door that led to the foyer, muttering, “That’s not gonna go over too good.”

“She wanted to cook, she should have brought over what she needed,” Benny noted. “I was gonna get takeout barbeque.”

Vinnie’s eyes sliced back to his son and he hissed, “Jesus, don’t let her hear you say that shit.”

“Why?” Benny asked.

“’Cause family’s gonna come callin’. Boy, you know you don’t serve takeout barbeque to family comin’ callin’.”

“I’m a single guy, Pop. They’re lucky I thought about feeding them at all,” Benny returned, and I couldn’t hold it back, my body started shaking with suppressed giggles.

Feeling it, Benny’s hand that was resting on my waist gave me a squeeze.

“Go in the kitchen and help her find somethin’ she can use to assemble the lasagna,” Vinnie ordered.

“Pop, I don’t own anything she can use to assemble the lasagna,” Benny replied.

“Then get your ass to the store and buy something she can use to assemble the lasagna,” Vinnie kept ordering.

“That shit is just not gonna happen,” Ben growled.

My body started shaking harder.

“Vinnie!” Theresa shouted from the kitchen. “I got the noodles laid out! Where’s my dish?”

“Ben doesn’t have one!” Vinnie shouted back.

“What?” Theresa yelled in a borderline screech. “I got the noodles laid out! What am I supposed to do with noodles and sauce and cheese and no dish?”

I lifted a hand, curled it around Benny’s thigh, tucked my face in it, and snorted.

“Jesus, shit, I’ll go to the store,” Benny mumbled testily. I felt his thigh muscles tense in preparation to get up, even as I felt his hand glide to the back of my neck to nonverbally tell me he was getting up.

I lifted my head and looked up at him, grinning.

He was not grinning.

“It’s good you’re amused, babe, but this shit is not funny,” he stated right when the doorbell went.

I turned my head and aimed my eyes over the back of the couch.

“They’re here!” Theresa shrieked from the kitchen.

I lost purchase on Benny’s thigh, then I lost purchase on the couch when Benny lifted me up and set me on my sandals.

We turned and I saw Vinnie was already at the door, huge smile on his face, opening it.

Ben took my hand and started us toward the door when Theresa showed, arms up in the air, mouth shouting, “Happy day!”

I heard, “Uncle Vinnie! Aunt Theresa!” shouted back in teenaged girls voices, but I couldn’t see them.

Ben and I made it to the foyer and waited in it for a full three minutes while Theresa pushed out to the stoop and grabbed everyone’s face, jerking their head back and forth to give them kisses before they were allowed to come in to get handshakes (Cal) or hugs (Vi and the girls) from Vinnie.

I watched as Cal took his kisses from Theresa like he’d rather wrestle an alligator. But Vi gave her kisses back and a hug, and Vi’s gorgeous daughters acted like Theresa’s signature dramatic welcome was a delight the like they’d never experienced.

The girls hit the foyer and practically bowled Cal and their mother over to rush Benny, shouting, “Benny!”

He let me go just in time to get hit by them both. He went back on a foot, steadied, and put his arms around them, murmuring something I didn’t catch because I was completely drawn in by the scene.

This was because something about it didn’t strike me right. It was beautiful watching Ben give affection to Vi’s gorgeous girls, downright dazzling.

But I was under the impression that Vi and Cal were relatively new, so I wondered how the girls were so tight with everyone so quickly.

“Hey.” I heard.

I turned my head to see Vi close and I completely forgot about watching the dazzling display of Benny Bianchi giving affection to two young girls.

“Hey,” I replied, looking into Violet’s eyes.

I didn’t think about it, her visit, except to look forward to seeing her, like she was a close gal pal who lived a few hours away, and thus, we didn’t have cocktails every Friday night but instead had to make plans for special occasions.

Looking into her eyes right then, seeing her in normal circumstances for the first time ever, it hit me that the last time I saw her, Daniel Hart was pointing a gun to her head. The entire time I’d made her acquaintance, our lives were in danger or we were running for them.

Together.

She did not let me separate from her when it probably would have been prudent.