I gave him another smile. He gave me one and let me go.

Benny moved me to the building.

I’d punched in the security code to open the door. We were in the lobby and he kept walking me to the elevators, but he did it dipping his head so he had my ear.

“You know you’re the shit, right?” he said there.

My chest warmed, my lips curled up, and I pulled my head back so he would lift his. When he did I caught his eyes. “Fuck yeah.”

He pulled me closer and did it laughing.

***

“Fuck it,” I muttered, leaning forward and putting my laptop on Benny’s coffee table.

I heaved myself out of his couch and moved through the house. Destination: garage, where Benny was working on my Z.

Obviously, we collected the Z. We also had a quick bite with Manny and Sela. Man, like his brother, didn’t waste the opportunity my quick forgiveness afforded him. He slid back into the Manny of old, teasing, giving me shit, making a lot of jokes, and generally acting like the annoying little brother you adored for reasons that made no sense, mostly because you adored him because he was annoying.

Sela thawed when she saw I wasn’t going to bust Manny’s chops, not even in a passive-aggressive way, and I was surprised to find she was sweet, kind of in the way Connie was sweet. Apparently, unlike his brother, Manny didn’t want a challenge. He wanted a woman to come there when she was told. Watching them together, I was glad he found what he wanted and a good one at that.

On my way to the garage, I ignored my jacket that I’d slung on the back of one of Benny’s kitchen table chairs. I was thinking I wouldn’t be out in the chill too long, thus I wouldn’t need one. So I walked out, down the stoop and the cement pathway, and I hit the garage. I opened the side door and heard the music, though I’d heard it before I even opened the door. Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam.”

Another urge to smile hit me. There wasn’t a lot of music I didn’t like, but there was no denying I was a metal girl down to my soul. Ben was all about metal too. I knew this from high school. I’d liked it since then, and right at that moment, I liked the idea that if it happened for us, if this worked, there would probably not be a time when we’d fight about what was playing on the stereo.

I moved between his SUV and my Z, which was backed into the garage, and found him under the hood.

There were things a man could do that were normal things to him that he would have no idea would give a private happy flutter to girls like me.

Working under the hood of a car was one of them.

I controlled the flutter and called, “Hey.”

He lifted up from what he was doing and rested his forearms on the filthy blanket he had draped over the side of the car. His hands were greasy, he held some tool in one of them, he turned his eyes to me, and the flutter became harder to control.

“You need a jacket,” was his greeting.

“I’m not gonna be out here that long,” I shared.

“You need a jacket,” he repeated.

Suddenly, the flutter became a whole lot easier to control.

“Or I wasn’t gonna be out here that long. Since you obviously need to make a point Benny-style, I might be out here a year.”

His eyes smiled as his mouth muttered, “Benny-style.”

I amused him.

That made me happy and mildly ticked—a contradiction of emotions that I was finding Benny was skilled at evoking.

“I will point out you’re in a t-shirt,” I stated for reasons that were beyond me, since it was chilly and I didn’t need to start squabbling with Benny. That’d mean I’d be out there a lot longer than I expected, which would make him right about me needing a jacket.

“I’m a guy.”

At his words, I blinked, then stared, forgetting about getting to the point, mostly because he was annoying, and when he was, I had all the time in the world to squabble.

“A woman needs a jacket, but a guy is immune to cold?” I asked.

“No. My woman needs a jacket ’cause I don’t want her uncomfortable or to catch a cold. I don’t give a shit about other women. They can run around when it’s fifty degrees and do it naked for all I care. But you need a jacket.”

“There you go, making protective annoying again.”

His lips quirked. “Told you it was a gift.”

I lifted my brows. “Do you think if I threw down a challenge and the person who fails to get in the last word loses, we’d be out here an eternity?”

“Probably.”

“Let’s not do that,” I suggested.

“I’d be up for it, if you went in and put on a jacket.”

Now I wasn’t happy, I was just ticked.

That was why I tipped my head back to look at the garage door rolled up on the rail and cried, “Arrrr!”

“Babe,” he called.

I looked back to him.

“Let’s get to the part about why you’re out here,” he suggested.

I took in a deep breath and asked, “You need a drink or something?”

He grinned and answered, “Nope.”

I nodded. Offer to do something nice for him while he was doing something nice for me extended and declined. Now it was time to move on to why I was really out there.

“Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working.”

He looked perplexed for a second before he asked, “What?”

“Your Wi-Fi password isn’t working. I’m trying to get my laptop connected so I can check my email. The password you gave me to do that isn’t working.”

“You type it in right?”

“Seein’ as I typed it in forty-five thousand times, I’m guessin’ one of those times I got it right.”

“Forty-five thousand?” he asked, eyebrows going up right along with the tips of his lips. “I been out here for twenty minutes, babe. You must type fast.”

I rolled my eyes before rolling them back to him and saying, “Ben, if I can get on my email, I can sort some shit out, do some work, get back into the swing of things, feel like my life is back in my control. I can do that on my phone, but it’d be a whole lot easier on my laptop. It’d help out if you could scan your brain to let me know if you gave me the correct password.”

“Honestly, I have no clue,” he replied. “Only got Internet for the TVs and set that up at least a year ago. But the password I gave you is what I remember the password to the router bein’.”

Since his password was 13579000BB, although this would be hard to forget, and although I put in one less 0, two more 0s, and left out the 0s altogether, something was not right.

“Did you write it down somewhere?” I asked.

“Yep,” he answered.

“Where?”

“No clue about that either,” he said on a grin.

I looked down to my car, then back to him, beginning to feel the chill seep through my thin sweater. I needed to get this done before I shivered noticeably, giving Ben the opportunity to pounce right on that, something to be avoided.

“Okay, well, you’re already doin’ somethin’ for me so I’ll just ask when you’re done, you do somethin’ else for me and find wherever you wrote down that password?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, making a move to leave.

“Babe?” he called, and I looked back at him.

“What?”

“Come here,” he ordered, still leaning into his arms on the side of my car.

“What, Ben?”

“Come here.”

“As you yourself pointed out, it’s cold. So just tell me…what?”

“Come here.”

I screwed up my eyes. “Seriously?”

He grinned.

“What, Ben?” I asked.

“Francesca, come…here.”

“Oh, all right,” I snapped and stomped around the car, stopping close. “What?” I asked shortly when I got there.

“Come here,” he repeated, having not moved anything but his neck in order to be able to look up at me.

“I am here, Ben,” I pointed out.

“No, baby, you aren’t. You’re there and the here I want before you go back into the house is for you to be here so you can give me your mouth.”

That caused a flutter along with a dip and my chest warming all at once.

But I was me so it was full of attitude when I leaned into him and pressed my mouth to his.

I intended only a lip brush, but without him even moving his hands, he kept me there by touching his tongue to my lips. Naturally, the promise of that was too much not to go after, so my lips opened and his tongue swept inside. I liked that so much my body reacted and I had to put my hand to his side to steady myself.

He released my mouth and said softly, “I’ll finish up here soon and find your password.”

“Thanks, honey,” I whispered, his kiss—the way he demanded it, the way he took it, leaning casually into my car but still managing to be all about me, something I thought was hot—causing all my attitude to leak out of me.

I was still close so I only saw his eyes smile. Therefore, it was likely he only saw mine smile too.

I lifted away and Ben turned back to my car.

I walked to the house thinking that I’d spent weeks freaking out about this, the idea of Ben and me. Torturing myself about it. Wanting it and finding every excuse not to give it to myself.

But having it—the ease of it, the naturalness of it, the excitement of it—now I was wondering why.

***

I stood in the hall of Benny’s house, watching him in the dining room and feeling him in the dining room.

It was the feel of him that had me rooted to the spot.

And the weird part of that was that the feel of him was calm, quiet.

Benny.

He’d come in from the garage forty-five minutes earlier, washed his hands, and went directly in search of wherever he wrote down the password.