Kristen Ashley - The Promise

And there it was. His birthday just kept getting better.

“You gonna be able to swing that?” he asked.

“I…I have a lease.”

“When’s it run out?”

“October.”

“Then you move in in October,” he declared.

“Ben, I work in Indianapolis,” she said quietly.

“You travel half the time, they got no problem with you workin’ from here. Ask ’em if you can have a home office in Chicago and conference in for meetings. You in my bed, my house, got no problem with clearing out that basement, gettin’ a computer with Internet, and givin’ you a guestroom so your fucked-up family can stay, drive us crazy, and we can celebrate when they get the fuck out.”

She stared at him but said nothing.

“You think they’ll go for that?” he asked.

“I think, come my one-year anniversary, which is the same month my lease runs out, if they don’t, then I’ll quit and find a job in Chicago.”

Jesus.

Jesus.

“Come here, Frankie,” he growled.

“No. I do, you’re gonna get busy with me and the cake will burn.”

“Come here, cara.”

“No, I can tell by your face you’re happy and I’m super happy and all that happy is gonna translate into ruined birthday cake.”

“Baby. Put the dog down and come…here.”

She bent to put Gus on the floor and came to him. When she got close, he guided her ass in his lap and rounded her with his arms. As he did this, Frankie wrapped hers around his shoulders.

When he had her where he wanted her, he said softly, “Best birthday ever.”

Beauty saturated her features, more than he’d ever seen from her, and he’d spent decades seeing a lot of beauty from Francesca Concetti.

“My awesome Benny,” she replied in a whisper, her arms tightening, one hand finding his neck and curling around, but her body melted into his.

“You’ve made me happy, tesorina.”

“I’m glad.”

“Kiss me, Frankie.”

“Okay, Benny.”

She put her lips to his, but it was Benny who took her mouth, leaning into her, bending her back, and drinking deep, one of his hands going down, then up her shirt and down again in her panties to cup her bare ass, both her hands diving into his hair.

He broke the kiss but didn’t move far away and waited for her eyes to slowly open, giving him crazy-beauty before he said, “Love you, Francesca.”

“Love you too, honey.”

He grinned, held her closer, but ordered, “Now go make frosting.”

She rolled her eyes, but she also pushed up, he went with her, and she climbed out of his lap.

After that, Gus under her feet, tripping her up, and her not minding, Frankie made frosting.

***

“Okay,” Frankie said, skip-walking into his bedroom that night.

It was after the dinner she’d made him (roast beef tenderloin, boiled new potatoes, asparagus coated in oil and toasted sesame seeds, and rolls Mrs. Zambino bought the day before from the bakery). It was after cake. It was after he told her he wanted her ass upstairs because he wanted to see another nightie. She showed him and wore it for about five minutes before he took it off so she could sit on his face and he could have his mouth on her while she used hers on him.

She’d put the nightie back on (red satin with a sheer panel around the hem and matching panties that had sheer at the ass, sweet but nowhere as sweet as the plum one) and gone back downstairs to grab his presents from where she’d hid them.

Now she was back, hands behind her, hiding the presents from view.

She hopped on the bed, walked on her knees to him, and flopped down to a hip before one arm came out and she slapped a mostly square, thin, large wrapped package on his chest.

“That one’s the goofy one,” she declared. “You get the good stuff second.”

He’d already had the good stuff.

She knew that so he didn’t tell her. He just opened the present and he did it with her talking.

“The first one may be goofy, but it was way harder to find. I had to order it off the Internet since they don’t sell them this time of year. I also had to find one you’d like, but they kinda don’t make those things for guys. Or, not guys like you. Still, it isn’t about tits and ass or muscle cars, which would be something I wouldn’t want to look at, but it isn’t too girlie, which is something you would toss in the trash, so I think I did all right.”

The paper off, he turned it in his hands and saw a calendar for that year, its theme: photos of Lake Michigan.

There was no cellophane on it. It had been opened.

Ben held it in his hands, stared at it, and stopped breathing.

“See? Totally goofy,” she stated, not sensing the change his mood was making in the room, just reaching out to pull the calendar from his hand and babbling. “Yours is, like, ten years old. Crazy. So it’s kind of a joke but kind of not.” She started flipping through and found what she wanted, showing him a month that had her writing in the little squares and flipping to the next, which had more of her writing. “See, I wrote all the birthdays in: Man, Sela, Vinnie Senior, Theresa, Carm, Ken, and the kids. I put Vi and Cal and all the girls in there, and Manny and Sela’s wedding date.”

Benny’s eyes looked at the calendar and his heart started jackhammering.

“And here,” she said, flipping back. “I put all my travel schedule in that I have set, all the times and flight numbers and hotel stuff and everything. You can write in the stuff that comes up.”

She stopped yapping, finally looked at him, and when she did, she went visibly still.

They stared at each other a couple of beats before she said hesitantly, totally not reading him, “The other present is a lot better, Benny.”

“Only one thing I want in my life,” he declared.

“Wh-what?” she stammered.

“All my life, didn’t have big hopes and dreams. Only one thing I wanted.”

“I…” She swallowed, kept her eyes locked to him, and asked, “What was that, honey?”

“A life that meant I’d have a calendar on my kitchen wall filled in with birthdays and anniversaries and parties and practices and special occasions. All the shit that makes a good life scribbled in the blocks printed on glossy paper hangin’ on a wall.”

Her eyes grew bright and her breath grew shallow.

“You gonna give that to me?” he asked.

“Yes, Benny,” she responded instantly.

Instantly.

Yeah.

She was going to give that to him.

And he was going to give it to her.

The…best…fucking…birthday…ever.

“No lip, no shit, come here right now, Frankie,” he ordered.

She tossed the calendar aside to land on the bed and she came to him immediately.

And Ben crushed her in his arms, rolled her to her back, and found reason again to get rid of her nightie.

In the end, she slept beside him in a hot pink one with black lace.

Her second present was an expensive, handsome watch that had an inscription on the back that said, For Benny, Love Frankie.

It was fucking kick-ass.

But it wasn’t better than the calendar.

Not by a long shot.

“You okay?”

I looked from the computer screen, on which I was obsessively watching the time change in the bottom right corner, to Tandy standing in the doorway of my office.

The answer to her question was, no, I was not okay.

It was Monday after spending the weekend with Benny for the sake of spending the weekend with Benny, as well as being there for the family celebration that consisted of him blowing out birthday candles on a pizza pie that he made and everyone on staff getting to suck back quick sips of Chianti while they worked. Ben opened presents in between making pies and getting out orders. Theresa, Vinnie, Manny, and Sela all were around, mostly being loud, giving Ben shit, and getting in the way.

I hung with Ben the entire night in the kitchen, my ass taking up counter space since I sat on one with a wineglass in my hand, and alternately gabbed with my man, gave him my own shit, and communed with what he called his “kids.” I took this time to get to know them, something I liked a whole lot since they were good kids and fun to be around.

In fact, Ben ran a fun kitchen. It was work, definitely—hot work with the ovens going and the stoves on, people rushing around, always busy.

But I’d been in those kitchens when Vinnie ran them, and although he wasn’t an asshole, he was a taskmaster.

It was strange knowing a father’s way and then seeing his son’s.

They both took what they did seriously. They both communicated that. But Ben was far more laid-back about it and the kids responded to it.

Watching him work, firm in woman-in-love mode, I fell more in love, my already immense pride at being Benny’s woman growing, watching him run his kitchen. His kids liked him. He organized chaos without any apparent effort. He wasn’t about shouting and bossing. He was about quiet words and direction. And every pie or dish put on the warming shelf to be taken out looked mouth-watering because I knew it was.

It wasn’t like he was organizing a disaster relief effort.

Still, it was awesome.

Saturday during the day and Sunday before I left to drive home, Ben and I tackled his office. On Friday, Ben had called the cable company to have Internet jacks installed. On Saturday, we went out and bought a filing cabinet, shredder, and a desktop computer. It took us hours, but we got a system down that might (might) make the rest of our efforts throughout the house easier. We tossed a bunch of crap, filed some away, and in the end, the office looked more like an office and less like a dump. The kind of room you’d find in a home, not a bachelor’s pad.