Chapter 5
TOBY
I have no idea what’s gotten into Cara tonight, but she’s on fire. Ben looks torn between confused and worried and irritated, and since we’ve spent the last fifteen years ribbing each other pretty hard, I’m tempted to let him suffer.
On the other hand, I’ve never molested his baby sister, and the upstanding guy inside me wants that record straightened out.
Unfortunately, there’s a small part of me that is now stuck on a weird mental loop around the word molest and the saucy look on Cara’s face.
What the hell is happening?
Half of those years she was an adult.
Fucking hell, that is not the right takeaway from that exchange.
Half of those years you could have—
Nope.
I grab the menu as soon as we take our seats. Thank Christ for drivers. “Who wants sake?”
“Not Elana,” Cara murmurs, her eyes still twinkling.
That works as a conversation changer.
“What?” Ben leans forward. “Is that why she passed on dinner?”
I’m not following. “Is what why?”
Cara laughs lightly. “I think so.”
Ben groans and rubs his fingers against his forehead. “That would explain the crackers she was munching on in our last meeting.”
Cara gasps. “You had a saltines clue and you didn’t give me the heads up?”
“It’s only clear in hindsight.”
I look back and forth between them a few times before Cara takes pity on me. “I’m pretty sure my sister’s pregnant again,” she says.
“For the hundredth time,” Ben adds.
“Congratulations?” I ask.
Cara nods. “Oh, definitely for them! Although the noise level in their house is already insane.”
Ben laughs under his breath. “You’d think Elana having enough babies for all of us would be a good thing, but this is just going to ramp up Nana’s pressure on me to get hitched.”
Cara’s eyes go wide, just for a second, but she doesn’t say anything to that.
It’s the first I’ve heard of it, too, but unlike razzing him about work or women, I know better than to comment on anything Nana Russo says. To Ben, his grandmother is a saint who can do no wrong. And even if she’s pressuring him to settle down, he’d still be hard-pressed to criticize her.
She’s his mentor. Hell, she practically raised him, even before his parents split up.
“This is her fourth?”
“Fifth.” Ben scrubs his hand over his face. “And it’s a good thing. I’m happy for them.” He grabs the menu and raises his hand. “Yeah, let’s get some sake.”
Sure. That’s the desperate cry of a happy man.
I’m way out of my depth here. I don’t get why he cares about how many kids his sister has, and I feel like there’s a nuance I’m missing. That I should know, should be able to fill in, because we’ve been friends for more than a decade.
I try to remember how he reacted the last time she had a kid. Two years ago? That may have been when we were deep in the off-shoring project for tech support.
Time before that? No clue.
I’ve met Elana’s boys. They’re all carbon copies of her husband, in varying sizes. Ben loves them. He’s had them all over for sleepovers.
He’s a way better uncle than I’d ever be, even if I had siblings.
The closest I’ll ever get to being an uncle would be if Ben had kids himself.
Jesus. Is his biological clock ticking?
Is that a thing for guys?
Frankly, I don’t want to go there. I turn to Cara at the same time she turns to me.
“So, how’s school?”
“How’s work going?” She stops, laughs, and we try it again. At the same time, again.
Luckily, the waitress arrives with a bottle of sake. “Ms. Russo, this is from the chef. He recommends it with the tuna.”
Cara turns pink and spins in her chair, waving her hand in the air at the grinning Japanese man behind the counter at the back. “Oh, how sweet!”
Two billionaires at the table, and it’s the pretty grad student who gets the star treatment. I get why she likes this place.
She rattles off an order, upping the numbers on some of the sashimi when Ben gives her a raised eyebrow.
As we wait for our food, I pour drinks all around. Then we get talking about work, and school, and before I know it, we’ve polished off two trays of impressive sushi and sashimi.
Just as the waitress is taking our orders for ice cream to cap off the meal, his phone chimes. He looks at the screen and swears under his breath.
“Is it work?” Cara holds up her hand. “We might need to cancel that ice cream,” she says apologetically to the waitress.
Ben shakes his head. “No, you can take the car back to Elana’s. I’ll grab a cab.”
I clear my throat. “I could drop Cara off.”
She gives me a grateful smile. “Oh, good idea. I wouldn’t want to miss the green tea ice cream here.”
“You’ve got your priorities sorted out.”
Her head bobs emphatically. “I spent all afternoon having watercress sandwiches batted out of my hand. I’ve earned this dessert.”
“What? Hold that thought, I need that story.” I stand up and shake Ben’s hand. “Good to see you, man.”
“Sorry to run.”
“I get it.”
“I know you do. Hey, walk me out?”
I nod, then point at Cara. “Don’t eat any of my ice cream. I’ll know.”
She winks. “Will you?”
I shake my head and follow Ben outside. Flatbush Ave. is busy tonight, and his car still hasn’t pulled up.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and winces as he stares up at the sky. “Do I need to warn you off my baby sister?”
I laugh. “No. I swear, nothing happened while she was out in California. She was a kid.”
“She’s not anymore.” He swears under his breath.
“Cara’s beautiful, smart, talented…and not interested in an old man like me. At all. Don’t worry.”
“Yeah. It’s just that she deserves more than a guy like us, you know?”
I frown, vaguely uncomfortable with that characterization—not that he’s wrong. Workaholics who rush out of restaurants on a Sunday night make terrible boyfriends. And it’s really just a matter of chance that this is Ben making a swift exit and not me.
Not that I’m in the running to be Cara’s boyfriend.
The unsettled feeling grows, getting less vague by the second. I change the subject. “What’s really going on?”
“I don’t know. Ever feel like you blinked and aged a decade?”
Not really, but that doesn’t seem like the right thing to say. “Sure.”
“You don’t, you asshole. You’re having nothing but fun times out on the west coast.”
I grin. “It’s good for the soul. Maybe you should relocate Gladiator, Inc.”
He growls. “No, it’s not that. I’m just…” He trails off as his car pulls to a stop in front of us. The driver gets out, but Ben waves him back. He opens the back door himself before looking back at me. “Next time, give us more of a heads up that you’re coming. And stay a bit longer. I miss your ugly face.”
“Life is short, Ben. If you aren’t happy, nothing wrong with making a change.”
***
“Dare I ask what Ben wanted?” Cara asks when I rejoin her at the table.
“He reamed me out for not spending more time here.” Not a complete lie.
She doesn’t buy it. She searches my face, her eyes sharp and knowing. Our friendship might be sporadic and framed by a weird I-remember-when-you-had-braces age gap, but we get each other. “That wasn’t what I was expecting you to say.”
“Oh?”
Sharp and knowing, but not jaded. She blushes, a faint sweep of pink across her cheeks that makes the blue of her eyes pop even brighter. “I thought he’d warn you off me.”
“He did that, too.” This is a weird conversation, one we’ve never had to have before. I try to soften the awkwardness. “But in a half-hearted kind of way. Like you got to him with your teasing and he just wanted to set the record straight, not actually threaten me.”
She hesitates as our ice cream plates are set in front of us. Three delicate scoops, one green tea, one red bean, the last, vanilla on her plate, and mango on mine. She lifts her spoon and touches it to the green tea scoop before pausing and glancing back up at me. “I was just teasing before. You know that, right?”
“Of course.” And that’s not disappointment swelling in my chest. “I told him as much.”
“Good.” She takes her first taste and makes a soft, satisfied sound that is way too womanly for my liking.
Or just womanly enough.
“Yum,” she whispers, her eyes closed and her lips…
Her lips.
The tip of her tongue darts out and licks the soft, pink swell of her lower lip, and all the blood in my body reverses course.
No need to worry about oxygenating organs where there’s a dick ready to stand at attention.
Hello, Cara’s mouth. Nice to meet you. Toby’s dick, ready to molest you.
I jam my hand against the table and cough. Jesus Fucking—
“Is it no good?” She asks, blinking her eyes open at me in confusion.
Nope.
No good at all.
I clear my throat and reach for my spoon. “I was just thinking about your brother,” I say gruffly. Yep, Ben. Mr. Overprotective. Mr. Family Matters. Mr. Probably Wants a Baby. Yes. That’s a good damper on inappropriate feelings. “I think he’s two steps away from sending for a mail order bride.”
She sighs. “My grandmother has given me the thou must get hitched speech, too. And today she ramped up the pressure, just like Ben said.”
I frown. “Why?” Ben makes sense. He’s thirty-five, and effectively the head of his family. I can understand his grandmother wanting him married. Hell, I can understand Ben wanting himself married.
But Cara’s just a kid.
No, we’re all very clear on the fact she’s an adult now. An adult who was a kid last time I looked, and is way too young to be pressured into any forever kind of plans.
She screws up her face, then blinks open one eye and looks right at me. “I think I might have a solution, though.”
Something about the way she’s looking at me, like don’t judge me, maybe, or can I trust you with this makes my chest tighten up. “What’s that?”
She hesitates, then drops her gaze back to her ice cream. Another scoop, another indecent moan.
“You don’t want to tell me?” I take a taste of my own ice cream. It’s amazing. Sweet and creamy, with the unexpected Japanese flavors making the whole thing that much more interesting.
“Probably shouldn’t.”
“I won’t tell Ben.”
She flashes me an indecisive look.
“I really won’t.”
I get a small smile for that. “I believe you. You didn’t tell him about the time I was arrested.”
“Detained, no arrest record.” I made sure of that.
“Right.” She sighs and takes another bite before putting down her spoon and squaring her shoulders. “I hate dating.”
Excellent. Never date. No man is good enough for you. The flare of jealousy is bright and fierce and even more unexpected than the grassy notes of green tea in my ice cream. Unlike the dessert, though, there’s nothing sweetly delicious about my blast of possessiveness. It’s wrong and inappropriate. “So getting married isn’t on your radar?” I manage to grind out. “That’s fine. Just keep being you.”
Keep being funny and gorgeous and celibate.
“But Nana has a point.”
No, she doesn’t. “How’s that?”
“Well not for me, exactly. But she wants this, and…”
“You’d get married just to make your grandmother happy?”
Her eyes go wide at the sharp tone in my voice.
My spoon presses hard against my palm, and I glance down, realizing I’m white-knuckling the metal.
“I don’t know.” But the way her voice falls, I know I’ve done exactly what she’d hoped I wouldn’t—I’ve judged her, and shut her down. Damn it.
“Hey.” I set my spoon down and reach across the table, brushing my fingertips against the back of her hand. Her fingers are so much smaller than mine, slim and long, just like the rest of her. I ignore the awareness that pulses deep inside my body as I touch her skin. “Sorry.”
She shrugs. “I know it’s a ridiculous reaction. It’s just that my grandmother is everything to us, you know?”
I do. On one hand, this is a sign that I should continue to mind my own business and leave the Russos to their complicated family dynamic.
On the other hand, life is short. “How about we finish this up and take a walk? You can tell me what Nana wants you to do, and I’ll do my best to not think it’s a terrifyingly bad idea.”
She laughs, a peel of joy that grows and bounces in the air around us.
I don’t hear that enough. I slide my phone out of my pocket. “Hey, when are you heading back? I’m flying to Toronto tomorrow evening.”
“I’m on a mid-afternoon flight.” She gives me a small, regretful smile, but her eyes are still crinkled with laughter.
No need for regret. I’m already rescheduling my last two meetings. “What airline are you on?”
She tells me her flight details even as she gives me a curious what-are-you-doing look, and I fire off an email to my assistant with instructions to get me on that flight and bump Cara up to first class with me if she isn’t already there.
“How long are you going to be in Toronto?” she asks as we make our way out of the restaurant and onto the busy Brooklyn thoroughfare.
“Just a day, same as here. I’ve got a string of meetings set up. Here, Toronto, London, Dubai, Tokyo. I’ll be home again next week.”
“Back to your lab high above the ocean.”
“Yep.”
“You’re so lucky,” she murmurs, her eyes going soft as she glances up at me.
I dodge us around a group of people, my hand in the small of her back. She points to a park at the end of the street, then I look back down at her again.
It doesn’t take long to reach the park. Two blocks. At least a dozen sideways glances. I suddenly feel too big, a bit clumsy, and certainly out of my league, because now all I can see is Cara’s soft, pink mouth. Her bright eyes and gorgeous face. The one thing in the world more beautiful than the Pacific Ocean.
I’m not sure what I’m going to do next. It’s definitely going to be foolish.
And totally worth it.