CHAPTER 10
BEN FINISHED BUTTONING the cuffs of his white dress shirt and grabbed the gray suit jacket off the hanger. It was the same suit he’d been wearing on the plane when he’d met Chloe, but by the time that had occurred to him, he was already half-dressed. Besides, changing his pants would have felt too much like an acknowledgment that his clothing choice this morning might not have been completely random.
Ben glanced at his watch. He needed to hurry if he was going to make it to the office for seven. He had a lot of work to catch up on since he’d sacrificed most of yesterday to hunting Chloe down. His beeline for the door was interrupted by a beautiful woman sporting bed-head, perfectly applied makeup and a ratty blue Vote for Nixon T-shirt. Obviously meant for a stout, 1972 Republican, it hit her just past midthigh.
“You want breakfast?” she asked, shaking a box of cereal toward him. “I think, after years of tinkering, I have finally found an ambrosia-like ratio of honey to nut.”
He smiled at the quip. “I’d love to, Chloe. I would. But part of the reason I’m so good at my job is that I get there by seven every morning.”
“Just stay for ten minutes? I was kind of hoping we could talk about this dinner on Saturday. There’s a ton of stuff that goes into hosting the perfect business dinner, and besides being good at your job, you’ve got none of them. Trust me when I tell you, I’ve learned from the master. And my mother has passed those tips and tricks on to me, because I had no say in the matter.”
For the first time since he’d set his sights on this promotion a year and a half ago, he wanted to stay home and plan a dinner party. The fact that he was even considering it shook him, and gave his words an edge. “I don’t really have ten minutes to spare for this right now.”
Chloe set the box on the counter. “Oh. Okay.” He could read the hurt in her expressive eyes as she poured milk into her bowl.
Ben managed a smile, an attempt to numb the sting. “I’ll see you later, though.” He grabbed his coat from the hall closet and jammed his socked feet into the square-toed dress shoes he’d left by the door.
“Way later. I’m closing tonight. Josh’s band has a gig so I told him I’d cover his shift. I should be back around eleven.”
He glanced over as Chloe appeared, her shoulder resting against the doorway to the kitchen, one bare foot curled over the other as she ate her cereal standing up.
“Have a good day,” she said.
Ben’s chest constricted a little at the wifely sentiment, but he couldn’t say why.
He stepped toward her and she stopped chewing, her spoon frozen in her hand. He was too close. He knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. She smelled warm and sensual, but with an edge. Like vanilla laced with bourbon.
Ben swallowed, reaching behind her to grab his keys off the counter. It was all he could do not to brush a soft kiss to her flushed cheek. Her lips.
He wanted to tug off that hideous T-shirt and see what she was—or wasn’t—wearing underneath. Push her up against the granite countertop or the stainless-steel fridge. Touch her everywhere.
Masochist, he chided himself, taking a big step away from temptation. “See you tonight, Chloe.” He didn’t look back as he pulled the door shut behind him.
* * *
IT WAS AFTER nine when Ben pulled his truck into the condo’s underground parking that night. He’d caught up on all his work and even used his supper break to squeeze in a quick workout. Despite the productive day, he still had a few things to finish up, and he grabbed his tablet as he sat down on the couch. But he couldn’t concentrate. He was acutely aware of how empty the condo felt tonight.
Stupid, since until yesterday he’d lived here alone for a year and a half and never realized how quiet it was before. He could only attribute the weird sensation to the fact that Chloe had left reminders of herself everywhere. A pair of heels tipped over at the door, a dirty mug in the sink. Her notebook and a makeup magazine on the coffee table. The duvet from his bed jammed in the corner of the couch, like the empty husk of a cocoon after the butterfly had flown away.
He ran a frustrated hand across his hair. He really needed to get a handle on Hotel Burke’s website and familiarize himself with the analytics before he met with his team the next morning. But the siren song of YouTube kept tempting him, trying to make him do the thing he’d been trying not to do for days.
She’d hate it.
He knew she’d hate it.
But he was dying to check out her makeup channel. And she wasn’t home yet. She never had to know, he reasoned. The argument was convincing enough that he swiped back to his home screen and opened the YouTube app.
He typed “makeup” and “Chloe” into the search field and with one tap of his finger, his screen was filled with thumbnails of her, dozens of them, spanning several different hair colors and so many combinations of makeup that Ben’s mind was blown.
Pink-lipped Chloe, red-lipped Chloe, Chloe with eyeliner, Chloe with no eyeliner, Chloe looking sweet, Chloe looking sultry, Chloe looking tough—he couldn’t even fathom that the mess of brushes and bottles and powders littering the bathroom counter right now could be responsible for all of them.
He scrolled through the page. Most of the videos had thumbnails with the same background—probably her bedroom at home, but he found himself clicking on the poorly-lit one at the very top of the page. The most recent one.
The video loaded, and there she was. She might as well have been a different person with her hair a uniform brown. Now that he’d met the real Chloe, the smart, strong woman who lived life on her own terms, he had a hard time remembering he’d known her before her hair was black and red.
“Hi, guys, Chloe here. I’m on the road this week, and as you can see my accommodations are not the most glamorous, but that’s no reason not to look like a million bucks!”
Ben was mesmerized by the process as Chloe transformed herself into the stormy-eyed goddess who’d done all kinds of naughty things with him on the quiltless bed behind her left shoulder.
But the video wasn’t compelling just because her sex appeal was off the Richter scale, or because he had intimate knowledge of the black satin bra he remembered was hiding under that T-shirt. Chloe was actually a really good teacher. Despite her tendency toward sarcasm and privacy in real life, onscreen her demeanor was very open and relaxed. She was a dynamic speaker, not plagued by the “ums” and “likes” that peppered most people’s diction when asked to wing it on camera. And even with the shitty lighting in the Value Inn, it was clear that she loved what she was doing.
There was true passion behind her words and the way she applied her makeup. He’d been more right on the plane than he’d realized. Chloe was an artist.
He clicked around a bit, watched more snippets of her videos. He couldn’t find a single one, though, where she didn’t start with all her foundation and one eye already done. He realized he’d never seen her without any makeup on.
Sometimes she did investigative-type videos, showing the advertising claims of the product and how they didn’t work as shown, before giving some tips on how to achieve the product’s promise through alternate means. Even though she basically called out his entire profession in them, these videos were his favorites—especially the one about something called “lip plumpers” because she was particularly scathing in it. After a while, though, the strategic part of his brain took over, and he became obsessed with the metrics.
She’d been making videos for about eight months, yet her subscriber list was much lower than he’d have suspected. Especially considering that at least a third of her thirty-two videos showed a dramatic upswing of comments and views over the last week. He couldn’t be sure, but judging by the comments, it seemed as if talking to Kenley Burke had paid major dividends. Imagine if she told even a few friends about the site. And if each of them told a few friends…
Even without the word of mouth, some of Chloe’s special-event tutorials—like Halloween and New Year’s Eve—were fast approaching ten thousand hits. Those were the kinds of numbers that would push her revenue into higher brackets.
But what amazed him the most was her total lack of self-promotion. She had no social media accounts linked to her channel, no website. Her entire reach was organic—makeup-wearers of all ages, from all over the world, stumbling across Chloe’s videos by sheer luck and then sharing them with their friends.
But by not linking to the products she was using, she was leaving thousands of dollars’ worth of affiliate money on the table. She needed to up the quality of her videos, too. Nothing some decent lighting and a new laptop wouldn’t fix.
With only a bare minimum of work, Chloe could turn her hobby into an empire. He was sure of it.
Ben’s heart rate picked up. He was having that moment again. The electric rush that came when his brain churned with ideas. He could help her transform Makeup by Chloe into something even bigger and better than it was now.
The sound of her key in the door startled him and he panicked. He hit the button to switch off his screen and shoved the tablet on the coffee table, exchanging it for the makeup magazine she’d left there. He settled into the couch and aimed for nonchalance.
* * *
CHLOE PUSHED HER way into the condo, kicking off her blister-producing high heels as she shut the door and locked it. God, it was good to be home. She headed straight for the fridge, dropping her purse on the counter and yanking a tub of Phish Food from the freezer.
“Ben?” she called, opening the cutlery drawer.
“In here,” came the reply, and she snagged two spoons before bumping the drawer shut with her hip and heading into the living room.
Ben was sprawled comfortably on the couch, his bare feet crossed at the ankles and propped up on the coffee table. He was wearing a white T-shirt and gray sweats. And to top off the cuteness that was Ben, he wasn’t watching TV. He was reading.
She raised her eyebrows as she took in exactly what he was reading, and he blushed when he closed the worn magazine and tossed it onto the table beside his tablet. “So, how’d it go today?”
“Well,” Chloe began, dropping onto the cushion beside him. Her shoulder pressed against his upper arm.
“Work itself was okay.” She mimicked his relaxed, feet-on-coffee-table position and pulled the top off the frozen nectar of the dairy gods. She gave him a spoon and Ben dug in before she’d dropped the lid on the cushion beside her.
“What do you call your penis?” she asked, and Ben’s other hand flew to his mouth, ostensibly to keep his behemoth spoonful of ice cream from falling off his tongue.
Chloe dug a chocolate fish from the pint with her spoon and let it melt on her tongue. “Have you given it a name? You know, something you call it when you’re with a special lady? Like Excalibur or Big Ben?”
She couldn’t help that her eyes darted covertly to his crotch. If she remembered correctly—and she did—either of those names were appropriate. Oh, geez! Chloe hunched her shoulders, hoping her nipples wouldn’t betray her gutter mind.
Clearing her throat, she pressed on. “Or are you into more generic innuendo? Like, ‘Hey, baby. I’ve got a package for you’?”
Ben’s face was scrunched up with disgust, which she found kind of endearing. “I’m trying to eat here,” he protested. “Why are you talking about dicks?”
Chloe dragged her spoon delicately along the top of the ice cream until she had a perfect curl. “Because the creepy delivery guy who dropped off our new Valentine’s Day signage asked if I wanted to go in the back room—”
“Jesus, did he try anything? Are you okay?”
Chloe was taken aback by Ben’s sudden intensity. “I’m fine. That’s why I’m trying to tell you the funny story of what happened to me today.”
He stared at her for a long moment before his muscles relaxed.
“What’s going on with you?”
Ben shook his head. “Nothing.”
She gave him a hard look to let him know she wasn’t buying it.
“It’s nothing. Finish your story. He wanted you to go into the back room…” he prodded.
“Because he wanted me to play with his trouser snake.”
Ben froze. “He did not say that.”
“I swear on Ben and Jerry’s lives.”
They stared at one another for a moment in shared horror before bursting into laughter.
“So if you have some cutesy name for your lower anatomy, I need to know now. Because I discovered something important about myself tonight—I can’t live with a man who says things like that.”
“I don’t. But for the record, after that speech, I wouldn’t tell you even if I did.”
Chloe smiled. “For fear of constant and merciless mocking? Or because you don’t want me to leave?” she asked, putting her spoon in her mouth upside-down, applying the ice cream directly to her tongue.
Ben sobered and glanced over at her. The smile slipped from her lips as awareness hummed between them. Her nipples tingled as she slipped the spoon from her mouth and forced herself to swallow. “Okay, seriously though,” she said, barging through the moment in the interest of self-preservation. He’d been kind of a jerk to her at breakfast. She was not going to fall right into bed with him. “What’s your penis’s name? Because I feel like that’s something a wife would know. What if your boss asks?”
Ben took her cue, dispelling the remainder of the tension with a grin. “I like your moxie, Masterson. You’re taking this seriously, preparing for every eventuality.”
“A good hostess always has a bevy of conversation topics at her disposal.”
“Yes, she does. And speaking of conversation topics, I have something I need to tell you.”
Chloe went still at the serious note in his voice.
“I watched some of your makeup videos.”
“What?” The blood drained from her face. It was like she’d been soul-jacked. A ridiculous reaction, she knew, since she’d posted her soul on YouTube herself.
“They’re great. You’re very natural on camera.”
“Thanks.”
Ben laughed. “Your words say ‘thank you’ but your tone says ‘fuck you, Ben.’”
That was probably true.
“I just do it for fun.”
“I think that’s your first mistake. Makeup by Chloe has the potential to be a big deal. It could be a brick and mortar business—I mean, you did your sister’s wedding makeup for free, obviously, but people pay big money for that. Or you can keep the business online. If you write anything like you speak in those videos, you could branch into a blog and it could lead to sponsorships, or just new audiences. You could even do a little of both, kind of dovetail them together, depending on your vision.”
Ben’s lecture was starting to feel like the speech her dad had given her before she applied for law school. “You will do this and you will go here.” Before she’d realized it, all her choices had been taken away.
She knew Ben was just trying to help. That his suggestions came from a good place, but…Makeup by Chloe was hers. And Ben didn’t have the right to make these decisions for her. That was the whole reason she’d started her YouTube channel in the first place.
“…I mean, just talking with Kenley resulted in a huge spike in your numbers. Imagine if—”
“Hey, Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Right, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself, but it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. Even just linking to the products you use could result in an impressive amount of affiliate revenue and—”
“Ben!”
He started at her brusque tone.
“I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine. I get it.” His voice belied his words. He wasn’t happy. She’d hurt his feelings.
Well, join the club.
“I’ve got some work to finish up anyway. I’ll be in the office.”
“Okay.” It was all she could say as she watched him leave.
It wasn’t that she didn’t feel badly about cutting him off. He talked a good game. Made her consider things she usually dismissed as fanciful. But Makeup by Chloe wasn’t ready yet. She wasn’t prepared to put it out in the world until she learned more techniques, and saved more money. Until she felt like a businesswoman, not an imposter. Doing makeup made her happy, sure, but she had so much more to prove before people would pay for her services. Before she could really make use of his advice.
She looked down at the ice cream in her hand. It had melted a fair bit during their chat. She put the lid back on it and headed into the kitchen to put it away, dropping her and Ben’s spoons in the sink as she passed by.
It was only the second night since he’d tracked her down, but they’d already started fighting and stopped having sex. Real life was intruding on their fantasy more quickly than she’d expected.