Knight Nostalgia: A Knights of the Board Room Anthology(43)
“You are spoiled rotten,” he said.
“Whose fault would that be?” Pulling back and giving him an enchanting smile, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and left his arms, sashaying across the aisles to rejoin Rachel.
As he moved to follow them, his attention was caught by something else. Cass was buying her mixer, telling the cashier their driver would be coming in to get it after she texted Max. Ben came to the counter. “This isn’t for a wedding,” he said mildly. “Because I already have a mixer.”
Yeah, he was doing a return volley on that earlier comment about whoever the groom might be. Ease it back, he warned himself. “You all are supposed to be letting me foot the bill today,” he reminded her.
“No,” Cass said, signing the receipt and handing it back to the cashier. She met his gaze. “Not for me.”
He deserved the ball busting, so he’d taken the previous comment with what he thought was good grace, but the implication here had his hackles up. Did Cass think this outing was about buying her off? Because it wasn’t, in any way.
Savannah had come to Cass’s elbow, as if she thought her support might be needed. Her expression said this wasn’t the place or the time. That Ben needed to hold his temper and figure out what was going on. What Cass needed from him to fix it.
He knew that. Yet he couldn’t deny the earlier comment had struck a nerve. Yeah, he hadn’t gone down on one knee or wrapped his head around the whole marriage deal, but Marcie was his. He was going to be there for her, take care of her, no matter what. For Cass to imply otherwise? That dog didn’t hunt.
“I’ll text Max to come pick it up,” he said. “If you’re okay with me handling that.”
He tried to keep the edge out of his tone, probably unsuccessfully, but Cass nodded. “Thank you. I’d appreciate it.” She put enough warmth in her voice to ease the tension. Cass was a superb corporate negotiator, and she knew how to flip a room with merely the right selection of words and tone. With that and the brief meeting of their gazes, she told him she didn’t want trouble either. She just didn’t want him to buy her anything.
He wondered how she’d feel about the two-thousand-dollar painting he’d just bought her. He’d let Marcie handle that when it arrived at Cass’s door. Probably by courier. A man knew when it was good to be prudently absent.
As they emerged from Ingredients, Rachel pointed out Baby Mine, a store for all things short people, and they headed that way. Ben took a moment to help Max put the new bags and Savannah and Cass’s boxed appliances in the car.
As Max straightened and closed the trunk, he watched the women, descending on the store like an army at the quickstep. “You want a protein bar, to help keep up your energy?”
“I don’t need help keeping anything up, thank you,” Ben retorted. At Max’s grin, he added, “You know, Jon’s been looking at auto-drive cars. You may be obsolete before you know it.”
“Good. Can focus on my fishing.”
“The first time Janet lets you clean a stinky fish on her Southern Living style back porch, I want video.”
Ben had expected the suggestion Max might be a regular visitor to Janet’s home would get him to clam up and retreat. This time he fired a decent return volley, which made Ben wonder if things were progressing faster than they knew.
“Love to chat, but I have to go sit in the car and nap. While listening to the game.” Max nodded toward the baby store. “You better hurry and catch up. They might need your opinion on baby rattles.”
The former Navy SEAL laughed and ducked Ben’s feigned punch. Reviewing a number of ways to take his revenge on the smug bastard, Ben headed for Baby Mine. He quickened his step so that he could hold the door open for an Asian mother coming out with a stroller. She had a phone tucked under her ear and a Louis Vuitton bag over the other shoulder he expected any of his women would have mugged her for. It looked big enough to be doubling as a very stylish diaper bag.
She nodded a harried thanks, but smiled as he made a face at the monument to cuteness in the conveyance, a toddler with silky black pigtails and laughing eyes who waved her drool-sticky fist at him.
For just a moment, he imagined a little girl with Marcie’s brown eyes and his dark hair. The stubborn set to her chin would be a given, since it was branded on the DNA of both parents.
Fucking Christ. What a way for his subconscious to effectively shrink his balls to the size of raisins and make his heart stop with terror. I haven’t even asked her to marry me.
Technically.
It was Dana’s fault, teasing him about what would happen when Marcie wanted children. And she would. Adopted or biological, it wouldn’t matter to her. It was a running theme among their group. Matt and Savannah intended to adopt their next child, and had already started looking into the paperwork side of things. And when Peter talked Dana into having a baby—when, not if—they’d adopt a sibling or two. All the K&A men knew not only how full foster homes and orphanages were, but what it felt like to lose parents, way before they could operate without them.
Though an adopted kid was no less scary to him than a biological one, Ben couldn’t help looking after the kid in the stroller and thinking what it would be like for someone to call him “Daddy.” Want to be tucked in at night. He thought about watching his kid run toward a swing set in the park, her singular focus on getting her little butt in that seat and pumping her legs to take her higher. No worries that mom or dad weren’t close by, keeping her—or him—safe.