Knight Nostalgia: A Knights of the Board Room Anthology(58)

Courteously, he turned his attention back to his laptop screen. Not to dismiss Ben, but to give him the chance to move away without requiring a response, something else Ben appreciated.

Cass’s blue eyes shifted to Ben as he came toward her. He remembered the first time he’d met her. She’d come to them for a meeting at K&A, representing a client through Pickard Consulting, her employer. Unbeknownst to them at the time, Lucas already knew her, from a chance encounter when he’d been vacationing in the Berkshires. The electricity between her and him during the negotiations had been like watching an erotic light show, but there’d been a stronger, more captivating undercurrent. Each man of the K&A circle had fallen fast and hard for the woman he wanted, the submissive he intended to claim forever.

Ben had felt an odd yearning during that meeting, which, at the time, he’d dismissed. He’d dismissed it when Peter had found Dana, and Jon had found Rachel, though the feeling had become stronger and stronger, until Marcie’s stubbornness had forced him to face what it was. An acknowledgment of his own loneliness, and that he was trapped in a cage he’d made for himself out of his past demons.

Marcie had thrown herself right into that cage, taken on those demons head-on, and wrapped herself around his heart and soul, refusing to leave unless they walked out together. That struggle was still ongoing, as some of yesterday’s events had proven, but in the jewelry store, the bars had bent, just a little.

When he’d met Cass, he hadn’t known she was connected by blood to the woman who would completely fuck up his certainty that he’d never be in a long-term relationship. Let alone be thinking of crazy things like marriage, or picking out rings.

Cass loved Marcie as much as he did. But it wasn’t that side of her Ben was considering as he took a seat next to her on the bench. He slid an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her upper arm with easy strokes.

“Did you guess?” he asked at last. “Or did Marcie tell you?” Since it was a short bench, they were hip to hip, her shoulder pressed against his chest.

She let out a little sigh, relaxing against him. “Neither. At least not right away. I came back to buy it and Mr. Owens told me it had been purchased. Then I guessed.”

“Mike,” the proprietor said, his hearing obviously sharp, since he sat nearly forty feet away and they were speaking in low tones.

“Mike,” she repeated, her lips curving in a slight smile.

They sat in silence for another few moments before Ben spoke again. “You wouldn’t let me buy you anything yesterday.”

“No.”

“I wasn’t trying to disrespect that,” he said. “Marcie wanted me to buy the painting for you.”

She nodded.

“I also wasn’t trying to buy you off. Make amends with a fucking bribe.”

He hadn’t meant to curse, but the first sentence resurrected some of what he’d felt yesterday. It had apparently built up acid in his gut that hadn’t dispelled.

She turned her gaze to him fully, and the regret he saw there disintegrated some of it. “Oh, Ben. I’m sorry you thought that I felt that way. I didn’t. Not at all.”

He tightened his arm around her shoulders, but suddenly needed some space. Withdrawing and rising, he walked a couple steps toward the painting and stared up at it. Fuck, the artist had succeeded in his intent. A man could get lost in the swirling colors and textures he’d used to depict the monastery, and the way it nested in the deep forest. The inviting depth was the right balance between coolness and warmth.

The longer Ben looked, the more it felt like he wasn’t looking up at a picture from inside of a gallery, but up at the monastery itself, from the floor of a thick forest. Standing on rich earth formed from the decay of leaves and passage of seasons, he could gaze up at the gray and brown timeless stone, more a part of the mountain than a separate structure built upon it. One could climb upwards to it, reach that tranquility.

There were no faces to those Ben had lost earliest. His mother had abandoned him as a baby, and he had no clue who the sperm donor was that he would never call a father. But as he looked at the painting, those faceless people passed through his mind, quickly overtaken by Jonas Kensington and brusque Golda, the closest thing to parents he’d had. But he had brothers. Matt, Peter, Lucas, Jon. He had a family.

Peace beckoned from the canvas. Ben wasn’t much of a nature guy, but even he felt its pull. Standing in its shadow, he felt what else it could summon. Truth. Uttered without accusation or defensiveness.

“I get it, you know,” he said. “You had one sibling self-destruct from his addiction. You don’t want to see Marcie go down a similar road.”

He turned to face Cass. Her intelligent blue eyes registered surprise at his words. “You think love can be like an addiction,” she said slowly, more an observation than a question.

“The way she goes about it, the line is thin.” Marcie gave her whole heart and soul to it, refusing to see any roadblocks or warning signs. “I won’t marry her unless I’m a hundred percent sure,” he said fiercely. “That’s a promise. I’m not going to set her up to be disappointed.”

Cass’s expression became even more thoughtful. “I’ve been a mother longer than I’ve been anything else in my life. Did you realize that?”

Not sure where she was going with that, Ben remained silent and let her continue. “Once Lucas and the rest of you helped me, so I could finally step back and take a breath, I realized it. My brothers and sisters, they became my kids when our parents weren’t up to the task. Hell, my mother was as much of a child as any of them.”