Page 15 of Home to Me

“Kind of like how you can be funny if you try?” Lauren inquired dryly. Sam's corny attempts at humor were a well-known, long-running joke in their group of friends.

Sam stuck her tongue out and retorted—yes, somewhat sassily— “Luke thinks I'm hilarious. And that's all I really care about. So there.”

After this response, however, she became completely absorbed in typing her reply to Luke, her face a mask of focus, her thumbs flying over the small keypad.

While Lauren waited for her friend to finish sexting with her fiancé, Ben returned, sitting as he unwrapped his sandwich. When he looked over at her and their eyes locked, Lauren felt the air leave her lungs in a whoosh and tingles spread from her head to her toes.

She looked back down at her food, trying to ignore her traitorous body’s reaction to Ben’s deep, puppy-dog, brown eyes. Lauren fidgeted in her chair. She couldn’t sit still. With Ben beside her, she felt as tight as a high wire, all tension and jangling nerves. After less than a minute, it became simply too much for her to handle, and she began to gather up the remnants of her lunch.

“Sorry to have to rush off like this,” Lauren said in hurried voice to Ben, making an excuse. Anything to get out of there. She felt as if she couldn't breathe, like she was a tightly coiled spring about to snap. “Sam and I really have to get going.”

At the sound of her name, Sam's head popped up from her text message composition. “Hmm?” she asked, distracted.

“I was saying that we really have to get going,” Lauren clarified for her, hoping she would pick up on the cue and just go along.

Sam wrinkled her brow in puzzlement and exclaimed, “I haven't even finished my sandwich yet!”

Okay, so...too much to hope for, then.

“Well, eat it in the car, then. We have to go,” Lauren said urgently.

Sam shrugged in acquiescence and wrapped up her sandwich, stowing it in her purse.

“Bye, Ben,” Sam said cordially as she got up from the table. “Nice to see you. I'm glad you came to have lunch with us.”

Ben laughed. “I think that makes one of you,” he joked, winking at Lauren.

Lauren stood up straighter, her spine stiffening. “Well, it's not as if I were expecting you,” she said defensively.

“Oh, I know,” came Ben's languid reply, which he paired with an equally frustrating knowing smile.

Lauren knew exactly what Ben was doing. He was goading her. It was obvious. Even though she knew she was doing exactly what he was baiting her to do, she found herself adding, “I'm not leaving just because you're here.”

Ben laughed, “Darlin', I never thought that.”

“Good.” Lauren tried to ignore the thrill that raced down her spine when Ben referred to her as darlin’. She knew it was now going to be added to the descriptive words Ben used last night that kept running through her mind, unbidden.

Cute. Adorable. Darlin’. Yep, they were going to be on constant repeat.

“Until you brought it up, that is.”

Lauren's eyes narrowed. She didn't want to let him have the last word, but she couldn't think of anything to say. Her brain was short-circuiting. She knew that Ben knew exactly what he was doing. She was being played like a fiddle.

It wasn’t just his lazy yet appreciative assessing gaze or his slow and sexy smile. The thing that was the most frustrating about the way he was looking at her was that his smile seemed to be hiding some amusing truth, something that he, and only he, was privy to. Something that he wasn't about to let her in on.

And. It. Drove. Her. Up. The. Wall.

She didn't like his 'cat that ate the canary' attitude. She didn't like it one bit. But she didn’t want to get into an argument with him right in front of Two Scoops either.

She settled for maintaining her dignity and simply bade him goodbye, turning on her heels and striding towards her car. Before she reached it, though, she heard him call after her.

“Oh, and by the way...Lauren?”

Determined to maintain her dignified bearings, she turned to face him, her back straight, her countenance placid.

“Yes?” she asked politely.

That damn 'cat that ate the canary' grin spread even wider.

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