Page 29 of Home to Me

On Ben's side of the room, Barbara was doing the same.

"What are the Polaroids for?" Lauren asked.

"Oh, those are so Barbara and I can sit later and strategize which outfits will look the best in the scene and next to each other," Marlene explained. "We'll shuffle them like playing cards and decide what our top pairings are. When we get it all settled, we'll chart it out and pack the clothes up, using the Polaroids to label which garment bag has which outfit."

"Wow. That’s quite an impressive system," Lauren said.

"Yep," Marlene agreed. "It serves us well."

Lauren could not believe how much behind-the-scenes work went into producing a television show, even a reality television show. It was a gigantic collaboration involving the talents and labors of many people. It was something she had never realized or respected before, but she was beginning to now.

As Barbara and Marlene hustled Ben and Lauren in and out of outfits, Lauren couldn’t help but sneak glances over at Ben, and in spite of her best intentions, she found herself admiring his well-muscled chest and six-pack abs.

In fact—again in spite of her best intentions—she actually found herself getting a little hot and bothered by the sight and proximity of a nearly naked Ben Stevens.

“Marlene,” Ben asked at one point, “is your son home from Afghanistan yet?”

“Two more months,” said Marlene sadly, but then she brightened. “I do get to Skype with him quite a bit. So that's a plus. I don't know how the wives and mothers of soldiers did it before that kind of technology, waiting weeks on end for letters to show up. I'd go absolutely nuts.”

“True,” Ben agreed. “But still. I bet you and James are counting down the days.”

“Fifty seven,” Marlene confirmed, and there was something so poignant in that—in her immediate recitation of the specific amount of days—that Lauren got a little misty even though she barely knew this woman.

Lauren felt her perspective on who Ben was shifting yet again. Remembering that Marlene's son was in Afghanistan, recalling her husband's name, caring about both of those things—this was not something that fit with the idea of Ben that she had in her mind. Was it possible that her concept of ‘Ben’–a Ben that was self-involved and entitled—was not the whole story and maybe not even what he was like at all?

It made her uncomfortable to think that she could’ve misjudged him so utterly and so quickly.

She wasn't yet entirely sold on the idea that she’d been wrong about Ben, but even the possibility of that made her feel unsettled.

During the entire three-hour fitting, Lauren tried to take advantage of small moments, little breaks, like when Marlene was pinning a Polaroid to the corkboard or when the two had to stop for thirty seconds to confer about small details, to try to somewhat keep up with the emails that were coming in on her phone at an alarming rate.

All she had time to do was scan them and reply to the most urgent ones. She noticed that Ben was doing the same thing.

At one point, she turned to him with a slightly frazzled smile and asked, "Is it always like this?"

Ben gave her a small half smile and a wink. “Nah,” he reassured her.

“Oh, that's good,” Lauren said with relief.

“Sometimes it's actually busy,” he clarified with a rascally twinkle in his eye.

Lauren laughed at this joke, which she’d left herself wide open for, and then said, “Well. Good thing I'm an excellent multitasker.”

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Torture. Pure, unadulterated torture. That's what this wardrobe fitting was for Ben.

Watching Lauren continue to be dressed and undressed, trying to keep his physical reaction to her under control—oh, yes, it was the sweetest torture he could possibly imagine.

What made it worse—and better—was that the longer the fitting went on, the less inhibited and more comfortable she seemed to become.

As Lauren slipped slacks on and off, he saw her legs—slim, toned, but undeniably strong. She was wearing a delicate, peach-lace bra-and-panties set, which made him smile. Leave it to Lauren to be dressed to the nines right down to her skivvies when she didn't even know that anyone would be seeing them that day. He wouldn't have expected any less of her.

But the reaction they were causing in him wasn’t a smiling matter. That pastel-peach color had him firing on all cylinders in a way that even an in-your-face, overtly sexy color like black or fire-engine red wouldn't have. It was so feminine, so close to her own skin tone, that he felt almost as if he were getting a preview of what Lauren Harrison must look like naked—and that was definitely not an experience he was prepared to have without sprouting some major wood.

And therein lay the problem. Not only did Ben wish to conceal his visceral, physical, sexual reaction to Lauren's beauty and state of undress from Lauren herself, but he wasn't exactly crazy about the idea of showing off his boner to Barbara and Marlene either—women he’d known for three years, whom he thought of as surrogate aunts.

Yes, that would definitely be a supremely uncomfortable situation.

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