Page 48 of The Barista's Beloved

21

There was only so long you could wallow in indecision before life swooped back in to distract you, Maeve found. She wanted to talk to Ben, but she was terrified to reach out to him.. What if he said he was leaving? What if he said he wasn’t? He’d sent a lot of text messages at first, while she was still furious and capable of deleting them with a sense of righteous indignation. Now she wished she hadn’t, because he’d gone radio silent.

She’d tried to hide her misery at work, although she was pretty sure she wasn’t fooling anyone. Iain had rolled his eyes at her several times, but they were both too busy for him to deliver another version of his earlier lecture. Orders were rolling in, and she and her team had their noses to the grindstone while Iain was looking slightly frazzled with the effort of sustaining his current marketing push and doing all of the administrative work they needed to stay on top of things. Maybe he was right, and they did need to find a lawyer for the contract work.

It was as good an excuse as any to reach out to Ben, she reasoned. Even if he wasn’t going to stick around—her heart hurt at the thought, a physical ache that made her wince and rub her chest—he might know somebody who could help them out. And if he did tell her he was leaving, she could pretend the only reason she’d reached out at all was for work. Unless, of course, he wanted to stay. She couldn’t let herself dwell on how much she wanted him to stay, and go back to being the Ben she knew and loved.

She sighed and packed up her bag. She was due at Youth Mentors for a volunteer shift, and she was dreading that nearly as much as she was dreading calling Ben. She hadn’t heard anything one way or another about the legal situation. Whether Ben had withdrawn his petitions or not, the organization was still vulnerable, still ripe for the picking for developers like Hartwell. Joan had worked so hard and done so much good for the community; to see her efforts fail simply because her office was in a prime location for development had to be galling. It infuriated Maeve, and she’d only volunteered there for a short time.

She said her goodbyes to the staff at the distillery and drove across town. As she parked her car, her phone buzzed with a text. It was from Joan, telling her that while she was gone for the day, there were a few items to be dealt with on the front desk. Maeve smiled fondly down at her phone. She’d grown to like Joan immensely over their recent acquaintance. Like an older version of Angelica, she seemed to know everyone and everything in town. Maeve wondered what she would do if Youth Mentors went under. Start up another charity? Retire for real? She already played golf with the mayor every week.

Shaking her head, she slid out of her car and headed for the door. It was unlocked, which surprised her. Maybe one of the other volunteers was still here. Normally when Joan left, she locked up behind her and Maeve used her own key to open the place back up. She dropped her bag on the chair behind the front desk, noticing a piece of paper with Joan’s handwriting laid over the computer keyboard. It looked like a to-do list.

A thump from the offices at the back startled her, and she frowned. “Hello? Anyone here?”

Another thump and a distinctly male grunt were her only answer, so she headed down the hallway to investigate, reaching the two former classrooms at the back half of the building. One of them was Joan’s office, and the other had been empty ever since Maeve had begun volunteering.

Except now it wasn’t.

She stopped dead in the doorway, eyes wide, and tried to understand what she was seeing. Ben stood in the middle of the room, behind a large desk that hadn’t been there the week before. He was heaving a heavy box from the floor onto the desk with a grunt. It landed with a thump, and she understood the sounds she’d been hearing. What she didn’t understand was why.

He wore dark jeans and a plain t-shirt, which clung to his muscles as he shifted the box. His resemblance to Captain America was back with a vengeance. A brief, searing memory of those muscles bunching under her hands as he lifted her into bed made her mouth suddenly dry out.

“B-Ben?”

He looked up. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come in. Hi.” His smile was warm, friendly, everything she was so used to from him. It confused her even more.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted.

He picked up a boxcutter and began to open the taped box with swift, economical movements. “Unpacking my office.”

“Your office?” He was speaking the same language she did, surely, but the words didn’t make any sense.

“Yep.”

“I don’t understand. I thought—”

“That I was off to Hawaii?” He met her eyes, smile still in place but something else in his gaze. Something that looked...determined? “That’s not me, Maeve. Not anymore. You showed me that.”

She took a slow step forward, finally entering the room and glancing around her. The desk wasn’t the only thing that was different. Several bookcases lined the walls, and there were two long filing cabinets underneath the window at the back. A comfortable-looking chair she vaguely recognized as once having been in the parlor at The Oakwell Inn was in front of the desk, and a standard office chair was behind it.

He stood at the desk, one hand still holding the boxcutter, watching her solemnly. “That job in Hawaii, and what they wanted me to do to get it...” He drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’ll freely admit I probably would have done it, before.”

“Before?”

He set the tool down carefully. “Before this. Before River Hill, before you. I was a trainwreck, Maeve.” His lips tilted briefly into a small smile before he continued. “I burned out, got fired, came crawling to Max and started doing whatever I could to pay rent. But it was never what I wanted. And it never was sustainable.”

She nodded. “I knew that.”

“For a while I thought I should just go back and do the same thing again, eventually, once I’d taken a break. And then I met you.” He stepped toward her, and she instinctively stepped back. She needed to hear the rest. His face froze, a little bit, but then he swallowed and continued. “You showed me that I’m a different person now.”

“I don’t—” She swallowed, realizing that she was about to say something she never thought she’d say. “I don’t think you should give up the job just for me, Ben.” It hurt to say it out loud, but it was the truth. She couldn’t be the solitary anchor that weighed him down and kept him here, no matter how much she loved him. Or he loved her. Because he did, she knew it, deep down. He loved her a lot, and it made her feel astonished and delighted and terrified in equal measure. Just like the way she felt about him.

“It’s not for you, Maeve.” When her eyes flew up to meet his, he actually laughed a little. “Sorry! I’m not saying this elegantly at all. But you’re right. You were the catalyst, but I really am different. The thought of taking that job made me feel sick, when I actually thought about anything but my bank account.”

She frowned. “So what is all this?” She gestured toward the office’s new furnishings.

“This is my new life,” he said quietly. “One I hope to share with you, if you’ll let me.”

---