Page 83 of Waiting For A Girl Like You
Ben ignored her, keeping his gaze pinned on the cabinets behind Rowan’s head. “Then why did I get an alert?”
“The cameras are down for a few minutes since I’m running a security check. The guards outside know. Klausen knows. Anderson knows. Samuel knows. Liam and Izzy know. Holden knows.”
Holy hell, he was rambling like a fucking moron.
“The system texts everyone, so everyone—”
“Knows. I get it,” Ben cut him off, his left cheek muscle twitching. “Next time, keep me in the loop.”
“Yes, sir.”
The three of them stood there with nothing but the hum of the refrigerator packing the long, mortifying silence. A solid thirty seconds passed, and it was Annabeth who broke first.
“We were just going to look at the stars,” she said, weakly waving the wine bottle. “I mean, the cameras are always on, and it just gets to be a lot. We needed… a moment.”
“I think we all do.” Liam hurried into the kitchen, his shirt still off and stitches on his upper arm glistening with Vaseline. “Jamison finished cleaning my wound, and we were going to have a glass of wine. Did you want to join us, Ben?”
“Should you really be drinking while the cameras are down?”
“It’s not totally down,” Rowan said quickly. “It’s just the cameras recalibrating. The doors and windows are secure.”
Ben didn’t seem very impressed with the response. “But yet, you two were going to go outside and look at the stars?”
Jamison darted into the kitchen with her box of medical supplies in hand. She skidded to a stop behind Liam. “Daddy, what are you doing up?”
“I suppose I’m having wine with you four while the cameras recalibrate.” Ben headed for the pantry. “There should be a decent bottle of red in here. Simone used to hide the good stuff behind those enormous bags of cat food she insists on buying.”
Once Ben disappeared into the cavernous pantry, Liam leaned on the counter. Propping his good arm’s elbow on the granite, he rested his chin on his hand and covered his mouth with his fingers. “I’m sorry, man.”
Rowan glared at him. “You suck.”
“What kind of wingman crap is this?” Annabeth hissed at Jamison. “You said it was all planned out.”
“It was!” Jamison hissed back. “You were supposed to be naked on the boat by now.”
“Well, we got distracted.”
Liam straightened, motioning toward the back door. “Just go. We’ll stall.”
“Yeah, no go,” Rowan whispered. “If I take her outside, Ben will flip the fuck out.”
From the pantry, something crashed, and Ben let out a string of curses. “Why does she have to store this much cat food?”
Summoned by all the noise, Simone’s bedroom door snapped open. “What’s going on?”
Realizing their perfectly planned idea was well and truly ruined, Liam’s shoulders drooped. “We’re running a security camera check, and while we wait for the cameras to calibrate, we thought we would have a glass of wine. Ben woke and wanted to join us, but I think the cat food might have attacked him.”
Never missing a damn thing and able to smell a lie—even a partial one—Simone took them all in. One. At. A. Time. Rowan would never get used to her. Five, ten, twenty years from now, she would continue to unnerve him in a way no one else could.
“Why aren’t you two in bed?” Simone asked, zeroing in on Annabeth and Jamison. “And Annabeth, why are you in that dress? It’s almost one in the morning.”
“I was cleaning Liam’s wound,” Jamison rushed out. “And Annabeth was taking Rowan outside for fresh air.”
The sounds of dry cat food spilling across the floor broke the tension building, and they all moved out of the way when a dozen or so felines slinked from out of nowhere to see what Ben was doing.
“Damn it, Simone,” Ben shouted from the pantry. “Where the hell are you hiding the good red these days?”
“Third shelf,” she replied, not taking her sharp gaze off the four of them.
