It’s not the answer I wanted, but I guess it will have to do because I’m not ready to ask him for any more details. If Ridge knows Tabitha is at the church, that’s the most important part.
In the early morning hours Main Street is dark, the streetlights illuminating bare sidewalks. Bennett pulls his truck into a space next to my car in the back parking lot and shuts off the engine.
“Are you coming in the bakery?” I’d expected him to drop me off out front and watch me walk away again.
He grunts.
“Okay then.” I haven’t been up this late since high school and a few small parties here and there. I don’t have the time or patience for any kind of attitude tonight.
I jump out of his truck and lightly close the door so not to wake up any of the other shop owners who live above their buildings. Bennett isn’t as concerned about my neighbors from the way he slams his door, the sounds echoing in the mostly empty parking lot.
Whatever.
With the door unlocked I spend a few seconds punching in the code and toss my unicorn tote bag on the table. I’ll clean it up when I’m back down here to start the doughnut prep in a little under four hours.
Bennett stares at the alarm. “At least you set the alarm.”
“Of course I set the alarm.” He reminded me two thousand times after they put it in.
He grunts. “Well you don’t listen to anything else I say.”
Bennett closes the door behind him and reactivates the alarm, I don’t have enough concern to figure out what the heck he’s doing here or his comments. He’s gone two days without talking to me. I don’t have any time for that nonsense. At least not right now. My bones are heavy from exhaustion. I’ll get back to being mad at him in the morning.
“This has gone on long enough,” he says standing in front of the back door with his arms crossed, his lips pressed together and a stern expression.
I turned from the steps I’d been about to walk up. “Excuse me?”
His eyes narrow a smidge. “I let you have your space the last two days while I waited for you to figure out you were wrong and ask me for help.”
That comment wakes me up. “Excuse me?” I ask in a higher pitch.
“What were you thinking? Whose bright idea was it to have a clandestine meeting with Frankie Zanetti in the middle of a cemetery? You are smarter than that choice.”
I turn completely around, my stance now matching his. “Excuse me?”
“And then I have to come and rescue you from a biker compound. Dom is not someone to be messed with. What went on tonight, Anessa?”
Screw sleep.
I have a man to correct. “Who do you think you are? You don’t talk to me for two days and I’m supposed to run to your side and be all Bennett please save me. No.”
“Yes,” he answers as if there was never another option available.
My mouth hangs open in silence. I mean really, what can I say back to his overzealous man behavior?
“Why didn’t you call me as soon as Frankie made contact?”
“I called Frankie,” I say and then immediately wish I could take it back from the way his eyes widen and his stance hardens. “And I was having tea with the bikers.”
It’s not completely the truth. I was holding a beer which I never opened, but we did talk about tea. And when it comes to fighting, it’s kind of the same thing. Close enough.
“You had tea with The Impaler?”
When he says it like that.
“Well…” If he’s going to ask me outright like that I suppose I can’t lie completely.
He grins like he knows he’s got me. “That’s what I thought.”
