“Seriously? Because I felt like you two needed to get a room during the interview,” Neil snorted out a laugh.
I hadn’t watched the show but the split-screen stills from it had wound up on my timeline, and even the photos looked scorching. Elli Andreson was a gifted athlete from Finland who also happened to be drop-dead gorgeous, which made it easy for audiences to speculate that Ben had been flirting with her during their interview.
From what I’d heard, it was very mutual. Like, the BookTok girlies went feral for their chemistry. There were dozens of videos showing Ben using the “triangle method” on Elli, which was an eye contact technique that supposedly made people fall in love with you.
“I thought you guys dated for a while?” Hailey asked.
Which was exactly what I’d turned up when I definitely wasn’t deep-diving on her in the hope of accidentally finding more details about what was going on between them.
“Maybe for like a minute,” Ben replied. He seemed to fixate on getting the perfect pita-to-hummus ratio. “It was nothing.”
The vibe felt too heavy for what wasn’t a big reveal. Ben was a known flirt and heartbreaker—present company one hundredpercent included—so I couldn’t figure out why he was acting like a youth pastor caught kissing a high schooler.
Neil turned to me. “You better be careful or you might be next. He has a way with the ladies. No one can resist the power of Magic Martino.” He wiggled his fingers like he was casting a spell on Ben’s behalf.
“Seriously?” I laughed in Neil’s face. “Watch me.”
Ben deflated half an inch at my response, but I knew better than to think that it had anything to do withmespecifically. It wasn’t that he wanted another chance, it was because he couldn’t believe that a human female wasn’t tripping over herself to impress him.
Oranyhuman, because Ben had a huge gay fanbase. He knew how to walk the line and be just flirty and receptive enough to score him a “Favorite Ally” pass.
“Yeah, and maybe you need to remember that this is work?” Hailey said. “Ben doesn’t need you to be his pimp, Neil. He does just fine on his own.”
I swallowed down a laugh. Hailey was growing on me.
“Whoa, stand down, Captain Feminism, I was just having some fun,” Neil replied. “He gets it. Right, Ben?”
Ben’s face went stony for a moment as he finished chewing.
“Listen, all I’m worried about this week is capturing a great story,” he replied. “And staying out of Quinn’s way.”
It was the last thing I expected him to say. Ben lived his life on fun mode, and even though I’d encountered a different side of him that night in Switzerland, I figured it was the exception and not the rule.
“Thanks,” I said softly. “Appreciate that.”
He met my gaze and for a moment it was just the two of us, confessing our feelings by the distant glow of a bonfire. Something inmy chest toggled toward the warmth and safety I’d felt that night, but I smashed the sensation before it could spread.
The server interrupted my delusion to deliver our entrées.
“Yay, time to eat weeds,” Neil joked.
“For someone who keeps shitting on the food you sure did some damage to that hummus,” Hailey said.
“Andthe arancini,” Ben added.
Neil didn’t answer because he was too busy downing stuffed peppers, which I was pretty sure he didn’t realize were vegan.
I was hungry, like always, and the spaghetti squash casserole with way too much parmesan sauce was a blissful change of pace for me. I forced myself to eat slowly. I was on guard now, because even though the meal seemed pleasant enough, they were still trespassing in my life during a critical period. And they werewatchers. Anything I said could and would be used as content, even unofficially. I was under a spotlight even when the cameras weren’t on me.
Yeah, this was going to be our first and last group dinner.
“Fan club alert,” Hailey said under her breath. She jutted her chin toward a group of six women across the restaurant who were doing a terrible job of pretending not to watch us.
I looked over even though I knew they weren’t staring at me. They’d been busy taking photos of their food but they’d finally picked up on the force field radiating from Ben, and now they couldn’t stop glancing over. I caught one of them pretending to show her friend a photo but I could tell she was filming us. I shifted so my back was to them.
No sense in cranking up the rumor mill early.
“Anyone want to bet on how long it takes one of them to comeover here?” Neil asked. “Given the nonstop staring and empty bottles on the table, I say it’s fifteen minutes.”
