Her stomach grumbled, and she glanced at the pickle jar. Normally she wasn’t a fan of pickles, but she was pretty hungry at the moment.
Seeing the focus of her gaze, he said, “Go on, have some.”
She reached into the jar and pulled out a slice but kept him in her line of sight in case he made any sudden movement.
After laying his jacket over the back of the sofa, he walked over to the kitchen. She watched him assemble a bag of ice, which he brought to her.
“For your cheek,” he explained.
Finishing the pickle slice, she accepted the ice and pressed it to her face.
“Thank you...”
“Where’d you get the bruise?”
She didn’t respond. She was pretty sure he and Jake weren’t the best of friends, but she didn’t want to assume too much. What if he told Jake? What if Jake called off the deal and punished her for contravening what he had said? She had already decided she was going to gather as much evidence as possible so that she could nail Jake’s ass to the wall.
When she didn’t answer, Benji didn’t press. Instead, he went back to the kitchen and made tea using some fancy coffee machine. He brought over two steaming mugs.
“I’m not much of a tea drinker,” she said.
“Drink it anyway.”
Setting down the ice, she took the mug he held out for her. Ugh. Green tea. Her least favorite.
“Sit down,” he said as he took a seat on the sofa opposite her.
Sitting down had never felt so good. She had taken to shifting her weight from one side to the other to provide some relief for her poor aching knees.
“On the sofa,” he added when she plopped down on the floor.
She crawled onto the sofa and pulled up her knees to provide some coverage for her nakedness.
“What’s your name?” he asked after taking a sip of his tea.
She didn’t see many guys his age drink tea, especially when there was expensive alcohol around as an option. She noticed he had barely touched his bourbon. Jake had also mentioned he’d opted out of the Scarlet Auction. Why was that?
“Your real name,” he clarified.
Did that mean he wasn’t going to call her Ass-Girl?
“Montana.”
He raised his brows. “Don’t know many black women named Montana.”
She almost retorted that she doubted he knew many black people at all. To keep herself from saying anything, she sipped her tea and grimaced at the flavor. For a spell, he did nothing but drink his tea and watch her.
“There any coffee?” she ventured to ask finally, hoping to make him go into the kitchen.
“Tea’s better for you.”
Patronizing bastard. His gaze was at her tits. Looking away, he shifted on the sofa and cleared his throat.
“You mind if I get dressed?” she decided to ask, hoping that he wasn’t as big an asshole as Jake. “It’s a little cold in here.”
He deliberated for a moment before answering, “I’d prefer you didn’t.”
She clenched her jaw in disappointment. So much for him being the nice guy. When she met his gaze, she had the strange feeling he was testing her.
“You went to Nerd Nation,” he commented, eying her class ring.
She looked at him, startled. Most people didn’t know Stanford by that moniker.
“I was there, too,” he added. “For my MBA.”
That doesn’t mean we have anything in common, she wanted to say. The people in the graduate school of business were a world apart from the activists and liberal arts undergraduates she’d hung out with.
“What did you study?” he asked.
“Communications.”
“No wonder you need money.”
She sucked in her breath, wanting to tell him she didn’t need the money, especially his. Well, not that she couldn’t use more—a lot more—to pay off her student loans, but it wasn’t like she was destitute. Especially not after she got hired at the Tribune.
“How much do you get from the Scarlet Auction?” he asked next.
“Forty percent.”
Out of two hundred thousand, that would be eighty thousand dollars. She could do a lot with eighty thousand dollars. But his transaction was directly with Jake, so she wouldn’t see any of it.
Vince walked in carrying bags of what was probably lunch. He leered at her as he walked by before placing the bags on the table.
“Where’s Jake?” Vince asked.
“On the water,” Benji replied.
Vince helped himself to some bourbon, then sat down at the table and unpacked a sandwich for himself. Benji’s cellphone rang and Kimani heard a guy on the line say, “Hey, Ben.”
So his name was Ben. Might even be short for Benjamin. She stored the information in her mind to look up a guy named Ben or Benjamin that was associated with the Chinese Basketball Association and went to Stanford’s business school. She was pretty sure she could come up with his full identity.
She couldn’t make out everything the man calling Ben said, but she heard something about his date having a cousin willing to come to the lake.
“Don’t bother. I got my own,” Ben replied.
“Yeah? Cool,” said the other guy. “I mean, I’d share mine if I had to, but I’m not really into the threesome thing—unless it’s two girls on one of me, of course. See you soon.”
Kimani stayed the impulse to toss her tea at Vince, who blatantly ogled her as he chomped on his potato chips. Ben hung up his cell, glanced at Vince, then removed his jacket from the back of the sofa.
Rising to his feet, he held out his jacket to her. “You said you were cold.”
She looked up at him first in surprise, then gratitude. Taking the jacket, she quickly shrugged it on. The material was amazing. She had never worn anything so silken before.
“What’s here?” he asked Vince, peering into the bags on the table.
“Tri-tip, pulled pork and turkey,” Vince answered. Finishing, he wiped his crumbs off the table, threw the wrapper and potato chip bag in the wastebasket, and went off to do whatever it was he did. Before leaving, he spared Kimani only a brief glance, less interested now that she was covered.
“What’s your preference?” Ben asked her.
“Um, turkey,” she answered. He was being nice to her, but at some point, he was probably going to want a blowjob just like Jake. Could she bring herself to do it for the sake of a story?
“Chips or potato salad?”
She shook her head. She hoped Claire was getting something better to eat than pickles, but she rather doubted it. They ate in silence at first, but she had too many questions to keep quiet. She wanted to know him better, for the story and so she could prepare herself for what might come.
“Can I ask a question?” she ventured.
“I don’t have anything against you talking,” he replied.
“Why weren’t you at the Scarlet Auction last night?”
He propped his feet over the edge of the coffee table. “Why do you care?”
She shrugged her shoulders in feigned nonchalance. “Just making conversation. Jake only paid thirty thousand for me.”
“Yeah?”
He sounded disinterested. She found herself unexpectedly staring at his mouth when he brushed away a dab of mayonnaise. He had sensuous lips. Almost as full as a brother’s.