“Yeah, it grows on ya,” Mark agreed and stood. Ben knew she should be relieved they were finally parting ways, but part of her wanted him to stay. “Well, I suppose I’d better hit the grocery store before Thomas gets home and finds the refrigerator without Gatorade or fruit snacks.”
“It was nice meeting you, Mark.” She offered her hand again. The simple handshake indulged a tiny bit of her need for contact, at least it was appropriate. “Oh, and I believe Thomas mentioned peanut butter. You wouldn’t want to forget that.”
“Heaven forbid. You have a good night, Ms. Riggs.” He shook as professionally as before, but she didn’t miss the added squeeze at the end and wondered if he’d had as much fun as she did in their simple, playful exchange. It was too bad nice men who were also ruggedly handsome and funny weren’t in her sphere anymore. The wonderfully crooked smile was not for and could never be hers.
“It’s Ben, actually. I only have my students call me Ms. Riggs.”
“Ben, Benfri right?”
She nodded and waited for the questions that nearly always followed about her name.
“Ben it is.” Mark smiled. “Welcome home.”
Chapter 3
After looking through the basket and finding a fifty dollar gift certificate from the chamber of commerce, Ben headed directly to the grocery store. She’d been prepared to live on cereal until her first paycheck, but with the discovery came the promise of protein, or at least cheap hotdogs.
She grabbed a cart and smiled as she faced the familiar store. Everything was exactly where it had been the last time she’d walked the aisles nearly a decade earlier with her aunt. With a step much lighter than when she’d started her day, she headed down the first aisle.
The packages were updated for the most part, but there was a bit of a time warp as she passed the more southern grits and in a real flashback to her childhood, lard. She hadn’t had lard fried chicken in years, and her butt thanked her for that. The grits though, they might be something she’d revisit soon.
Trying to be practical, she bought better cereal, string cheese, milk, canned fruit, canned soups and bread because it was all easy and so far she didn’t have anything more than a small soup pan to cook in. With Thomas’s request staying in her mind and sounding fantastic she grabbed peanut butter and looked longingly at the jelly, but her budget didn’t allow it and her thighs didn’t need it.
She loosened up her thigh and budget rules when she got to the freezer aisle. She allowed an indulgence because she was human and dealt with teenagers all day. A carton of double chocolate chip called her name, and she knew that at the end of the day it would be cold, sweet and chocolaty delicious. Ice cream was a perfectly respectable crutch for her at times. Even her Aunt Willy, the sourest woman Ben knew, never begrudged a little treat on occasion.
She looked at the carton in her hand and frowned when she noticed the torn plastic around the edges. The next one in the case was ripped too. There was no way she was going to buy freezer burned ice cream. Ben leaned down and reached for the third in line. There were other options, but she still went for the good stuff. She could always try vanilla, but really. Why bother?
* * * *
Mark turned into the freezer section. His mental list hadn’t seemed that big when he’d left the house, but as he shopped he remembered how much food Thomas had gone through in the past three days. Since he was in town and at the store, he might as well re-stock the pantry.
The six week reprieve while the kids had been in France with their parents had been nice in a few ways. The grocery bill and sheer amount of time he’d spent at the store had reduced drastically. But he was making up for it now.
Thomas had grown six inches, all legs which were constantly empty, so there was never enough food in the house. Mark remembered those days, but still, the never-ending flow going into the kid astounded him.
Not to be outshined, Kira had decided to become a vegetarian. A nine-year-old anti-meat eater who lived on a working dairy farm where they raised a few beef cattle for cash on the side was not ideal.
Mark shook his head as he threw a bag of frozen cheese ravioli in the cart. He hoped the vegetarianism thing was a phase. There was nothing endearing about hearing every time he ate a steak that eating anything with a face made him a cannibal.
He remembered potpies and headed down the second freezer aisle. When he looked up from tossing the pies in his cart he caught sight of a generous backside filling out a khaki skirt. Ben Riggs. Despite the recent and much too brief introduction, he’d recognize her anywhere.
Part of him wished they’d known each other before she left Flathead Falls. She was quite a few years younger than him so they’d never hung out together. Watching her straighten and toss her hair back, he smiled. He would have liked having memories of Ben.
But he didn’t mind the new memory he was making of her. Her thighs were the rounded, strong kind like the women who played catcher on softball teams. They looked muscular and tough but still soft to the touch. When she bent slightly forward he could have groaned at the pretty picture she made. Her thighs and hips led to a waist that was maybe a little chubby, but he’d never really paid enough attention to women to give an honest comparison.
He just knew he liked what he saw, a healthy, soft woman.
“Well, hello, Ben.” Mark moved next to her cart to grab the largest tub of vanilla ice cream the store carried. “Sure is nice to see you again so soon.”
“Oh, hi.” Ben eyed his overflowing cart with a bemused smile. “I bet you have to do this often with a teenage boy at home.”
“And don’t forget his little sister, who can go pound for pound on most things during a growth spurt.” Mark added a jug of chocolate syrup from the stand beside the freezer case. “And at the end of the day you’ll be hard pressed to find a farm boy who doesn’t like a bowl of ice cream.”
“I bet. So you have both of the kids?”
“Yep. You haven’t heard the whole story yet?” he asked, the market quiet in the pre-supper rush. She shook her head and the pretty corkscrew curls that had been locked in a clip slipped free. He wondered if she knew how distracting she was, but forged on to answer her question, “Their mom is my older sister. She’s married to a French scientist. Kimmy is a scientist too, and they work on cancer drugs over in a French lab. She and her husband spend most of their time working, and they wanted the kids to be educated here. I was elected as guardian.”
Ben paused in front of another case and turned to him. She had freckles. How could he have overlooked them when they met in the classroom? Must have been her eyes, Mark thought as her gaze connected with his again. Her kind of eyes could make a man forget his name.
“That’s so great of you, Mark. They’re lucky to have such a generous uncle. Do you help coach football? I was invited thirty-seven times today to go to the freshman and b-squad games on Thursday night and was wondering if you might know what time I should be there?”
“Six if you can. I don’t help coach, but I try to make it to all of Thomas’s games. Kira does too. They usually last an hour tops, so we get back in time for milking.” The reminder made him look at his watch and bite back a curse. Now that he was getting another chance with Ben he wanted to make the most of it, but duty called. “Speaking of chores, I didn’t realize how late it was getting. I better get home.”
* * * *
“Yeah, same here. I should get going before my ice cream melts.” Ben laughed and followed Mark with her sparsely filled cart.
She should have known better, but when she chose checkouts