Oh God. He was totally going for it. He was taking advantage. He was getting his licks in before the bell even rang.

“Ben—”

“Sweet and spicy. What more could a man want?”

Oh God.

Before I could get another word in, his thumb did another brush of my lip, his arm around me gave me a squeeze, and then he let me go and walked out of the room.

* * * * *

I stood at the basin in Benny’s bathroom in a pair of undies and a bra, my new bandage that Asheeka taped on me covering my skin several inches under my br**sts, slightly to the right.

I had my roller brush in hand and was blasting a thick lock of dark hair with heat from Benny’s hair dryer.

I did not allow myself to consider why Benny had a hair dryer.

I didn’t do this because I knew why Benny had a hair dryer.

The first part of what I knew was that it wasn’t for Benny’s personal use. Asheeka had amused herself (and me) by calling out an inventory of Benny’s bathroom cabinets while I showered. We learned he had product for his hair.

This was not surprising. With all that hair, he’d need something to rule it. Though, I was slightly surprised (as was Asheeka) he used a designer brand that cost a whack and could only be bought at upscale salons. That didn’t seem very Benny.

But the hair dryer wasn’t for Benny. He probably put that gel in when his hair was wet, did a slapdash job when he did it, and didn’t give a f**k mostly because he simply didn’t give a f**k and partly because, no matter how half-assed he did it, he had such great hair, it was just going to look good.

I didn’t think of Benny standing in front of his bathroom mirror, probably inattentively running his long, strong fingers through his hair by rote and doing this with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist.

No, I absolutely didn’t think about that.

I thought that it was certain a lot of women had been through that bedroom and, thus, in that bathroom. One either had left that hair dryer (this was the greater possibility), or he’d bought one as an act of consideration for all the women who’d been through that bathroom and needed one (this wasn’t very likely).

I was thinking with some irritability about using another woman’s hair dryer, and I was doing this in an attempt not to think about the fact that I was doing my hair. If I allowed my mind to go there (which I unfortunately did), I would tell myself it was me (something else I did).

I was out of the hospital. It was time to get back to me and I was a girl who did my hair. I did it big. I used beaucoup products. I put creams in for heat protection, oils in for frizz prevention, mousse in for lift and volume, spray in for hold. I teased. I flipped. I fiddled. I could work on one curl for ten minutes to make it lay right.

But I was not...absolutely not…doing this because Ben Bianchi had seen me for a week and a half looking like shit and now I had my opportunity to look decent.

Even Jamie knew how important this was to me, thus, when she brought my packed bag to the hospital, she’d included all my products, my teasing comb, and my roller brush.

Alas, she’d failed with the makeup, only bringing my moisturizer, powder, one single shade of blush (when I had at least twelve in my makeup drawer at home), and mascara.

When I did the makeup part earlier, I’d had to make do.

What I wouldn’t do was make do with the single tube of lip gloss (by Asheeka’s report, shade: “Berry Promising”) that was rolling around in Ben’s drawer with black barber’s combs, Band-Aids that, for some reason, had found themselves box-less, nail clippers, used razors that should have been dropped in the trash, not in that drawer, random pills that found themselves out of the bottle, and the like.

That lip gloss was definitely not Benny’s.

Later, in a moment of alone time, I’d do what my doctor ordered: get some exercise, walk to the bathroom, grab that lip gloss, walk to the bedroom, and throw it out the window.

I turned off the hair dryer, put it on the basin, and used the roller brush to fiddle with the lock I was currently drying.

“This pains me to say, babe,” Asheeka started, sitting on the toilet seat and watching me. “Seein’ as that boy looks like that boy looks, but I’ve got three older brothers. My brothers have got their own brothers. By the look of the biceps on that man downstairs, not to mention other stuff on that man downstairs, he could hold his own. Ten black men show up at his door to get the woman he’s holdin’ captive out of his house, I’m thinkin’ that won’t go down too great for him.”

Asheeka was tall, big of chest, and abundant of booty, with short, straightened, styled-to-the-teeth hair and eyes that made you wish she’d find a man and have babies because children needed to see that kindness directed at them from birth to the last glance she gave them on her deathbed.

She also called work that morning to say she’d be late since she was taking care of me. When she was not calling down the inventory of Benny’s bathroom, she was reminding me my soon-to-be-ex boss would not mind if she was a half an hour late, or three hours late, due to the fact she was seeing to me.

This was because he liked Asheeka. This was also because he loved me.

I knew he loved me partially because he wanted to get in my pants.

Mostly he loved me because I was the top salesperson on his sales force. When I put in my resignation, I thought he was going to cry.

I understood this. I was a hot commodity. I could sell. It was a gift. I had the knack, even I had to admit that.

It started when I got my first job in sales at age twenty selling cars. The man who hired me did it as a joke. He wanted to watch me try to sell cars and he wanted to make fun of me with his boys when I failed.

What he didn’t get, as many car salesmen didn’t, was that there were some women who actually knew cars, and one of those women was me.

Another thing he didn’t get was that there were other women who bought cars on their own without a man attached to their hip and speaking for the both of them. Those women wanted someone they could trust, someone they could relate to, someone they didn’t think would screw them, and that was also me.

What he also didn’t get was that I was not hard on the eyes, I was not above flirting my ass off to make a sale, and ninety-eight-point-seven percent of the male population thought with their dicks.

So I killed.

But I didn’t stay at that job long, mostly because he was an ass**le. Even though I’d shown him and wanted a goodly amount of time to crow about it and hit the top of the sales board month after month and crow about that to the good ole boys he employed, no one likes to spend time with an ass**le. When another dealership made an offer, I took it.