Free Flavor Of The Month (Kiss & Tell Book 2) by Tori Carrington Page A

my father when I was kid every Sunday morning. Back then, this place was little more than an abandoned fishing shack. I used to spend my time looking up at it, dreaming, thinking of all the things I’d like to do with it.”
    He felt her gaze on him. “You always wanted to open a restaurant?”
    He looked at her. “No. First I envisioned this ultimate skateboarders heaven. It was at the beginning of the extreme sports turn. The only problem was my dad wouldn’t let me have a skateboard, so that dream vanished pretty quickly.” He chuckled. “I lost a lot of fish that way. My dad said that I’d miss out on a lot of opportunities in life if I kept walking around with my head in the clouds.”
    “And your mom?”
    He slid his hands into the pockets of his slacks and squinted out at the waves just beginning to throw back the morning sun. “Never knew her. She left my dad shortly after I was born.”
    “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”
    He scanned her pretty face, ascertaining that she genuinely was. Having met so many people over the years he’d owned the restaurant, he knew that people always said the words, but not many of them meant it.
    Not that he went around telling everyone about his mother. He didn’t. In fact, he was surprised he’d shared what he had with Reilly. Actually, a lot of what he did with Reilly surprised him. He’d never come on to a woman as strongly as he did her. And the teasing…
    “What about you?” he asked.
    “Me?”
    “Family? Mother and father?”
    “Big one. I’m the middle of five children. Mom and Dad are still together.”
    She seemed to hesitate over something, then closed her delectable mouth.
    “This place is everything and far more than I even imagined it would be. And I have quite an active imagination,” she murmured, turning to look out the window again. “Your dad must be proud.”
    Ben stepped over to the bar and let himself behind it. “I don’t know how he would feel. He’s never been here.”
    “Never?”
    He shook his head as he went about making a strong pot of coffee.
    “Does he live far away?”
    “Same spot we’ve always lived.” He pointed down the beach. “About a mile down that way in an old apartment complex.”
    “So why…” her words drifted off. “Never mind. I’m being nosy, aren’t I?”
    He blinked at her. “No. You’re being human.” More human than anyone he’d met in a long, long time.
    When was the last time someone asked him about his family? His father? And not only listened but asked follow-up questions? Too often he encountered people who used questions to launch into their own life’s story. But not Reilly.
    “You say that like you don’t know many of them.” She climbed up on top of a bar stool across from him. “Humans, I mean.”
    He took two cups out of a dishwasher. “Maybe it’s because I don’t.”
    She seemed to consider him for a long time, then said, “Well maybe it’s long past time you met more.”
    Ben was getting the strong impression that he already had. With Reilly.
    He told her about his father owning three hot-dog stands. About how his father felt about his selling those stands and buying this place. About how the older man felt he wouldn’t fit in if he did come.
    The words flowed out of his mouth easily, unchecked, and Reilly seemed to take every last one of them in.
    “Every Friday morning I call to invite him. And every Friday he tells me, no, he’s got something else to do,” he finished up, placing a cup in front of her and staying right where he was on the opposite side of the bar.
    Truth was, he liked this. Liked talking to Reilly in a way that felt…cathartic somehow. Like what he said mattered to her simply because it mattered to him. And he knew if he was sitting next to her he wouldn’t be able to squash the need to touch her, chase away all conversation.
    She slowly sipped her coffee, leaving untouched the sugar and fresh cream he’d put out. “Invite him on a Monday