“Quite well. Encouraging, actually,” Ben replied. “Which surprises the hell out of me, after everything he’s been through because of me.”
“Ah, well, there’s a lot of June in him, so I’m not surprised at all.”
June straightened. “Ben Conner, I swear… if you try to take the blame for what his father did to him or fall back into that pit of guilt and self-loathing, I will slap you. Yesterday, I finally saw something of the man you used to be before the shooting. Don’t you dare bury him again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” was Ben’s quick reply. Then he leaned over and kissed her rather passionately in front of Mary and the lingering diners.
If she hadn’t worked for Mary since her freshman year of college and if she hadn’t been so surprised, she might have added a few more shades of red to the canvas of
