Ben looked towards the speaker moving towards them from the elevator. The man was almost as tall as he was, fair haired and deeply tanned. He had a muscular build under the white dress shirt he wore open at the neck with rolled up sleeves and his tight blue jeans. He had a strong chin, piercing blue eyes, and a dazzling white smile he showed to the blushing receptionist as he strode towards Ben.
“Sorry Mr. Blake! It’s just… Ben Shepherd! Here in our office!” the girl swooned.
Don Blake reached out to shake Ben’s hand. As they gripped hands, he gave Ben a false frown. “She used to look at me like that!” His grin reappeared immediately. Up close Ben could see he was likely in his early sixties.
“Mr. Blake!” the young woman gasped in embarrassment and put her hands over her red cheeks.
Ben smiled, enjoying their casual and friendly behavior.
“Mr. Shepherd will be here tomorrow,” he glanced to confirm that with Ben who nodded and continued. “You can bat your pretty eyes at him then. Get on home to your mum and give her a kiss from me.”
“Yes, Mr. Blake,” the young woman said as she walked past.
“Could… could I get a picture to show my mum?” she pleaded.
“Sure,” Ben said and her face lit up.
Don took her phone from her and got a few shots of the young woman grinning happily beside Ben. Once he handed the phone back the woman left quickly, eager to show her mother the pictures.
“Have you eaten?” Don asked him.
“No.”
“I took the liberty of making reservations for dinner at a favorite restaurant of ours. We can drop your luggage off at the hotel on the way,” he suggested.
“That sounds good,” Ben agreed. He picked up his duffle and laptop case as Don took the handle of his suitcase and began to lead him back out the front doors.
They waved to Evie as she drove past with a huge smile on her face. Then they turned right towards a huge red SUV. It was one of those ex-military conversions. Ben glanced at the man beside him.
“Bryan and the fellas want to take you out tomorrow night if that’s alright. They’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival with the solution you designed for them. Did you bring it?”
Ben smiled and patted the duffle.
“It’s really going to filter the uranium dust from the truck’s air intakes?” Don asked curiously. He hadn’t been part of the effort but Bryan had kept him abreast of their communication with their online engineer.
Ben smiled. “That’s one use for it and we’ll see it work in a production environment tomorrow. The virtual benchmarking I did proved it will work theoretically. However, that only goes so far. My software is really good but it’s not like I can run a physical test of my own with these materials.”
Don grinned and nodded to him. “Just put your bags in the back seat for now. The hotel isn’t far from here.
They climbed in and got underway. The ride in the big SUV was smoother than Ben had expected and the interior was very posh and comfortable. It even had plenty of head and shoulder space. But still, it was really too much truck for city driving.
The hotel looked very nice and Ben dropped his bags off in his room. Once he was back in the SUV they drove to the restaurant. The valet looked at the big truck with wide eyes.
“Be gentle with my baby!” Don grinned at the young man.
Ben followed him into the restaurant and the hostess greeted them with a wide smile. The restaurant owner came out to shake their hands then personally led them to their table where two pretty blondes were already seated.
Again, Ben glanced over to Don but he was all smiles as he leaned down to kiss the two women. Ben saw one was older than the other and that one got the kiss on the lips, the younger one getting a chaste kiss on the cheek. He hadn’t seen their age difference until he’d gotten much closer.
Don turned back to him. “I’d like to introduce you to the two loves of my life, my wife Rita and my daughter Sarah.”
Seeing he wasn’t being set up on a blind date Ben relaxed and smiled at them. He shook their hands and everyone took their seats.
“Would you care for some wine Mr. Shepherd?” Rita asked.
“Please call me Ben. I don’t drink so I’m fine with water.” Seeing her momentary discomfort he continued. “But please enjoy the wine! I have no problem with other’s drinking!”
She smiled graciously at him and he could see she went to considerable effort to maintain her youthful appearance. She was truly lovely but there was a tightness to her features.
“What brings you to our side of the planet?” Sarah asked. She had to be in her late twenties, maybe 28, and was truly lovely in that spoiled and pampered way of the wealthy. Ben was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt but her eyes were scanning him critically and from the slight twist of her lip she was finding something she wasn’t impressed with.
“Just a little work with your father’s company,” he replied politely.
“You work in mining? I thought you were a celebrity?” she said sounding genuinely surprised.
“Celebrity? Hardly. I’m a mechanical engineer. I design solutions for engineering issues,” Ben replied.
Sarah pouted at her father. She’d been promised an interesting evening with a world famous celebrity and here she was stuck with this dreary mining engineer whatever that was. He looked like he could be the Ben Shepherd she’d read about but maybe he wasn’t.
Ben watched her expression with interest. While it was disappointing he was always amazed that people could reach adulthood yet never progress past an early teen’s maturity.
“Now dear, Mr. Shepherd is more than a mechanical engineer-”
“Actually, not really. That’s the extent of my training. Everything else I’ve done that’s you might have seen on the news has been grossly exaggerated. I’m just an average man,” Ben replied watching the young woman’s confusion grow. Don seemed genuinely concerned that his daughter was unhappy. Too much of a doting father perhaps?
“What about the sculpture? Was that an exaggeration?” Rita asked with a twinkle in her eye.
Ben frowned looking down but shook his head. “No, that’s accurate. A little too accurate for my comfort.” Ben missed the look exchanged between mother and daughter but when he looked up he saw the young woman’s pout had been replaced by a look of interest.
Sarah was finally convinced that this was the same Ben Shepherd from the magazines and TV so her night wasn’t going to be a loss after all!
The waiter arrived thankfully and they placed their orders. Don recommended the prime rib or the T-bone steak. Ben went with the latter. Once the man left Ben went on the offensive.
“What do you do?” he politely asked Sarah.
“Our Sarah doesn’t have to do anything,” Don grinned broadly. “Why do you think I work so hard?”
That earned him smiles from the ladies. Ben couldn’t comment on that without offending the man so he just nodded.
Rita leaned forward again and Ben got the impression that she might have adjusted her dress to expose her cleavage just a little more. She had sizable implants which were now threatening to come out and say hello. When his eyes returned to hers he saw the satisfied expression before she spoke.
“Surely not everything we’ve seen in the news about you has been an exaggeration. The girls you rescued from the slavers over in France for instance? They reported you walked unarmed into their hideout and killed four heavily armed men to rescue five young women.” She raised her eyebrow at him daring him to refute the story.
Ben shifted uneasily in his chair. “What they didn’t report was that I only stumbled on the ‘hideout’ because I was in the restaurant next door and got lost looking for the washroom. I wasn’t on some kind of rescue mission.” Ben had no memory of what happened in the room but didn’t want to open that Pandora’s Box. “I just did what was necessary.”
“I think our Mr. Shepherd is uncomfortable with the praise, no matter how justified it is,” Don said coming to his rescue. He nodded to the man who looked satisfied at having his daughter smiling again. When Ben glanced in her direction she wasn’t just smiling, she was eyeing him like dessert. He sighed to himself and turned back to his meal.
Conversation moved to travel and how Ben had enjoyed France. Don had taken his family there and they exchanged recollections of their favorite places. Ben shared his memories of Paris, the French Alps, and his time in Southern France. He stayed away from the more sensational events he’d experienced in those places but Sarah’s expression of interest never waned. She’d gotten her entertaining evening after all.
“Do you travel a lot, Ben?” she asked.
“No, before this trip I’d only been to France and Costa Rica,” he replied.
“Ah! Your vacation with Dream and La’Shia! I read about that!” the woman exclaimed.
Ben looked at her excited expression. “Well, we didn’t go with them. Again, it was more a case of accidentally bumping into them when we were there. They just happened to be staying at the same resort with the other members of their… groups.”
Sarah’s eyes were almost glowing with her excitement. “It was so tragic to hear about La’Shia breaking off the wedding then Dream getting arrested for murder!”
“What? Murder?” Ben jolted.
“Yes, they’re saying he gunned down two men in the house of a friend of his oldest friend, Night-” Her eyes flew wide. “OH MY GOD! You were there when Night died!”
Other guests in the restaurant were beginning to look in their direction and Rita took her daughter’s hand to get her to calm herself. “Sorry Mum but he was there!” she said in a more subdued voice.
Don looked at him for confirmation. “Yes, I was there. It was a stupid accident. The man was… deeply troubled and unstable.”