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I ignored the offer, flipped the phone over, and looked away. “Do they serve here every day?”
Dennis’s impassive face returned. “Six days a week. On Sunday Father Dan is busy with some other things.”
The moment had passed. He was back in boss mode.
Our meal concluded as he gave me a quick history of Father Dan’s mission to feed the poor in this part of town.
He stood and took his plate and glass with him.
I followed to add mine to the dirty dish stack. Somebody had a monumental task this afternoon.
He touched my shoulder. “Thank you for helping.”
The shock of the touch unwired my brain for a second. “It was my pleasure.”
“See you back at the office,” he said before turning for the door.
Father Dan intercepted me. “Jennifer, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Thank you for helping us today. It makes a world of difference to those we feed here to have the support of caring people such as yourself.”
“You do good work here. It was my pleasure.”
As I walked to my car, his thanks gave me an internal warmth I hadn’t felt in a long time. I’d spent much of the last months and years worried about Ramona, Billy, and myself, without stopping to realize we were luckier than some. We had food to eat and a roof over our heads, even if it was only a two-bedroom apartment.
As I drove back to the building, I had trouble making sense of today’s experience.
Yesterday I’d known Dennis Benson to have an evil heart, bent on profit over safety, but this episode completely muddled my image.
“We should never be too busy to care,” he’d said. The simple sentence tugged at my heart strings in a way that made me tear up. He’d shown metwosides of himself I hadn’t seen before, and they didn’t fit my previous view at all. The puzzle of Dennis Benson was no longer as simple as a devil hiding behind a suit.
Although I knew beyond a doubt he was guilty in Dad’s death, the man had compassion for others that I couldn’t square with that knowledge. He also had pride in his family and himself for what they contributed to the community. I’d have to leave that part of the equation in the enigma column for now. This was more than I could handle today.
Then there was the sheer animal magnetism when he looked at me. It was a pull I couldn’t deny. It was a force I couldn’t wish away.
Last week, my objective had been clear. Now Dennis Benson was messing with my ordered view of the world, and nothing made sense.
Chapter 15
Jennifer
(Two Weeks Later)
I’d been workingupstairs with Dennis for just over two weeks now. It had been odd at first to call him Dennis instead of Mr. Benson—or the devil, as I’d always named him before—but the day at Saint Helena’s had changed that.
Since then, I’d seen more instances of the man who was giving enough to volunteer at a soup kitchen, more of the boss who cared about his employees, and none of who I’d thought he was. When I looked at him, I was seeing more suit and less devil every day.
This morning, my before-breakfast email check revealed my first message from Hydra in weeks. Not that previous communications had been frequent, but I hadn’t gotten any feedback from him after the disastrous day Dennis’s spin-off announcement had nullified our “bad news balloon,” as Hydra liked to call them. I’d expected a reaction of some kind, given how shitty I’d felt about Dennis escaping the wrath of the market that day. Hydra had to have been pissed as well, but his radio silence had been deafening.
To: Nemesis666
From: HYDRA157
Number 89461 is next.
It may have moved upstairs.
