Truly (New York 1)

“Who you dumped with a note.”

“Yeah. Although he probably hasn’t read it yet.”

Ben knocked back the rest of his whiskey in two quick swallows and addressed his next comment to the ceiling. “You’re having a really shitty couple days.”

May nodded.

“You have anything else on your agenda? Now that you’ve committed assault, dropped your asshole boyfriend, and gotten mugged?”

“Not really.”

Surely there was a way to sort things out and still fly home, even on a holiday weekend, but she couldn’t imagine it would be easy. Bare minimum, she needed access to the Internet, because she didn’t know anybody’s phone number except her parents’, her sister’s, Matt’s, and Dan’s—and none of those were any use to her now. Her family and Matt would be headed up north to the cabin on the lake.

If she could get online, she’d be able to find someone to call. Beth and Anya were both in her Gmail address book. Or she could go back to the apartment and wait for Dan to come home, then tell him what had happened.

But there was that imaginary line across the floor behind her.

Ben scrutinized her. “You sure you don’t want to play darts?”

“There’s always pinball.”

One corner of his mouth hitched up. It wasn’t a smile, but it was defi

nitely amusement. He set his glass on the table next to the couch. Slowly, he rose, stretching his arms behind his back. He was broader through the shoulders than she’d realized. Flat across the stomach. Nicely put together.

But she only registered that in the most distant, uninterested sort of way, because the bulk of her brain was preoccupied with trying to figure out what to make of the fact that he was moving around like he planned to leave soon.

“Get up,” he said.

Confused, she lifted her chin and collided with his eyes again. The black corona around the edges reminded her of the rings around a lemur’s tail, which was yet another crazy thing to think, but that didn’t make it any less true.

They were ordinary brown eyes. There was no reason they should be so … so crackling.

He extended his hand, and when she took it, his fingers wrapped around hers, and he hauled her to standing.

She stopped moving before her head did, which suggested she maybe shouldn’t have had whiskey on top of the beers at the bar on top of no lunch and a public robbing. Normally, she had the alcohol tolerance of a moose. Right now, though, she had to be a little tipsy and a lot hungry, or she wouldn’t feel this impulse to rub her face against Ben’s neck.

His hand was really warm.

“You all right?”

She nodded, afraid to speak before she’d relocated her brain.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you some dinner.”

She was so relieved, she nearly collapsed. Which didn’t make sense because, one, she barely knew the guy, and two, she didn’t much like him. Plus, three, he wasn’t following her friendship-development script at all.

Still, she felt a sort of any-port-in-a-storm relief. Ben was far from her ideal shelter, but he was sturdy, and he was offering food.

Except … why?

Her eyes cut to his face the instant after the unpleasant possibility struck her. He didn’t think—

He wouldn’t expect her to—

Would he?

“What?”