Truly (New York 1)

“—Thursday. But I’m not supposed to be here. I think Coach is going to cut off my nuts. I just got her note, and I went straight to the airport. I actually made it up here last night, but then I didn’t know where to go.”

That was when she figured out who Matt was talking to. And started saying all the really bad swear words in her head.

“—find it?”

“They all look the same in the dark, dude, and May’s not answering her phone. I’m glad to see you, because—”

“Will there be anything else?”

Allie blinked. The man behind the counter was slapping a sticker on her plastic bag of salami, and Dan was here.

Dan was at the front of the store, talking to Matt.

She snuck a glance at the reporter. He was staring fixedly at her.

This was nuts. It was Labor Day weekend. On Labor Day weekend, the Fredericks family played cards, drank beer, and ate too much junk food at the lake, and Allie filled the annual drama quotient quite capably by herself.

When she was eight years old, she’d knocked out both her front teeth in a bizarre, impossible-to-replicate waterskiing mishap.

At eleven, she fell asleep with gum in her mouth and woke up with it stuck to her thighs and tangled in her hair.

At seventeen, she’d laid out in the sun all day covered in baby oil and somehow, despite distinctly overcast weather, managed to contract sun poisoning, after which she’d spent most of the weekend huddled in a dim room, shivering.

And now she was twenty-four, about to get married, and scared to death she was making a mistake. She’d spent three weeks telling herself to calm down, because she would have a chance to talk to May at the cabin. Every time she imagined how that might go down, she’d had to admit that it seemed likely she’d crown a lifetime’s Labor Day stupidities by jilting the one man in the world who loved her more than oxygen.

Instead, May had gone AWOL, and her NFL quarterback boyfriend had hauled ass to the North Woods to throw himself at her feet. And at least one reporter was here chasing the story.

Weird didn’t begin to describe it.

“Ma’am?”

“Sorry. What?”

“Anything else?” The butcher extended the assorted bags of sandwich stuff, and she rose to her tiptoes to take them.

“No, thanks. That should do it.”

“All right. You have a good day now.”

But it hardly seemed possible. Dan was here, and May was not.

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

“Matt?” she called loudly. “Hon?”

“Yeah?” he called back.

“You and, uh … Dave should take the rental and head on back. I’ll be done in a sec, and I can follow you guys in our car.” She crossed her fingers. Catch on, Matty. Catch on.

“Who’s Dave?” he called back.

Allie barely resisted smacking her palm to her forehead. The guy with the camera started walking in Matt and Dan’s direction.

This is the problem with men who think the world is full of people as nice as he is, Allie thought as she sprinted down a parallel aisle. They never understand codes.

They also had trouble with dry humor, and they were too nice to even consider anal.

She cleared the end of the aisle. There they were: her fiancé and May’s erstwhile boyfriend standing together, wearing matching Why-has-Allie-gone-crazy expressions.