Truly (New York 1)

Where Ben couldn’t see her, she made surprise-eyes at May and whispered, “Holy shit.”

What? May mouthed back. She turned around, wondering what he’d done, but it was just Ben. Shirtless. Barefoot. His hair wasn’t long enough to be sticking up, quite, but it certainly looked as though he’d taken a shower, gone straight to bed, and spent half the night fucking someone.

Her hand rose to her own hair. There was really no question who he’d spent half the night fucking.

“Better than the picture,” Allie whispered.

Ben came right up behind May and shook Allie’s hand. He seemed not to mind about the dog, which was good, because Allie almost always had a dog somewhere on or around her person.

“I thought you might be gone by now,” Allie said. “I’m glad you’re not. I wanted to meet you.”

Ben flattened his hand against the doorjamb, his chest pressing into May’s back. “Here I am.”

A car approached slowly, and May noticed the blinker before it fully registered that she recognized the car. “No,” she said. “Oh fuck, no.”

“I told you, I tried to stop her,” Allie repeated. “I told her not to come. But she just kept saying, ‘Why isn’t May over here yet? I need her help with the macaroni salad.’ Then I said I would come and see on my way to the grocery store, but she was all—”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I tried! That’s why I’m here! It took you forever to come to the door.”

May whirled around and ran into Ben’s chest. She made a strangled sort of aaaah noise

and tried not to notice that even in the midst of panic, she sort of wanted to bite him. In the sexy way.

“Your mother, I presume?”

“Get dressed, okay? This is going to be …”

What?

She actually had no idea. But it would definitely go better if Ben had a shirt on.

“Interesting,” Allie said, pushing past them both into the house and dropping the little dog onto the carpet. She whipped the throw blanket off the back of May’s couch and arranged it in a long, rumpled pile on the cushions. “Get a pillow from the bedroom,” she said to May. “Now.”

As May rushed from the room, the dog began to bark, and she heard Allie repeat, “This is going to be so interesting.”

“Why?” May called. “What did you do?”

Because Allie’s “interesting” was, so often, May’s doom.

“You know how you said I had to think of something to tell Mom?”

“I didn’t say that.” May took a pillow from the bed into the hallway and yanked the door closed behind her. The dog darted between her ankles, nearly tripping her.

“More or less, you did,” Allie said. “You didn’t want me to tell Mom you were staying with some guy you picked up at a bar.”

“Not in exactly those words, no, but—”

“So I told her that you were staying with Dan’s agent’s PA.”

“Andy doesn’t have a personal assistant.”

“Yeah, but Mom doesn’t know that.”

The doorbell rang, and the little dog went absolutely apeshit, yipping crazily and jumping three feet off the floor, over and over again.

“He hates doorbells,” Allie said. She scooped up the dog, making shushing sounds, and May looked at Ben.