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 definitely 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?”
“Nothing.”
She took a step back and wiped her tingling palm on her hip.
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re looking at me like someone slipped you a copy of my prison record.”
“You have a prison record?” Her voice rose to a panicked whine.
“No. Christ, it was a joke.” His eyes narrowed. “What do you think this is?”
“What do you think it is?”
“Dinner.”
“Just dinner, and not …”
But how could she say it when she could barely even think it? She was an infant. She didn’t belong in New York. She belonged in Manitowoc, where she knew all the rules and where nothing ever happened to her that caused her to wonder whether she might accidentally be stumbling into the exchange of dinner for sexual favors.
“Just dinner,” Ben said. “And not some kind of perverted thing where I clock you on the head when your back is turned and sell you into white slavery.” The rogue side of his mouth curved all the way up into a close-lipped smile.
He looked safer when he smiled. Almost normal. Not remotely like a man who would be so crass as to think she’d be selling herself for dinner.
And really, who was she kidding? She wasn’t the type to inspire that kind of offer.
“Are there still white slavers lurking around the streets of New York?”
“In Manhattan, they have everything.” Ben shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie. “You like tacos?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s get some tacos, and we’ll see if we can’t find a way to get you sorted out.”
May nodded her assent and let Ben lead her from the bar.
Maybe he wasn’t a dick, after all.
CHAPTER FOUR
The pedestrian traffic on Christopher Street had picked up since she went into Pulvermacher’s, and now there were all sorts of people meandering around Greenwich Village.
May felt strange trailing along in Ben’s wake. Naked and innocent, like she’d just been cast out of Eden, and she found herself on a guided tour of life after Paradise.
Not that Dan had been Paradise. Far from it. He’d only been comfortably familiar, and suddenly nothing was. Not the man she was with or the city he led her through. Not the way her heart pumped whiskey through her veins, making her feel like she was floating an inch or so above her feet.