A few beats passed. She tried to think of some kind of segue into normal conversation. The best she could do was “Yeah, but is it any good?”
“It’s super.” He injected the maximum amount of sarcasm into the word.
Sarcasm didn’t scare her. Her sister, Allie, had spent her freshman and sophomore years of high school dripping it all over everyone.
“I’m May.” She extended her hand.
He looked away from the book then, though not at her face. At her hand first. Then down at her shoes, which made him frown. She allowed him some leeway there, because she was wearing dark green leather flats with bows on the toes, and she didn’t like them much, either.
When he lifted his gaze, it got stuck on her breasts for an uncomfortable period of twelve to fifteen years. “Ben,” he told them.
This offense was harder to forgive. Men had been addressing her breasts since she was thirteen. Her breasts had yet to respond to this treatment.
I’m up here.
She didn’t say it aloud, but his head lifted, and he finally looked right at her.
He had sort of sleepy eyelids that went with his broad-planed face, his full mouth—a face that made her think of bear-taming and those male dancers in the tall black boots and flouncy white shirts who crossed their arms and stuck their legs out.
Slavic, that was it.
His eyes were brown, lighter than they should have been in the middle and rimmed with black. Weird eyes.
Weirder still, he didn’t seem embarrassed to have been caught boob-ogling, and he didn’t take her hand. She had to retrieve it from the air in between them and find a place to stow it along the seam of her pants.
“What’s with the jersey?” he asked.
“Hmm?”
“Season doesn’t start until next week.”
Oh. Oh. The stupid jersey. Not her breasts.
“Believe me, I know.”
“Plus, Einarsson is a douche.”
Right. That.
Even back home, she sometimes got flack about continuing to wear the old jersey of a quarterback who’d abandoned the Packers for the Jets, only to lead his new team to a Super Bowl victory against the old one. She might as well be sporting a pin that read, I support Benedict Arnold!
Still, douche seemed a little harsh.
Ben sat up straighter, his eyes refocusing on something over her right shoulder. He slid off his bar stool and raised a hand. May turned just as another man came off the last basement step and into the bar. A blond, good-looking man who actually knew how to smile.
“How’s it going?” Ben asked.
“Good,” the other man said. “Sorry I’m late. Erin’s been texting me about some crisis, and I lost track of the time.”
“Don’t worry about it. Got you a PBR for old times’ sake.”
“Classic. But you’ll have to drink it—I can’t stay long, and I’m in training anyway.”
“You’re always in training.”
“Tell me about it. Let’s go in the back.”
Ben pushed the spare beer a few inches in her direction. “You want this one?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
He took the other, and the two men walked past the pinball machine and disappeared into the back room.
May allowed herself a small, self-pitying sigh.
She’d hoped to throw herself on the mercy of some kind Midwesterner, and instead the universe gave her Ben. An intimidating stranger who liked to read books about corpses and who’d called her boyfriend—her ex-boyfriend—a douche.
This whole Pulvermacher’s fantasy was a lost cause.
But at least he’d given her another beer. Now she had until the bottom of this glass to come up with a better plan.
CHAPTER TWO
Ben Hausman took a deep breath, quieting his body and his mind.
He thought of the farm. The view of Lake Superior from the roof of the chicken house, flat and deep blue, stretching away until it fell off the end of the world.
Calm.
Lifting his arm, he bent it and directed all his energy toward the target on the wall. On an exhale, he cocked and flung the dart.
It hit the outermost ring of the target at an angle, bounced, and fell to the floor.
“Dude, you suck at darts,” Connor said from his perch on the arm of the bar’s ratty couch. “Give up. I’ll play you at pinball.”
“Bite me.”
Connor shook his head with a grin. “It’s Tron.”
“What’s Tron?”
“The pinball. They changed it. Didn’t you see? It’s Tron now.”
“Tempting, but I’ll pass.”
“What are you so worked up about?”
“I’m not worked up.”
“Your neck just disappeared.”
Ben blew out a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. Fuck. The whole point of playing darts was to practice not being tense. He refocused on his technique.