Truly(40)

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“No problem.”

She picked at the edge of the countertop, unsure what came next.

“Let’s go,” he said abruptly, and stood.

She nodded. Ben put some money on top of the check and gathered all her packages. She followed him. They hurried out the door, into the twilight.

“I can carry those,” she offered.

“It’s fine.”

He walked so fast, she had trouble keeping up, and she didn’t especially want to.

Because of course it was a problem, even if it shouldn’t have been. His refusal to talk about Sandy—whoever she was, whatever had happened—reminded May that she didn’t know him. His past could contain anything. Violence. Cruelty.

He could be anyone at all.

Her feet slowed, and she drifted to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

Ben reached the corner and turned, then kept turning when he didn’t find her right behind him. He spotted her half a block back and barked, “What is it?”

May shook her head. She wouldn’t shout down the street. She couldn’t speak. Her sinuses were full, eyes stinging, and she didn’t want to cry.

She hated this—hated drama and anger, disapproval, any kind of tension. Whatever Dan’s faults, he was thoroughly good-natured, and she’d always known what to expect with him.

Ben stalked back along the sidewalk, packages swinging, shoulders hunched. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I’m … not sure.”

“What’s the problem?”

What could she say—I don’t like you like this? I just realized I don’t know a single thing of importance about you, and I’m starting to scare myself?

“I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

Ben lowered his head, his eyes fixed on the sidewalk. He plowed one hand through his hair and exhaled, long and slow. “Because I’m being a jerk.”

At least he was self-aware.

His eyes found hers. “It’s been more than a year, but it still pisses me off,” he said.

“I noticed.”

“I hate talking about it.”

“Okay.”

“I keep expecting you to ask me, and it’s making me tense.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you anything.”

Now it was her turn to stare at the sidewalk. There was a lump of paper by her toe, sodden and disintegrating. Ugly.

Its ugliness offended her. Infected her.

She heard the rustling impact of paper against concrete as he set down her packages. His fingers gripped her shoulder. “May?”

“What?”

“Look at me.”

She did. He’d come up close, and his voice was low when he spoke. “If you have to know, I’ll tell you. But it doesn’t—” He closed his eyes and exhaled again, softer this time. “I don’t think it matters.”

She studied his face, known and unknown. The deep V between his heavy eyebrows that never completely disappeared, even when he wasn’t scowling. His hooded eyes, open now, but so difficult to read. The downturned corners of his mouth.

Anybody could see that it mattered.

Back home, if she crossed paths on the sidewalk with a man this intense, she would avert her eyes and hold her breath until he was gone and everything was okay again.

Part of her wanted to do that.

Most of her wanted to do that. Her stomach hurt, her hands were shaking, and her instincts urged her to walk away fast. To get somewhere safe and familiar and stay there.

Not because she was afraid of him, but because she wasn’t, and she should be.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

He didn’t answer. Their eyes were perfectly level. Locked. She couldn’t read the mysteries of his soul in his, because they were just eyes, and she was just May. She didn’t have her sister’s ability to look at an injured animal and figure out what it needed.

Until he dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers, she didn’t have the slightest idea that he was about to kiss her.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


The thing was, he couldn’t stop himself.

Her laughter had been pulling at him all afternoon, the shapes of her face—the attraction only amplified by the way her legs looked in the new jeans she’d bought and her smile in the restaurant. By the way she ate and the way she peered at him sideways, beneath lowered eyelashes. By the obvious delight she took in the diner and all the pierogis she’d packed away.

That wasn’t why he kissed her, though. It was the look in her eyes.

Even thinking about the divorce had his hackles up, made him bitter and far too sharp with her, and he hated that he’d made her wrap her arms around her waist in defense.