He should go back to the couch. The woman radiated fragility. She was like that assignment in high school where you had to carry around an egg for a week and pretend it was your baby. If he was too much of an asshole, she’d crack open. Spill all over the place, and then he’d have to deal with the mess.
But it was strange. That laugh—so loud and unapologetic. It didn’t fit.
It didn’t fit that she’d tried to pick him up, either. She’d been far from oblivious to the signal he was putting out. Busy here. Fuck off.
Ben had already burned through the obligatory post-divorce phase of sleeping with any passably attractive woman who was into it. He’d landed in the ashes on the other side—tired, bleary-eyed, flat-out not interested.
He wasn’t interested now. This wasn’t interest. It was something else. An opportunity.
Because how was he supposed to learn how not to be a dick, except by talking to someone who actually seemed to notice when he was one?
The logic probably wouldn’t survive scrutiny. Ben didn’t stop to scrutinize it. He moved.
“You want to play darts?” he asked her.
She gave him a skeptical look. “No.”
“What, did Connor warn you off?”
“He said you were sorrier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”
That explained the laughter. They’d been mocking him.
“What, you’re some kind of master?”
“I’m all right.”
“Play me either way. I’ll buy you a drink.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Okay to the drink.”
“Not the darts?”
“Not the darts.”
He could live with that. “What do you want?”
She scanned the selections behind the bar. “Glenlivet, if you’re buying. And a Red Hook.”
“That bad, huh?”
She did that thing with her mouth, that whip-frown, and his heart kicked his ribs again.
Those weren’t a milkmaid’s eyes. They were sharp and intelligent, full of a feeling he knew far too well.
“You have no idea,” she said.
But he did. He knew repressed fury when he saw it.
CHAPTER THREE
When Ben came through to the back room from the bar carrying four drinks, May wiped her hand over her mouth. It had settled into a sort of battle rigor. She forced herself to smile.
Maybe he’s not so bad.
He set the drinks down and sucked spilled beer off the flat space beside his thumb. His hands were big, his knuckles covered with dozens of tiny scars.
He took a seat on the opposite end of the couch. “So. May.”
Then silence. He seemed to have nothing more to say.
May took the initiative. “Ben. Are you from around here?”
Small talk. Bright and cheerful. Just what her mother would have prescribed for such a situation. Not that her mother would ever find herself in this situation, because who moved in with her boyfriend, attacked him, slunk out of his apartment, got purse-snatched by a paparazzo, and ended up drinking with a hostile stranger?
Only May.
“I live in Hell’s Kitchen,” Ben said. “Ninth and Fiftieth.”
“I’m staying in the Meatpacking District.”
Ben nodded but didn’t comment.
It was as if he didn’t know how small talk worked. Or he hated her.
So why had he bought her a drink? Pity?
“Have you always lived there?” He seemed like the sort of man Hell’s Kitchen might have spawned.
“I grew up in Ashland.”
“Ashland where?”
“Wisconsin.”
“All the way up north?”
He nodded.
“I’m from Manitowoc.”
Another nod, and now he looked bored, probably because this conversation was lame even for small talk. Whereas May was kind of stunned. She’d never in a million years have guessed he was from back home. He was so armored.
He passed her one of the short glasses of whiskey.
“How long have you lived here?” she asked.
“Six years.”
“I’ve been here six weeks.”
And then more nothing.
She wished he would say something. Anything.
Part of her wondered if this was some kind of elaborate setup, like this morning. That guy who’d stolen her purse must have planned it. He must have wanted access to her phone, hoping for juicy details to feed the media’s fascination with Dan. Or not with Dan, really, but with Dan’s celebrity. Fans called him “Thor” for his longish blond hair, his build, his Scandinavian roots. In his uniform, she could see it. He looked like a Viking quarterback god.
But he wasn’t what he looked like. People often weren’t. If the thief had looked like a thief, rather than a runty guy in a uniform with a baseball hat shading his eyes, May might have told him not to bother. There were no juicy details on her phone, because there were no juicy details, period. Her personal life was ordinary. Drama-free.