by Ruthie Knox
He wanted to put his arm around her, but if he’d even had that right, he’d forfeited it. “Don’t cry,” he said. He sat down beside her. “It’s all my fault.”
She made this noise—this horrible noise that sounded as though it had forced its way up from the bottom of her soul. Her back shuddered, and she began to sob—really sob, a wretched, violent sound that made him want to run anywhere, to do anything other than sit here and listen.
“Shh,” he said. Trying to be soothing, though he didn’t have a clue how anyone could pull it off. How anyone could stand this. He inched closer until his thigh touched hers, because even though he shouldn’t touch her, he couldn’t leave her alone, either. Not when she was so miserable. “Shh, May-Belle.”
His hand lifted of its own accord and began stroking up and down her back, but that seemed to make her sob harder, so he stopped. His hand came to rest on the back of her neck.
“Go ahead and cry, then,” he said, because shushing her wasn’t working, and he’d begun to understand that this wasn’t normal crying—this was something else.
Mourning. Purging.
This was a woman who’d put up a good front through two extraordinarily shitty days finally letting out all the emotions she’d been suppressing.
You asked for it, Hausman.
“Cry. I’ll wait. It’s not like I had anything better planned for tonight anyway.”
Wiping her eyes, she turned her head and gave him a wobbly smile through her tears. “You’re such a jerk.”
“I know.”
And then she turned the rest of the way toward him, and he opened his arms and widened his knees to fit her inside them so he could hold her.
He didn’t know if it was the right thing to do. Probably not. She felt too good in his arms.
But it was what she wanted, and after what he’d just done, he wasn’t about to deny her anything.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
May removed the tags from her new clothes. She peeled off inspection stickers and checked care labels.
Soap into the barrel, quarters into the slots. Cold water for the colors. Warm water for the whites. Delicates in to soak.
Regardless of whether she continued to stay with him—which was obviously, objectively, a bad idea—or whether she came to her senses and booked herself a hotel room, she would need clean clothes.
So. Laundry.
She dropped her purchases into the right tubs, where the water saturated the fabric and stole whatever magic they’d possessed.
She hoped it would come back. She’d liked those clothes.
Damn it, she’d liked Ben, too, and she fully expected warning flags to be flapping. Alarm bells to be ringing in her head. If May told her mother or Allie about his temper, the divorce he wouldn’t talk about, the kiss …
Run, May. Run fast.
Instead, she was doing his laundry, mingling their clothes together. She didn’t fear Ben. She feared her own disappointment. Her bad habits and where they led her.
When he’d kissed her, the kiss wasn’t what she had hoped it would be. What else was new? It was the story of her whole blasted life, this gap between what she hoped for and what she got.
It wasn’t the world’s fault. It was hers. She spun fantasies, but she had to live in reality. The habit was too old, too deeply ingrained to do anything about except notice it. Nod her head. Ah, yes. Screwing myself over once again.
That was what had happened with Dan. He’d always been himself—the self-indulgent boy-man she didn’t like quite enough on the morning of their first meeting—but she’d invented a thousand reasons not to notice, because he’d picked her. In exchange for doing her the great favor of wanting her around, she’d given him everything—her love, her attention, her faith.
There was an old schoolhouse in the countryside south of Green Bay, a mile or so past where the paved part of the Fox River Trail ended. She knew which room would be hers and Dan’s, which one for the baby, which one for the older child. She knew where the garden would go and what kind of dogs they would have.
When Dan took the offer from the Jets, she’d mentally moved the schoolhouse to New Jersey. She’d expected to have a big old diamond on her left hand by the time she flew home to Wisconsin for Christmas.
Pathetic.
She didn’t know how to turn it off—how to fling these rose-colored glasses she wore onto the pavement and stomp them until they shattered. Somehow, she’d convinced herself this weekend with Ben wasn’t just one more fantasy. That it was an interlude, not an illusion.
She’d convinced herself that she’d drawn a line through her life and stepped over it, and any decisions she’d made about Ben were new decisions made in this new life.
Ha.
He’d kissed her, and her heart had dropped out of the clouds, right into her stomach. Because she’d wanted him to kiss her, but not like that. She’d wanted a beautiful moment, or at least something she recognized as genuine connection. Passion.
And instead you got a sidewalk, and the taste of borscht and orange juice. Ben’s erection poking you in the stomach and his tongue in your mouth.
The sad thing was, it hadn’t even been bad. When he’d pulled her close enough to feel him getting hard, lust had fired between her thighs. She could still feel it, a lingering slippery warmth despite all the blocks they’d walked since then and all the tears she’d cried.
She’d liked the way he smelled up close. The pressure of his lips on hers.
She just hadn’t liked the reason he’d done it.
Not that she even knew what that was. All she knew was he’d been upset, in need of a distraction, and Oh, wait, here’s a woman-shaped creature. Let’s kiss her!
And then, when she’d stopped him: I’m sorry. It wasn’t about you.
She had wanted it to be about her. Had hoped, even knowing the timing was wrong, that he’d desired her. She’d hoped Ben saw the real May—that woman in the mirror at Macy’s—and felt something more for her than friendly goodwill.
But no. It wasn’t about you.
That was life. There were always so many of these awkward moments, these miscalculations between two people. There was beer breath and the occasional need for lube. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t magical.
The sound of running water cut off, and May realized she was bracing herself on her forearms over the open lid of the machine, staring deep into the tub full of soapy water as though she’d find the answers she was looking for in there.
There are no answers, she reminded herself. There are no perfect fantasy outcomes. There is only this muddling thing we call “being alive.” Get used to it. Get used to it.
But she never had. She wondered if she ever would.
* * *
He came in a while after she’d put the clothes in the dryer. “How are the bees?” she asked.
Ben sat down on in a wobbly maroon wingback near the low couch where May had been reading an ancient copy of Elle. “They’re fine. How are you?”
Confused. Vulnerable. Tired of myself.
She didn’t want to go into it. Maybe tomorrow.
“I got new cowboy boots.” Lifting her legs a few feet, she pointed both toes and waved them up and down.
“I noticed.”
“I’ve always wanted cowboy boots.”
“Are they everything you hoped for?”
“They might actually be more awesome than I’d hoped.” She lowered her feet, satisfied by the sound the heels made against the polished concrete floor. “Do you think I’m too tall?”
“Too tall for what?”
“Just too tall.”
“I can’t say I’ve given it any thought.”
“You’re supposed to,” she told him. “You’re supposed to find my height threatening. Especially in cowboy boots, because they make me taller than you.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Sure they do.”
“They really don’t.”
“They absolutel
y do. You only have an inch or two on me in socks.”
He pulled a face. “More than that.”
“Stand up.” She rose, and when he seemed reluctant to join her, she tugged him up by the arm. “Take off your shoes and turn around.”
He complied. May spun and backed up, aligning her body against his. She ignored the pressure of his butt touching hers, the pinpricks of heat where their shoulder blades connected, and focused on measuring the tops of their heads with the palm of her hand. “My head is higher than yours.”
Ben lifted an arm, and his palm smoothed over the crown of her head. “No.”
“Yes.”
Slowly, he turned around. He framed her shoulders between his palms and rotated her a hundred eighty degrees. His body brushed against hers in a dozen different places, and his nearness pulled some secret trigger on her attraction.
Bam.
“My nose is higher than yours,” he said.
She lifted her chin a fraction. “It’s not. I’m looking down at your eyes.”
He tipped his forehead forward until it touched hers, and the bridges of their noses aligned.
It wasn’t sexual contact, or even sexy, and yet time slowed. All her senses filled up with Ben. His breath on her mouth. His warm forehead against hers. The smell of soap and end-of-the-day male.
“Let’s measure again.” She turned back around and waited for him to do the same, because it was safer to press her shoulders to his. Safer to push the back of her skull against Ben’s and feel him without having to see him, too.
“May?”
“Yes?”
“We’re exactly the same height when you wear those boots.”
Given the alignment of every single part of her body with every single part of his, she thought he must be right about that.
“I honestly don’t have an opinion on that, positive or negative,” he said.
“Okay.”
“I do have a number of dirty thoughts.” He waited a beat. “You want to hear them?”
Of course she wanted to hear them. And yet she hesitated, because she wasn’t sure how they’d gotten here again, and so quickly. Weren’t they supposed to be awkward right now? Deep into serious conversation or argument, rather than ignoring all that stuff in favor of this physical flirtation?
“I’m—I’m not sure.”
“All right,” he said calmly. “Just let me know when you do.”
“You’re giving me a rain check on your dirty thoughts?”
“Exactly.”
The word stroked over her collarbones and dragged down her eyelids. He shifted. His arm nudged her waist.
“I’m sorry I kissed you.”
“You said.”
“Are you?”
“Sorry?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“No.”
A long pause. “Does that mean I can do it again?”
“Do you want to?”
She felt movement, and then his breath hit the back of her neck. His hands slid over her shoulders and down her arms. Up again. A light touch that made her shiver. “Yes.”
She closed her eyes. Was she waiting for him to turn her around and kiss her, or was she waiting to make up her own mind? She didn’t know.
She only knew that she felt safe here, surrounded by the fragrance of soap and damp dryer lint and Ben’s body. Despite everything, and even though it didn’t make any sense.
“Hey, May?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you staying?”
“I haven’t decided.”
She had, though. It would take a powerful force to drag her away from him.
“Hey, Ben?” Her eyes were still closed.
“Yeah?”
“What happened? With Sandy?”
She felt the tension come into him, charging all the atoms in the air between them. Part of her wanted to retract the question, but that part of her had no place here, with him. That part of her needed to stay out of it.
Ben stepped away.
She turned around to see him rub his palm over his head. “She doesn’t go by Sandy Hausman anymore. She goes by Alessandra Alesci.”
He said the name carefully, as though she might recognize it. “Should I know who that is?”
“It would be nice if you didn’t.”
But Alessandra Alesci—she’d heard the name before, hadn’t she? “Give me a hint.”
“You ever shop at Shaker Prospect?”
Oh.
Oh.
“She’s the one with the cookbook and the spatulas and all that?”
“One and the same.”
May occasionally bought gifts at the Shaker Prospect store at the mall. Alesci’s smiling face graced a number of products, her name endorsing a premium line of gourmet sauces and powdered mixes—everything from steak sauce to orange-poppyseed scones.
“I think I bought my mom her cookbook last Christmas,” she said.
“My cookbook.”
“The one where she’s on the cover with the striped apron?”
“I wrote it. Most of it anyway. But Sandy’s name sells more books.”
“You’re a …” A ghostwriter? A cook? She wasn’t sure how to end the sentence. This conversation had taken her out of her depth.
“I’m a chef.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.
“No wonder you can cook,” she said finally.
The dryer buzzed, and she was grateful for the excuse to step away from him. His proximity made her too warm; the conversation, too confused. She needed space and air.
She opened the dryer door and squeezed a sock. Dry.
Ben helped her pile the warm clothes onto a countertop, and they began to fold them, side by side.
“You said you were a beekeeper.”
“I am. When I got divorced, Sandy took the restaurant. I signed a noncompete agreement that says I can’t open another one.”
“She can do that? Keep you from being a chef forever?”
“No, I could open a pizzeria in Fargo if I wanted, but I agreed not to open another real restaurant in New York or the boroughs for two years.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A year next month.”
“So you’re … what? Just biding your time with the bees and the gardening?”
“Something like that.”
“And then you’re going to open another restaurant?”
“If I can find some backers, yeah.”
May stopped herself from asking how likely that was. It seemed as if it might be a rude question, like asking someone who they’d voted for or how much they earned. Like saying, Are you a good chef or a mediocre one?
“Does that mean you’re making me breakfast again?” she asked instead.
“It could mean that.”
“If you make me breakfast, I’ll stay.”
“And the kiss?”
He didn’t change his tone or move closer. When he reached for a T-shirt, his elbow brushed her arm, and her chest broke out in goose bumps.
From his elbow.
“Another rain check, I think.”
They folded laundry together. He got the basket and set it onto the counter, and they piled the warm clothes inside. When they’d finished, she turned to get her purse and found him where she hadn’t expected to, and they moved into each other—a slow-motion collision that wasn’t precisely an accident.
At least, not on her part.
Her hands lifted to investigate the rigid sculpture of his biceps just beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. His palms spanned her waist. Then her hips. When he pulled her toward him, his thigh came between her legs, and the heat spread with a slow pulse, up and out, across her stomach and her thighs. Into her breasts, her neck. Her face.
The detergent smell of the laundry room, the tumbling clothes, her new panties drying over the edge of his green plastic laundry basket—none of this had been part of her fantasies. She’d never intended to run
from Dan and end up with this divorced farming beekeeper ex-chef, with his surly attitude and his crooked smile. His secrets.
She had never imagined the feel of Ben hard against her hip, his quiet breath on her face.
She couldn’t have, even if she’d known to want to.
“I’m cool with a rain check,” he said. “But tomorrow, your vacation starts.”
“You’re going to make me fall for New York.”
“That’s the plan.”
He didn’t move his hands. He didn’t have to—she was melting just from their weight and heat at her hips. Her fingertips took tiny excursions on his arms. Up and down. Over the swell of his bicep, along the groove between bicep and tricep.
“And we’ll find you an apartment, somehow,” she said.
“And visit some bees.”
“What if they don’t like me?”
“They’re going to love you,” he said. “How could they not? You’re exactly the right height.”
She smiled, and he ducked his head and laid it against her neck. His strong arms gathered her close and wrapped around her, possessive and comforting.
She stroked her fingers along his hairline and up and down his neck, letting herself touch him. She wanted to know all the shapes of him, all the secrets he was made of.
But one at a time. Shape by shape. Secret by secret.
“When the laundry’s done, can we watch a movie?” she asked.
“I do fantastic popcorn.”
He kissed the patch of her skin that was closest to his mouth, and she closed her eyes again and let him hold her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the morning, he offered her a tour of the garden at Figs.
It was a short tour. The restaurant’s rooftop was small, and its garden consisted of a series of low raised beds, each sporting tidy rows of green at various heights. Ben told her the restaurant was coming to the end of its first growing season.
He talked about both the garden and the restaurant as though they belonged to him, but when she asked him if they did, he said no. She hoped he’d volunteer more information about how he knew Cecily and Sam and how deeply he was involved with Figs, but he didn’t.
Still, he seemed cheerful as he harvested a few dozen tomatoes, some squash, and fresh herbs. He told her the names of things with a certain measure of pride, teasing her when he asked her to pick some basil and she revealed that she didn’t know which part to pick—the leaves alone, or the whole stalk? She’d never had a garden.