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“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.
She needed to eat.
“How far can you walk in those?” Ben aimed a look of pure contempt at her feet.
May looked down to see what her toes had done to piss him off, but all she saw were her flats. Not the best shoes for walking in, but they could be a lot worse.
“I don’t know. How far is it?”
“Ten minutes, maybe? We could take the subway. It wouldn’t be faster, but you could sit.”
“I can walk for ten minutes.”
They stepped off the curb at a crosswalk, and May watched her feet, hyper-vigilant lest she give any sign of how hard the whiskey had hit her. It seemed important to be sober and smart—but she’d already failed at that. She could at least appear to have her shit together.
Then she remembered to look around for landmarks. If anything awful happened—if Ben suddenly decamped, say, or violent criminals attacked and kidnapped him, leaving her behind in the streets—she should have some idea where she was located.
