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“Just a second!” Allie called back. She turned her attention back to Ben. “We’re having breakfast for lunch. In the middle of the afternoon. It’s a hangover tradition.”
“Can I please talk to May?”
Allie put her hands on her hips. Her eyebrows lifted above the frames of the sunglasses. “She told you she loved you.”
“I know.”
“In a public bathroom.”
“Yes.”
“And then you drove away.”
He straightened to his full height and tried to look confident. “I’m prepared to do anything to get your sister back, but—”
“But? But?”
“—but unless she’s sent you out here as her delegate, I’d rather not have you in the middle of it.”
Allie took off her sunglasses. Her eyes looked small, the skin around them puffy, and the light made her squint.
“Do you love her?” she asked.
“That’s not really—”
Allie flapped her hand, cutting him off. “I know, I know. None of my business, between you and May, et cetera. But I’m the one who cried with her yesterday, and I’m the one who danced with her for two hours straight.”
“Danced?”
“We had the reception.”
“But not the wedding?”
“Didn’t we just establish that you weren’t going to ask?”
“Sorry.”
She sighed. “I called off the wedding. We had the party anyway. Dad spent most of the night grumbling with his brothers about how much money I’d thrown down the drain. Mom progressed from speechless to ‘I’ll have a small cocktail’ to quite thoroughly lit in the space of about an hour, all while playing perfect hostess and smiling at everyone.
“Matt showed up with six of his college buddies, already half-toasted, told me we would always be friends, and then did the Electric Slide with May’s friend Beth, who, last time I checked, was doing her damndest to pick him up. I had to stop looking because even the thought of it makes me want to cry, so all I’m going to say, moving along, is that May looked like a seriously hot piece of ass and danced to all the songs and flirted with everybody until around two in the morning.”
Allie paused to breathe. She put her hands on her hips. “At which point she cornered me and made me go outside with her so she could cry and tell me every single thing that happened between you guys, some of which I’d rather not know, so do me a favor and convince me that she’s not making a huge mistake trusting you.”
Another deep breath.
“Because I need to know that something good is going to come out of all this shit before I let you in the house.”
Ben sunk his hands into his back pockets, unsure how to respond. Allie wasn’t the person he wanted to declare himself to.
But then, in the kitchen, May laughed—that loud, impolite braying noise he’d first heard nine days ago.
That laugh. That woman. All he wanted.
Then it was easy. “I love your sister.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s radiant.”
