Read Online Truly (New York Trilogy #1) by Ruthie Knox - Free Book Online Page A

and pulled a bottle down from one of the cabinets. He opened it and poured a glass, then joined her on the couch. Which was pink.
    “So you want to take a shower?”
    “No.”
    Ben leaned forward, squinting at her face. “You look really freaked out.”
    “It’s been kind of a long day.”
    “I bet. Sure I can’t get you some wine? Might help you unwind.”
    That’s what I’m afraid of
.
    He’d already unlaced his shoes and left them by the door, and now he unzipped his hoodie to reveal a gray T-shirt underneath.
    Socks and a T-shirt. Lounging on his pink couch, he should have looked like Ken relaxing at the Barbie Dream House. Instead, he looked disreputable. A standing lamp cast a pool of light around him, and the exposed bricks behind him gave the scene a rugged feel. The T-shirt stretched tight across his chest, hinting at an even better build than she’d guessed.
    She could see him exactly like this on a catalog page. Slap a faded Packers T-shirt on him, put some other bodies in the frame, and with the wineglass in his hand and the unzipped jacket, the scene would say,
I’m just lounging around in my urban apartment among my metropolitan friends, drinking wine and eating canapés and being hipper than you
.
    He would sell so many clothes.
    “You should be a model,” she said.
    He made a deeply cynical face.
    “What? You’d be great for catalogs. It probably pays better than washing dishes.”
    Oops. That had been a rude thing to say. She really
was
nervous, if she was forgetting the social niceties so thoroughly.
    “You think I’m a dishwasher?”
    “Aren’t you?”
    “No.”
    “Oh. So what are you, then?”
    Ben sipped his wine, and the silence drew out between them. She couldn’t read his expression—bemused, bewildered? Finally, he said, “I guess I’m a beekeeper.”
    Of May’s mental list of all the things he might have said,
I’m a beekeeper
was way, way down toward the bottom. So far down, she couldn’t think of a response. Finally, she came up with “This is New York.”
    The quirky little smile. “I know that.”
    “Where are the bees?”
    He pointed up, and like an idiot, May looked toward the ceiling, searching for buzzing insects. “On the roof,” he clarified.
    “So that’s …”
A job?
“That’s a surprise.”
    “I’ll bet. I keep hives on the roof. They’re not my bees, actually, they’re Alec’s. He gives me a break on the rent in exchange for taking care of his bees. But I’ve got a bunch more hives all over the city.”
    “Why?”
    “For the honey,” he said. “And because I like it.”
    “You sell the honey?” She was still trying to figure out where the viable career was in all this.
    “Yep. And some of the bees are leased to rooftop gardeners, so I get paid to make sure their crops get pollinated. I do some of that, too.”
    “Some of what?”
    “Gardening. That’s what I do for Cecily and Sam—I guess you didn’t see their menu, but a lot of the produce at the restaurant comes from a garden up on their roof. I’m in charge of the garden.”
    “And their bees.”
    “Right.”
    “So when you said, ‘Best honey in New York’ …”
    “I was bragging. That was spring honey from the hives on their roof.”
    “Your honey.”
    “My honey.”
    “I think I would like some wine after all,” she said, and he grinned. Which just made her want the wine even more.
    He was a farmer. In New York City. It figured, didn’t it? Only May would leave Wisconsin behind, move to New Jersey, stumble her way into a total life meltdown, and then pick a Wisconsin bee farmer to go home with.
    A Wisconsin bee farmer who looked like a male model in disguise.
    And didn’t want to get in her pants.
    He got up to pour her a glass just as his phone began to ring from the countertop where he had left it. “Why don’t you get that?” he asked. “It’s probably for you.”
    May retrieved the phone. “Hello?”
    “May! It’s Anya! Are you okay? What’s going