Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(29)
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I really am. You know that, baby. You know I didn’t mean it. You know how much I love you.”
“I’m busy,” Zoe said quietly. “Leave me alone.”
“You look so damn beautiful right now, baby. Can I talk to you? Just for a minute? Then you can go back and do your thing.”
She said something I didn’t hear and he tugged her toward him, whispered something. She shook her head and looked down, flowers in one hand. “Come on,” he said, his voice coaxing. “I made us a reservation already. You know it’s your favorite place.”
“I’m with people,” she said softly. “My friends. You shouldn’t be here.”
Luis whispered something else and bent his head to kiss her. She turned her head and took the first kiss on the side of her face. The next one, following fast like a boxer’s combination, caught her lips.
“Looks like Nikki’s not the only one going on a date,” Marlene whispered.
Zoe looked over at us. “I gotta go,” she murmured. “Thanks for everything.”
I didn’t say anything. Just nodded good-bye. Luis shot the group of us that high-wattage smile again. It was a good smile, one that showed his white teeth and dimpled his cheeks. I would have bet that plenty of women had fallen for that smile. “Sorry, ladies, didn’t mean to drag her away,” he apologized, still smiling. “Guess I just can’t stay away from her.”
No one answered him. I watched the two of them leave, his arm around her waist. Zoe held the flowers. Luis held Zoe. Someone walking past them on the street might have thought cute couple and not given them a second look.
I turned back to the group. “Anyway, the title—from the biblical passage, Matthew eleven, verse twelve. ‘The kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away.’ Let’s talk about that. Who are the violent here? What are they trying to bear away?”
“Seems like he’s bearing away that poor girl,” muttered Jess.
Along with the rest of the women, I looked involuntarily toward the door. Wondering if I should have done anything more. Knowing that however much I might want to, I couldn’t charge through the world trying to fix every broken thing I came across. Yet here, sitting all around me, were women who had all needed something. Different things, but the same thing. Where was the line? Broken things didn’t always fix themselves.
Especially when there was someone trying hard to keep them broken.
“Nikki?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Was thinking about something. One more time?” I turned my attention back to the book group, trying to focus on the discussion while in the back of my mind trying to place a foreign scent. After a moment, I realized what was distracting me.
I could still smell a trace of Luis’s cologne, heavy and dangerous in the air.
17
“Sorry I’m late,” I said. “Got caught in traffic.”
“No trouble at all, Nikki. You missed the first round, but plenty more.”
Ethan came over. He was wearing a blazer and chinos. The sleeves on the blazer spilled almost to his knuckles. He kissed me on the mouth, surprising me. To my greater surprise, I didn’t mind. “Meet Lawrence and Katherine Walker,” he said. “Good friends. Lawrence has taught me everything I know about tennis.”
“Which isn’t much, Ethan, I’m afraid. But we persevere.”
Lawrence Walker was a tall, solidly built man in his late thirties, with carefully kept jet-black hair, a close-cropped beard, and wire-frame glasses that together would have left him looking perfectly at home in the October Revolution. He wore a green cashmere sweater, gray flannel pants, and brown oxfords. His accent seemed East Coast. His wife, Katherine, was a tall blonde about the same age. Maybe five years older than me. She wore a flowing tangerine skirt, with a necklace of heavy pieces of turquoise looped around her neck. Each wore a rose gold wedding ring.
I greeted them and handed Lawrence a bottle.
“A Barolo,” he said, impressed. “I can see you’re going to teach Ethan a thing or two.”
“She already has,” said Ethan with a smile. He was happy. Happy, and a little buzzed.
They had a spacious apartment in the trendy Lake Merritt neighborhood of Oakland. My brother’s apartment was probably less than a fifteen-minute drive away, but it could have been in another world. I looked around. The place screamed intellect and whispered money. Tasteful, but able to indulge that taste, too. High oak bookcases in the living room. My eyes picked up a hodgepodge of names as I walked past—Foucault, Marcus Aurelius, Guy de Maupassant, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Jean Genet, Anthony Trollope, Harold Bloom, Thomas Mann, Goethe, of course the mandatory Sophocles and Euripides and Shakespeare and Chaucer and Joyce. They had everything covered. Literature, history, drama, philosophy, cultural studies.
One of the reasons I hated e-readers was because bookshelves showed so much about the people who owned them. Here, clearly, was an academic couple, probably able to discuss Greek tragedy, Russian literature, and French political science with equal fluency. Also, here was an apartment whose occupants were broadcasting a message a mile high: they wanted anyone who knew anything about books to know that they did, as well. I took another look at the titles. The proportions were too perfect. A little of everything, not too much of any one thing. A careful display. In the living room was a sculpture, a crouched warrior with spear raised in one hand. Paintings, a series of nude prints, Saville, a Tracey Emin, a Modigliani. The living room was comfortably appointed, a heather-gray upholstered couch, deep armchairs, a striking dining table legged with marble pillars.