Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(6)

“I was waiting for you to say that,” he said, sitting down. “I’m Ethan. And you are…?”

“Nikki.”

“You like Kierkegaard?”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I feel he’s the only thing holding me together.”

“Look,” Ethan said. “I don’t usually give out my number to strange women.”

I had to laugh. “Was I asking?”

“Your eyes betray you.”

“I see.”

He winked at me. “I’ll make an exception. Just this once.”

“You will.”

“But we don’t sleep together on the first date,” he said sternly. “That I’m sticking to. Not up for debate. I don’t care what you say.”

I sipped my coffee and tried not to smile. “Setting terms, are you?”

“Well, someone had to. Now, if you would be so good as to lend me your phone, I’ll put in my number, and then you can pretty much go ahead and call me, like, whenever.”

“I don’t have a cell phone.”

He was surprised. “Everyone has a cell phone. My grandmother has a cell phone and she doesn’t know how to turn it on. Literally, I’m not exaggerating, she would not know where the Power button is. But she has one.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason that I don’t have a pet hamster. Because I don’t like them.”

He took a hash brown off my plate and chewed it thoughtfully. “Be careful. Now I’m starting to really like you.”

“Is that so?”

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to go out together, and it’s gonna be fun.” He took a napkin, pulled a pen from his jacket pocket. “That’s my number. How do I reach you, No-Cell-Phone Girl?”

He had blue eyes. Soft ones. And he did have a good smile.

“Fine.” I took the napkin, tore off half, wrote down a phone number and address, and handed it back to him.

He took the napkin, surprised. “Your address? You barely know me.”

“Monday,” I said. “You can come over for dinner this Monday, seven o’clock. If you want.”

“You’re inviting me to dinner? I feel like I should be inviting you to dinner.”

“Well, you didn’t. Besides, I promise you that I’m a better cook than you are.”

“How do you know that?”

“Call it another assumption.”

“I’m kind of a shitty cook,” he confessed. “But I love to eat.”

I checked my watch again. Almost two thirty. It was time.

I threw a twenty on the table and got up. “I have to go now. And by the way,” I added. My fingers brushed his jeans pocket, where his Cal ID peeked out. “Sometimes it’s only a matter of looking close.”

Then, because I couldn’t resist, I took his crown, put it on my head, and walked out of the restaurant.





4


Ten minutes later I was back at the Craftsman house.

Again, I left my bike down the block. The homes on either side of the street were darkened. Cars littered the curbs and the Port’s sodium glow spread spookily through the sky. The street was quiet.

I’d noticed a funny thing about people who left home in an ambulance. They never remembered to lock their door on the way out. Just wasn’t something they thought about. They had bigger concerns. The paramedics never locked the doors, either. It wasn’t their job.

So I wasn’t surprised to find the front door unlocked.

I let myself in.

He wasn’t back yet. Friday night in Oakland, the emergency rooms were running at full capacity. Even with a broken nose and rib he’d have to wait a bit. Oakland was a city, and kind of a violent one. Not as bad as it used to be, but people still got shot, run over, stabbed. All kinds of bad things happened every day, and Friday nights seemed to bring out the worst in people. The ER wasn’t going to drop everything for a guy with a broken rib and busted nose. No one was going to die from a broken rib. But they wouldn’t leave him sitting there forever. He hadn’t come in with a sprained ankle. I figured I’d have to wait one hour, maybe two at the most. Depending on how busy the night had been. Depending on how many bad things had happened to people I’d probably never meet.

He’d mentioned coffee.

I rummaged through the kitchen and found a bag of Peet’s, pre-ground. Could be a lot worse.

I brewed a big pot in the coffee machine and settled in to wait.



* * *



I heard the door just before three thirty. I didn’t bother to get up. Stayed in the armchair as he walked in. I wasn’t worried about police being with him. He wasn’t going to tell anyone that he’d had his ass kicked by some girl he’d invited over. And the last thing on his mind was the possibility of me still being there.

Of me having come back.

I waited until he had closed the door. “Robert,” I said, and clicked on a light.

“What the hell!” He literally jumped backward. His nose was partly obscured by a white bandage and both his eyes were blackened from the break. A few stitches on his forehead from where his head had hit the coffee table. Probably ACE bandages under his shirt. There wasn’t much to be done about broken ribs except to let them heal without doing anything to stop that from happening. Not a fun injury. He winced in pain as the words left his mouth. With broken ribs even breathing hurts pretty badly at first. He was backing away from me. “Why are you here?”