“Yeah, I’m fine.” I responded, then asked in return, “Are you okay?”

He nodded as he scanned my features, and then, still holding my hand, he turned to Marie. “How about you? May I offer you anything?”

Marie glanced at the sky. I noted her eyes were shining with barely controlled tears. “Do you have any vodka?”

CHAPTER 5

“Another toast to Alex. May he live long and prosper, and have lots of prospering, long-living babies!” Elizabeth raised her glass; all the toasts she’d led so far had been Star Trek related, and this was the second live-long-and-prosper toast, which was how I knew it was time to cut her off.

“Na’zdroveya!” Fiona said.

“Hear, hear!” Kat said.

“Cheerio, old chap!” Ashley said.

“To warm hats!” Janie said.

“À la vôtre!” Marie said.

“I volunteer….” I mumbled under my breath. My brain and lips were loosened by the inhalation of alcohol, but I was nowhere near as inebriated as the rest.

He didn’t hear my comment. No one did.

Or if they did, they made no outward show of it, which means they didn’t hear me because, as intoxicated as they were, at least one of them would have repeated it loudly and made lewd hand gestures.

Alex didn’t laugh; he was filling our water glasses with his usual detached attention. In fact, despite our profusion of toasts in his honor, he hadn’t waved us off or feigned embarrassment, nor had he made a joke of it. Rather, he stood stoically, showing no outward emotion, and accepted our praise—every time.

I made a mental note that, at least at first, Alex behaved as a typical alpha male. His acceptance of the praise demonstrated that he not only welcomed a good ego stroking without putting on a display of false humility to get it; he craved it. But then again, after our prolonged effusion of compliments, he should have revealed some outward sign of weariness or annoyance when the toasts turned into tipsy tributes. He didn’t.

He gifted us with a gentle nod of his head, his eyes snaring mine for a prolonged second, before he turned and sauntered back to the kitchen.

Zing.

I sighed.

As I watched him depart, I wondered if he lacked a sense of humor. I dismissed the thought almost immediately. He had suppressed a laugh last Friday while he sat across from me and said naughty things, and I’d gotten the distinct impression that he had a sense of humor that tended to be wicked, dark, and sardonic.

“Sandra?”

I reluctantly pulled my attention from Alex and met Fiona’s inquiring gaze. “Yes?”

Her elfish eyes narrowed on me and her lips compressed into a threatening smile. “I said, I think we’re going to skip the knitting tonight.”

“Oh.” I glanced around the table. Everyone was looking at me except Marie, who was surreptitiously trying to read her phone. “Yeah, sure. That’s fine.”

“It’s finally happened. I’ve had too much knit to alcohol.” Ashley slurred, her head falling into her hands. The unintended word switch earned her some snickers.

“If you weren’t working on an Ysolda sweater pattern then you could probably still get through some rows,” Kat said then promptly hiccupped, which made her giggle.

“Yeah. Knit a scarf. Stop being such a pattern snob.”

As conversation flared around the table—a debate over the readability of Ysolda Teague’s Vivian sweater pattern while inebriated, and why knitting a ribbed scarf made one a ghetto knitter—Fiona leaned close to me and whispered, “Janie called Quinn.”

I nodded and glanced at her from the corner of my eye as I said; “Yeah. I saw Dan and the guys arrive earlier.”

After the earlier kerfuffle on the sidewalk, the restaurant owner, Mr. Patel, had called the police. Fiona and Marie had done most of the talking.

While the police took Marie’s statement, Janie had called her husband, Quinn, who owned a very capable commercial and private security firm. Three members of Quinn’s private security team arrived not one minute after the police departed.

I noticed that Alex was scarce, and appeared only to refill water glasses until the police left. Of note, Mr. Patel took a break from the kitchen to bring out lovely plates of chicken tandoori and samosas. He was also the one to deliver our bottles of wine, an overabundance of fantastic-smelling dishes, jasmine rice, and garlic naan.

We all eavesdropped on Marie’s story—as we were wont to do—and discovered that the sinister stranger was actually a guy she’d met, a bouncer, while she was working on her most recently published magazine article.

The title of the article was “Looking for Big in All the Wrong Places: The Tiny Truth About Body Builders.”

The police stuck around just long enough to get our quick statements and remind Marie to call if she had any more problems. Before they left, we listened as an APB was put out on her assailant.

Marie, though I was concerned about her emotional and mental well-being, was determined to salvage the evening and insisted on ordering four more bottles of wine. She wanted to stay and celebrate, and no one was inclined to argue her out of it.

At one point she said, “I will not be bullied out of celebrating my success.” And I think I loved her a little more in that moment, though I didn’t know how it was possible.

Of course, there were about seventeen remaining elephants in the room, the three largest of which were Marie’s future safety, Fiona’s mysterious badassery, and the way Alex had knight-in-shining-armored his way to the top of our favorite person list.

Instead of addressing the former two, we focused on the latter and made copious red wine toasts to Alex once he replaced Mr. Patel as our server—and every time he came to the table. Our appreciation—especially my appreciation, of course—quadrupled when he remembered to bring out Marie’s gift after dinner and before dessert.

“Do you think I should ask Marie if she wants to talk about what happened?” My attention was distracted as I watched the only other customers in the restaurant push back their chairs and depart for the night. Although it wasn’t yet 9:30 p.m. and the place had been packed at 7:00 p.m., it was a Tuesday night, and it was bitterly cold. People wanted to be at home and warm.

More customers at this point were highly unlikely.

“No.” Fiona paused, her eyes moved over Marie. “She’ll clam up if you try to use your powers of psychoanalysis on her. I think that’s why she insisted that we stay and have dinner here. It’ll be hard enough to get her to agree to the security detail.”

I silently conceded the point and said, “I need to visit the ladies’ room. If I see adorable Alex, I’ll ask him to bring the check.”

Fiona’s gaze sharpened, and the suddenness of it halted my movements. “Adorable Alex, huh?”

“Yes. Don’t you think he’s adorable?”

“No. I think he looks like a tall, scary version of James Dean.”

“The dead actor or the  p**n  star?”

“The dead actor.”

“Shoot.” I twisted my lips to the side and sighed mournfully. “That  p**n  actor has a gigantic….”

“Sandra,” Fiona interrupted me, her voice a careful whisper. “Be careful with Alex. There is something not right about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on. You two have been eye sexing each other all night. It’s hard not to notice.”

“Well, I can’t help it. He gives me the zings in my things.”

“What does that mean?”

“I feel like I have wings.”

“Maybe you’re drinking too much Red Bull.”

“No. It’s lady quiverings.”

“Listen, Doctor Seuss, I don’t care if looking at him makes you want to sing. Look all you want. Just don’t…don’t do anything else.”

I didn’t even try to look sheepish, but because I also sensed that something about Alex was a bit off, I was curious about Fiona’s assessment. “You’ve been making toasts to him all night.”

“Yes, because he helped—or intended to help—Marie. Which is another thing, how he ran out of here. How many people do you know—how many guys do you know—who are willing to run into a fight like that?”

“You did.”

She looked abruptly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well I’m not a guy. I had the element of surprise, I know Marie, and we’re not talking about me.” Her voice was firm and left no room for questions. I recognized her deflection for what it was. “He doesn’t know her. And that bouncer guy, even though they were evenly matched in height, that guy was almost twice Alex’s width. It’s almost like Alex has a death wish. You’re good at reading people; I’m sure your thoughts were similar.”

I nodded noncommittally. Usually I was good at reading people. Admittedly, now, and at the time it happened, it didn’t occur to me to think that what Alex did—running out to save some unknown damsel in distress from a beefy behemoth twice his size—was reckless.

I thought it was sexy and swoony and hot. Maybe our Friday kiss and the constant zings had clouded my judgment.

After a short moment, she added, “And the way he looks at people.” Her eyes lost some of their focus.