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Nikole quickly pushed me out of the way. “You’re a guest. I’ll take care of these. Why don’t you pick a movie for us to watch?”
Huh. I hadn’t realized I was staying that long. Or perhaps putting on a movie was her way of having to make less conversation.
“I’ve got a couple of streaming channels. You can pick something from there.”
The television remote lay perfectly aligned next to her book on the coffee table. But I didn’t reach for it right away. Instead, I walked over to a tall bookshelf to check out some of the titles.
There were law books, as I’d suspected, but not many of them. Maybe two or three. There was a row of crime novels and another for cozy mysteries. But below those, there were at least three rows of colorful purple and blue paperbacks. I pulled one down and smirked at the cover featuring the naked torso of a well-endowed man. I checked the book next to it and the one next to that. More men, some women, all of them in a state of undress.
Well, well. What did we have here?
I flipped through the pages of a book with an alien on the cover.
“What are you smirking at?” Sarah asked.
I cleared my throat. “Nothing.”
The clanging of dishes stopped and Nikole turned around. Her eyes scanned the bookshelf and my hand, and they narrowed. “I don’t think you’ll find anything you’d like there,” she said and turned back to the dishes.
I ran my finger along the spines of the books and an image of Nikole curled up in bed reading and perhaps a little breathless popped into my head. The knot in my shoulders loosened. “I don’t know. I might surprise myself.”
A smirk, so tiny, I couldn’t be sure I even saw it, tickled her face.
“You used to love those crime fiction novels, Jake. What were they called again?” Sarah piped in.
“The Tom Clancy ones?” asked Nikole.
“No, no,” said Sarah, and my heart stopped for a second. Sarah couldn’t be talking about—
“The ones with the little girl detective. What was her name?”
“Nancy Drew,” I murmured.
“That’s it!” Sarah clapped her hands. “You loved those books. I remember you would hide in the closet to read them because Dad would get so mad at you.”
My mind was transported back two decades. I sat in a dark, cramped closet with a flashlight reading while I listened for my father’s footsteps.”
“Why would he get mad about that?” asked Nikole, turning off the water.
“Because I preferred reading over playing football with him. I never lived up to his expectations.”
Sarah stared, and Nikole’s gaze flickered to me as well. After receiving both of their pitying glances, I felt like a boulder had fallen onto my chest. It was more than I could take. “Let’s watch that movie.”
I turned on the television and scrolled through the movie titles. I didn’t stop to read any of the descriptions.
“Slow down. You’re going too fast.” Sarah plucked the remote from my hand and dropped onto the couch like a sack of potatoes. “
Nikole came around the couch and touched my arm with the back of her hand. She held a cup of coffee. “Would you like one?”
“I’d love one,” I said. “Thank you.”
She smiled. The first genuine smile I’d seen directed at me. I hated that it came off the heels of pity. I cleared my throat. “I’m just going to check the perimeter while you two choose the movie.”
I walked toward the front door and felt their stares on my back. The infrared cameras had the perimeter covered, but I needed some air. That one little nudge felt too intimate, as though Nikole were my friend and not my client. Her smile had warmth behind it, not politeness the way everyone else’s did. I needed to step out and shake off that feeling. I didn’t want it.
I didn’t.
A familiar but distant craving brought me closer to my car. I opened the passenger door and reached inside the glove box. A red and black carton sat on the driver’s manual. It had been there for months. I had quit smoking the day I had left Janine and hadn’t wanted a cigarette since. Not until today.
