Chapter 2
LEAH
"Ihave coffee," I say, holding up my cup like evidence.
He looks at it. Then at me.
"It's watered down."
He holds out his hand.
I look at it. Just sitting there, open and patient, waiting.
I know he's not just offering to throw away a lukewarm Americano. I'm not naive. He's offering something else, something that starts with coffee and ends somewhere I probably shouldn't follow. I know this the way you know things in your gut before your brain catches up to them.
My gut is also, currently, doing something it hasn't done in a very long time. A kind of low, fluttery awareness that is inconvenient and warm and absolutely not helping me think clearly.
I've read the articles. The ones that tell women to trust their instincts, to pay attention to the way a situation makes them feel, to notice the alarm bells.
The alarm bells are there. Distant, but present.
The problem is that something else is louder right now.
I hand him the cup.
He drops it in a nearby trash can without ceremony and starts walking, tilting his head for me to fall into step beside him.
"You think carefully before you act," he says, not unkindly.
"I'm cautious." My cheeks are warm. I resist the urge to touch them. "Is that a problem?"
"Not at all." He pauses to let Athos sniff at a stoop decorated with bright clay flowerpots, completely at ease, no apparent hurry. "Caution is smart. The trick is knowing when it's protecting you and when it's keeping you from good things."
I look at him sideways. "That sounds like something a man says when he wants a woman to stop being cautious."
He laughs. Low and real. "Fair."
The cafe he takes me to is more normal than I expected.
All mint-green subway tile and mismatched chairs and plants hanging in every window, the kind of Brooklyn spot that's been there long enough to be genuinely beloved rather than aggressively curated.
The espresso smells perfect. The ambient noise is exactly right, that warm hum of conversations not quite loud enough to follow.
I order a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant. He orders a triple espresso and absolutely nothing else, because apparently he runs on spite and iron will.
We settle at a small table on the back patio, shaded and quiet.
Athos and Benji arrange themselves on either side of us with the diplomacy of two countries that have signed a temporary ceasefire.
I slip Benji a bit of my croissant and, after a glance at Viktor that he meets with the faintest nod, I give Athos one too.
I drag the foam off my cappuccino with a spoon. Viktor wraps both hands around his tiny espresso cup, which looks approximately the size of a thimble in his grip.
"Athos," I say, watching the Cane Corso. "Like The Three Musketeers?"
Viktor's expression shifts. Something like approval. "Yes."
"So do you have a Porthos and an Aramis somewhere?"
He laughs again, and I feel it again, that warm reverb in my chest. I need to get a handle on that.
"Not yet. Athos doesn't share well."
"No all for one and one for all for him?"
"Not in the slightest."
I smile into my cup. "What made you choose a Cane Corso?"
"I've always liked a dog that looks more dangerous than it is."
I glance at Athos, who is resting his enormous head on his paws and staring at a sparrow with profound disinterest. "He's a softie?"
"He has moments." Viktor watches him with something close to fondness. "Don't tell anyone."
"I like big dogs," I say honestly. "Cane Corsos especially. Those bronze eyes are something."
"Yes," Viktor agrees, and then he looks at me. "They are."
I feel my face heat and quickly focus on the croissant.
"I've seen the Great Dane before," Viktor says after a moment, settling back in his chair. "But not you."
"Benji belongs to my best friend. She's out of town for a couple of days, and I promised I'd cover mornings until her dog sitter arrives." I glance at Benjamin, who is watching a pigeon with elaborate hope. "He gets destructive if he misses his walk."
"He needs the outlet."
"He needs a job. Something that tires him out." I pause. "Maybe a career in demolition."
Viktor's mouth curves. "He's done good work already today."
"Please don't remind me."
"For what it's worth," he says, "I should have paid better attention when I saw you both on the street. I was distracted."
I look up. "By what?"
He looks right at me, like it's a completely obvious answer, and says nothing.
Oh.
Right.
I clear my throat and go back to the croissant.
"I'm sorry," he says, and I hear the amusement underneath the sincerity. "I don't mean to make you uncomfortable."
"You're not." A small lie. Not entirely. "I just don't usually have strangers buy me things."
"I didn't do it to make you uncomfortable. I did it because it was the right thing to do."
He says that plainly, without any performance behind it. Like right and wrong are just coordinates he moves between without any drama about it.
I wonder, briefly, what that's like.
"The full name," he says then, tilting his head toward Benji. "Benjamin Maximus Jellybean James. I have to ask."
I groan. "You heard that?"
"From half a block away."
"It was a collaborative effort," I say. "My best friend named him Benjamin. Her daughter named him Maximus after a cartoon horse. Her nephew contributed Jellybean at a birthday party. James is the last name because he needed one." I pause. "It suits him. Don't you think?"
Viktor considers the dog seriously, as if he's actually weighing the question. "I do," he says finally. "Although Athos has a more distinguished ring to it."
"It does. But Benjamin Maximus Jellybean James has character."
"It has something," he agrees.
I laugh, and it comes out easier than I expect, loose and real, and Viktor's expression shifts when he hears it. Something moves in his eyes, gone before I can name it.
I realize I'm enjoying myself. Actually, genuinely enjoying myself, in a way I haven't in longer than I want to admit.
Not just the company, though the company is doing things to my nervous system that I'll deal with later.
But the feeling of sitting in the sun on a Wednesday morning with coffee and a croissant, talking to someone who listens like the conversation matters.
That part might actually be the most dangerous thing about him.
I check my phone and do a double take.
"Oh no." I sit up straighter. "I'm sorry, I lost track of time. I have work I really need to get to."
"Of course." He stands as I do, one smooth motion, and gestures for me to go ahead. No fuss. No protest.
We walk back toward Suzie's, and I tell myself the whole way that I'm not going to ask to see him again. That's not how I operate. I have Eliza, I have work, I have exactly zero margin in my life for whatever this man would be.
I make Benji sit on the stoop.
I turn to Viktor.
"Thank you. For everything." I mean the jeans, and the apron idea, and the crowd. I mean all of it. "You didn't have to do any of that."
"I wanted to."
"Even considering the circumstances?"
Those blue eyes warm. "Especially considering the circumstances."
I look at him for one second too long.
Then I go inside, get Benji settled with water and his favorite toy, give him approximately forty goodbye kisses, and talk myself down off the ceiling the entire time. By the time I lock the front door, I have almost convinced myself that this was a funny story, a very good one, and nothing more.
I head down the stoop.
I nearly crash directly into him.
Viktor is still there, standing at the bottom with both hands in his pockets, Athos at his side, perfectly calm, like he had every reason in the world to wait.
I catch myself on the last step. His hand comes up fast, steadying me at the elbow.
"I want to see you tonight," he says.
Not a question.
"My daughter is home tonight."
"I'll cover whatever extra is needed for a babysitter."
I blink. "That's not necessary. I have a neighbor she loves."
"Good."
He's watching me with those eyes, and I can see every shade in them up close. The dark ring at the outside. The gray threading through the blue. The black at the center.
I should say no.
Every sensible part of me is lining up to say no.
"Where do I meet you?" I ask.
Something shifts in his expression. Satisfaction, maybe, but warmer than that.
"I'll send a car at 7:15. There's a reservation at 8." He pauses. "Wear something you feel good in."
He doesn't say dress up. He doesn't give me a dress code. He says wear something you feel good in, and somehow that lands differently than anything else he's said today.
"Okay," I say.
I give him my address. He puts it into his phone. He gives me one more look, the kind that says I'll be thinking about you until then, and walks away with Athos at his heel, unhurried, certain, like a man who has never once doubted that he'll get what he wants.
I stand on the stoop for a moment after he's gone.
Then I go inside and call my neighbor.
Then I go to my closet and stare at it for twenty minutes.
I am so far out of my depth it isn't funny.
But for the first time in a long time, I don't care.