by Nella Tyler
In the meantime, the police took Natalie’s statement, as well as mine. I explained that I had come on my own, just to have dinner, and had noticed the client that Natalie was with acting strangely throughout their date. I backed Natalie up on every detail, even the ones I had missed, and they led the man away in cuffs. “You’ll want to go to the hospital, make sure you aren’t more injured than you think,” the officer told her.
“I think I’m mostly fine—just very sore,” she told her man, giving him a half-smile.
“I can drive you, if you want,” I told her, taking in the sight of her bloodstained clothes and the bruises on her face and wrists.
“No, really, I’ll go to the doctor in the morning, and if I feel really bad tonight, I’ll have someone take me. I’d really rather just get home and get cleaned up right now,” she said, shaking her head at my offer.
“Would you like an escort? Just to make sure…if you’re more injured than you think…” The police officer was an older guy—maybe in his mid-fifties—and it was obvious to me that he’d seen too many people refuse help, only to end up more injured when they tried to drive home with a concussion or something else wrong with them.
“I’ll accept that,” Natalie said. She looked at me and gave me a wry smile. “Sorry I ruined your dinner,” she told me.
“Oh shut up,” I said, shaking my head. “If anyone ruined it, it was that asshole. Go home and get cleaned up.” I watched the police officer guide Natalie out of the restaurant and wished that I had had the moral courage to insist on her letting me help instead. I went back to my table to see the check was lying there, marked paid, and my leftovers had been carefully boxed up.
“Thank you so much for your help, Mr. Baxter,” my waiter said, coming to my table as soon as I sat down. “I hope you’ll see us again soon—I hope this incident hasn’t put you off.”
“No,” I told the man, gathering up my food and my receipt. “I’ll be back in soon, I’m sure.” I stood up, feeling old and angry, and left the restaurant.
Chapter Twenty Five
Natalie
I checked the time on my phone. Brady should be up from his nap in about twenty minutes. It had been a day since my disastrous first meeting with Nathan Giles, and I had canceled the session I had with another client. I was free for the entire day. I sighed, tugging my favorite, worn blanket tighter around me. I didn’t want to take the full dose of the pain medication, especially if Brady was going to be awake and playing, but the half-dose I allowed myself to take didn’t completely dull the aches and pains and twinges from the injuries that Giles had given me.
At that, I had to remind myself that it could have been much, much worse. According to the doctor I ended up going to see, I had two bruised ribs, a sprained knee and wrist, and of course, the various bruises on my face, arms, and legs, along with the split lip I’d gotten, but I hadn’t broken anything, and I hadn’t needed any stitches. I had two weeks’ worth of Vicodin and prescription-strength Aleve, a brace for my knee and wrist, and instructions to ice the worst of the injuries every few hours and keep them elevated as much as possible. Of course, I couldn’t rest as much as the doctor wanted me to—Brady, at three, couldn’t understand the extent of my injuries and wasn’t about to change his normal activity level to accommodate me—but I was glad that he slept well at night and took a nap regularly during the day, and that for at least some of the time, I could sit on the couch and watch him from there.
I’d called Katie as soon as I could, informing her about Nathan Giles’ horrific behavior, and she’d immediately sprung into action: he would, as I’d told him, be banned from any of the matchmaking services that we had any kind of relationship with, and the company would be filing civil charges against him to go along with my criminal charges. He might be rich, but as long as we could push the matter, he wasn’t going to get away with what he’d done.
I shifted on the couch to try and get into a more comfortable position and winced as the movement sent new pain through my body. It could have been a lot worse, I reminded myself for the tenth time. In fact, if Zeke hadn’t been there, it probably would have been a lot worse. I shivered, remembering the feeling of dread that had washed through me when Giles had come after me. Normally, I’m fairly good at defending myself, and I did manage to get one or two hits in. But I was so shocked that someone would actually get so physical in a public place like a restaurant that I hadn’t been as quick as I normally would be.
I remembered Zeke’s sudden appearance at the table, remembered the sight of him hitting Nathan Giles, twisting the man’s arm behind his back, and pinning him to the chair. He had looked amazing: strong, capable, and fierce. Almost unwillingly, I compared him to my ex in my mind. While I was sure that at some point in his life, Alex had loved me very dearly indeed, I didn’t think that he would have been even half as capable as Zeke had been in protecting me. The thought made me feel a little ashamed; I knew I shouldn’t compare my ex-husband with a man I wasn’t even romantically involved with, but I couldn’t help it.
And, Zeke had stayed with me even when the cops arrived. He had offered to take me to the hospital to get checked out. If I hadn’t been feeling so angry, so shaken up and determined to call Katie and get the ball rolling on making sure that Nathan Giles got what he deserved, I might have actually taken Zeke up on his offer. I couldn’t help but feel grateful for the fact that he had been there, in that restaurant, at that particular moment in time. I had no idea at all what had brought him to the place where I was meeting with Nathan for the first time, but I had to admit that if anyone else had been there instead of him, I would probably had come out of the meeting with more than one broken bone.
My timer went off, and I got off of the couch as slowly and carefully as possible, turning the buzzer off. It was time to wake Brady up from his nap; hopefully he would be able to get himself out of bed without help from me—because between my wrist and my knee, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to drag him out from under the covers. I limped through the house and down the hall to his little bedroom. “Hey, little bug,” I called in through the door quietly. “Time to get up.” Brady wriggled and squirmed under the blankets, murmuring something sleepily. “If you get up, we can get a snack!” I grinned to myself as he sat bolt upright in his bed.
“Snack?” his eyes were bright, no sign of any sleepiness at all in him.
“Come on, little man. Let’s get you a snack and get something fun on TV.” Brady followed me into the kitchen like I was the pied piper, and I managed to get a bowl of cut-up fruit out of the fridge, along with a jar of almond butter. He toddled back into the living room to wait for me while I wrestled with his snack, scooping out a few spoonfuls of banana slices, apple chunks, and grapes onto a plate and then adding a dollop of almond butter on the side for him to dip them into. I fixed myself a bowl of the fruit as well, and limped back into the living room where my son was already seated on the floor next to the coffee table, rummaging through his box of toys for what he wanted. I put on an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba and sat back, propping my injured leg on the coffee table.
“Mama,” Brady said, dipping a banana slice into his almond butter and quickly devouring it.
“What’s up, little boy?” I munched an apple slice.
“Who hurted you?” I snorted.
“One of my clients,” I explained. “I just met him for the first time. He was a bad man.”
“Not Mr. Zeke.” He made the statement not quite a question.
“No, not Mr. Zeke,” I confirmed. “Mr. Zeke actually helped me.” Brady selected a grape and ate it thoughtfully.
“You see Mr. Zeke soon?” I shrugged.
“I’m not sure.”
“I wanna see him,” he told me. “He’s nice.”
“He’s very nice,” I agreed. “Why don’t you watch your show? I think it’s your favorite episode.” Brady turned his attention halfway onto the TV, continuing to meditatively consume his snack. I slipped my phone out of my
pocket as I decided that dinner—three hours in the future—would be leftovers of the spaghetti sauce I’d made earlier in the week, along with some pasta. I pulled up Zeke’s contact information and opened up a text message to him. I wanted to thank you again—if I remembered to thank you the first time—for what you did for me, I wrote. I’m a bit worse for the wear, but nothing that won’t heal. I set my phone aside and gathered up my empty bowl and Brady’s empty plate.
By the time I managed to limp back into the living room, I heard my phone ringing; a quick look at the screen told me that it was Zeke. “Hey,” I said as soon as the line connected.
“How bad are the injuries?”
I laughed. “Nothing broken,” I said first. “A couple of bruised ribs, a sprained knee and wrist, bruises here and there. Nothing needed stitches. I think that’s probably the best outcome I could have expected.”
“I should have gotten up sooner,” he said. “But there’s no sense in rehashing it, I guess; is there?”
“None at all,” I agreed. “I’ve got the next few days off on Katie’s orders, but I wanted to schedule our next date as soon as I could.” My heart was beating faster in my chest, for some reason I couldn’t fathom. There was nothing strange or unusual or nervous-making about going on another practice date with Zeke.
“I will actually have to get back to you on that,” eh said, sounding excited. “I finally got a woman to agree to go out with me—can you believe it?” My heart stuttered in my chest, not quite stopping.
“Oh, that’s great,” I said, trying to make my voice sound as cheerful as possible. “That’s…that’s really good!”
“It was a woman from the coffee shop I usually go to in the mornings,” he explained. “You have no idea how thrilled I was. It was amazing.” I forced myself to smile—both because I knew Zeke would be able to hear it in my voice and because Brady kept glancing at me.
“Well, then when we do get to our next session, I’m sure we’ll have plenty to discuss,” I said, swallowing against the dry feeling in my throat. “What do you want to do for our next date?”
“I was thinking we could visit the mini-golf course again—without Brady this time, unfortunately,” Zeke told me. I nodded, glancing at the brace on my wrist.
“Well, I can’t promise to give you as much of a challenge as I did last time, but I am definitely game for a rematch,” I said, keeping the smile on my face. “When do you want to meet?”
“Let me get in touch with Trevor, and see what he can arrange with my schedule and yours,” Zeke suggested. “Did you visit the doctor?” I laughed again.
“I did. I am actually on a few different medications right now—most of them pain ones. But of course, since I don’t want to miss Brady trying something he shouldn’t, I’m only taking half-doses of the pain pills.”
“Maybe you should have someone come over and watch Brady for a few hours while you get some sleep?” I shrugged off that idea.
“I’m icing down everything that I should, and Brady is being very good about playing with his toys,” I said. “I should be up to working again in a few days—so whenever you can arrange the date for, let me know and I’ll make it.” Katie had given me three days of personal time to get over the worst of the healing process; she’d been especially vehement about it when she’d seen the pictures of my injuries.
Zeke asked a few more questions: whether he could order some food to be delivered to my house, or send someone from the cleaning service he used to straighten up for me, or any of the other things he could do to help me out, but I declined them all. I finished up the conversation with him with another reminder to let me know about our date as soon as possible, and hung up when he finished wishing for my quick recovery. I sat on the couch a little while longer, pretending to watch Yo Gabba Gabba, but actually feeling more depressed than ever—though I couldn’t quite admit to myself the reason why.
Chapter Twenty Six
Zeke
I arrived at the mini-golf place with about ten minutes to spare and spotted Natalie waiting for me at the entrance; she was still wearing a brace on her wrist and knee, but the bruises had begun to fade and there was only a little scab on her lips where it had split. She looked as though she’d mostly recovered from the attack, and I was glad. I would have felt incredibly guilty meeting with her if she still looked as injured as she had the night of the assault.
“Hey,” I said, smiling as I leaned in to kiss her on the cheek. “Have you come up with your tall tale for how you got knocked about yet?” Natalie laughed.
“Not yet,” she said. “Actually, the true facts of the story make for a pretty good tale on their own, don’t you think?”
I chuckled. “That’s a good point.” I was practically dancing from the desire to tell Natalie about the date I’d been on with Brigitte. I wanted so much to thank Natalie for her advice, for her encouragement, but I knew better than to jump into that right away. Instead, I led her into the building and collected our passes and tickets to use the course and helped her pick out a ball and a putter.
“Brady was sad that he couldn’t come this time,” Natalie said, before flashing me a grin. “But I’m pretty sure by now his babysitter has taken out the bubbles, so he’s probably forgotten I even exist.”
“Nah, kids never forget Mom,” I told her. “I’m sure he’s fine, but he’s aware you’re not there.”
“That’s comforting,” she said, smiling at me still.
“I had my date with Brigitte,” I said; I couldn’t hold back any longer.
“That’s great,” Natalie told me. She stepped back to let me take my putt. “How did it go?”
“It went so, so well,” I replied. “It was great—totally unlike any other normal date I’ve been on. Everything was exactly the way it should be, and I think I really, really charmed her.” I took my putt and managed to get almost to the hole—but not quite. “Your turn again.”
She limped slightly on her way to where her purple ball had landed, and took her shot. She was just short of the hole. “What was so special about it?” I looked at her for a moment; there was something in the tone of her voice that struck me as a little odd, but I pushed the idea of that aside.
“I followed all of your advice,” I explained. I took my shot and landed in the hole, then stepped back to let Natalie go ahead. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you—I don’t think—but it started with asking her out.”
“Oh?” Her back was turned to me, and I waited for her to putt before I spoke again, so I wouldn’t distract her. She sank the shot and I updated our scorecard.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling as we went from one hole to another. “I spotted her in line behind me at the café we both go to, and I bought her drink. I remembered her usual order and didn’t make a huge fuss or anything, just walked up to the register like usual, ordered my drink and hers, and paid for both.”
“That’s really nice,” she said. I waited for her to take her first shot on the hole before I continued.
“She agreed to go out with me right away,” I told her. “So I picked a Moroccan place for dinner for us. I figured it would be a little more intimate, a little more romantic than a standard high end restaurant.”
“That’s a good choice,” she agreed. “Did you bring her flowers?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t, because I didn’t know which ones she would prefer—just like you said. I wanted to follow your advice to the letter, and I did, and it was great.”
“That’s awesome,” she told me. I took my turn and missed the ball. I was too excited. I stepped back and let her take her second turn.
“I did get a goodnight kiss,” I said when she had taken her turn and sunk the shot. I went up to the tee and managed to hit the golf ball close, but not right into the hole. Since Natalie was done, I took another shot and missed. “It was really nice.”
“Glad to hear it,” she said.
“I think I could really get to like her.” I sank the shot finally
and we moved onto the next hole. “What have you been up to, other than—obviously—recovering from that hellacious meeting?”
“Just spending time with Brady,” she said. “I’m starting to look at getting him ready for pre-K.” We talked about that for a little while, moving from one hole on the course to another, and I listened as Natalie explained that she wanted her son to be prepared as possible, but she didn’t want Brady to feel overly pressured. I could understand—objectively, at least—the reason for her concern; she didn’t want to stress her son out, but she didn’t want him to be stressed out later, either, when the stakes were higher.
We talked about a few more things after that, but my thoughts kept turning to Brigitte and the date. “She’s a really pretty fascinating woman,” I told Natalie as we started to reach the more difficult holes of the course—the ones with more and more obstacles.
“How so?” I glanced in her direction as she took her putt and waited for her to finish before I explained.
“She’s a translator at one of the banks here in the city,” I told her. “She speaks English—obviously—and French, along with German and Dutch.”
“That’s awesome,” she said, smiling at me. “I’m glad you had a good time.”
“I’m really looking forward to seeing her again.” I took my turn, but managed to hit one of the obstacles. Natalie went up to make her second putt.
“Keep in mind, the goal is to prepare you for someone from the matchmaking service,” she pointed out. “Of course, you’re not required to end up with someone that Katie picks out for you, but this is supposed to be a practice kind of thing.”
“Oh, of course,” I said, nodding. “I’m really looking forward to meeting some of the people that Katie comes up with.” Natalie’s ball hit one of the bumpers and went wild. “But in the meantime, it’s nice to actually have a successful date with someone, you know? And feel like I am looking forward to seeing them again.”
“I bet,” she said. “Take your turn, Zeke.”