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The guy, a shaggy-haired surfer type, sneered. “Nothing, man, it’s all good.” His fingers nudged his phone provocatively on the table, while the girl plastered on a brittle smile. All for Jack.
“Did you take a photo of us?” Jack asked, his tone even to normal observers, but Lili detected the underlying turbulence. What had started out as cloudy with a chance of hot make-up sex was now turning into a cat-five hurricane about to make landfall in some idiot’s face.
“No,” the blonde said at the same time Surfer Dude said, “What if I did?”
Lili tugged again, but Jack twisted out of her grip, and stepped forward and sideways to block her. Protecting her. She tried to shrink-wrap her body behind his, but peeked around his arm, keeping a line of sight open on the couple.
“Whatever you’ve taken, I’ll need you to erase it. And apologize for what you said.” Jack’s voice dripped polite menace, like a gangster in one of those Guy Ritchie movies. His smooth accent might fool someone into thinking he was weak. It was the perfect disguise.
“I don’t think so,” Laugh Boy said, taking a sip of his imported beer. ‘Clyde’ was embroidered on his two-tone shirt, but Lili doubted that was his name. Blondie’s face slipped into panic. Maybe, she was able to read Jack’s body language better than her friend. Women knew these things.
“I’ll ask one more time. Delete whatever you took and say sorry.”
That edge in his voice jangled Lili’s nerves. “Jack, it’s okay. Let’s just go.”
“It’s not okay,” he said, his eyes still zeroed in on the guy.
“It’s a free country,” Clyde said.
“No, it’s not.” Jack moved so fast Lili felt her skirt rustle as if a rush of air had blown through it. With one quick thunder crack of violence, he slammed the phone against the edge of the table, then threw it down, shattered screen up. There were probably ways to retrieve stuff off phones with broken screens, but the message was crystal.
“Man, what the fuck’s your problem?” the guy yelled, his voice pitched high enough to attract the rubbernecking attention of bar patrons in a three-table deep radius. Lili slid a furtive glance to Cara whose expression screamed, Leave. Leave before Jack beats the tar out of some big-mouthed moron in front of an avid audience with twitchy fingers hovering over their Send buttons.
Jack turned his imperious gaze on the blonde who fidgeted with her phone and held it up, screen forward. “Deleted, I promise.” She looked at Lili and bit her lip. That was her apology, Lili supposed.
He jammed his hand in his pocket, peeled a few hundreds from his billfold, and threw them down with the same vehemence as the phone. His eyes, murky as impenetrable night, sliced through Lili. That was a whole other level of scary.
“Now we can go.” With his hand grasping her arm tightly, he steered her toward the door.
Thirty-Seven
Outside, a wall of oppressive July heat rose up to meet them, but it still registered cooler than the stifling atmosphere in the bar. Slipping Jack’s severe grip, Lili retreated to several feet away from the bar’s entrance, her heart pounding so hard she worried her chest might explode.
Ohgod ohgod ohgod.
Once, she had asked Jack if he would punch everyone who said something mean to her.
She’d thought it was sweet when he said, yes. Be careful what you wish for.
Cara paced, phone surgically attached to her ear, muttering “shit” over and over, and something about how they needed to get a statement out to the press. Her whole posture spoke to caged chaos as she got to work on saving her job and the television future of her boss.
Dazed, Lili turned to find Jack crowding her. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”
No, no, no. “You shouldn’t have done that.” She squeezed her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
People streamed out of the bar, their noisy laughter strident and probably unrelated to what had just happened. Lili’s cheeks blazed hot all the same and she tried to walk away, but Jack commandeered again and directed her to his car. He felt too big, too potent, the power she envied barely leashed. Not that she was afraid of him, but she saw now that he had good reasons for ignoring the trash that was written about him.
Seconds later, they were making their getaway through the side streets of Wicker Park.
An eerie calm descended, as if the further away from the bar she got, the easier she could breathe. But it was just an illusion, another segment of her fever dream. She hadn’t even said goodbye to Cara. At last glance, her sister had been eating the sidewalk in her Manolos, hands sculpting the air furiously as she did what she did best. Managed and controlled. The network deal might survive the night—no one had been hurt physically—but how long before a smashed phone turned into a smashed jaw?
Looking out the window, she saw they had slotted into a space right outside DeLuca’s. Long past closing, the lights were still on which meant Tad was likely mangling the cash out. Holing up in the back office with her Mount Everest of paperwork until the storm passed by was starting to look like a very attractive option.
She jumped at the warm brush of his knuckles on her arm. “Lili, are you all right?”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she repeated, feeding him a sidelong glance.
“He deserved it.”
