That night, after the drubbing she gave him, before they parted for their respective locker rooms, he asked her again. And this time, for the first time in a long time, Nikki was tempted. No, more than merely tempted. She came very close to a yes.
On the walk back to her apartment, she sorted through her feelings. Close as she had come to saying, “My place,” she had taken it right up to the line in her imagination and declined. The month without Rook had been a long one emotionally and physically. She could have easily had a night with Don, and neither he nor Rook would have had a say in her choice. But her no came from the same place as all the ones that preceded it. But why? Was she in a committed relationship now with Rook? She might have answered that differently before he went away. And certainly it loomed as a bigger question after the Le Cirque shot and all it meant. The issue for her was what kind of relationship, if any, she would have with Rook when—if—they did see each other again. Sleeping with Don that night would have been revenge sex. Which Don sure wouldn’t care about, even if he knew. But she would. That wasn’t her reason, though. Her no to Don had been about postponing a definition.
Or perhaps it was more transparent than that. Maybe she knew the last thing she wanted was to have one more complication added to the stress of her life. Hell, of her day. What she needed was a night of letting go, of lightening up.
She already had the bath in mind, lavender bubbles for sure. One more thing would give her the head break she needed. On Park Avenue South, Nikki stopped at the newsstand at the end of her block and snatched up tabloids and celebrity mags. Hok, the news vendor, gave her a special hello, the one with the wink he started giving Heat the day she was on the cover of First Press with Jameson Rook’s exasperating story, “Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave.”
Counting out the change for Hok, who smiled brightly when he got exact change, Nikki smelled fumes from an idling engine. “Hok, how do you stand that?” He made a face and fanned the air in front of his nose. She looked in the direction of the exhaust. It was coming from a big SUV a few paces down the sidewalk. She turned back to give the vendor his coins when the phrase “penis car” entered her thoughts. She turned again toward the SUV. It certainly looked the same as the one she had encountered on her walk to Andy’s Deli—graphite gray with wide tires—but something was different. The plates. She had clocked those plates as Jersey. This had New York State tags. Hok offered her a plastic bag, which she waved off. She stepped from the newsstand and was surprised to see that the SUV was gone. Nikki stepped to the curb in time to see its headlights disappear as it backed down the street against traffic and disappeared into a side street.
Backward?
Nikki turned in a circle, getting a look at her surroundings. She saw nothing unusual. Nothing else unusual, that is. She was only a block from her place. Heat unfastened her coat, took off the glove on her right hand, and started walking with her eyes and ears on alert.
Her street was quiet. No cars at the moment, and in the stillness of the sub-zero night, she paused briefly to strain her hearing for any sense of a low engine rumble. Nothing. She moved quickly up her front steps to the vestibule, keys already in hand.
Vestibule, clear.
Heat unlocked and let herself in. Following an instinct not to get trapped anywhere, she bypassed the elevator and climbed the stairs to her floor, pausing occasionally to listen and then moving upward.
On her floor, she swept the length of the hallway in both directions. It was empty. She let herself into her apartment, threw the deadbolt behind her, and exhaled. Nikki quizzed herself. Was this paranoia? Stress response at the end of an exponentially crap day? Or did she have a tail? And if so, why? And who?