Just dinner.
“Okay,” she answered, her lips pulling into a broad smile that stung at the corners of her mouth. “I’d like that very much.”
He grinned, the expression extraordinary and charming.
Offering his arm for her to wrap hers beneath, he pulled her close to his side when she accepted and said, “Allow me to escort you out of this shithole so we can go someplace more suitable for someone of your beauty.”
The burst of laughter that boomed from her lungs shocked her. The true depth of happiness that she could feel with the practical stranger a shock to her cynical and closed up nature.
How he’d affected her so easily, she wasn’t sure. But she was willing to spend more time with him to see if there wasn’t more than a budding attraction to the mystery of his expression and the wickedness of his sensual smile.
By the time they walked through the front door of the house and down the crumbling steps that damn near swallowed them whole, Alice couldn’t stop grinning at the feel of him by her side.
*
As it turned out, dinner lasted much longer than the hour she’d assumed it would. Max was fascinating to her, a man of obvious wealth and class, but one who didn’t allow the affluence he held in life to go to his head.
They talked about everything that night, at least that’s how it seemed, and Alice often found herself prattling on about the details of her life she normally kept hidden. She was careful not to discuss the elements of her childhood that were better left unsaid, but she caught herself going on and on about her time in college and the hospital, her decision to leave neurology and the string of worthless jobs that followed in its wake.
Never once did Max seem bored with what she had to say. He laughed at all the appropriate points of her story, and he appeared thoughtful during the parts that were hard for her to admit: namely, the fact that she was very much alone in the world, with very little money and no true hope of a bright and promising future.
Her cheeks flamed red when she realized what she’d admitted to a practical stranger, but he never judged her for her poor choices or the sad fact that she had nobody she could name as a friend.
Not much of a talker himself, Max would offer small bits of information about his life back to her, quick glimpses into the life of a man who was as reclusive as her. It surprised her to discover that he wasn’t one to socialize very often and that, in fact, he almost didn’t ask her to dinner for fear she’d turn him down.
Magnets drawn to each other, Alice and Max’ date grew into another date and another. Weeks had passed and Alice finally felt comfortable enough with their burgeoning relationship that she allowed him to pick her up from the small apartment where she lived. Prior to that, she’d always met him at the restaurant where they’d often dined, each time with Max voicing his dislike of not being able to pick her up himself and take her on a proper date.
When he pulled up in front of her apartment building, Alice watched from the window and noticed the scowl that marred his lips when he saw the exterior of the building. When she’d moved there, she knew the neighborhood wasn’t the best, but the rent was something she could afford while still between jobs.
After eyeing the paint that peeled away from the stucco walls, and the grass out front that was more brown than it was green, Max stepped over some trash that littered the parking lot to ascend the stairs to the second floor. Alice tracked his path as far as her eyes could follow him, but when he turned the corner of the stairs to take the hall that led to her door, he was out of her view for several minutes longer than she’d expected.
Finally, a knock sounded at the door. She opened it to discover that his eyes were hidden behind shadow, his lips pulled into a thin line of disapproval.
“This is where you live? In this…hovel?” He spat out the word as if it burned his tongue to hold it inside.
Startled by the disapproval that flowed around him like a sickening aura, she gripped her fingers tighter around the doorknob and quickly rethought the decision she’d made to allow him to pick her up.
Her voice quiet and ashamed, she couldn’t meet his eyes when she admitted, “I’m sorry, but I can’t afford anything else.”
Reaching out for her, he slipped his finger beneath her chin to lift her face. She opened her eyes to see that his expression had fallen, the anger that had been there just seconds before replaced with something else. Unsure whether it was pity for the state of her life, or regret for having so glaringly pointed it out, his expression was a mystery to her in that moment.
“I won’t allow you to continue living this way. I can’t, Alice. I feel too much for you to accept you being in this place.”