He finished his beer and ordered another. A redhead sitting with a friend at a two-top near the back wall caught his eye, and he hers. Dom scanned for a wedding ring on her ring finger like a seasoned pro, and saw her finger was unadorned, but then he noticed the woman’s dramatic mannerisms in her conversation with her friend, and her ragged fingernails were evident even from halfway across the room. He pegged her as more frazzled and emotional than he was prepared to deal with at the moment, and he resumed his scrutiny of the room.
A tall athletic blonde in a business suit glanced his way through a large group of both male and female coworkers, but her dress and the gang around her told him she worked on the Hill. Dom knew a few congressional staff members, he had nothing against them personally, but he wasn’t really in the mood to listen to either inane party politics or cynical gossip from the congressional coatroom, so he moved on, continuing his slow study of eligible women in the pub.
Dom sighed inwardly while he searched. The older he got, and the better he became at reading people, the tougher it was to find someone he was compatible with. He wondered whether or not he really wanted to ever get married, since he found it so damn hard to connect with someone mentally even for a single night.
After another long pull off his beer, Dom recognized the real impediment to a connection was his own frame of mind. India had fucked him up, even for something as callous and momentary as sleeping around.
C’mon, D. Soldier on.
He ordered his third drink of the evening, and when it arrived he thought about making his way toward a table of three good-looking college-aged women in the middle of the dining room, but his plan was derailed when he heard the beautiful brunette just down the bar from him raise her voice in annoyance at one of the three big men surrounding her. “I said no!”
Dom’s eyebrows rose, he’d all but discounted the woman during his initial scan because she was in a group of men, but now he tuned his ears into the conversation between the brunette and the young men, and he looked them all over more closely.
The three dudes looked to Dom to be about seven hundred fifty pounds’ worth of trouble. Their muscles strained in tight T-shirts emblazoned with eagles and skulls and wolves and other nonsense, tattoos ringed their forearms, and their leather coats lay haphazardly on three chairs at a table nearby. He scrutinized their eyes and postures and confirmed all three were either drunk or at least well on their way.
Dom sized up the situation quickly. The beautiful woman didn’t know these guys; she was several years older and much better dressed than they, and she looked impossibly small and painfully uncomfortable as they towered over her.
Dom used his practiced powers of observation to determine the woman had arrived alone; she was on business here in D.C., perhaps, maybe staying at one of the big four-star chain hotels in the neighborhood. She’d dropped in for a late dinner and a glass of wine, and then had apparently fallen prey to a crew of steroid-addled horny jackasses.
This is not your night, honey.
Dom focused on the barrel-chested blond-haired man with a goatee who seemed to be doing the talking. He was the one incurring the wrath of the small brunette. He said something to her, Dom wasn’t able to pick it up, but she answered him with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head.
Now the man said, “You don’t got to be a bitch about it.”
“I’m not being a bitch. I was trying to be nice, but you weren’t listening.”
“I sent you over a drink. The least you can do is be friendly and join us at our table.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have accepted it. I’ve got an early flight tomorrow and—”
“One more drink! What’s it gonna hurt?” he shouted, and he loomed over her ominously.
No one else at the bar had taken any interest in the conversation except for a well-dressed gentleman at the far end, who looked on with idle curiosity. The bartenders were out of earshot, laughing it up with some other patrons.
The two friends of the blond with the goatee kept their mouths shut as he and the woman argued. Dom gave this a moment’s consideration and determined any real friends would have hustled their buddy away from this confrontation and told him he was acting like a jerk, so the fact these two were holding their tongues indicated to Caruso the blond was the alpha of the trio.
The brunette tried to ignore the young tough. She flipped her bill over, then pulled out her wallet and put a couple twenties on the bar. She attempted to push her bar stool back to stand up, but the man behind her didn’t move. The blond with the goatee put his hand on her back, keeping her right where she was.
He said, “Where you goin’? You gotta do a shot.”
Dom swigged the last of his beer, threw his own cash on the bar, and then stepped forward into the fray.
13
FIVE SECONDS LATER Dom placed his hand gently on the bearded blond’s chest, and leaned in close as if to shout over the music and the din of the crowd.
He kept a faint smile on his face as he said, “Hey, buddy. You asked. She answered. Let this one go. Don’t sweat it, you’ll catch the next one.”
Dom’s demeanor was unsettling, confusing to the bigger, younger man. Was this stranger threatening him? With a smile on his face? Who the fuck was this guy?
“Who the fuck are you?” Dom thought he detected Michigan in the man’s voice.
“Nobody. How ’bout you let me buy you a whiskey? What are you drinking? Evan Williams? Big spender.” Dom held his hand up for the bartender and flashed a quick look at the brunette. He was hoping she’d understand that his look meant “Go. Now.”
But she just stood there.
One of the other big men grabbed Dom by the shoulder and spun him around. Dom found himself looking straight ahead into the muscular chest of the young man. His eyes tracked up and he smiled. “Take it easy. I was just telling your buddy that I’m picking up this round.”
The woman backed away from the bar now, and she put her purse on her shoulder, but she did not walk to the door. She just stared at the dark-haired man who’d come to her rescue, unsure what to say or do.
The blond man with the goatee spun Dom back around to him, using Dom’s shoulder again as if it was a door handle and causing his bruised ribs to spasm in pain. “Nobody was talking to you, asshole. Stay out of this.”
Dom sighed a little. He knew he should disengage. These people meant nothing. This wasn’t some back alley, in a Third World hellhole. This woman wasn’t in real danger; if she started yelling, surely some other man would eventually get off his ass and come over to defend her honor.
But Dom couldn’t help himself. He stood his ground.
The blond said, “Seriously, bro? You wanna piece of me?”
Dom knew the question was asked as a provocation, but he considered it carefully. Do I want a piece of you? he asked himself.
He had to be honest. Yeah. A piece of this jackass was exactly what he wanted. It wasn’t mature or professional, but Dom was in that kind of mood.
As much as he knew he could get himself out of this without resorting to violence, he did not disengage.
The blond man smiled, showing teeth stained with chewing tobacco. To Dom he looked like a guy who realized he wasn’t getting laid tonight, but was just as happy, if not happier, to discover he was going to at least get to punch a man in the face.
A nice conciliation prize for a guy like him.
Dom added, “She and I are walking out the front door. You boys should stay right here.”
The blond said, “You walk out that door with her and I’m going to follow you out and break your pencil neck.”
Dom didn’t think he had a pencil neck, but he didn’t dispute the point. Instead, he just turned, took the brunette by the arm, and said, “Let’s go.”
As he walked by the two big men who’d been standing close behind him, one of them jolted at him suddenly, his fist up and high like he was about to pound Dominic in the jaw. He threw the fist, but
stopped it an inch from Dom’s face.
Dom didn’t even flinch, he knew this guy wouldn’t suckerpunch him because the alpha of the group had already claimed him as his prize. He just gave the man a little smile and kept walking.
The big man with his fist held in the air was taken aback. He was used to smaller men cowering under his threats. He recovered quickly, and turned to bluster. Gleefully he said, “Shane’s gonna kick your ass. It’s gonna be a one-hit fight, bitch.”
Dom just continued toward the door with the girl in tow, and the three big men rushed to grab their coats.
As Dom walked past the end of the bar he noticed the distinguished gentleman in the nice suit sitting alone. He had turned away, he stared down into his Manhattan, though Dom was certain the man had seen and heard everything.
From behind him he heard the man call out again. “A one hit fight!”
MOMENTS LATER CARUSO, the girl, and the three tattooed men in leather jackets were standing on the dark sidewalk in front of The Pig. A few couples passed them by, uninterested in or unaware of the impending trouble. The blond with the goatee squared off in front of Caruso, his nostrils pulsating as the adrenaline rush of the moment sped up his breathing.
The girl said exactly what Dom expected her to say: “Please. Don’t do this for me.”
Caruso did not reply, he only smiled at her a little. It wasn’t about the girl anymore. He faced the big man, while the other two stood behind their leader.
“One-hit fight!” The guy said it again. Dom wondered if he ever said anything else.
“Shut up, Doyle! You too, Joey. This asshole’s all mine,” replied the blond with the goatee.
Dom maintained a relaxed exterior. On the inside he was already chastising himself for not deescalating this situation. He forced himself to make one more halfhearted attempt. “So, Shane, any chance you want to just call it a night?”
“I’m gonna beat the fuck out of you.”
Dom did not reply. He knew Arik Yacoby would not have been proud of him at all, and this only made him madder at himself.
Shane was going to suffer for Dom’s anger.
Shane ambled forward nonchalantly, and Dom saw that he was trying to close the distance he needed to take him down with a single punch. Dom let him close, kept his hands down to his sides and his shoulders relaxed. Even when the big blond adjusted his stance, stepping one foot out and the other back, getting himself ready to throw a jab, Dom continued to portray an air of someone oblivious as to what was about to happen.
Dom wasn’t oblivious, however. He was reading all the tells. Shane was clearly a trained boxer, right-handed, going for a headshot, and his plan was to drop his opponent, no doubt with one shot to the jaw to impress his buddies.
Dom took a half calming breath, his eyes unfixed on anything, but all his senses primed for the attack to come.
Doyle shouted once again. “A one-hit fight!”
Shane’s right hand was down by his side, but Dom noted the instant it morphed into a massive, square fist. When the fist fired up at Dom’s face he was prepared to bob away from it, but instead he used his speed to bring his left elbow up to the side of his head as he swiveled his torso. The punch glanced off the high elbow and was deflected by Dom’s spin, knocking Shane’s arm across his own body and causing him to lose his balance since he’d thrown all his weight behind the jab.
Dom continued his spin by stepping across his body with his left leg, picking up speed as he rotated in place, whipping his own right arm out away from his body and launching it in a 360-degree arc, a blur of knuckles and leather jacket that fanned through the night air.
Dominic’s spinning back fist struck perfectly against the big bearded man’s jaw, the wet splat of bone on bone with flesh caught between echoed off the front windows of the pub. Shane’s head jacked to the left and his legs gave out, as if a switch had been thrown and all muscles holding himself upright had just been shut down for the evening.
Shane crumpled to the sidewalk awkwardly as his two big friends stood stupefied.
Dom looked up at Doyle. “Whaddaya know? You were right.”
As Dom expected, Doyle was the next to attack. He telegraphed his movements as he charged. He was a lefty, he planned a hook as soon as he got in striking distance, but Dom stepped diagonally into the hook, parried it with his forearm, and then backed up into Doyle’s advance. Dom drove his head back into Doyle’s face, then took his left arm and used it to throw the big man over his back, slamming him down on the sidewalk with incredible force.
The air bellowed from Doyle’s lungs with the impact, and he gasped like a fish on a dock, desperate to fill his lungs back.
The third big man, Joe, hadn’t said much of anything. He seemed to be in some shock that his two friends were lying on their backs in front of him, but he kept his focus on the man who put him there.
He raised his hands into fists and moved closer.
Dom said, “You don’t have to do this, Joe. Shane’s your boss, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Construction?”
“Large appliance delivery.”
“Large appliance delivery,” Dom repeated, as if this should have been obvious. Then, “He’s going to be off work for a couple of weeks. Doyle, too. He’ll be pissed you didn’t stand up for him after he and Doyle went down, but at least this way you can generate some income for him while he’s out.”
Joe seemed to consider this; he actually weighed the pros and cons. Finally he gave a half-shrug. “He won’t see it like that. He’s not that great a businessman.”
“Then find a new boss,” Dom said.
“Tough economy.”
Dom regarded the statement. “True. I guess you better just let me beat the shit out of you.”
Before he got the last words out, Joe charged forward. Dom was surprised by the man’s sudden speed and intensity, and the attacker managed to get inside of Dom’s punch and wrap his arms around Dom’s arms, pinning them high over his head.
Dom’s bruised ribs cried in agony and the muscles around them seized, his back spasmed from his shoulder blade to his tailbone.
The big man lifted him in the air with ease. Dom had no doubt he was one hell of a large appliance deliveryman.
As Dom felt himself go inverted behind Joe’s head he pushed out of the hold around his arms, then kicked harder, away through the air behind his attacker. He landed on his feet, unsteady and in pain, but perfectly positioned when his Joe turned to find the man he just tossed like a rag doll an instant before now facing him in a fighting stance.
Dom punched the man hard in the nose. His head snapped back but quickly returned to neutral. His nose was red, but he showed no sign of any physical deficit from taking a hard jab to the snot box.
Joe smiled at Dom as if to say, “That’s all you’ve got?”
Dom answered the unasked question by firing out another jab, but this time he extended his fingers, turning his fist into a spear, and he gouged into the big man’s solar plexus, then followed with a spear from his left hand into Joe’s throat, just enough to put him on his back, rolling in the street in a coughing fit, five feet away from Shane, who was still out cold, and Doyle, who had rolled onto his hands and knees but was still gasping in search of air to replenish his empty lungs.
Dom stood in the middle and regarded his handiwork. He knew Arik wouldn’t have been proud of his student’s inability to move away from an avoidable threat. But Arik couldn’t have faulted his fighting skills. He’d taught Dom a lot in a month of daily grappling and training.
And Dom had put it to use.
After a moment, however, he remembered this altercation had involved a woman. He looked around for her, and found her standing by the curb. This wasn’t his first bar fight over a female. He knew the brunette would either be repulsed by the fight, and think as little of Dom as she did for the men he was trying to protect her from—and in that case she would walk away quickly, now that it was ove
r—or else be drawn to him. She would latch on, and she wouldn’t be going anywhere without her brave defender.
He looked up the sidewalk to see which one this girl was going to be. He saw her standing there the night, her arms crossed tightly over her body, shielding herself from the fight in front of her.
She said, “That was honorable, what you did. Trying to talk the one guy out of it.”
“He didn’t want it any more than I did. He was just obligated. Boys’ rules.”
She nodded. Said, “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I really thought chivalry was dead.”
“It’s in intensive care. Occasional signs of life.”
She smiled, batted her eyes. He saw what was going on behind the eyes. She was sizing up this situation. Bar fights and strangers coming to her aid weren’t the sort of thing that happened to her.
“I’m Monica.”
“Dominic.”
They shook hands. Dom turned to head back to his place, doing his best to hide the fact his ribs and back were killing him, but she didn’t let him get twenty-five feet before she caught up to him.
“I hate to sound trite, but would you let me buy you a drink? Seems the least I could do.”
Dom jerked his head toward The Pig. The windows were full of patrons and employees staring at the three big men on the sidewalk and the smaller man who’d put them there. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say I’m not welcome back in there tonight.”
“We can go to the bar at my hotel. I’m at the Loews Madison. It’s right around the corner.”
Dom sighed a little, but he didn’t let it show. His designs on mindless sex tonight had fallen by the wayside the moment the bear-hug flip aggravated the pain in his badly bruised ribs. As beautiful as the woman in front of him was, at the moment he felt more passionate about going home for a short-term relationship with a bag of ice.
“I’ll walk you back to your hotel,” he said. “Just in case those guys manage to put themselves back together and hit the streets looking for mischief. But then I’m going to call it a night.”