Nick didn't know what the smile was for because he didn't know there was no suggestion they weren't cool to begin with. The john, that sonofabitch was on his shit-list but the leggy girl with the hair, she was OK and so was the kid. He didn't make a lot of space for guilt, guilt was for late Sunday nights, two am starts from nightmares and the sour aftertaste of a heavy night the night before and there hadn't been a helluva lot of those. Nick drank spare, these days. Watched the room, drank and left. Wasn't nothing heavy about his nights now.
She dropped the battle-leader stance and folded into a chair and Nick studied her face and her wrists real subtle, because most men he'd seen who liked to grab women that didn't belong to them, they weren't careful. Men who stuck around, they got real careful about being mean because they didn't want to get caught. Destiny didn't carry bruises like bracelets, she put cash down on his counter and Nick ignored it because it wasn't going nowhere near the till.
"My guy does the best goddamn sandwich this side of New York," he said with deep satisfaction, "You want a club sandwich, we get you a club sandwich. But the way you walked in that door, a sandwich wasn't top of the list. First off, tell me how the kid's doing, then you can wring me out for whatever it is you got lurking back there behind that smile of yours." His mouth had worked into wry smile, not because she was working him over - the girl was, but she made it look like she didn't know what the hell she was doing, which was either smooth enough that it deserved some praise or she really didn't, in which case he didn't mind being worked on by a young, leggy chick with a smile to beat Broadway.
"You want coffee?" He'd scribbled the order down on paper and spiked it on the back of the door to the kitchen for Caesar to collect.