His face softened when he saw me. He pushed the woman who was tugging at him away with little pity.
He strode over to me and said in a deep voice, “What are you doing here?”
“I met someone I know!” I said, without explaining exactly how I had met Alex.
He raised his eyebrows and tugged at me to leave.
But how could Sheila Torres just let him go? Her eyes were cold when she saw me. Her drunken sanity made her look at me and sneer.
She looked at Dennis and said, “Dennis, look at us. Take a good look at us. Am I not as pretty as she is? Or am I not as fit as she is? I can give you what she can, and I can give you what she can’t.”
In her excitement, without any regard for her dignity, she pulled the dress from her bosom to reveal her breasts. She grabbed Dennis’s hand and said, “Feel it. If she can do what you want in bed, so can I. I can do better than she can.”
It was a public place, after all, and her gestures would no doubt attract a lot of attention.
And Dennis’s face was completely black. Almost without hesitation, he threw his hand so violently that Sheila Torres was thrown to the ground.
She was unsteady in her high heels. She stepped back and bumped into the corner of the table, cutting her forehead.
Maybe the pain woke her up a little bit. She looked up at Dennis and realized, belatedly, that everyone was looking at her. She looked down and saw her own naked body.
Almost automatically, she reached out and pulled at her dress.
But she was drunk, and if she was sober for a moment, it was only for a moment. She looked down and began to giggle.
Then she looked up at Dennis and me, her eyes moist. She looked at Dennis, although she smiled on her lips, the tears in her eyes did not diminish.
She raised her hand and pointed at me, “Clara, what did you do to seduce this man? Why is he so obsessed with you?”
Then she looked at Dennis and said sarcastically, “What’s so good about her? She’s been messing with Hank Gibson. Do you think she’s clean? Look at all the news which had been blocked. How dirty she is! You still want her when she’s so dirty? Why? You guys don’t mind that?”
Almost instantly, before I knew it, Dennis had Sheila Torres by the neck.
His face contained anger, and Sheila Torres blushed as she gasped.
His dark eyes narrowed and his voice was cold. “If you want to die, I’ll give you a ride.”
As he said this, the strength of his hands increased.
There was a sound of talking and breathing all around. In hindsight, I realized that Sheila Torres had completely pissed Dennis off.
He wanted to kill her.
Seeing someone around me pulling out his cell phone to take photos, I almost automatically ran to Dennis, pulled his hand apart and said, “Dennis, take it easy. Let’s go home.”
If this got out, Dennis would be verbally attacked. No matter how good a man was, once he was found to have beaten a woman or violent tendencies, the power of the Internet would not investigate the incident at all, but would directly sentence him to death.
Dennis was Dennis, after all. He had run the George Group for years, and he had seen a lot of business shenanigans. One Sheila Torres wasn’t enough to get him all worked up.
For a moment he pulled back his hand and smiled. Then he took a couple of bills from his wallet in his pocket, folded them in half and stuffed them into Sheila Torres’s bulging chest.
He smiled gently, “Here’s a tip for all your hard work. I’m too neat to do anything to someone like you. That’s enough for a cab ride home.”
A stab wound with a bright knife was at most a pain in the flesh. But the sarcasm was more painful than a bright knife.
Sheila Torres’s face was instantly pale and bloodless.
What Dennis said, he just mixed her up with a streetwalker in the red-light district.
Her soul and pride were trampled under his feet.
She looked at Dennis, beads of condensation on her curling eyelashes falling slowly.
Dennis got up, put his wallet in his pocket gracefully, and then led me out the door.
A place like a nightclub, even if it was upscale and clean, there were shady people there.
Sheila Torres’s beauty and body were the best of the best. Besides, with her bare breasts, she might have been noticed.
At the door, I stopped, and Dennis stopped and looked back at me.
His eyes were not as sharp as before. He raised his eyebrows and said, “What’s wrong?”
After thinking about it, I said, “Dennis, she needs someone to take her back!”
Dennis frowned, his eyes on me. “Clara, she doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”
I could understand why Dennis was angry, because Sheila Torress comments, whether sarcastic or mocking, touched Dennis’s bottom line.
I was Dennis’s bottom line. His anger came from Sheila Torres’s malice toward me.
Seeing that he was leaving, I stopped him and said, “I’m not feeling sorry for her, Dennis, but she works for the George Group. She’s an employee you just praised at the annual meeting. If anything happens to her, it’s not just her, it’s the George Group. We’ll just find someone to take her back, keep her safe, and everything else will be fine.”
Sympathy?
Part of it.
All I knew about Sheila Torres was a few meetings. If I had never heard what Rose said, I probably would have left tonight alone.
But those words were heard by me, so, I relented. Dennis was so good, and it made sense that he would be loved.
After all, life was a long journey. I thought Dennis knew better than I did how to handle all the adoration around him.
There was a long silence. Then Dennis sighed and gave in. He raised his hand to the W Town’s waiter, said a few words, and looked at me, “Is that okay?”
I nodded, took his hand, and smiled. “Yes. Come on, let’s go home.”
In the car.
Dennis was in no hurry to start the car. He just looked at me with his black eyes and said, “Clara, you don’t seem to have that much hostility towards her, do you?”
I was stunned and then I asked, “Who?”
“Sheila Torres.”
I paused, thought for a moment, and said, “In fact, it is not without hostility, but I know that you have me in your heart. I’m sure you love me enough to know that I’m not afraid of how many others love you, because you’ll always come back to me.”
He looked at me with eyes that could not be more profound. “You trust me that much?”
I nodded, looked at him, and said with certainty, “Dennis, we’re about a third of the way through our lives. We can see a lot of things and figure it out. Therefore, daily necessities are real life.
He was silent for a long time and did not speak again. Then he started the car and said nothing.
I thought there was nothing wrong with that, but it seemed to me that he was being excessively silent.