Ace pulled a chair up and sat down with her. “Did you get a look at him?”
Summer frowned and tried to picture him in her mind. “No. He wore dark clothing, a mask, and gloves. I couldn’t even see his eyes. It was one of those masks that have the built-in shades,” she said waving her hand over her brow.
“Tall? Short?”
Summer remembered him standing in the doorway right before she flung open the front door. She walked back to that door and indicated his approximate height. She could almost see him standing there, and a cold chill ran through her body. I could have been killed. What was I thinking?
“Tall, then.”
“Y–Yes. He was big,” she said, indicating broad shoulders with her hands, which suddenly wouldn’t stop shaking. “He grabbed me when I tried to get away and I fell.” She touched her elbow and was suddenly aware of the throbbing pain there. She felt like a baby when she couldn’t stop the quivering in her lower lip. Kemp growled softly.
* * * *
Ace glanced at Kemp when he reacted to Summer’s statement. Watching her suffer the aftermath of the attack made a tight ball form in his chest. He wanted very much to soothe the way she trembled as she pressed a shaky hand to her lips. “Come here, Summer,” he murmured, gently drawing her suddenly quaking body into his arms. “Just breathe, kitten.” A great tremor passed through her. “Don’t fight it, just breathe through it.”
Her respiration turned to panting as her reaction to the event finally caught up with her. She’d been holding it together up until the moment when she relived the attack in order to describe it to them. A slight whimper escaped from her, and she held on to him tightly. Looking sympathetic, Kemp stroked her back and her hair. After a minute, her trembling began to dissipate, and she finally looked up at him and then over at Kemp.
“Wow,” she whispered softly. “I don’t know where that came from.”
Kemp said, “You went through a very dangerous, scary experience, darlin’. Your body is just catching up to it.”
Once her shakiness had passed, Ace helped her back down the hall to her office and helped her sit down. After turning on the lights, Ace pulled back the sleeve of her dress and said, “The skin isn’t broken, but you’re going to have quite a bruise there. Some ice should help.” Ace went to the kitchen and returned with a plastic bag filled with ice for her. She thanked him and gingerly held it to her elbow.
He squatted down in front of her and brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. Her eyes were dilated, and her skin was cool to the touch.
“How do you feel otherwise?”
“Honestly? A little woozy like I could take a nap.”
Ace nodded in commiseration. “It’s the adrenaline that dumped in your system earlier. If it doesn’t pass, you may want to lie down for a while. You had quite a fright.”
Remembering the extreme fear on her face as she’d run from the shop earlier caused another wave of protectiveness to wash over Ace. He wished like hell that he’d caught the son of a bitch that had scared her so badly that she was now reacting to it physiologically.
Ace noticed the line between her furrowed eyebrows and asked, “Does your head hurt, too?”
“Yeah, it does, all of a sudden.” She reached in her desk and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol and took a couple with the glass of water Kemp had brought her.
Kemp asked, “Can you tell us what happened, Summer?”
Ace listened as she described that morning’s events. She hadn’t expected them for at least another twenty to thirty minutes, and the fact that they’d arrived early might have been the only reason she was still in one piece. He’d teased Kemp about being overeager to get to the shop, but now he wanted to thank him.
Ace was both shocked and impressed when she described clobbering the burglar with the baseball bat. He nodded appreciatively and said, “Well done. That was a gutsy move.” Ace disregarded the urge to turn her over his knee for placing herself in so much danger when she could’ve just run.
“He may have to go to the emergency room. I may have broken his collarbone the second time I hit him, plus I…”
Kemp prompted her with a puzzled expression. “You what?”
“When he pulled me down, I—um. I nailed him really hard in the groin with my other elbow.” When both men grimaced she added, “He wasn’t much of a fighter after that. I just wanted to get away from him. He followed me to the front but must’ve run when he heard you close your vehicle’s door.”
Kemp said, “I’ll ask Duke to check area hospitals and clinics.”