The Hunk Next Door(69)

His fingers released her. A wild shot exploded from the weapon and breezed by her head. He shouted more threats as she rolled to the floor, but she ignored them all, searching for any kind of weapon. Her coffee table splintered and the vase toppled, spilling water all over her.

Deke swore, lunging for her again. She grabbed the vase and bashed him over the head.

Another gunshot rang out, and Deke’s body went limp, crushing hers.

The coppery smell of fresh blood mixed with the clean pine and sweet roses and lilies that had brightened the room so cheerfully just a day ago.

She pushed at Deke’s shoulders, not sure if he was dead or merely unconscious. The floor shook as people pounded into her house.

Then she was surrounded by people dressed in black tactical SWAT gear. She only knew they weren’t from Belclare, or even Baltimore. The team lifted Deke’s body off her, carrying him and his gun out of her house. She asked if he was dead, but no one answered her.

“Are you injured?”

She shook her head. Only her coffee table and a wall or two. The raw wounds she suffered wouldn’t benefit from a bandage.

“Someone will contact you for a statement,” one of the team said, and then he walked away.

The sudden quiet in their absence was nearly as shocking as their entrance had been.

She pushed up to the couch, but it felt slimy. Contaminated by Deke’s deception and violence. Raking her hair back from her face, her knees wobbled as she tried to walk away from the destroyed room. She just couldn’t face the mess and destruction right now. Couldn’t cope with all that it signified.

The bathroom upstairs was too far. She might as well climb Mount Everest. She stepped out of her shoes and stumbled along to the kitchen.

A man clad in black tactical gear filled the room, his back to her. He didn’t have a helmet and she recognized the sandy-brown hair as well as the spread of his shoulders. Shoulders she’d leaned on more than once in past days. Shoulders she’d clung to last night with part of him deep inside her. “Riley?”

Her hand covered her lips. Was that even his name?

“Have a seat, Abby.”

“You...” She looked back toward the hallway. “You’re here to take my statement?”

“Eventually. Right now I just want to take care of you.”

“I’m fine.”

He stripped off his bulletproof vest and set it on the floor by the back door. “You’re in shock.”

“On a few levels,” she confessed. “You saved my life.” He’d said that was his job, his real purpose in Belclare.

“I had a little help.”

“But I said...” She had to clear away the emotion clogging her throat. “I said awful things at the station.”

“I might have deserved them.” He shrugged. “I hurt you.” He ran warm water over a paper towel, then squeezed out the excess. Pulling another chair closer, he started cleaning her face.

“I can do that,” she protested, abruptly annoyed by his tenderness. He should be angry with her. She should still be angry with him. What did it mean that he was here? Was he just doing his job again or was there more to it?

It scared her how much she wanted there to be more to it.

He washed her face and sat back, staring at her. There were questions in his soft brown gaze that echoed the ones chasing through her mind.

“You handled yourself well,” he said.

“Is he dead?”

“Don’t know,” Riley answered. “Does it matter?”

“Only if he causes more trouble.”

“Well, dead or alive, I can assure you Deke Maynard is done causing trouble.”

“You’re sure about that?”

He nodded. “No lawyer will get him off or out on bail now.”

She believed him. She should ask for proof, but it was there in his steady, golden-brown gaze. He was telling her the truth.

“I want a new couch,” she blurted.

“That’s reasonable.”

“This time I want it bigger.”

One of his dark eyebrows arched and his lips twitched at the corner. “Big enough for two?”

She nodded. “Maybe a sectional.”

He laughed and pulled her to her feet, wrapping his arms around her. “Now we have two houses needing repair work.”

Abby spread her hands flat across his chest, stroking up and over his shoulders, following the firm muscles under the black ribbed sweater down to his hands. “I know a guy who’s good with his hands.” She lifted his hands to her lips, kissing each finger in turn.

“You do?”

She looked up into his warm brown eyes and felt the weight of the world simply fall away. “I do.”

“Took you long enough to decide between us today.”