Shooting one last glare at the heavily locked steel door behind her, she reminded herself to review the tapes later to make sure that her grandfather wasn’t using this as an excuse to, “live it up,” as he’d like to call it and taste test every sugary sweet treat in the place. Thankful that she’d purchased the Gold package so that she could watch the surveillance videos at home, she made plans to pick up a pizza on the way home, a gallon of chocolate milk since she’d had a really difficult day thanks to her grandfather’s hovering, and made plans to review all the footage from today, praying that she found an excuse to call his doctor and rat his ass out so that the doctor could pull him in for another one of those conversations that he liked to have with him and scare some damn sense into her grandfather.

A brownie wasn’t worth your life no matter how delicious it was.

It just wasn’t and sooner or later her grandfather was going to figure it out, or she’d simply have him committed to that lovely senior citizen home down the street that was known for its lovely salad bar and strict rules against meat. That should be more than enough to get the old man to take his health a little more seriously, she tried telling herself as she walked towards the van even though she knew that the man was already set in his ways and that nothing and no one, especially her, was going to be able to make him listen to reason.

He was just so damn stu-

“Ah!” she screamed as she threw her heavy backpack at her would-be assailant’s face, turned and ran back towards the solid black door that was locked, making her wish that her first reaction hadn’t been to throw her bag at whoever that was so that she could have grabbed her keys before she’d gone into defense mode, but she’d have to move on and let that go, especially since she had the really pissed off man chasing after her now.

As her foot caught on some barely visible black ice and she went flying, her last thoughts before she slammed into the brick wall and knocked herself out were, “Of course this was how she was going to die,” dryly and she would have rolled her eyes, but by that point she’d already slammed her head into the wall, not on purpose of course, and managed to knock herself out like the klutz that she was.

Chapter 22

“What the hell was that?” one of his asshole cousin’s asked, but Duncan didn’t stop to explain, because he knew that scream too damn well to ignore it.

“Mother fucker!” one of them snapped as Duncan shoved past him and headed for the front door of the bakery where several of his cousins were standing, blocking his entrance and starting to look nervous and for damn good reason.

There was nothing on this earth that was going to stand between him and his little klutz. The second scream had him changing direction to the right, and saving his cousins who had looked seconds away from diving out of his way, because there had been no doubt in any of their minds that he would have slammed through them to get to her.

“Duncan!” Reese yelled close behind him, but he wasn’t paying attention to his brother.

As soon as he came to the locked chain-linked fence, he jumped up, grabbed onto the unforgiving rusty metal links and used the hold to pull himself over the fence. His feet had barely hit the ground when he broke out into a full-out run and ran between the two large brick buildings towards what looked liked a back parking lot.

The second that he turned the corner, he realized that he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison for killing the asshole standing over Necie, hugging her bag to his chest and looking terrified.

He didn’t stop to think, ask questions or see if this was just a misunderstanding. He punched the man, laying him out flat and then just as quickly shifted his attention to the small woman pressing her hand to her head and wincing as she slowly moved to stand up, her pale cheeks quickly filling with blood when she spotted him.

She opened her mouth, closed her eyes and winced as she moved to sit back down, apparently decided that sitting hurt less. Since he had no idea how the adorable little klutz hurt herself, he resisted the need to pick her up and hold her. So, instead he released the EMT in him, knelt by her side and quickly checked her over.

“Did you lose consciousness?” he asked, moving her hand away from her forehead just long enough to see that she had a small gash that wasn’t going to need stitches.

Relieved at least at that much, he grabbed the pocket flashlight from his pocket and quickly checked the dilation of her eyes. From there he moved onto her pulse, palpated her from head to toe, looking for injuries all while he ignored her annoyed demands that he leave her alone because she was fine.

“Let me have a look,” Aidan said, kneeling down beside him and since he trusted his brother, he moved back with a nod, turned around and launched himself at the bastard who’d finally regained consciousness and punched him until a few of his cousins managed to grab him and pull him off.

“Let me go!” Duncan snapped, determined to kill the bastard.

“Oh, my God, don’t let him go!” the bastard bleeding on the ground screeched as he assumed the fetal position and kicked away Necie’s bag as though that would somehow save him.

“Let me go!” Duncan yelled, managing to free one arm as he struggled to free his other arm so that he could finish beating the shit out of the asshole.

“Please don’t!” the guy curled up on the ground screamed.

“What the hell is going on here?” Mr. Dixon demanded as he walked outside, slamming the large metal door behind him and looking absolutely stunned at the scene before him.

“I quit!” the guy on the ground screamed hysterically as he suddenly found the balls to scramble to his feet and make a run for it.

Eyes narrowing on the little bastard, Duncan watched as he ran straight for the gate and then awkwardly climbed over it, dropped down, fell on his ass, stood up and limped/ran towards what he probably considered freedom. The moment the little shit was out of the picture, Duncan shifted his glare to old man Dixon to find him standing there with a sheepish smile on his face as he peered down at his granddaughter.