“You tell, ‘em,” Eden yelled out.
Toni looked hopeful.
Asher took a step toward David. “Don’t even think about it, Asher Thorne,” Eden said. “Samantha is right. She was taking care of herself, and Phil, and Greg. I don’t know what went down tonight, but she was handling it.”
Ezio set down the coffee mug and slowly stood up from the couch.
“Ladies,” he said quietly. “We’ll have to agree to disagree. There were guns involved. Tell me, Phil, was a gun pointed at you?”
He shook his head.
“Greg,” Ezio turned to that man. “Was a gun pointed at you?”
That man shook his head.
“Samantha, was there a gun in your vicinity?”
She bit her bottom lip and nodded her head.
“How close?”
“Close,” she admitted.
Fuck!
“Was it pointed at you?” Ezio asked softly.
She nodded her head. “But it’s okay. I had my mace and I got away. With the money! Everything turned out all right.”
David and Asher started shouting at her, but Ezio had had enough. He put a firm hand around her waist.
“We’re out of here.”
“Wait, I have to give them their money,” Samantha cried.
Ezio carefully disentangled her purse strap from her hair and off her shoulder. He shoved it at David’s chest. David rolled his eyes.
“Wait, I need my keys.” When she went to grab her purse with her right hand and gasped with pain, David’s eyes darkened, and he handed the purse back to Ezio. Ezio pulled the keys out of the purse and pocketed them.
“I think she should stay here tonight,” Eden suggested.
“Leave them be,” Asher told his fiancée. Ezio appreciated Asher having his back. He looked at Samantha. She needed out of here, she was done in.
“Come on, honey.” He kept his touch light but firm as he guided her out the door and to his Jeep.
“I can’t leave my car,” she protested.
“Someone will drive it to your house. It’ll be okay,” he soothed.
“Okay.”
He tucked her into the passenger seat and buckled her in.
She was almost asleep by the time he pulled out of the driveway. Good, maybe she wouldn’t wake up until he got her to his house. He really didn’t need an argument.
12
He opened the passenger door. She still didn’t move. He took a moment to just look at her as she rested there. She looked beautiful with her head lying against the leather seat and her blonde hair splayed out across her red dress.
“Samantha, I need you to wake up,” he said gently.
“Huh?”
“We’re home.”
She sat up and looked around at the forest-lined driveway. “Where are we?”
“My house.”
She gave him a quizzical look. “Why didn’t you take me home?”
“Because I’m worried about you.”
“I’m really fine. My wrist is only a little sore.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “Samantha, don’t those people know where you live?”
“Oh heck.”
“Oh heck, indeed.”
This time she used her left hand to unbuckle her seatbelt. She yawned, then smiled. “I could have stayed with Eden.”
“You could have,” he agreed as he helped her out of the Jeep. “I wanted you to stay with me.”
She laughed. “You know, you could have done this little thing I’ve heard about.”
He put his hand under her elbow because the driveway was kind of rough and her heels were really high. “What could I have done, honey?”
“You could have asked.”
“Nope. Because then you could have said no.”
Samantha laughed again. “You sure do put your cards out on the table.”
He winced. “Let’s not use that analogy, shall we.”
She laughed even harder. “I knew I liked you. But seriously, I can’t stay here for more than a night. I have all my stuff at my house. I have a life. What am I going to do?”
“Do all of your shenanigans end up with these kinds of repercussions?”
Samantha stopped short. “What are you talking about? I don’t have shenanigans. And if, hypothetically speaking, I did have shenanigans, they wouldn’t normally turn out to be this big of a deal.”
“How big of a deal would they be?”
She started walking toward his door.
“Sam, answer the question. What’s the worst thing that’s happened before?”
“It wasn’t too bad. I made a pretty good friend while I was in jail. But seriously, when can I go home? Those people need to be stopped.”
“Jail? You ended up in jail?” Ezio tried to keep his voice level.
“It was a protest thing. I ended up in jail a couple of times in Boise.”
“When was this?” Ezio asked as he unlocked his front door, disabled the security system, and ushered her inside.
“What about those guys at the wig shop?” she asked.
“David and Asher called the cops. Gideon will know soon if they’ve been captured, but until we know, your ass is planted here. Now tell me more about how you ended up in jail. Who was with you, Kevin?”
“Oh no, this was before I met him. My friend Nancy needed someone to go with her to a PETA protest at the University where they were breeding sick dogs for research and then doing inhumane testing on them. I got arrested three times. Nancy wouldn’t tell me where the next protest was after she found out it would endanger my scholarships.”
“Christ, Samantha, what were you thinking?” Ezio ground out. “Are you always such a bleeding heart?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked as she stepped out of her
