I'd noticed he was a big, burly guy when he'd stalked across the yard but I hadn't put all the pieces together until right now. Hell, I'd barely noticed my surroundings in this white-knuckled sprint to get away, to disappear.
I'd left at two in the morning and driven through the night to keep a low profile, and it'd worked beautifully until the hot neighbor insisted on helping me open my door.
In truth, it was rude. It was downright disrespectful for all those brutish good looks to be wasted on this know-it-all, mansplain-my-life-to-me, uninvited knight in ripped denim. Where were the drop-dead sexy guys who didn't appear out of nowhere to announce a woman shouldn't use a crowbar to open a door? Where were the ones who asked if they could assist, and when refused, offered to simply hang out and serve as eye candy? What about the ones who didn't automatically assume I was a criminal? Why couldn't they be my neighbors?
Not that I had the room in my life for anyone but me and my steamship of homemade problems. There wasn't a human being alive who wanted a piece of my mess.
"All right. Give it a try."
Linden shifted, his arm extended in my direction and a fierce smile stretching his lips. His shoulders spanned the width of the door and I had to talk myself into glancing away rather than eye-fondling him.
Taking the key from him, I dropped my gaze to the lock. Broad shoulders didn't matter. Wolfish grins didn't matter. Insanely meddlesome neighbors didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the next move.
I gave the lock a few tries, twisted the knob several times, and thumped my shoulder against the door as hard as I could but nothing happened. I was ready to call this experiment off and return to my method of beating and bashing until I got my way when Linden said, "Stop eyeing the crowbar. That's not going to help."
"Then propose an alternative solution," I replied, now fully exasperated at this man and his presence. "Otherwise, I'll take care of this on my own, thank you."
"Go another round," he said, tipping his chin up toward the door. "You work the knob, I'll add leverage on the door."
"That sounds—" I really wanted to argue with him. I wanted it so much and not even because I disagreed with him on this issue but because my frustration and anger needed a place to go right now. It was supremely unfair to unload any of it on this guy and I knew that. I knew better. "Okay. Fine. I'll try it your way this time."
He ran his hands along the panel of the door, thumping with his fist every few inches. "This is the spot," he murmured like some kind of deranged door whisperer. "Come on. Let's do this."
I hooked a glance over my shoulder at him as I closed my hand around the knob. He was right there, his body crowded up against mine. We were close enough that I could pick up the scent of coffee lingering around him. Under normal circumstances, I would've preferred some polite distance from the rude dude I'd just met but I'd been awake and wearing the same clothes for a day and a half, my life was stuffed into the back of a station wagon, and my career died in a grease fire. There were no normal circumstances and there was no other way to do it.
"I can feel the deadbolt sliding out of the lock," I said. "It's almost there."
"Hold on," he murmured.
Before I could ask what and how I was to hold on, Linden rammed his shoulder against the panel, the door swung open, and we stumbled inside.
He recovered quickly, pushing to his feet and saying, "Like I told you, sometimes these old doors stick."
Sticky old doors and the beastly men who break them down.
"I appreciate your efforts," I replied, ignoring his outstretched hand as I gathered myself up and stood. It was the best I could do. I was in too much of a miserable snit to properly thank him for his help.
"Don't mention it." Then, leaning into the open doorway, he frowned. "Do you hear that?" He set his hands on his hips—which required me to study both—and glanced from side to side. "It sounds like—" He suddenly pushed me to the floor, one hand on the back of my head as a sudden burst of high-pitched squeaks exploded from somewhere inside the cottage. "Bats. Stay down. Stay out of their way and they'll ignore us," he said, his words warm as he spoke them against my ear.
All at once, the noise was upon us, a long-rumbling roll of thunder punctuated by squeals and slaps. All told, this exodus lasted less than a minute but every second pressed facedown on a dirty porch floor while a swarm—flock? who knew?—of startled bats passed overhead was a series of increasingly ridiculous eternities.
As for the hot neighbor who didn't know how to mind his own business, he was doing a fine job of shielding me from the bats with that girth and muscle of his. Whether he needed to cup my breast to accomplish this was debatable but he wasn't taking advantage any more than I was with my elbow cozied up between his legs.
The accidental intimacy wasn't his fault though I was reminded once again I could've managed all of this on my own. That included the bats. Surprising? Yes. Incapacitating? Absolutely not.
"I think that's the last
