Until his head tilted the barest degree.
She matched the angle of his chin, slanting with her own head and licking her bottom lip. Wishing magic did exist and dreams did come true. For a moment, one brief, star-struck, crazy, meteoric moment, she left herself open to the possibility of a kiss. Her first real kiss.
The purest silence swelled around them. It was happening. Heaven had opened. They were in an invisible cathedral. The rarest celestial blessing was pouring down on them and—
HONK! Darn. Someone had finally spotted her. Why now?
With a jolt, her mysterious hero blinked. He dropped his hands. The magic—Pffft!—vanished. Straight back up to heaven, where it belonged. Ashley exhaled a frosty breath. Love wasn’t real anyway. Why waste time wishing it were?
As if nothing happened—because nothing had—the monster-turned-angel fastened some kind of sticky gauze around the front of her neck. He maintained a professional, indifferent hold this time, pressing the gauze until he was sure it held.
“This will keep for now,” he said a little too briskly. “Does it still hurt?”
In more ways than I’ll ever tell. “Umm, no,” she replied with her steadiest, most unemotional voice. “I’ll be okay.” Because single women who live alone have no choice but to be okay. “Thanks.”
The temptation to melt under this fierce man’s chin, to breathe deeply of his breath, and imprint his scent into her olfactory receptors for the rest of her life, was hard to resist. But Ashley offered tit-for-tat, nothing more. If he refused to acknowledge what she’d felt between them, so would she. He needed to back off and let her get on with her orderly, predictably boring life.
“Do you have a cell phone?”
She nodded, the top of her head bumping his chin. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were still that close, I mean…” She could smell the mint on his breath. “Y-y-yes. It’s over there.” She pointed at the gutter, where her messenger bag leaned against the curb, as if she’d simply set it there while she’d been busy being assaulted.
“Call the police. Tell them what happened. They’ll send an ambulance.”
“He wanted drugs, oxy. He… he thought we kept opioids in our building, and that I had a key.”
“You work at the free clinic?”
She shook her head. “Just the Health Department.”
“I’m glad I was here.”
Ashley froze at the quiet declaration of that unexpected something else. He didn’t expound further, and that was good. This was not a night for mutual admiration, certainly not for whatever that momentary lapse in judgment between them had been. Like that other disastrous time, this was just another night to forget.
He cleared his throat. “Call 9-1-1, ma’am. Do it now. Tell them what happened. Tell them some guy showed up and interrupted that rat bastard before he could seriously hurt you. Tell them I beat the fuck out of him, then ran off like a chicken shit. Can you do that for me?”
“Probably not quite like that,” she admitted meekly. Her harshest expletive was fudge.
He had the grace to smile. “Sorry ma’am. I tend to forget my manners when I’m at war.”
“Why can’t I just tell them the truth? That you saved me?”
“Because I’d rather no one knows who I am. I work better this way. Keep my secret, okay?”
“What’s your name?” she asked like a dolt. Why would he tell her? It was a secret. Duh.
He did something a little bit magical then. He leaned into her face and pressed those warm, luscious lips of his to the middle of her sweaty forehead. “I’m just some guy,” he whispered against her skin, his masculine voice devastatingly deep and sexy. “Call the police, kiddo. Stay off dark streets from now on. Forget you ever saw me. Promise?”
Who could resist? “You’ll always be a hero to me,” she promised with all of her banged up heart. “My name’s Ashley, by the way. Ashley Cox. Please stay safe.”
“Do yourself a favor and don’t worry about me, Ashley Cox,” he murmured before he moved her off his lap, walked to the gutter, and retrieved her bag. Handing it to her, he asked, “Is this your can of mace? It was beside your purse.”
“Oh, my, umm, yes,” she replied, embarrassed that even with her secret weapon, she’d still been a helpless damsel in distress.
He crouched down beside her, his hands loose between his knees, his alpha male presence overpowering the last of her resolve. “Go ahead,” he said, fluttering his fingers to hurry her along. “Call the police. I’ll stay until they show.”
“Okay.” Taking her bag with trembling fingers, she stuffed the mace back where it belonged, then pulled her phone out of an interior pocket. But when she lifted her head to tell him goodbye, that she hoped she’d run into him again someday, her handsome shadow was gone. Just like that. Of course. What had she expected? He was just a man. He’d said he’d stay, but he hadn’t. He’d disappeared. Only her attacker remained, and he wasn’t breathing too well.
Shaking like the last leaf of autumn about to fall off its lonely branch, Ashley called 9-1-1 and gave the dispatcher her location. In minutes, the Alexandria police arrived, along with a fire engine, an ambulance, and two other squad cars. The officer out of the first cruiser was a woman, thank God. Her partner was male, but both were kind and professional. So were the paramedics who assessed her minor injuries, removed her from the scene of the attack, and stowed her inside the ambulance.
While they double-checked the bandages on her neck, Ashley couldn’t keep her eyes from searching the shadows beyond the emergency vehicles. Was he still out there? Was he watching? Did he have any idea how much his being here tonight would mean to her for the rest of her life? Did he even care? Probably not.
But she’d promised. She’d never tell.
Chapter Three
From between the strip mall and Alexandria’s Health Department, behind the Dumpsters and recycle bins, deep within
