The Librarian's Passionate Knight Read online

  “‘Jason,’” he mimicked with a nasty smirk before he bent to snag her keys from the curb where they’d landed with a loud clatter. “That’s it? ‘Jason.’ You could at least pretend you’re glad to see me. After all, I spent half the night trying to catch up with you.”

  Phoebe forced herself to look into his bloodshot brown eyes and hated it when she couldn’t hold his gaze. Hated it more when she realized she was shaking.

  He needed a haircut; his shirt was dirty. He was also drunk—mean drunk. The alcohol stench of his breath fanned her face as he moved in on her, turning her stomach, triggering a hundred childhood moments and one very recent one of the first and only time he’d hit her. Her ears had rung for a day afterward. The bruise on her cheek had taken much longer to fade. The memory never would, even though she’d written him out of her life at that exact moment.

  He glared at her through an ugly smile.

  How had she ever thought his smile was beautiful?

  More important, how was she going to get out of this?

  “Give me my keys, Jason,” she said, shooting for reasonable and hoping he’d comply. Unfortunately, her demand sounded more like a plea.

  He gave a pitying shake of his head and held them out of her reach. “You know, your problem always was that you didn’t know how to show a man proper respect. You should be thanking me, not giving me orders.”

  She closed her eyes, swallowed. “Thank you…for picking up my keys,” she said meekly as he crowded her backward until she bumped into the driver’s-side door of her car. “Could…could I have them, please?”

  Triumph turned his mouth into a sneer. “Better. Not good enough, though. Just like I was never good enough for you, was I? Was I?”

  She willed herself not to panic as he pressed his face close to hers.

  “How’s that happen? I wonder,” he demanded with the angry slur of a big man about to teach a small woman a lesson. “How’s it happen that a mousy, old-maid librarian thinks she’s better than me? Where do you get off dumping me? Huh?”

  He wiped spittle from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. “You think you’re some prize?” He snorted out an ugly laugh. “News flash! You’re not. What you are is leftovers. Leftovers!” He dug his fingers painfully into her upper arm, making her wince. “I was good to you. I was great to you! What’s your problem, anyway?”

  Like an animal could sense a coming earthquake even before sensitive scientific equipment could pick it up, Phoebe anticipated the coming blow. With a hard jerk, she pulled free and whirled away before it landed.

  His fist slammed into her car door with a loud crack. His vicious curse sliced through the night as she half walked, half ran, praying that he’d curl up to nurse his pain and forget about her.

  The sound of heavy footsteps pounding the sidewalk behind her told her that wasn’t going to happen.

  Her heart sank. Nausea rolled through her stomach as she stepped up her pace and, not for the first time in her life, wished she had the backbone and the skill to strike back.

  The crowd had thinned to a handful of people when Daniel spotted his ice cream lady about a half a block ahead. Pleasure, unexpected and uncontested, had him forgetting about sleep and unnecessary distractions and heading in her direction.

  He was within a few yards of her when he realized she wasn’t alone—whether by choice or by accident, he couldn’t tell. A big man, over six feet and roughly two hundred ten, two hundred twenty pounds, was dogging her like a jet trail.

  Daniel sized him up with a practiced eye. He didn’t like what he saw. Bully came immediately to mind. A real bruiser with a nasty attitude. He could only hear snippets of their conversation as they stopped by an older-model gray compact car. He heard enough to grasp that the guy was obnoxious and ugly, though, and about as welcome as a wad of gum on the bottom of her shoe. He picked up on something else, too. She was afraid of him.

  Daniel’s stomach bunched into tight knots when the creep grabbed her arm and squeezed hard enough to make her wince. That was as far as he was willing to let this go.

  Two

  Daniel picked up his pace, then momentarily lost track of her when he got tangled up in a group of rowdy, laughing teenage girls. When he finally broke free of them and spotted her again, she was heading away at a fast walk. The guy was hot on her heels.

  Daniel caught up with her at a fast jog.

  “Hey, babe.” Moving in close beside her, he physically cut off the other man with his body. “Slow down, would you? I lost you for a while there,” he added, slinging an arm over her shoulders with the easy familiarity of a man claiming his woman.

  She stopped so fast he had to steady her to keep her from toppling over. When she looked up at him, the eyes behind her glasses were huge and round and scared. It took a moment but eventually she recognized him from the concession line.

  He smiled and reassured her with his eyes. Play along. I’ll get you out of this.

  “How was your ice cream?” he asked and nudged her back into a walk.

  “F-fine,” she finally managed to say, cueing in to his intentions and falling into a faltering step beside him.

  “Who the hell are you?” an angry voice demanded from behind them.

  “Just keep walking,” he said, lowering his mouth to her ear. For her sake, he didn’t want to make a scene, and he figured the best shot at avoiding one was to walk away.

  A beefy hand clamped on his shoulder and stopped him.

  So much for what he’d thought.

  “I said who the hell are you?”

  Daniel turned, a deceptively neutral smile in place. “I’m the guy who’s taking the lady home. Now, if you’ll excuse us—”

  “You threw me over for him?” The stench of alcohol explained the slurred words. “For this pretty boy? I knew it! I knew you were screwin’ around on me!”

  “Jason.” Her voice was thin and tight. Embarrassment flooded her chalk-white cheeks with color. “We are over. We’ve been over for two months now. What can I say to make you understand that?”

  “Yeah, Jason,” Daniel echoed with false congeniality. “What can she say to make you understand?”

  “Stay out of this,” Jason snarled and started in on her again. “We are not over, Mouse. Not till I say so.”

  Red ringed the eyes that narrowed into angry slits. Hands the size of small anvils clenched into tight fists at his sides. He wanted to hit something. With a sickening twist in his gut, Daniel realized what—or in this case who—it was.

  “Don’t even think about it.” He shoved her behind him and stepped into the line of fire. “And then do yourself a favor. Walk away. Just walk the hell away.”

  Jason, who easily outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds, snorted. “You think you wanna piece of me, pretty boy?”

  “Oh, I’d love a piece of you, Clyde.” Daniel smiled pleasantly. “But you’re just not worth my time. Now back off and leave the lady alone or this is gonna come down to you and me and the nice policeman walking toward us. You want to go down for attempted assault with a little drunk and disorderly tacked on for good measure? Make a move and you’ve got it.”

  “Problem here, folks?”

  “I’m not sure.” Daniel glared at Jason as the uniformed officer approached them. “Is there a problem?”

  Jason glowered but finally shook his head.

  “Is there a problem?” Daniel repeated, turning his attention to a pair of doe-brown eyes, relaying with his tone that all she had to do was say the word and this bozo was history.

  She hesitated then shook her head. “No.”

  Daniel watched her face for the length of a deep breath, not knowing what to make of that. What he did know was that it wasn’t his call. It was hers, and since he’d come in at the middle of this particular movie, he wasn’t going to make any snap judgments.

  “Guess there’s no problem.” He flashed the officer a tight smile. “Thanks anyway.”

  Daniel shot Jason
a warning glare. Then he waited to make sure the other man got the hint to move on. When he stalked off, Daniel wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  She tried for a smile—of relief or gratitude, he couldn’t tell which. Regardless, it didn’t matter, because she didn’t pull it off anyway. She was shaking so hard that he expected her to vibrate right out from under his arm. She surprised him, though, because when he started walking she let out a pent-up breath that seemed to drain her of her tension and fell into step beside him.

  He looked down at the top of her head, comfortable with the easy way she fit against him, not so comfortable with the intensity of the protectiveness he felt for her.

  True, it wasn’t the first time he’d been ready to take a fall for a woman. As a rule, though, he generally liked to know a whole helluva lot more about her before he got his lights punched out. For starters, he thought with a cheeky grin, he at least tried to make it a point to know her name.

  Phoebe figured she was in shock. She couldn’t think of another reason why she was letting a total stranger wrap his arm around her and walk her farther and farther away from her car. She supposed there was the very real likelihood that Jason had scared her witless. And then, there was the fact that the man steering her down the sidewalk was quite possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

  “You okay?” she heard him ask. The way he said it made her realize it wasn’t the first time he’d asked. His voice, as smooth and low as deep water, was filled with concern.

  When she couldn’t find it in her to reply, he stopped and turned to her. Cupping her shoulders in his hands, he searched her face. As she, in turn, searched his, she forgave herself for lapsing into speechlessness.

  Sweet Lord, he was gorgeous. He wasn’t particularly tall—just under six feet—but at five-four she still had to lift her chin to look up at him. He wasn’t exceptionally muscular either, not like a bodybuilder. Instead, he was sleekly muscled, like a runner or a swimmer, a study in athletic fitness that combined conditioning and finesse to a honed perfection that overshadowed brawn any day. His black T-shirt and black shorts showed off tan arms and legs and lean, sinewy strength.

  She knew what it felt like to be tucked into the warmth and power emanating from his body. She’d felt sheltered and protected while visions of a different kind of embrace—intimate, needy—further scattered her already fractured thoughts.

  He wasn’t a workingman either, she decided, forcefully dragging her mind back to the moment. Nothing specifically told her that. It was more of a generalization of his overall presence that quietly spoke of money. That he either came from it or was made from it was as obvious as the blue of his eyes. From the artful style of his sun-streaked brown hair that he wore longer than respectable yet looked exactly right on him, to the cut of his formfitting black T-shirt, he wore wealth. It wasn’t overt. It was, instead, effortless. He was as comfortable with it as he was with his utter maleness, at ease with everything that he was.

  The blue eyes that searched her face were thick-lashed and kind of dreamy, strategically set for maximum impact in that stunning, poster-perfect face. His cheeks were deeply tan and slightly stubbled, his jaw molded with love by a benevolent master.

  His classic male beauty, however, had enough rough edges thrown in to save him from being pretty. A tiny crescent-shaped scar marred the corner of his full upper lip, and a nick split the arch of his dark eyebrow. Still, his face was so symmetrically sculpted it was almost painful to look at it, yet impossible to look away.

  He was everything—everything—that a hero was supposed to be. Brave, gorgeous, wealthy.

  Her heart sank on a reality check. A worthy heroine she was not.

  The realization of who she was, what she was and what she wasn’t, melted over her like spent wax, starting at the top of her head and working its way to her fingertips.

  “Are you still with me in there?” he asked with a lazy, amused grin that infiltrated her thoughts like a spelunker breaching a turn in an underground cavern.

  “I…um…”

  He chuckled, held his hand in front of her face and asked, deadpan, “How many fingers?”

  She blinked, focused, and remarkably, the magic of speech returned. “Four and a thumb. At least that was standard issue last I knew.”

  On second thought, magic may have been too strong a word when paired up with the words she’d just uttered. Obviously, her reply had spilled out before she thought, because if she’d thought, she wouldn’t be firing wisecracks. Shock, prompted by reality, made her forget to measure her words, police her reactions.

  She reined herself in and clarified. “He didn’t hit me.”

  He smiled again, gently this time, sort of a slow, concerned unfurling that dug deep grooves in his lean cheeks and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “But he wanted to. And that in itself is a violation.”

  He had the most sensual mouth. His lips were generous and seemed to be perpetually tipped up in some semblance of a grin.

  Too aware that she was staring again, she lifted her gaze to quite possibly the most expressive eyes she’d ever seen. In that moment, she read his pity through them and was ashamed.

  “Oh. Oh, no. It’s…it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not one of those poor women caught up in an abuse cycle.” Though he was a total stranger, she didn’t want him thinking that about her. “I ended our relationship months ago. He’s just not— Well, he’s not getting the picture.”

  “And he’s not likely to anytime soon unless he has a reason to consider the consequences.”

  Consequences. So far, she, not Jason, had been the one suffering the consequences of his unwarranted obsession.

  It all caught up with her then. The fear of the past few moments. The utter sense of vulnerability and violation. The embarrassment of a public scene. And her dependence on this stranger to come to her rescue.

  Jason had blindsided her. She hated him for that. She hated violence more. She’d felt as helpless against it tonight as she had as a child. And like a child, she’d frozen in the face of it.

  She knew what that made her. Leslie Griffin, her sixty-years-young friend and co-worker, could argue all she wanted that Phoebe was heroic for overcoming her abusive childhood, for putting herself through school, for enduring and establishing herself as a solid, independent citizen. The truth, however, was that at heart she was a coward. For that failure alone, she hated herself almost as much as she hated Jason for putting her in this position.

  “Well.” She squared her shoulders and rallied what pride she had left. “It’s my problem. I’ll figure out how to deal with it.”

  “Think in terms of a two-by-four. Right between his eyes,” he said darkly.

  “Do you all run on pure testosterone?” She blurted out the words before she could marshal them. Again.

  She closed her eyes, pressed her fingertips to her temple. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  She didn’t know how to act around this man. If she wasn’t gaping in stupefied silence over his glaring good looks, she was bumbling out the most inappropriate things.

  “I’m sorry. You saved me from a really bad ending here and I’m coming down on you for wanting to…” She paused, lifted a hand in the air.

  “To add more violence to an already violent situation?” he suggested, an apology in his voice. “Unfortunately, sometimes that’s the only option.”

  For the first time, something other than gentle amusement hardened his mouth. She saw and heard his anger but understood that it was directed at Jason. She also understood that he hadn’t judged her as harshly as she’d judged herself.

  When she realized he was watching her with an absorbed intensity that relayed both concern and the same gentleness as his smiles, she drew in a deep breath and let it out.

  “Well,” she said, feeling compelled to assure him, “I’ll be okay. He’ll give up sooner or later. In the meantime, I really don’t know how to thank you.
Most people wouldn’t have stopped, and, you know, gotten in the middle of someone else’s mess.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  That much she’d already figured out. He certainly wasn’t like most of the people she knew at any rate. And he wasn’t anything like her. She was strictly struggling to be middle-class mundane. And he— Well, he wasn’t.

  “So, what happens now?”

  She let out a breath through puffed cheeks. “What does happen now?” she mused aloud before her brain synapses clicked into place. “Well, now I guess I walk back to my car and drive home.”

  It seemed simple enough, except that on the heels of her statement, she realized it wasn’t going to be simple at all. She would have laughed if she could have mustered the strength.

  “Well, normally I’d walk back to my car and drive home.”

  “Normally?”

  She worried her lower lip between her teeth then lifted a shoulder. “He got away with my car keys.”

  He quirked a beautifully arched eyebrow—the one with the nick in it. “Oops. That’s a problem.”

  Phoebe tugged on the tips of her hair where it tickled her nape and tried not to fidget as he continued to watch her with that half-amused, half-interested, all-male grin.

  “So it would appear that you’re stranded.”

  Yep. She was in a tight spot. So why was she suddenly grinning back at him?

  It was ludicrous. Someone who had once meant something to her, someone she had trusted and had actually considered building a life with, had just tried to physically assault her. In addition, he’d made off with her car keys. Yet the pain of the first and the anger over the second just sort of drifted off in the comfort of this man’s dazzling smile.

  “I’ll, um, just hail a cab,” she said, sobering resolutely. “I’ve got an extra set of keys at home. I can come back for my car tomorrow.”

  “Or,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts, “I could take you.”