Her light eyes widened. "I won't ask how you know that."
"I'm not keen on introducing guns to the situation if we can avoid it." I steered us toward the outdoor and hunting section. "They tend to complicate things."
"Agreed," she murmured. "Thank you for… thinking of all this."
"Can you imagine if you'd swooned into a banker's arms?" I teased, stopping in front of the trail cams. "Then where would you be?"
Evie's soft mouth fought against a smile, and she folded her hands in front of her. "I very specifically chose the ex-Army doctor, obviously. Give me some credit."
"Very discerning," I said gravely. I tossed a trail cam into the basket. "Although, next time, maybe go for a marine. They're better with hand-to-hand." I paused, turning to her. "I'm sorry, was thatsarcasm?"
She tucked her bottom lip between her teeth. "It's a little fun."
"I appreciate you allowing me to be a bad influence on you," I said with a slight smirk. Her cheeks went blossom pink, and I tamped down a laugh. Too easy.
Once we had everything I could think to grab for the moment, including zip ties, hornet spray, and duct tape, I felt like a proper serial killer. This had to be the weirdest basket of stuff ever. We turned the corner, heading toward the checkout. Movement in my peripheral vision pinged in my brain, and I turned just in time to find a stranger wearing a blue medical mask swing his elbow toward Evie.
She gasped, trying to dodge him, but his elbow connected with her face. A dullcracksounded on impact, and I lunged for her. She was headed straight for a shelf loaded with screwdrivers and she was going to impale herself. My arms locked around her, but our momentum was going to take us down no matter what I did. Unceremoniously, I whipped her around, so she landed on top of me while I took the brunt of the fall.
We landed in a heap, and two other men stepped out from the other side of the aisle, their faces masked, and their expressions determined. I reached for a screwdriver, but one of them stepped on my wrist, hard. Evie scrambled forward, trying to wrap her arms around one of the attackers' legs, but he kicked her in the shoulder, sending her sprawling away from me. She was bleeding freely, her nose crooked and gushing red all down the front of her dress and my shirt.
I punched the calf of whoever was stepping on me and locked my arms around his legs, shoving forward with my shoulder. He went down heavily, and I turned to plant my fist in the next man, but he was already backing away from Evie with a white handkerchief soaked with her blood. Two of them sprinted away, and the guy on the ground kicked me in the chin.
I saw stars momentarily, but gamely, I forced myself to my feet and lunged for the one trying to escape. I landed a hit to his kidney, and he stumbled to the side, crashing into the aisle with an ear-splitting cacophony. Screwdrivers and hammers clanged to the ground, and a few shoppers gasped audibly. Theidiot I'd taken down was already trying to get up, scrambling to extricate himself from the contents that had collapsed around him. He was wearing a boring blue T-shirt and worn jeans, and as I looked at his scuffed-up work boots and utilitarian watch, I realized that this had to be a hired man, not an actual player.
I grabbed him by the front of his shirt, hauling him up and easily blocking a clumsy blow from his fist. I wrenched him around, forcing him to his knees and twisting his arms behind his back until he was face down on the floor.
"Benjamin," Evie choked.
I tore my eyes from the asshole in my grip to find her kneeling on the ground with her hands over her nose. A pool of blood was collecting in her lap, staining her pink dress and collecting on the white tile floor. I yanked on the hired hand's arm, gritting out, "The name of the player who sent you. Now."
He huffed in response, and his mask came loose as he fought my hold. "Don't fucking know!"
"Benjamin," Evie croaked again. "Just let him go."
Let him go? "He's not getting away with assault, Evelyn," I bit back. A few onlookers had come to see what the commotion was about, and an employee in an orange vest was already on the phone, presumably calling the authorities. I glanced at Evie again and found her eyes imploring. No cops, she'd said. My shoulders slumped in defeat. The only way to bring this shit bag of a human to justice would be to involve the authorities. And Evie didn't want that for whatever reason. Also, she was bleeding and probably had a broken nose.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved the attacker's head into the ground, hearing a satisfyingsnapfrom his nose. He screamed, writhing, but I was already standing away from him. I returned to Evie, and her wide eyes tracked me over her blood-stained fingers. I bent down, shuffled my arms under her legs, andpicked her up without another word. "Broad daylight?" I asked sardonically.
She stared at me, blood spurting through her fingers. "I was wrong."
"Yeah, well, so was I," I said grimly, heading for the exit while customers and employees gawked at us. "I should have been more careful."
Her voice sounded thick, stuffed up from her swollen nose and all the blood. "What about the stuff?"
"We should probably shop online from now on," I admitted ruefully.
"Oh," was all she said.
I paused in front of my car, glancing down at the bloody mess of a marshmallow in my arms and then at my Italian leather seats. Custom. "Fucking hell," I muttered. I set her on her feet and pulled my shirt over my head. Folding it up, I pressed it against her nose, and she winced, coughing. She was an absolute mess. "Press that as hard as you can stand it against your nose. You trust the doctors in your local ER to get your nose straight?"
She ignored my question, skating her gaze down my body instead. "Why is your shirt always off?
"Youare the reason my shirt is always off." I put my hands on my hips. "And I didn't think I'd ever say that without getting laid, but here we are."
She considered me thoughtfully, and despite all the blood and my shirt muffling her nose and mouth, she asked, "Would getting laid help?"
"Are you offering?" I asked with incredulous amusement.
