Grant’s hand shot out and closed around her wrist. Arden jerked in surprise.
“If you think you’re just going to walk out of here after threatening me, you’re very much mistaken.”
“Let go of me,” Arden said between her teeth.
At that moment, the door slammed inward, the bell’s tinkle more of a clash, and a wonderfully familiar voice bellowed, “Get your hands off her!”
BAZ
Baz hadn’t riddenLexie’s dirt bike since they were teenagers. It was like riding a bike: you didn’t exactly forget, but he remembered it being a lot bigger. Also, he didn’t remember getting quite so many bugs in the face, and he was pretty sure it had seemed a lot faster before.
Still, it was the only thing in Windrock capable of getting him to Wildcat Forks, and he had ridden here as fast as he could.
He didn’t know exactly where Arden was going, but this was the best guess he had, at least as a place to start. If nothing else, it was close to the family ranch, and he could get help from his parents and the sheriff’s department if he needed it.
When he passed the town limits, his sense of danger abruptly spiked, exactly as it had on that sun-drenched day when Arden was threatened in the meadow by the wild shifters when he’d first met her.
In that instant, he had absolutely no doubt where he needed to go, where he had to be.
He skidded to a stop in the parking lot of Sammie Jo’s diner, barely recognizing his own truck as he charged past it into the diner, to find Arden,hisArden?—
“Get your hands off her!”
The slime in the suit, who must be Grant Hamilton, dropped Arden’s wrist like it was on fire. Baz knew the other guy in the booth all too well; it was the big slab of muscle who had been harassing her in town. But who they were mattered to Baz only to the extent that he needed to get Arden as far away from both of them as possible.
“Who the hell are you?” said probably-Grant.
Arden was on her feet now too, but she showed no sign of moving away from the table. “Baz,” she breathed out.
“That’s her boyfriend,” said the muscle.
“She’s got awhat?”
Baz moved shoulder to shoulder with Arden. “Are these guys bothering you?” he asked her.
It was only as he noticed that the waitress and the other patron in the diner were staring at him that he remembered he was covered with mud. He’d pulled on his clothes without doing more than hastily toweling himself off. After the motorcycle ride, it had dried on him. He could feel his hair sticking up in spikes. He probably looked unhinged.
If so, it matched the way he felt.
Arden let out a breath. “Baz, I guess it’s time you met my very,veryex-husband, Grant.”
“Husband,” Grant snapped. “I’m her husband and she’s my wife.” He looked at Baz as if he had just crawled out of a pig pen. “Who are you, again?”
“I’m only your wife because you cheated on the divorce paperwork.” Arden leaned subtly against Baz, and he put an arm around her. To her credit, she didn’t try to pull away in spite of the mud. “And I just had an amazing idea. We’re going to the courthouse right now, and we’re going to file whatever we need to file, and I’m going to be done with you.”
“I refuse.”
Baz leaned in. “What if I refuse my fist right into your face?”
“Excuse me?” From behind them, the waitress approached. “If there’s going to be fighting, you need to leave. Sorry, Sebastian,” she added.
Baz had known her, like almost everyone else in town, for his whole life. “Actually, I think leaving is exactly what we’re going to do. Arden’s right, we’re headed straight for the courthouse, we’re going to do whatever we need to do with her divorce paperwork, and then you’ll get out of her life for good.”
The nearest courthousewas in the county seat, Spring Meadow. Baz was honestly unsure if Grant would go along with it once he was no longer being loomed over, but either he’d come to his senses or his probably-bodyguard had talked some sense into him, because he and the bodyguard followed them there in a new-model dark SUV.
Arden relaxed immediately in the truck, clinging to Baz despite his filthy state. After loading Lexie’s bike into the truck bed, they pulled out, and he filled her in on developments after her departure.
“No one’s mad at me?”
