“Duck, Delaney. Now,” her hero ordered.
She ducked. Nash’s powerful fist swung out, and it slammed into Kurt’s jaw. Kurt stumbled back, and then he fell toward the floor. He crashed. Hard.
The priest gasped. The lady at the organ nearly fell off her wooden bench. And the men and two women in the pews—people connected to Kurt—froze.
“The wedding is off,” Delaney told Kurt. The tall ceilings in the church made her angry words echo around her. She yanked off her engagement ring and tossed it toward Kurt. The ring and the bouquet. The rose petals fluttered in the air.
“Is that a knife?” Her hero had just noticed the knife on the floor. It had fallen when Kurt took the punch to the face.
No time for an explanation about the knife. The guests were shaking from their stupor, coming close, and she was sure some of them were armed because a few of those guys weren’t friends of Kurt’s. They were more like his evil henchmen.
“We have to get out of here, now.” She grabbed for Nash’s arm.
Once upon a time, Nash had been the star of her teenage fantasies. Technically, he was still the man who made far too many appearances in her adult dreams. The man who…
When she’d had those long-ago visions of a beach wedding, he’d been the groom in her daydreams.
Then, unfortunately, he’d gone on to utterly break and destroy her heart. After the breakup that had left her sobbing into her favorite chocolate ice cream, she’d planned to never, ever see him again. But, desperate times could call for some extremely desperate measures. She’d needed help. Her options had been limited. She’d had to text for emergency assistance and there had only been time to send out a cry for help to?—
“Uh, Delaney?” Nash’s deep, dark voice slid over her. Through her. “Is that creep in the front pew reaching for a gun?”
Yes, yes, he was.
Nash didn’t wait for her to respond. He attacked the creep in the front pew. Nash drove his right fist at his target even as his left hand snatched the gun away and sent it hurtling beneath some pews.
The priest and organist ran.
As for Delaney?—
Nash spun back toward her. “You coming with me?”
Uh, yes. “A thousand times, yes.”
He grabbed her, tossed her over his shoulder, and hauled ass for the door. The train trailed over her head, falling over her upside-down self, and she fought to shove it out of her way. When she finally did get the satin and lace out of her way, she saw Kurt being helped to his feet. A groggy Kurt.
He staggered and pointed at her. “No!” Kurt shook his head. Almost fell again. “Delaney!” He lunged toward her.
But Nash was carrying her out of the open church doors. Fresh air hit her, and a wide smile curved her lips. Nash had gotten her out. Away from Kurt. She was bouncing along Nash’s broad shoulder and then?—
He lowered her in front of him. The satin and lace tumbled. Her breath heaved.
“You can’t ride on my Harley wearing that damn thing.” And, for the second time in the last ten minutes, a man came at her with a knife.
Except the blade of Nash’s knife didn’t touch her at all. It did slice away her dress. He cut the bottom of the dress off her, leaving Delaney in a new, makeshift skirt that barely fell to mid-thigh.
“Delaney!” A bellow from the church.
She looked toward the open doors.
Kurt was trying to charge at her, but some of his friends-slash-henchmen were holding him back. For the moment.
“Let’s go.” She jumped over the discarded satin that had fallen at her feet. “Go, go, go!”
Nash stared at her with his amazing eyes—one blue, one brown. Both eyes glittered with his fury. “What in the hell is happening?”
Her side ached. Probably due to the stab wound. Or slice. Yes, she definitely preferred to think of it as a slice because a slice sounded way better than a stab. “How about we talk about everything once we are away? Okay? Good for you?”
His eyes narrowed. “Delaney…”
