Page 19 of Resist

She turned around, ready to thank him. He’d saved her from… She couldn’t let herself think the word, so she swallowed it down, not letting her thoughts drift beyond the fact that he’d saved her.

He’d been gentle as he held her, but when she faced him, his expression immediately morphed to one of anger.

Ainsley took a step back, until he said, “You need to go to the hospital. You’re hurt.”

She took mental stock, trying to pinpoint the painful places. Her scalp was tender, her lip was throbbing, and her arm hurt like hell. Those were the sharpest pains. Everything else had receded to a dull, throbbing ache.

“I’m okay. It’s not that bad.”

“Not bad!” Coulton said hotly. “You’re bleeding.”

She reached up and winced when she felt her split lip. “Fucking asshole. What is it with guys? Why do you all think it’s okay to backhand a woman?”

“All?” Coulton froze. “Have you been hit before?”

She rolled her eyes. “What part of ‘I’ve lived in Cherry Hill my whole life’ did you miss?”

He leaned toward her. “Who hit you?” he asked darkly.

She tilted her head, trying to come to grips with what she was seeing. The man looked seriously ready to go on the warpath. On the two occasions he’d sat at the bar, they had talked, and he’d been super chill.

Well, apart from his showdown with Eli, but Eli tended to bring out the worst in everyone. It was her brother’s one true talent.

Coulton’s desire to take on anyone who tried to hurt her was one of the things that had captured her attention, despite her efforts to put the pretty man out of her head. It was hard, because no one—and she meantno one—had ever tried to protect her before.

“I’ve been mugged a time or three,” she responded. “And my dad is no fucking prince.”

Suddenly, it felt as if the temperature in the tavern had dropped a good fifty degrees.

“Your dad backhanded you?”

She shrugged. “Plenty of times. Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but I’m kind of a smart-ass.”

Coulton drew in a slow breath through his nose, his eyes dark with an anger that should have scared her…but instead made her horny as fucking hell.

Quite the feat considering she’d almost just been…

Nope. Not thinking that.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” he repeated.

She shook her head. “No. You’re not. I’ve got some bumps and bruises and that’s it. All they’ll do at the hospital is give me a three-hundred-dollar Tylenol and a seventy-dollar ice pack. No thanks. I’ve got that shit at home.”

Coulton didn’t like her answer. “If I take you home, will someone take care of you?” he asked, his voice so low, she had to lean closer to hear. God, at this rate, she’d be pressed against him again.

She laughed, then winced again because her lip hurt like a bitch. “Oh yeah, Coulton. Mick will kiss all my boo-boos, make me hot chocolate with marshmallows, and then tuck me into bed.”

Ainsley’s second language was English.

Sarcasm, her first.

“What’s really going to happen when you get home?”

Ainsley closed her eyes, too weary to continue this conversation. “Mick will want to know if the assholes got the money, and he’ll be pissed at me when I tell him they did,” she said, also angry that they’d gotten away with the cash. They really needed the money. Mick had stupidly decided to do a cash-out refinance on the tavern when the medical bills got to be too much, the short-term solution leaving them even deeper under water, thanks to the high interest rate.

“They came in to rob you?”

She narrowed her eyes, her anger toward Eli resurfacing. “Not really. They were trying to get me to pay off my brother’s debts, and fun fact…there wasn’t enough money in the register.”

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