Page 6 of Tate
She frowned. “I know that. But…I just can’t…” She sighed. “I can’t watch a man I could…care about…die. I can’t go through that again.”
“You won’t.” Kelsey again. “Don’t let your fears keep you from loving a man who loves you back.”
Right. Yes. Because David had been a soldier, running into trouble.
Tate’s job was to keep themawayfrom it. He was careful, prepared, and anticipated trouble.
He wasn’t looking for a fight.
A crash sounded. She startled, paused. Maybe he’d dropped a glass.
She headed toward the door. “Okay. Yes. You’re right…I’m just freaking out. Overthinking this?—”
She opened the door.
The sofa lay askew, the green counter chairs were toppled to their sides, and glass from the round coffee table in the middle of the room glinted under the overhead lights.
One of the tall flower vases had hit the floor, also shattering, water and lilies scattering.
And Tate…what?—?
Tate was backed up against the wet bar, one hand gripped on the arm of a huge, balding man dressed in a suitcoat, trying to pry the man’s beefy hands from his throat.
The other was balled and hammering away at the man’s ribs.
Glo couldn’t breathe. Or maybe she was simply taking a breath to let out the mother of all screams?—
“Glo—?”
Her scream ricocheted off the thick panes of the picture windows, through the glass chandelier, and across the expanse of the room enough to jerk the fighters apart.
She dropped the phone.
“Glo! Get out of here!” Tate’s words emerged choked, on a wisp of breath, and he glanced at her long enough for her to see the damage done to his handsome face. He bled from the nose, his mouth, and from a cut over his eye, which turned him into some nightmarish, blood-crazed ninja. Especially when he turned back to Bald and Beefy and slammed his fist into his jaw.
The man staggered back, loosening one hand, and Tate cuffed off his grip from his neck.
Tate ducked away, breathing hard. Glanced again at her, his eyes just a little crazy. “Run!”
But— “Behind you!”
He turned just in time to step away from a bone-crushing fist to the face. He caught the man’s arm and held it there while he delivered a backhand to his face, his gut. Then, in a move that had her hands to her mouth, he flipped the big man right there onto the floor.
The man let out an epithet that sounded Russian. Or maybe Polish. Whatever it was, she got it.
Run!
She started for Tate, probably galvanized by the same thought because he held out his hand, as if to take hers. But Igor the Russian reached out and tripped him. Tate went flying.
In a second, the big man was on him, a knee in his back. He grabbed Tate’s arm, twisted it behind him, and Tate howled.
Glo just reacted. She picked up a green lamp on a nearby table and crashed it over Igor’s head.
It dazed the brute enough for her to kick him—the power of it stunning even her when he lost his grip on Tate.
Tate rolled, landed a fist in the man’s throat, and scrambled to his feet. “Glo, get out of here!”
He kicked the man in the jaw, but Igor had rebounded—probably rage—and resembled a bull, crazed with blood. Unstoppable.
