A California Christmas (Silver Springs #7) - Brenda Novak Page 0,56

this situation escalated, whether he’d be a real threat. Young, maybe twenty-two, he was about six foot four, two hundred and twenty pounds, and he had broad shoulders, massive biceps and beefy hands. He obviously spent lots of time pumping iron, which was probably why he thought he could be an asshole and get away with it.

He was also drunk.

“How do you know whether it’s my business or not?” Dallas asked.

“Because I wasn’t talking to you—I was talking to her.” He still had a hand clamped around Emery’s wrist. “And like I was trying to tell her, I didn’t mean to make her mad. I thought she was hot in that video. Hot’s a compliment, right?”

“That isn’t what you said.” Emery’s face was flushed, her jaw clenched. “At least not all of it.”

“You mean the part about your tits?” he said, starting to laugh. “Aw, man, come on! That was a compliment, too.”

“Let her go,” Dallas said.

“You stay out of it!” the guy snapped. “I’m trying to apologize to my famous partner here so we can finish our dance.”

Dallas lowered his voice to make it clear he wasn’t messing around. “I said let her go.”

“Dallas, it’s okay.” Emery glanced worriedly between them. “I don’t want to drag you into this. I’ll just... I’ll finish the dance. He apologized.”

“See?” The way the guy jutted out his chin acted as an exclamation point. “There’s no reason for you to get involved.”

They were making a scene, and Dallas knew she wouldn’t want that. But he’d brought her here, and he wasn’t about to let anything go wrong after she dared take the risk of coming with him. “You don’t have to dance with this drunken prick if you don’t want to,” he told her, and took her arm to lead her off the floor.

Eli and Gavin were both hurrying over as a large hand gripped Dallas’s shoulder. He felt himself being turned, but when the blow came, it mostly missed. He’d been prepared for it, had jerked his head to one side just in time. It was the other guy who was surprised when Dallas used the momentum of his turn to add power to his own punch.

His opponent looked dumbfounded at the immediate and decisive retaliation. Maybe he’d expected Dallas to start by cursing, yelling or lobbing more threats. But Dallas wasn’t about that. He was more than happy to enforce what he felt was only right.

The dude didn’t crumple to the floor as Dallas halfway expected. He shook his head as though he had to clear the cobwebs out of it. Then he touched his mouth, spotted blood on his fingertips—blood that’d come from his nose, which looked broken—and his eyes narrowed as he came after Dallas again.

“Get her home,” Dallas said, shoving a stunned Emery into the safety of Eli’s chest.

The guy managed to get both arms around Dallas and pull him down while Dallas was trying to make sure Eli got Emery clear of the action. Then, as Eli guided Emery out of the bar and Gavin held back the guy’s friend, who seemed all too eager to jump in, the fight turned into more of a wrestling match than a boxing match. But Dallas was a better wrestler than he was a boxer, anyway. Anyone who had any street fighting experience knew how important it was to be good on the ground, since almost every fight ended up there.

After narrowly escaping being pinned underneath his opponent, Dallas used all his strength and flexibility to break away and tried to jam the guy’s arm up behind his back.

The dude managed to get free before Dallas could fully achieve the hold he was striving for, but Dallas maintained his balance and used the leverage of being higher off the ground to get on top, where he pressed his sudden advantage and really let loose.

At one point, the guy succeeded in bucking him off, and they rolled around on the floor. Dallas took a few blows, but there was no pain. The only thing he felt was determination and fury. As they crashed into other people and chairs and tables, someone yelled to call the cops. After that, all sensory input dissolved into a blur. Dallas couldn’t see anything except his opponent, and he couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing through his ears—until Gavin and several others pulled him off the stranger.

“Dallas, that’s enough,” his brother said.

The words came to him as though through a long tunnel. It didn’t feel