and freezing—the heat readying him to fight and the cold stripping him of any humanity that might moderate his wrath.
In a move he’d perfected at work, he bent his knees and drew his arm back, striking forth with the crowbar against the first one’s thigh like the hammer of Thor. A sickening crunch sounded, and the man screamed in pain, falling to the ground as his broken femur gave way.
Behind him, Verity screamed, but Colt ignored her, advancing on the other man, whose wide, terrified eyes begged for mercy. He stumbled backward and fell onto the cement, a stain of wetness spreading across the crotch of his shorts and making a puddle on the ground. Colt raised the crowbar to strike again—
“Colton!” she screamed again. “No! No more!”
He gasped, the crowbar high over his head, much higher than the can of pop had been when the two men were throwing it back and forth. Frozen, as though his body could move only if she gave him leave, he panted through a fog of fury, waiting for her to speak again . . . but she didn’t.
She didn’t say anything at all.
Out of nowhere, her small hands locked around his chest, embracing him. Her small breasts pressed up flush against his back, her cheek rested on his T-shirt. He felt the in and out of her chest as she drew quick, even breaths behind him.
“No more,” she said gently, her voice calm, soft, and white, cutting through the raw, red haze of his rage. “That’s enough, now.”
Panting in jagged spurts, he lowered the crowbar slowly, closing his eyes and clenching them shut for a moment before opening them again. His eyes shuttered back and forth between the two men—one lying on his back sobbing in pain, the other whimpering in a pool of his own piss. Colt gave them each a hard look, then spat on the ground between them.
Without looking back at Verity, he covered her hands with his, carefully pulled them away from his body, then headed back to his car.
***
Verity looked at the uninjured man cowering on the ground and raised her chin. “Call an ambulance for your friend. I think he might have broken his leg.”
“That guy is fucking crazy!” he screamed with wild, frightened eyes.
She advanced on the man, fists clenched, ready to finish what Colt had started. “I’ll call him back here and you can say that to his face!”
The man shook his head, putting his hands up in surrender. “No! Don’t do . . . just . . . just go.”
“You shouldn’t pick on defenseless people,” she said, reaching up to swipe at a runaway tear. “Shame on both of you. You got what you deserved.”
Turning around, she looked up into her brother’s frightened, confused eyes. “Come on, Ry.”
“Where we goin’, Ver’ty?”
“With Colton,” she said, taking Ryan’s hand and leading him across the parking lot to Colton’s car.
His trunk was open, and he was throwing the crowbar back inside as she approached.
“Your offer,” she called. “Does it still stand?”
“My . . .?”
“Your offer to put us up for a night or two.”
His brows furrowed, but he leaned closer to her, as though he couldn’t possibly be hearing her correctly. “After that . . . after what just happened, you want to . . .”
She nodded, holding his eyes. “Get the suitcases, Ryan.” As her brother collected their belongings, she nodded again. “Not after that. Because of that.”
His eyes widened. “But I just . . . I lost it. You should be . . . I mean, aren’t you . . .?”
“Scared of you?” She stepped closer to him. “No.”
He wasn’t handsome. Not by a long shot. But no one—not anyone—had ever stepped in to defend her brother like Colton Lane had just done. So she wasn’t afraid of him, and she certainly didn’t care that his wasn’t the prettiest face in the room. There was even a shocking part of her that didn’t care he’d just broken a man’s leg with a single, lethal blow. She’d deal with her feelings about that later. All she cared about right now was the fact that he had helped them, not once, not twice, but three times going on four. Her heart swelled with gratitude for this strange, gruff giant who’d been her savior today.
She reached up and cupped his left cheek, resting her palm against his hot, bristly skin and tilting her head to the side as she gazed up at him.