His eyes, deep and gray, searched hers, scanning them like he couldn’t figure her out. Finally he shrugged, but it was a weak movement, like he was just as confused and overwhelmed as she was.
“No one. Just a guy.”
She shook her head. “No. You’re not just a guy. I’ve met plenty of guys. You’re . . . different.”
“Here’s the suitcases,” said Ryan cheerfully, bumping into her as he lugged them over to the trunk.
She dropped her hand and stepped away, staring at the ground for a moment to gather her wits before looking up at Colton. “So? Are we still invited? To stay at your place?”
Instead of answering, Colton reached down for the suitcases and hefted them into the trunk, slamming it shut before giving her a hard look.
“Go get the box and duffel,” she told Ryan, without dropping Colt’s eyes. She raised her eyebrows in question once they were alone again.
“I just broke a man’s leg,” Colt said.
“I saw.”
“You shouldn’t come home with me.”
She heard his words. She listened to them and processed them and let them roll around in her head for a long minute before deciding that, regardless of the viciousness of his attack on those men, he’d treated her and her brother with nothing but kindness today. He’d helped them, saved them, protected them, and, if anything, his anger over Ryan’s mistreatment endeared him to her even more.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.
His face turned from concerned to deeply irritated. “How have you stayed alive this long?”
From nowhere, a giggle started deep inside her, swirling up from her belly to her throat, tickling her tongue and opening her lips. It died before it could take flight, but its intention tilted her lips into a big smile.
“I don’t know.”
“I got ’em, Ver’ty,” said Ryan, standing beside her, holding the bag and box in his arms.
“Get in the backseat and buckle up, Ry,” she said, still grinning up at Colton Lane’s scowling face as an ambulance siren sounded in the distance. “It’s time to go.”
CHAPTER 4
Colt’s house wasn’t exactly glamorous.
That said, it was clean and tidy and a lot better than the Thrifty Inn.
He’d inherited it from Aunt Jane and Uncle Herman after they passed on, a few years back. They’d had only one child—his cousin, Melody—but she wasn’t in a position to take care of it, so the house, a 1960s brick Cape Cod cottage on a main road in Stone Mountain, had been left to him.
It had three small bedrooms, a bathroom upstairs and another down, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and a back patio. He kept the front lawn neatly mowed and mulched Aunt Jane’s hydrangeas by the front stoop every summer, but he didn’t have much of a green thumb, so he left it at that. Plus, with most of his time spent at The Legend of Camelot, he didn’t have a lot of free time for gardening.
For a few minutes, as they pulled out of the parking lot and headed back to the highway, he’d been worried about the police connecting him or Verity to the man’s injury, but she hadn’t used a credit card for her stay and didn’t have a permanent home address. The men could have taken down his license plate number as he peeled out of the parking lot, but he doubted it. One of them had still been on his back, and the other was leaning over his friend with his back to Colt’s car when he looked back in his rearview mirror. Besides, guys like that? It was unlikely the police would be called or a report would be filed. Colt would be surprised if they hadn’t already had some tangles with the law, and he was quite sure they weren’t interested in drawing attention to themselves.
Verity was uncharacteristically quiet as they drove the fifteen minutes from Decatur to Stone Mountain, staring out the window while Ryan mumbled “pop” and “’vic-ted” from the backseat until he dozed off. Colt hadn’t known her long, but a quiet Verity was new for him, and he wondered what was going on in her head. She was in desperate straits, that was for sure, and probably more than a little apprehensive about staying with him, even though she’d insisted she wasn’t afraid of him.
It had been a while since Colt had lost control to the degree he had today. Months, at least. Working as a Viking Knight allowed him a chance to fight