closest door, an emergency door with an alarm on it. She knew it would open onto an outdoor courtyard full of picnic tables that would be empty in January. The door was usually propped wide open with a cinder block on summer nights.
Tonight, in the dark, people were heading for the main exit, so she and Graham were like salmon going against the flow as they headed to the much closer emergency exit. The band stopped playing, one guitar after the other petering out mid-chord. More women started screaming, which only added to the chaos.
Emily ducked instinctively as a bottle flew over their heads. She kept moving, the wall of warm man protecting her, his body all around her. The crowd jostled them—well, it jostled him. She only felt everything secondhand, a vibration at her back as his body absorbed any impact. In an amazingly short time, a matter of seconds, Emily and her bodyguard pushed open the silver bar of the emergency exit and burst into the crisp, cold air of the empty courtyard.
“Go on.” He let go of her so suddenly that she took a couple more steps before it registered that he’d changed directions and gone back to catch the door before it shut. No alarm was sounding; it had probably never been armed after the summer. Graham reached in, leaning in with his shoulder, and handed out another woman. Another. Then a steady stream of men and women started pouring out of the open door, dozens of people filling up the patio, bringing their loud and excited chatter out into the cold January night.
She lost sight of him.
Her ex, Foster Bentson, hustled out the door instead. Foster looked around the growing crowd, but there was no sharpness in his gaze, no efficient scan of the situation. Instead, Foster looked nervous, peeking back over his shoulder as he put distance between himself and the fight inside. Emily watched him for a moment. That wasn’t nervousness; it was guilt. He looked like a child afraid someone had seen him filch an extra dessert.
“Em! Hey, Em!” One of Foster’s friends, Doug, called to her from the rapidly growing outdoor crowd. “Have you seen Foster and Mike?”
She pointed briefly. “Foster’s over there.”
Tarzan had disappeared back into the jungle silently. Emily couldn’t do anything about it except wait and hope she’d see him again. Being Jane had its sucky side.
Emily crossed her arms to keep herself warm. It wasn’t freezing, but it was still in the forties, typical January weather around here. It was cold enough that she hoped the crowd would be able to go back inside shortly. She’d dressed for her night out in something fun and feminine, not warm. Her legs were bare from mid-thigh to the tops of her cowboy boots. She was going to get real cold, real quick.
Instead of walking over to Foster, Doug hollered at his friend to come over to them. The guys greeted each other like they hadn’t seen each other in months instead of minutes, performing some kind of an arm wrestler’s grip of a handshake and a bump of shoulders.
Oh, yeah. You’re a couple of he-men, the pair of you.
Emily looked around the growing crowd, but Graham was gone. It had been nice of him to get her out of the bar, but considering the way he’d helped the next few women as well, he’d just been a gentleman. He hadn’t wanted to have a drink with her, and he didn’t want to stick around and talk to her now. She wasn’t his Jane.
“Mike’s still inside,” Foster said. “I don’t know what happened. Some guy just pushed him, and next thing I knew, pool cues were flying.”
And then you ran outside to be safe and left Mike to fend for himself in there?
No wonder Foster had come out looking so guilty. He and Doug stared at one another in silence for a moment.
“But Mike can hold his own,” Doug offered.
“Oh, yeah. Mike can handle it.” Foster sounded eager to believe it.
“Yeah. Mike’s fine.”
Emily rolled her eyes even as she kept her arms crossed against the cold. “Whether Mike can handle himself or not, I’m sure he’d appreciate some backup.” She was half-tempted to go back inside, just to demonstrate how a loyal friend should act. But Mike was Foster’s friend, not hers.
Foster looked irritated. “Mike’s fine.”
“And you’re a wimp.” Then she smiled at him, very sweetly, just as he’d been begging her to do all night.
Foster opened his mouth, looking offended as all get-out, ready to tell her off.
Bring it, wimp. She was so in a mood for a fight. Nothing was going her way tonight. She’d come here to blow off some steam with girlfriends, because her family had spent the entire Christmas break trying to talk her out of the one career—the one life—she wanted. Talk had turned to ultimatums she couldn’t disobey. But her friends hadn’t shown up. Her ex had. Then a stranger named Graham had rocked her world just by standing still, but the man couldn’t be less interested in her. Frustration of every kind was boiling over.
Foster abruptly shut his mouth and settled for a sneer before he shuffled away a couple of feet.
Awareness prickled down her spine, and she turned around to find Graham back in his silent bodyguard mode, standing just behind her. He was scanning the crowd again, but he spared her a glance as she looked at him. He nodded.
Great. Apparently he communicated in nods, which she’d already misinterpreted once. She kept her arms crossed and crossed her ankles, too, squeezing her thighs together to keep warm, and tried communicating with words. “That was my ex and his friend.”
“I figured that out.”
Ah, he speaks. Emily waited, but that was apparently all Graham was inclined to say.
She tried again. “He’s harmless, but it was nice of you to step in earlier by the bathrooms. You don’t have to keep being my bodyguard, though. I can handle him.”
“There’s no gate in this fence,” he said. “We’re penned in if the fight spills outdoors.”
Okay, then. He was still in bodyguard mode. She might not need a bodyguard, but he’d be a heck of a good one, always on duty, always making people think twice with that air of danger about him.
She rubbed her arms. “The only way in and out is the front door where they check the IDs. We won’t be leaving for a while.”
“If the fight comes out here, we’ll have to go over the fence. I’ll give you a hand.” He glanced at her, and she knew, without a doubt, he was judging how much she weighed and how easy or difficult it would be to toss her over. It was a purely practical evaluation. There was nothing sexual in that look.
He nodded toward one section of the fence. “We’ll go there. I can see between the planks that there are no shrubs on the other side to get tangled in.”
It wasn’t that he was dangerous, she realized. It was that he was prepared to handle danger. “Do you always have an exit plan?”
“Always.”
She’d benefited from his last exit plan when they’d been inside, but it was kind of sad that he’d had one when he could have been smiling at her and enjoying a beer instead. Expecting the worst at all times must wear a person out.
“This bar usually isn’t this bad. Just a fistfight that’s over before it’s started, maybe one a week. This one’s probably over already. You won’t have to throw me over any fences.” She patted his arm without thinking, a couple of firm slaps. It was the same way she’d pat her horse’s neck after they’d worked the cattle.
Atta boy. We’re done now; you don’t have to keep watching the herd.
But this was no beast under her hand. This was a man, with hard muscles and an even harder expression on his face.
She pulled her hand back, embarrassed at her impulse, and tucked her hands back under her arms. She uncrossed her ankles, then crossed them the other way, trying to stay warm. There was just enough of a breeze to make the