purse and found the familiar shape of her door key. Oh, God. He was almost on her. She whirled, threw her purse at him with all her strength and turned to unlock the door.
Not fast enough.
Big, strong hands grabbed her upper arms. Yanked her around.
Pepper spray. She still had the pepper spray in her left hand. She lifted the small canister and mashed down the button.
“Oww. Bloody hell!” her attacker grunted.
He ducked away from the worst of the spray, barreled into her, and propelled both her and himself against her door. His weight knocked the breath out of her for a moment, during which he released her with one hand, just long enough to turn the doorknob. Which, of course, she’d managed to unlock right before he jumped her.
She opened her mouth to scream, but her attacker shoved her inside and slammed the door shut behind them before she could let it rip.
“Jeez, Hank. It’s me. Ashe.”
Her scream cut off just as it got started. “Ashe? What the heck?” She flipped on the light switch and stared at him in disbelief.
“Christ. Where’s a sink? I gotta rinse that pepper spray out of my eyes.” His eyes were, indeed, watering copiously, and he took a half-blind step toward her kitchenette.
“Are you going to attack me?” she asked suspiciously, backing away from him.
“Hell, no. I just took out the bastard who was about to jump you.”
Her jaw dropped. “Who was he?”
“No idea. Sink?”
“Oh. Over here.” Taking him by the arm, she guided him to her kitchen sink and turned on the spigot. It coughed then began to emit a sluggish stream of smelly New Orleans tap water.
He splashed great handfuls of it over his face again and again, rinsing away the pepper spray from around his eyes. His back muscles flexed under his taut T-shirt as he bent over the sink. Yowza. The guy was ripped. She hovered nearby, feeling helpless and guilty that she was the cause of his hissing breaths of pain and watering eyes. Eventually he stood upright. He was easily six foot two. And freaking built like an Olympic athlete.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand to forestall her. “Stay here.” She watched as he cautiously opened her front door. Stepped out onto the landing. Looked around. Came back inside and announced, “He’s gone.” She sagged in relief and realized abruptly that her knees felt weak.
Meanwhile, Ashe pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.
She eavesdropped shamelessly as he asked, “Is Bastien LeBlanc by any chance on duty tonight...? Perfect. Could you ask him to cruise by Malouf’s Oriental Rug Shop in the Warehouse District when he gets a chance? There was a minor scuffle in the alley beside the store, and a black-and-white drive-by would help ensure that no more trouble flares up. Tell him Asher Konig will owe him one...thanks.”
“What was that all about?” she demanded. “Who’s Bastien LeBlanc?”
“NOPD patrol officer. And an old friend. He’ll cruise by and make sure your would-be assailant doesn’t stick around for seconds.”
Wow. It must be nice to have one’s very own cop on call to do favors. If only she had the same. Maybe then she would know where her brother was by now. “You should have told me who you were instead of chasing me up the stairs,” she said accusingly.
“I didn’t know if I had knocked the bastard out fully or not,” he retorted. “Unlike on television, people can pop up pretty fast after getting walloped in the head. I needed to get you behind cover and in a defensible position before I bothered with niceties.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Sorry I nailed you with my pepper spray.”
“Don’t apologize to me. You didn’t realize who I was.”
Did he have to be so nice about it? Now she felt even guiltier than before. “Let me get you a towel. You’re soaked.”
She retreated to her bathroom, grabbed the cleaner of her two towels off the rack and hurried back to the main room. Sheesh. What was wrong with her? Was she afraid he was going to bolt from her place before she got a chance to flirt with him or something?
Oh, my. As she stepped into the living room, she was just in time to see him grab the back of his T-shirt and haul the wet garment over his head.
Oh, my. Acres of bulging pecs and rippling abs came into sight as he straightened. Top-tier male models had nothing on this guy’s physique.
“Wow,” she breathed. “You’re pretty without a shirt.”
He glanced up and smiled wryly. “Thanks. And thanks for the towel.” He lifted it gently out of her nerveless fingers and began toweling off his muscular acreage...while she stood there and basically drooled at him.
“You okay...?”
Wait. What? He’d asked her something. She replayed the garbled syllables and blurted belatedly, “Yeah, sure. I’m fine.”
“Let me see your hand.”
Huh?
Before she could figure out what he was talking about, he’d moved swiftly to her side and lifted her hand in his, palm up. Oh, hey. Look. There were three angry red scratches running the length of her hand and culminating in big gouges.
“Tweezers,” he bit out.
“Medicine cabinet.”
He turned and strode swiftly into the bathroom. Oh, God. A half dozen skimpy thongs and lacy bras were draped over the shower rod, drying. Too late to stop him.
Sure enough, he was smirking a little as he emerged from her postage-stamp-sized bathroom. But then he picked up her hand and started digging around.
“Youch!” She tried to yank her hand away but might as well have had it lodged in a block of concrete for all it moved.
“Splinters,” he muttered. “Stay still.”
Obediently she stopped squirming and leaned closer to watch as he deftly extracted several splinters from her hand. He was actually really good at it. His fingers were steady and swift. Exquisitely gentle. Then suddenly, he glanced up at her and asked, “You holding up okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“One more to go. You’re being very brave.”
This from a man who’d cracked heads twice in the same evening without breaking a sweat. The last splinter surrendered to him, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb across her palm, soothing it tenderly.
“I think the patient is going to live,” he murmured.
“Thank you. For everything.”
He looked up from her hand, and their gazes met—or rather, tangled together in a sexually charged dance of intense awareness of one another. Of hot, undeniable attraction, of hunger and need...
Yowza. The man sure knew how to, well, look at a woman.
Some sort of bright light flashed outside her window. “That would be Bastien,” Ashe said. “He’s shining his spotlight down the alley.”
“Wow. That was fast.”
“We’re good friends. Used to work together. He knows I wouldn’t bother him unless it was important.”
He took a careful step back from her and glided over beside the window like James Bond, peering furtively past the blinds at an oblique angle that spoke of cloaks and daggers. What was up with that? Her other window onto the street got the same treatment.
A text came in on his phone, and as soon as he read it, the tense set of his shoulders relaxed. “Bastien says the alley’s clear. He drove around the block a couple