Rough Around the Edges (5 page)

His answer seemed to satisfy Cameron, who disappeared into his office with a wave and final goodbye.

The gym was empty for about half a second before two guys entered through the front door.

Ryan strode past them and stepped out onto the evening street.

It was cool out, and relatively quiet. The combination tempted Ryan’s mind to wander, and he let it. As his shoes hit the sidewalk, he thought of Ally. Nothing specific about her, at first – just the way she looked and sounded, and the way he imagined she’d feel beneath his hands. His thoughts were just taking a more specific turn along those lines when his gaze flickered over a silhouette a block or so ahead, where someone else walked the lonely sidewalk.

At first, he didn’t know what was wrong, only that something was. A sharp bolt of unease zipped down his spine and made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

Then his mind caught up with his senses and he zeroed in on exactly what was wrong with the picture in front of him – the shadows to the side of the solo-walker were moving, stepping out of the dark shelter cast by a looming four-story warehouse.

The shadows belonged to two men. The person who’d just been about to walk past them was undeniably a woman – tall but slender, almost willowy.

Clearly, she hadn’t realized they were there. She jumped, falling back into a defensive position with a sound of surprise. “What are you doing?” Her voice was familiar, though he’d never heard the distinct note of fear in it before. So was the sheen of her black hair as she edged backward, toward the hazy circle of light cast by a streetlight.

The woman was Melissa, and the two men were closing in on her.

Ryan dropped everything – literally – and burst into a sprint.

He was halfway there by the time the noise of his bag hitting the cement echoed from behind him. Everything rushed by in a blur of brick and light, his surroundings dimmed by the intensity of his focus on the three people ahead. All he saw was Melissa and the danger that was closing in on her in the form of two men. One of them reached for her just as Ryan arrived on the scene.

“Stop!” Melissa’s voice was higher now, her tone somewhere between definite fear and a threat. She began to draw back her right arm, like she was going to strike the man closest to her.

But there were two of them, and they laughed as she tensed, telling them to leave her alone.

The man’s fingers brushed Melissa’s upper left arm – the arm where her purse hung. But it wasn’t the handbag’s strap that he attempted to latch on to; it was her bicep.

He never got a chance to establish a firm hold. Ryan reached for the man and gripped him hard by one shoulder, jerking him back.

The guy wasn’t much smaller than he was, but he’d been so focused on Melissa that he hadn’t noticed Ryan approaching until too late. The force of Ryan’s jerky movement went through the man’s body, causing his neck to snap back.

Chapter 3

Ryan drew his fist back and let it fly in a movement he’d practiced so many times that his training had blurred with instinct. The fact that there were two men meant that he had to move fast, and full speed left no room for mercy. Not that either of them deserved it.

The man’s expression of surprise had just transitioned into anger when Ryan’s knuckles landed squarely in the center of his face. The crunch of cartilage was loud. Ryan wasn’t sorry – it seemed natural to relish the sound of damage, if only because it meant he was succeeding at what had suddenly become the most important thing in his world – protecting a woman in trouble.

The man crumpled, catching himself with a hand thrown backward against the sidewalk as he clapped the other to his face, swearing. The expletive came out muffled, the word broken just like the speaker’s nose.

“Fuck!” The other man’s curse rang loud and clear, echoing down the street as he took a step backward from Melissa, eyeing Ryan warily.

Ryan lunged for the man, but he was already running, leaving his friend to fend for himself.

Apparently reluctant to be abandoned, the injured man scrambled to his feet and hurried in the same direction, mumbling a string of curses that mixed with the wet, bubbling sound of blood flowing through his damaged nasal passages.

Ryan’s muscles quivered with the instinct to give chase, fueled by bitter adrenaline. Taking control and reining in the urge, he resisted, staying at Melissa’s side instead. The whole point had been to protect her, and he couldn’t do that if he left her alone. “Are you all right?”

She met his gaze with eyes that were still wide. “Yeah… Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

He nodded.

“I had no idea you were out here,” she said, looking from side to side as if wondering where he’d come from. “When you pulled that guy away from me, I think I almost collapsed from relief.”

“I left the gym about a minute after you did. I was only a block away when those shitheads crawled out of the shadows.” Now that he stood beside Melissa, it was obvious that they’d been lurking in the adjacent alley and had come out when she’d walked by. They’d probably been lying in wait for someone to mug – or worse.

The sheer relief evident on Melissa’s face said that she realized that. “Thanks,” she echoed. “Really, thank you.”

Ryan shrugged, instinctively trying to put her at ease. “What kind of idiots try to jump someone this close to an MMA gym?”

That did the trick – Melissa laughed, though the sound was faintly shrill. “I don’t know, now that you put it that way.”

Ryan slipped a hand into his pocket. “I’m going to call the police and report this – if I see those guys around here again, I want to be able to call in and have something done about it. What do you say we wait for an officer to respond?”

Melissa hesitated for a moment. “I’ve got work, but… No, you’re right. We should report this. I’ll stay.”

It didn’t take long for a pair of officers to arrive at the scene. Ryan and Melissa both answered their questions, and Ryan was careful to give as much detail as possible. The thought of two thugs lurking near Knockout ready to ambush women made his gut cramp up with hot anger and sharp worry. What if they waited for Melissa again? Or Ally? His blood ran cold as he imagined what might happen if either of the women were ever attacked and no one else was around.

Yeah, they both knew how to fight, but that didn’t make them invincible. Far from it. They were both a lot smaller and lighter than Melissa’s assailants had been, and what if the men were armed next time?

He did his best to shake off the worries. Shit like this happened. It didn’t mean it would happen again. He was doing everything he could about it.

“Did you see what they were wearing?”

The officer’s question helped to snap Ryan out of his haze of what-ifs.

“Yeah.” He rattled off a description of the nondescript, dark-colored jeans and hoodies the men had been wearing. Probably not a hell of a lot of help, but it was what it was.

When they finished answering questions, the officers told Ryan and Melissa to call if they saw the men in the area again.

Ryan agreed, thoughts of Ally in danger still racing through the back of his mind, making him sick with residual anger.

“I’ll walk you wherever you’re going,” he said as the police cruiser pulled away from the curb. “Are you heading to work now?”

Melissa nodded. “I work at Annalisa’s.”

“Never heard of it.” Even after nine months, he still wasn’t as familiar with the city as he should’ve been. It was hard to work up the will to explore when he didn’t particularly want to be there in the first place.

“It’s a little bit of a walk. If you don’t have time, that’s okay.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have time, and even if I didn’t, I’d make it.”

He escorted Melissa to Annalisa’s, which turned out to be a restaurant, small and on the cheap side, but family friendly. They hadn’t spoken much during the walk there, but he felt obliged to say something as he stopped a few yards from the door. “Be careful, all right? Maybe have someone else drive you home instead of walking.”

Melissa nodded as she reached for the door and let her fingers rest on its glass surface. “All right. Tonight, I will. Thanks again. Why don’t you come in for dinner?” She smiled. “It’ll be on the house.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” A part of him wouldn’t have minded lingering at the diner, but over the past nine months, it had become second nature for him to turn down such opportunities. Old habits died hard, and loneliness had become an old habit.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Be careful walking home. I feel bad that you came all the way out here for me.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He wasn’t sad to see her go in the way he’d been sad to see Ally go that afternoon. But watching her disappear into the brightly-lit interior of the restaurant was still a bitter experience, mostly because the sense of purpose that had filled him for the past hour disappeared when the door fell shut.

The night’s cold touched him for the first time as he turned away and began the journey back to his apartment. The heat that had burnt in every fiber of his muscles during his workout and the confrontation on the street had evaporated, leaving him vulnerable to air that was chilly enough to turn his breath to fog.

He’d made it about two blocks when the noise of feet pounding against pavement sounded from behind him. Someone was running, not walking, toward him.

A hint of adrenaline crept back into his veins and circulated quickly, calling his fighting instincts back to life. Melissa was safe inside the restaurant, but the memory of her attackers was still fresh. He drew in a mouthful of cold air that dragged down his throat and spiraled into his lungs, chilling him from the inside out as he turned.

“Hey!” Before he fully faced the approaching individual, a voice cut through his instinctual assumptions, slashing the cords that tethered his consciousness to suspicion.

Ally
. He already knew her voice. But what was she doing on that sidewalk? Did she work at Annalisa’s too?

No, she wasn’t dressed for work. Her hair hung in loose waves over her shoulders, and he hadn’t seen many waitresses work in jeans.

He stood frozen as she jogged toward him. Even with her jacket on, he could make out the motion of her breasts rising and falling with each step. She looked more like a fantasy than a real woman as she approached him.

She stopped a few feet from him and exhaled, her breath curling over her parted lips in tendrils of fog like white ribbons.
“Melissa told me what happened. Thank you.”

The cloud of her breath dispersed as she met his eyes, her lips still cracked. They were slightly glossed, and the wet-looking layer caught the streetlight in a way that made him wonder if the gloss was flavored.
“Why don’t you come inside for dinner?”

She’d worded her invitation almost exactly like Melissa had, but the words sounded so different when she spoke them. Every fiber of Ryan’s being responded to the innocent suggestion, sending blood flooding close to the surface of his skin, which tingled as he stared back at her.

The nearby streetlight was bright and she was standing at an angle that allowed the light to catch her eyes, illuminating her dark irises. His heart pumped a little harder as her expression reminded him of the way she’d looked at him when he’d won his last fight on Friday night, securing his position as middleweight champion for the week.

He smiled without meaning to. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“No.” She hurried to speak, as if he’d either been dead wrong or dead right. He held onto hope that it was the latter as she continued to hold his gaze.
“It’s not like that. I mean, dinner is on the house – it’s the least anyone can do. You might’ve saved Melissa’s life.” Her eyes shone earnestly in the streetlight.

Well, he could be serious too. Taking half a step forward, he left maybe a foot of space between their bodies.
“Ally Rivera, if I sit down and have dinner with you, it’s going to be a date. So if that’s not what you’re offering, I’m going to have to say no thanks.”