What a Bachelor Needs (Bachelor Auction Book 4)(3)

She’d flinched at his approach and had tried to wedge herself between brick wall and dumpster. Hiding, but it hadn’t worked.

“I’m okay,” she’d offered next. “Just resting.”

Just king-hit by the human filth who’d fled the deserted street the moment Jett had turned into it. He’d seen the hit, seen her go down. He’d never been able to unsee it.

“Did he take anything? Did he rob you?” he’d asked and she’d started to laugh helplessly, hopelessly, lost in the grip of shock or hysteria.

She’d raised her hand to her head, tried to tuck her fall of chestnut brown hair behind one ear, and faint light had glinted off her wedding ring when her hand had come away gleaming. Her laughter had tapered off into puzzled silence as she’d looked at the blood uncomprehendingly before putting her hand to her head and collecting yet more of it to rub between thumb and fingers.

Jett had called emergency services and asked for an ambulance because she’d seemed so sleepy, so concussed, and she’d really panicked then. Tried to get up.

“I can’t,” she’d said, swaying like a willow in the wind, as she’d struggled to her feet. “I can’t be here when they come. I can’t afford it.”

He remembered asking if she’d rather be dead.

He remembered the look in her one good eye as she gave the question some serious consideration, and all the while, as she stared at him, she’d played with the ring on her finger.

“The answer’s no,” he’d growled. “Don’t you think that. Not ever. You’re worth something. You hear me?”

He didn’t think she had.

“Wait for the ambulance. I’ll wait with you and if this isn’t an emergency, they can bill me for the service.”

She’d started laughing again. “You should go,” she’d said. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

“Mardie, right? It’s Mardie Griffin? I know you from school.”

She’d started swaying again, until finally he’d told her to lean against the wall, which she did, her swollen cheek to the rough brown brick.

He remembered trying to get her to stay awake and talk to him, staying awake being the most important bit, and to this day he still remembered his silent curses when she began to slip into the grey of not-quite-there.

He remembered moving in and letting her lean on him when she’d threatened to topple over, and she’d been a lightweight beneath her thick winter clothing. Barely present, in body or in spirit, and he remembered telling her all sorts of random information about his own life. How he had four brothers, all older, and how as a kid he’d used to take off into the mountains, on whatever skis were handy, in order to escape all those brothers who were better, stronger, faster, and smarter than him. At everything. He’d told her about his first dog and his last one while they’d waited for help. He’d told her his favorite dessert was cherry pie from a little café on Flathead Lake, and how the first snow of the season was always the best day of the year and that gradually, over the years, skiing had become his thing. A jumble of words meant to keep her conscious and with him and to this day he didn’t know if she’d been listening to any of it, but her tremors had stopped and her breathing had evened out and the blood flow from the wound had slowed to a trickle by the time help arrived, although it started up again when he removed the pressure of his fingers.

He hadn’t been able to help much when it came to identifying her attacker. Male, medium build, fairly tall, hard to tell what kind of complexion given the moonless night and the lack of light in the alley.

The bastard could run; he’d give him that. The minute Jett had turned into the tiny back street and shouted, Mardie’s attacker had lit away like a rabbit.

Mardie hadn’t been able to describe her attacker either, and when one of the ambulance officers had asked if there was anyone she could call, she’d said no. Jett had looked to her hand, for her wedding ring, only this time her fingers had been bare.

He’d studied her beautiful, broken face again. And wondered.

Maybe this hadn’t been a random act of violence inflicted by a stranger. Maybe this had been a far more intimate betrayal.

“Thank you for helping me.” She’d offered up the rictus of a smile, right before they’d put her in the ambulance.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No!” Urgency sharpened her voice. “I’m good now. I’ll be okay.”

“It’s no trouble.”

“There’s no need.”

“I can call someone from Marietta. Your parents.”

“No.” She’d tried to smile again, and that was just all-round disturbing, this keeping up of appearances. “I’ve got this.”

“Mardie, if you’re in troub—

“Thank you for staying with me. I heard you. I’m worth something. But you need to go now. Please. You’ll only make it worse.”

Jesus.

The bitch of it all was he’d done what she asked. He’d walked away. And ended up at the hospital in Bozeman, three hours later, hovering in an antiseptic-grey hallway while James Prescott Senior, esteemed Marietta lawyer, came to collect her.

The distinguished lawman had stood over Mardie as she’d signed herself out of hospital against medical advice, the ink barely dry before he’d been herding her to the door with all the care one might afford an unwanted stray.