Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale) (5 page)

He gasped, the crowbar high over his head, much higher than the can of pop had been when the two men were throwing it back and forth. Frozen, as though his body could move only if she gave him leave, he panted through a fog of fury, waiting for her to speak again . . . but she didn’t.

She didn’t say anything at all.

Out of nowhere, her small hands locked around his chest, embracing him. Her small breasts pressed up flush against his back, her cheek rested on his T-shirt. He felt the in and out of her chest as she drew quick, even breaths behind him.

“No more,” she said gently, her voice calm, soft, and white, cutting through the raw, red haze of his rage. “That’s enough, now.”

Panting in jagged spurts, he lowered the crowbar slowly, closing his eyes and clenching them shut for a moment before opening them again. His eyes shuttered back and forth between the two men—one lying on his back sobbing in pain, the other whimpering in a pool of his own piss. Colt gave them each a hard look, then spat on the ground between them.

Without looking back at Verity, he covered her hands with his, carefully pulled them away from his body, then headed back to his car.

***

Verity looked at the uninjured man cowering on the ground and raised her chin. “Call an ambulance for your friend. I think he might have broken his leg.”

“That guy is fucking crazy!” he screamed with wild, frightened eyes.

She advanced on the man, fists clenched, ready to finish what Colt had started. “I’ll call him back here and you can say that to his face!”

The man shook his head, putting his hands up in surrender. “No! Don’t do . . . just . . . just go.”

“You shouldn’t pick on defenseless people,” she said, reaching up to swipe at a runaway tear. “Shame on both of you. You got what you deserved.”

Turning around, she looked up into her brother’s frightened, confused eyes. “Come on, Ry.”

“Where we goin’, Ver’ty?”

“With Colton,” she said, taking Ryan’s hand and leading him across the parking lot to Colton’s car.

His trunk was open, and he was throwing the crowbar back inside as she approached.

“Your offer,” she called. “Does it still stand?”

“My . . .?”

“Your offer to put us up for a night or two.”

His brows furrowed, but he leaned closer to her, as though he couldn’t possibly be hearing her correctly. “After that . . . after what just happened, you want to . . .”

She nodded, holding his eyes. “Get the suitcases, Ryan.” As her brother collected their belongings, she nodded again. “Not
after
that.
Because
of that.”

His eyes widened. “But I just . . . I
lost
it. You should be . . . I mean, aren’t you . . .?”

“Scared of you?” She stepped closer to him. “No.”

He wasn’t handsome. Not by a long shot. But no one—not
anyone
—had ever stepped in to defend her brother like Colton Lane had just done. So she wasn’t afraid of him, and she certainly didn’t care that his wasn’t the prettiest face in the room. There was even a shocking part of her that didn’t care he’d just broken a man’s leg with a single, lethal blow. She’d deal with her feelings about that later. All she cared about right now was the fact that he had helped them, not once, not twice, but three times going on four. Her heart swelled with gratitude for this strange, gruff giant who’d been her savior today.

She reached up and cupped his left cheek, resting her palm against his hot, bristly skin and tilting her head to the side as she gazed up at him.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice a broken whisper.

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.”

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 in the arena every night and twice on Saturdays and some Sundays, and sure, it was play-fighting, but it still burned off the steam of rage that he carried inside.

But seeing that redneck shitbag open that can of pop in Ryan’s face made something inside him snap. All his anger—all his deeply buried fury—had rushed to the surface so fast, it should have made him dizzy. Did he feel bad for breaking that dickweed’s leg? God help him, he didn’t. Hopefully a few months in a cast would make that asshole think twice before he picked on someone who clearly wasn’t playing with a full deck.

Sighing softly, he shot another look at Verity, who worried her bottom lip between her teeth.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She turned from the window, her face brightening with a small smile like she knew he needed it. “I was just thinking . . . life is real strange, isn’t it?”

“Guess so,” he said, turning off the highway, relieved to hear her talking again.

“This morning I woke up with one life, and tonight I go to sleep with a different one. What else do you know can change that fast?”

“The weather,” he said, looking out the windshield, stopping for a red light.

He was surprised to feel her pointy little elbow jab him in the forearm. “Did you just make a joke?” She gasped, grinning at him. “I may pass out if you did.”

He pursed his lips. “No need for the vapors.”

“A
second
joke?” she asked, laughing softly. “Wonders never cease!”

Colt glanced over at her, watching her dimples as they deepened, making her look impish and young. Had he thought her plain earlier today? Fuck, he’d been blind. She wasn’t plain. She wasn’t even just pretty. She was . . . she was . . .

“Light changed,” she said, and Colt jerked his gaze away from her.

. . . different.

“What you did back there?” she said.

His fingers curled around the steering wheel, bracing himself for censure or fear. “Mmm.”

“Seemed like maybe you’d done it before.”

“I fight in the show every night.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “I didn’t think of that.”

They were almost at his house now.

“You sure you don’t want me to take you to a hotel? There are a couple—”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then,” he said, turning right, into his driveway.

Instead of pulling into the dark garage, he stopped in front of it, putting the car in park and cutting the engine. He sat still for a moment, waiting for her to say something. When she didn’t, he turned to look at her, and the sweetness of her face made his breath catch.

She stared at the modest house like it was something special or beautiful, her lips parted and her eyes soft. He watched as her gaze touched softly on the white-painted brick, the bright blue hydrangeas that flanked the front steps, the diamond-cut glass windows on either side of the front door, and the bay window in the living room.

“This is your house?” she murmured.

“It’s not much, but . . .”

“I love it,” she said, turning to smile at him. “I don’t know what I expected. You’re such a giant, I guess I thought you’d live in a . . .”

“What? A cave? A castle?”

She shrugged, looking back at the house, her face filled with wonder. “It’s just a nice little house.”

He sighed. “I’m a knight, not a king.”

When she didn’t respond, he opened his door and left her there, popping open the trunk and taking out the two suitcases. Peeking in the rear window, he saw that Ryan was still asleep, so he closed the trunk gently and picked up the cases, heading for the front door. Behind him, he heard her car door open, and he looked back to see her following him.

“Okay if I let him nap for a few more minutes?”

“He’ll be okay?”

She nodded. “He sleeps like a log until I wake him up.”

Unlocking the front door, he preceded her into the house, heading straight up the stairs. “I sleep downstairs. You two can stay up here. Bathroom.” He gestured to the door in the middle of the hallway at the top of the stairs. “One bedroom left. The other right.”

“Does it matter which one I take?”

“The left one belonged to my cousin, Melody. May as well take that one,” he said, placing her suitcases on the carpeted floor of the small hallway. He hadn’t redecorated the upstairs bedrooms, so Melody’s room was still wallpapered with bunches of purple violets, and his old room, to the right, was still wallpapered with airplanes. He figured Ryan might like those old planes covering the wall, and he liked the idea of Verity waking up to flowers tomorrow morning.

“Thank you.”

He turned to face her, and suddenly the tiny hallway felt so small, it was like there wasn’t enough air for both of them. She looked up at him like he was Superman and Batman and every other superhero rolled up into one stupid Viking Knight. And that’s when he knew: he had to be careful. He couldn’t get attached to her. He’d have to fight against it because the way she looked at him made him feel invincible—like a hero or a knight or just a genuinely good guy who didn’t just break some asshole’s leg.

“I want you to know,” he said quickly, gulping softly before continuing, “what I did to that guy? I was mad. But I . . . I’d never hurt you . . . you
or
your brother.”

She nodded, her expression serene, her voice gentle. “I know that.”

For no good reason he wanted to yell at her,
You don’t know that! You don’t know anything about me! You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know what I’ve done. Don’t be so fucking trusting or you’re going to get hurt!

Feeling a scowl coming on, he looked down at his shoes and muttered, “I didn’t plan for comp’ny tonight, but I’ll see what I’ve got in the fridge.”

“Please don’t go out of your way.”

“No bother,” he said, taking a step to edge past her and head downstairs.

“Colton,” she said.

He stopped, his hip flush with hers, excruciatingly aware of her small, soft body beside him. He was so close to her that he could smell her—laundry detergent and sunshine and kindness and goodness—and he fought the urge to close his eyes and inhale as deeply as possible, to lock away the memory of this lovely girl standing in his home, to tuck it away for another time, when she was long gone and he was all alone again.

Her voice was warm and soft. “‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem like enough, but I don’t know what else to say.”

He remembered the feeling of her small arms embracing him in the parking lot of the motel—the way she pressed her body against his, extinguishing the fire of his fury with her gentle calm. Without a word she had soothed the raging beast inside him, her touch transforming him from a maniac to a man. What powerful magic she wielded inside her small body, and how desperately he craved its peace.

They were both still. Unmoving. Barely breathing, though he could feel the slight movement of her chest beside him as she inhaled and exhaled in shallow breaths. She was so close that his skin prickled with awareness, with longing, with excitement, with overwhelming attraction, and, ultimately, with a cruel warning:

Don’t want what you can’t have, stupid.

“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly, brushing past her to head down the stairs.

***

An hour later, Verity and Ryan sat across from Colton at a picnic table on his back patio eating tuna salad sandwiches on hot dog buns with potato chips and pickles on the side. It wasn’t fancy, but Colton had prepared it himself and set the simple table with paper plates, napkins, and three cans of pop. Everything was ready when she and Ryan had finished settling in and come back downstairs.

He was so strange, this unlikely knight who had grudgingly taken them under his wing, helping them get jobs and giving them a place to stay. She hadn’t known him longer than a handful of hours, and he groused and huffed and scowled near constantly. Yet, in his own way, he had saved them many times today, and Verity couldn’t help the warmth she felt toward him. Wait, warmth? No, scratch that. She looked at him across the table and felt her tummy fill with butterflies, making her breathless. Whatever she was feeling, it was far more exciting, more captivating, more intoxicating, than warmth.

No one in her life had really looked out for her. Her mother was forty-six when she’d had Verity, her father fifty-two. Ryan was their main concern, for obvious reasons, and Verity, by and large, was left to fend for herself. She’d spent a lot of time at her friend Elaine’s house growing up. When she and Elaine started budding breasts, it was Elaine’s mother who took the girls to Walmart for training bras. When she got her first period, it was Elaine’s mother who instructed her on how to use a tampon. Her own mother, while sweet-natured, had her hands full with tending to Ryan and the farm. And her father, who’d managed the pecan farm with only Ryan for help, just didn’t have a whole lot of time for his daughter.

It wasn’t an unhappy life, really, but Verity had grown up feeling strangely lonesome. She had a good friend, parents who made sure she had all the basics, and a brother who followed her around like a puppy. But she didn’t have an
older
brother. Not in the conventional sense. Not in the way her heart had been promised, by virtue of their birth order. Not in the sense of someone who looked after her and protected her and made sure the other boys treated her right. Despite their biological birth order, Verity was the older child in her family, and because of it, she would long for an older sibling for the rest of her life.

So to meet Colton, and for him to help her, to be kind to her, to defend and protect them, and give them a place to stay? He had no idea, of course, but his actions today had inadvertently fulfilled a longing—a visceral
need
—deep inside Verity’s heart, and it made her attachment to him quicken. He was older by a few years, she guessed, and sexier than any man had a right to be, which meant he was way out of her league, but she couldn’t help the furious fluttering of her heart when she looked at his face across the table.

“My new bedroom has planes on the wall,” said Ryan, breaking the silence. “I never been on a plane, but I still like them.”

“It isn’t your
new
bedroom,” said Verity gently, giving Colton an apologetic look. “We’re just here for a day or two.”

Colton shifted his eyes from her to her brother. “Glad you like the room.”

“Was it used t’be yours?” asked Ryan.

Colton nodded before taking a large bite of his sandwich.

“Ain’t had my own room since we left Strawberry Road,” said Ryan. “And Ver’ty says I snore like a loco—loco—uh, a loco—”

“—motive.” She nodded at Ryan, then grinned at Colton. “It’s true. Just be glad
your
bedroom is downstairs.”

“Oh, gosh!” exclaimed Ryan, suddenly leaping up from the table and knocking over Verity’s can of pop. “You got rabbits here. Ver’ty, look! Our new house got rabbits!”