Black Rose

way back to get us.”
    “Good. Good.” She was not going to faint again. No matter what. “Well, we’re just going to press all sorts of charges.” She brushed at her hair, then her dress, and noticed a tear on the skirt. “Goddamn it, I bought this especially for today. All sorts of charges.”
    She drew in a breath, struggling with temper and giddiness. “Harper, honey, will you do me a favor and take this worthless piece of trash around front, you and Mitch wait for the police. I don’t want to see him for a minute or two. I might finish what Amelia started.”
    “Let me haul him up first.” Mitch bent down, yanked Bryce up on his buckling legs. Then with eyes burning green, he glanced toward Roz.
    “Sorry,” he said before he plowed his fist into Bryce’s face and sent him sprawling again. “Hope you don’t mind.”
    “Not a bit,” Roz told him, and despite the churning in her belly found her lips spreading into a wide, wide grin. “Not a damn bit. Harper, you mind taking it from here? I’d like a word with Mitch.”
    “Happy to.” He dragged Bryce off, and shot a look over his shoulder. “Mama, you sure can kick ass.”
    “Yeah.” She drew in a breath, let it out. “If it’s all the same to you,” she said to Mitch, “I’m just going to sit down right here until I get my feet back under me. That ass-kicking took something out of me.”
    “Wait.” He peeled off his jacket, spread it on the ground. “No point in messing up that dress any more than it is.”
    She sat down, then tipped her head onto his shoulder when he joined her. “My hero,” she declared.

EPILOGUE

    SHE SAT QUIETLY until her heart rate slowed to normal, until the tangle of nerves, of rage, of reaction in her belly eased a little.
    Broken glass glittered in the sunlight. Glass could be replaced, she reminded herself. She’d mourn her flowers, but she’d save some of the wounded, and she’d grow more.
    She’d grow an abundance of more.
    “How’s your hand?” she asked Mitch.
    “Fine. Good.” He all but spat it out. “He’s got a chin like a marshmallow.”
    “Big strong man.” She turned to wrap her arms around him, and didn’t mention Mitch’s raw, scraped knuckles.
    “He must’ve gone crazy to think he could get away with this.”
    “A little, I guess. I imagine he planned to be done wrecking my place before the reception was over. He’d figure we’d blame it on kids—or the police would. And all I’d have was a mess on my hands. A man like that doesn’t have any respect for women, doesn’t believe one can best him.”
    “One did.”
    “Well, two. One live one, one dead one.”
    Since the faintness had passed, she got to her feet, held out a hand for his. “She was like fury, Mitch. Flying over the ground, through tables, and so fast. Wicked, wicked fast,” she stated. “He saw her, Bryce saw her coming at him, and he screamed. Then she was choking him. Or, I think, making him believe he was choking. Her hands weren’t on him, but she was strangling him.”
    She rubbed her arms, then clutched gratefully at the lapels of his jacket, drawing them tight when he draped it over her shoulders. She didn’t know if her bones would ever be warm again.
    “I can’t describe it. I can hardly believe it happened. Everything so fast and wild.”
    “We could hear you shouting,” he explained. “You cost both me and your son several years of our lives. I’m going to say this once.”
    He turned, took the lapels himself to hold her still and facing him. “And you’re going to hear it. I respect and admire your steely will, Rosalind, and appreciate your temper and your capability. But the next time you so much as think about taking on some lunatic with a bat on your own, I’m doing some ass-kicking. And it’s going to be your ass with the bull’s-eye painted on it.”
    She angled her head, studied his face, and saw he meant exactly what he said. Son of a gun.
    “You know, if I hadn’t already decided on this thing I’m about to ask you, that would’ve done it. How could I resist a man who lets me fight my own battles, then when the moment’s right, steps in and cleans house? After the dust is clear he gives me a good piece of his mind for being an idiot. Which I was, no question, no argument.”
    “Glad we agree on that.”

    She took the last step toward him, lifted her arms, and hooked them around his neck. “I really love you.”
    “I really love you back.”
    “Then you