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I had no answer for him, so I didn’t bother giving him a false platitude.
“I’ll be there in five. I’m around the corner anyway because I was going to give you the news in person.”
Then he hung up.
“He’ll be here in a second,” I said as I looked from Ellen, who was still passed out cold on the floor, to Mattie. “You want to go get dressed?”
She rolled her eyes and cupped her braless boobs.
“Is that your way of telling me that I need to go put a bra on before Sheriff Summers sees my boobies?” she teased.
“Grab your stuff, then get into the bathroom and close the door. Lock it. I’ll go let him in,” I urged.
She did what I asked, and I only left the room when I heard Sunny knock.
After taking one last glance at the passed-out disgruntled ex-employee, I went to get the door.
When I came back into the room, it was to see Matilda swinging a fist toward Ellen’s face. Ellen who was once again standing with the bat in her hand.
Ellen fell backward when Mattie’s fist connected with her face.
This time she didn’t pass out. But she did drop the bat again.
“Nice,” Sunny said as he walked into the room behind me. “Ma’am, if you reach for that weapon again, I’ll be forced to tase you.”
Ellen didn’t reach for the weapon.
I walked to Matilda and took her hand, inspecting it.
“Nice punch,” I said.
“You made it look a lot easier than it was.” She winced. “That hurt.”
She opened and closed her fist multiple times to alleviate the ache, but it was pointless. Punching someone hurts. Punching someone in the face hurt worse than other places.
I snorted. “Punching something hurts.”
My hand was still smarting, and it’d been a bit since it’d made contact with Ellen’s face.
“You didn’t even flinch. Her face is a lot harder than I thought it would be.” She curled her fist in the palm of my hand. “But it was quite satisfying.”
Grinning, I pulled her into my side as I once again looked at Ellen.
“Why are you in my house?” I asked her point blank. “Tying up my fiancée?”
Said fiancée snorted.
So we didn’t have rings. But we did have the promises, and that was all I needed for now.
“I’m here because you ruined my life!” she cried out. “I tried to sue you, but you hired that lawyer that already contacted me this morning to tell me that my case would be futile to pursue! She called me stupid!”
I highly doubted Birdie had called her stupid.
Did I doubt that she’d made her feel that way? No. But actually calling her stupid? That was very unprofessional, and I doubted that she’d done it.
“I’m sorry you feel that way about what Ms. VanDerBeek told you,” Matilda said diplomatically. “But that doesn’t mean that you can come into someone’s house and tape them up. What were you going to do? Kill me?”
Ellen sneered at Matilda. “Nobody’s talking to you, dumbass.”
I had to physically fight the urge to punch her all over again.
Sunny, however, didn’t have the same problem. He jerked her toward him, then turned her so that she was facing the wall.
Which pissed her way the hell off.
Matilda sighed. “I feel like name-calling isn’t necessary right now. What I do feel like is necessary is getting down to the root cause for you to think that you can come into my home.”
“I had a key,” she grumbled, turning her face so that she could stare at Mattie over her shoulder. “I was allowed in legally.”
I winced.
I’d given her a key once to deal with a plumbing issue I’d had. I hadn’t realized she’d made a copy of the key, seeing as she’d given the original back.
“Well,” Mattie said, “then I’m fairly sure that you had an ‘I shouldn’t use that’ moment in your head before you came in. You probably knew damn well that you should’ve returned that key and didn’t. You may not have ‘broken in’ but you still entered without anyone in this house wanting you here. Not to mention you knocked me out to tie me up.”
Knocked her out.
I whirled and stared at Mattie.
I hadn’t thought about how she’d so easily complied with getting tied up…
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She smiled and patted my chest. “I’m fine. A little headache.”
I studied her face, then reached for her chin and tilted her head this way and that.
She didn’t look worse for wear. The only spot on her that I could see was some reddening skin around her wrists from where the tape had been.
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes at the look of understanding on her face, then said, “Shit.”
She pressed herself into me, and I couldn’t stop the fierce need that rose up and overtook me.
God, this could’ve been so much worse.
