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For a moment, she stood on the back landing, breathing deeply until her heartbeats slowed and she could think straight.
She was about to step off the landing when the back door slammed open, and she turned halfway around to see who it was.
A man rushed through so fast that he plowed into Felina, nearly knocking her off the stoop.
He wrapped his arms around her to keep them both from flying off the landing.“What the fuck,” he muttered, teetering on the edge.
Headlights flashed at one end of the gravel parking lot.
The man’s hand slid into her front jeans pocket.
“Don’t touch me!”Felina demanded as she positioned her little can of pepper spray over her shoulder, hoping to get the man’s eyes and not hers.She pressed the button.
The man yelled and pushed her so hard she flew off the stoop, landing on her hands and knees in the gravel, the pepper spray skidding out of reach.
She looked back at the man above her.
“Fuck!”The man swayed on the stoop, rubbing his eyes.
One more step in the wrong direction and he’d fall, landing on top of Felina.
He took that step.
Felina tucked and rolled back toward the stoop as the man tumbled off the landing.
He landed in a heap on the gravel in the spot she’d just vacated.
He staggered to his feet, his eyes tightly closed.“Bitch!I’m gonna kill you!”
Before Felina could rise to her feet and run, a black SUV with darkly tinted windows blew through the back alley and skidded to a stop in front of the man she’d pepper-sprayed.
A big man, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses, leaped out of the SUV, grabbed the man by the shoulders, shoved him into the back seat and climbed in beside him.The door slammed, and the SUV spun out of the parking lot.
Felina lay in the shadow of the stoop, waiting for the SUV to move far enough away to allow her to read the numbers and letters on the license plate.Unfortunately, there was no license plate.
The SUV disappeared around the corner of the building.
Felina pushed to her feet and stared down at her bloody hands and torn jeans.
The back door opened, and a man stepped out.
Felina tensed, ready to run.
The man’s face was cast in shadow from the light shining down on the back of his head.
When he turned toward her, he murmured.“What the hell?”
Felina whirled to run.Before she could take two steps, the man flew off the stoop, landing in the gravel beside her.
He grabbed her arms and spun her around.
“Let go of me!”she yelled and pounded her fists against his chest.
“Felina, it’s me, Lucas,” he said in a low, rich tone.“It’s okay.It’s just me.”
She stared up into the warm brown eyes of the man who’d bought multiple bouquets of flowers in her shop.When her mind registered him as a friend rather than an enemy, she sagged against him.
“Sweetheart,” he said softly, “are you hurt?”
