lived in areas like this all of her life and never once had she ever come close to being assaulted or robbed. For the most part, she hardly ever gave her own safety a thought. It just wasn’t one of the things she worried about.
But this put everything in a different light. This made her acutely aware of her own vulnerability, placing it smack on her doorstep. She didn’t like it.
Taking another breath, she pressed the three keys that universally connected people to help. Someone answered on the fourth ring.
“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”
Sarajane turned away from the scene and Jordan. It was the only way she could get herself to speak.
“Hey, man,” the assailant growled, “let me go. No need to call in the cops. This was a joke, just a joke.”
“Then you’d better do something about your sense of humor,” Jordan told him coldly.
The man tried to squirm, but with Jordan’s heel in his neck, there was nowhere he could go. “You want money? I’ll give you money.”
“Save it,” Jordan snapped. “You’re going to need it for your lawyer.” He glanced toward Sarajane to see how she was doing and yelled to her, “And we’re not taking on his case.”
Having given the pertinent information to the dispatch operator on the other end of the line, Sarajane ended her call. She turned around again as she returned her phone to her pocket. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the man squirming on the ground.
“No way in hell,” she affirmed.
The assailant tried to get up again and failed. “She was asking for it,” he spat out. And then he screamed again as Jordan yanked his arm up higher.
Sarajane jumped at the bloodcurdling sound. She looked at Jordan, but his expression was mild, as if he’d done nothing more than just stretched his own muscles.
She couldn’t draw her eyes away from Jordan. There was obviously more to the man than she thought.
“I’m taking you home, so don’t bother giving me any excuses or arguments,” Jordan informed her.
“I won’t be giving any,” she told him.
It was more than an hour later. The police had responded fairly quickly, arriving on the scene within ten minutes of her call. They took both her and Jordan’s statements, then cuffed the would-be assailant, depositing him in the back of the squad car amid a hail of profanities. One of the arresting officers had told Sarajane that she would have to come down to the precinct to formally press charges tomorrow.
She’d nodded, promising to be there first thing in the morning.
Jordan took her gently by the arm and brought her over to his vehicle, now parked several feet away from the bus stop; one of the officers had asked him to move it.
He looked at her carefully, wondering if he should insist that they go to the emergency room of the closest hospital. “You sure you’re all right?”
She wished he wasn’t being so nice. If he’d lectured her, she could have rallied, could have had something to fight. But he had come to her rescue and was being her knight in shining armor. How was she supposed to rail against that? He didn’t play fair.
Sarajane shrugged. “My faith in humanity’s a little shaken up right now, but yes, I’m all right.”
He opened the passenger door for her. “He didn’t hurt you?”
She didn’t sit down right away, afraid that her knees would start to buckle if she tried to get into the vehicle. She paused to pull herself together. “Maybe just my pride.”
He didn’t follow. “Your pride?”
Sarajane nodded. Her thoughts began to explore what might have happened if Jordan hadn’t shown up when he did. But it was too painful to think about and she pulled back. Damn it, she was supposed to be independent and self-sufficient. “I should have been able to handle the situation.”
She was being too hard on herself, and she definitely expected too much from herself. “From what I saw, it wasn’t a debate. If it had been, you would have cut him to ribbons. But you’re what—?” He looked at her. “Five foot nothing? That guy looked like he was at least twice your size.”
She raised her chin defensively. “He was bigger than you and you handled him,” she protested, then stopped abruptly. It had all happened so fast, she wasn’t certain exactly what she had seen. “How did you handle him, anyway? I mean…”
Her voice had trailed off. She’d obviously realized that she was insulting him, Jordan thought, but he took no offense. The other man had been an animal and probably outweighed him by fifty pounds, if not more.
“Easy. I was one of those ninety-eight-pound weaklings as a kid.” He continued to hold the door open for her. She took her cue and got in. Her knees were weak, but mercifully didn’t collapse out from beneath her. He raised his voice as he rounded the hood to get to his side of the vehicle. “My father got me a personal trainer to build up my confidence and my body.”
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