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NATE WAS BEYOND ANGRY. Perci saw it in the controlled way he dealt with his brother and Joel’s deputies.
There was glass everywhere. Nate had blood staining the white shirt of his tux. He’d let her have two minutes to check the wounds. She’d pulled glass from his forearm, while trying to get control of herself.
She’d slipped his jacket off his shoulders less than two minutes before the bullet from a .38 had shattered the glass and embedded in the drywall behind them.
It had missed Nate by less than six inches.
Her eyes burned.
She never wanted anything to happen to this man.
Just how she felt for him was kind of hard for her to miss at the moment. It had become crystal to her when they’d been pressed together in the hallway. He had wrapped his body around hers. Protecting. Like always.
But she’d wanted to protect him, too. The urge had been just as deep and real and overwhelming as it had been in the moment when that beam had nearly crushed Pip.
Because she loved him.
Joel and his people looked around outside. There weren’t any tire tracks. No signs of who it had been.
Joel had found evidence himself of teenagers. Near where the gunshot had come from.
Even homemade targets.
No doubt Nate's brother would be asking every teenager in the county where they’d been tonight. Just how close she’d come to losing him sickened her.
When Joel offered to drive her home, while Nate cleaned up the mess and covered the window, she refused.
No doubt her brother-in-law knew exactly what had happened before they’d been interrupted.
Perci didn’t care. All that mattered to her was that she was right where she was supposed to be. With Nate.
She’d been fighting that long enough.
Perci looked at Joel and Nate, struck again by how perfect they looked. Mastersons were made right; that was for sure. “No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying with Nate. No matter what.”