Susan Andersen - Coming Undone

She screamed and Jared caught his first entire-Peej glimpse since entering the room. Stuck like a turtle on her back, her eyes showed too much white and tendons stood like overburdened cables in her neck. A chunk of hair had been hacked off about chin length on the side nearest him, but it was the knot on her cheekbone, which was beginning to bruise, and the blackening eye swelling shut above it that really made Jared see red.

His professionalism went up in flames.

He swung Menks around by the arm still in his grip, then sent him crashing to the floor with a powerhouse right hook to his jaw.

The guy screamed like a girl and stared in horror at the blood that spattered the hand he'd raised to his mouth. "You can't strike me! God has charged me with a mission."

"Yeah, me, too. And I'm glad you're at peace with Jesus, buddy," he growled through clenched teeth, "because I'm gonna send you home to Him." He hauled Menks to his feet only to flatten him once again. "Oops. Look at that. It appears I missed the damn chair entirely when I tried to seat you. Tell you what, Luther. Why don't you go ahead and take a swing at me just to even things out."

Menks didn't move an inch from where he was sprawled on the floor. "The law of Jesus Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death." He pinned Jared with his fanatic's eyes. "I have no argument with you. May God grant you repentance so that you may know the truth, that you may come to your senses and escape the snare of the devil. My mission is withher, the devil's whore."

Jared's temper spiked another degree hotter. "Get up, tough guy," he said. "You're real free and easy with your fists and your scissors when your opponent is a woman who weighs maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Let's see how you deal with someone your own size." Oh, man, he wanted the SOB to take a swing. Just one lousy swing. It was all the excuse he'd need to lose that last thin thread of control preventing him from annihilating the bastard. Without taking his eyes off his downed quarry, he leaned down and righted P.J.'s chair.

"You sure you don't want to take a shot?" he demanded of Menks when she tried to stifle a gasp of discomfort. "No? Okay then, don't say I didn't offer." And filled with a cold, killing rage, he put the power of his shoulder behind the punch he threw. Pain sang up his arm when his knuckles connected with Menks's face, and cartilage popped audibly in Menks's neck as the man's jaw followed the trajectory of Jared's fist. "I'll make you a deal, Luther. If you're still alive when the cops arrive we'll call it even. That's better odds than you gave Priscilla."

"She is Jezebel." Menks's eyes burned with conviction even as he cowered away from Jared. "I thought she was pure but-"

"Sheis pure, you son of a bitch!" And damn it to hell, although her bruises were Menks's responsibility, the situation washis fault. His father had always said he was a fuck-up and he'd just proved the old man right. His pride and goddamn need to allow P.J. her distance for his own emotional safety had almost cost him the woman he needed more than-

No. He gave himself a mental shake. This was not the time to get into this. His lack of professionalism had already nearly cost P.J. her life.

Stowing his guilt in a dark corner of his mind already teeming with like-minded emotions, he shoved Menks into a chair, then bent down and whipped P.J.'s belt from her ankles. "Change of plans. I'm not going to jail for stomping the life out of a twisted bastard like you," he snarled as he secured Menks's legs. When he untied the bandana from around P.J.'s wrists and saw her swollen fingers, however, he didn't hesitate to wrench Menks's arms behind his back with unnecessary force. And if he tied the bonds a little too tightly:?

Tough shit.

He lifted P.J. from her chair, supporting her when her legs buckled. Fighting the rage that threatened to consume him all over again when he assessed her bruises and contusions, he touched them with gentle fingertips. He could feel the tremors that racked her body as she leaned against him. "Easy, baby, just hang on," he murmured as gently as he could manage with all this unspent adrenaline thundering through his veins.

Just then Nell burst into the room. "Oh, God, oh shit," she moaned when she took in the situation.

"Here." Pulling his cell phone from his belt loop, he tossed it to her. "Call 911. We need the cops and an EMT. Then get hold of Security." Looking down at P.J. again, he assured her quietly, "The paramedics will be here to check you out real soon."

It only took minutes for word of P.J.'s encounter to spread. Hank arrived and a mere moment later so did Eddie. In short order the room started filling up with roadies, extra musicians, the sound guy and two women from the front office. Last to appear was a man Jared recognized as the arena security head.

"I don't need the paramedics," P.J. said, and to his horror her eyes filled up with tears that silently spilled over.

"Aw, man, don't cry," he pleaded, wrapping his hand around the back of her head and pressing her face into his chest. God, she was killing him here. His control had all but disappeared this afternoon. For the first time in fifteen years he'd failed to stop and count the consequences before he'd acted, and only some failsafe embedded deeply within had prevented him from beating Menks into a coma for what he'd done to P.J. He needed to get back command of his emotions. "Please, baby, don't cry." Over the top of her head he watched the security guy approach and narrowed his eyes. He had more than a few choice words to say to the man.

"I'm not crying," she denied gruffly, rubbing her uninjured eye against the swell of his pec. "But I don't want a paramedic. I just need you. I was so scared, J." She pressed herself against him as if trying to climb inside. "God, I thought I was dead for sure and I hadn't even told you I love you."

He froze. Joy warred with terror and he couldn't say which was winning. A dozen thoughts and twice as many emotions jumbled his mind. But only one emerged.

"You don't really mean that, Peej," he assured her coolly. "You've been through hell and had the crap scared out of you. You're not thinking straight."

A couple of uniformed cops entered the room barking questions. He felt a shameful sense of relief as he turned Peej over to Nell and left to go answer them. Then he'd have to see about canceling tonight's concert and imparting a few home truths to the head of security.

P.J. was finally safe and his job was done. It was hard to believe, but the two facts were bound to sink in any minute now.

And as soon as they did, he was sure this two-ton rock crushing his chest would lift.

FOR THREE LONG DAYS NOW, in the wake of Luther Menks's assault, P.J. had held it together. She was still holding it together when Jared came barging into her dressing room in Cleveland's Gund Arena and blew her hard-earned calm all to hell and gone.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he said, banging through the door without so much as a hello. "Youshouldn't do it. It's too damn soon."

She shrugged, hanging on to her composure by refusing to look directly at him.

But he just couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. "Are you nuts, Peej?"

Everything inside of her coalesced into a hot ball of anger and slowly, breathing carefully, she redirected her attention, bringing her gaze from just beyond his left shoulder to meet his stormy eyes. "Excuse me?" Her voice was quiet, but if he was half as smart as she'd always thought he was he'd be very, very careful about what came out of his mouth next.

Apparently she'd overestimated his intelligence.

"Look at you!" He took a step closer, scowling down at her. "The swelling might have gone down, but your cheekbone still looks tender and your eye's still black." He squinted at the orb under discussion. "Well, more green and purple, but the point is, you've got a way to go yet in your recovery. You sure as hell don't need to put yourself through a big-ass press conference. What was McGrath thinking to set it up so soon? What areyou thinking to agree to it?" He took another step nearer. "I repeat, are younuts? "

Tossing aside the stage makeup she'd been contemplating using to minimize her black eye, she marched up to him. "I guess I must be or I would have wised up by now and stopped putting up with your lame game of emotional dodge-'em."

"Huh?" He stilled, looking down at her with eyes gone wary. "What did I do?"

I will not lose it, I will not lose it."Aside from insulting my intelligence and treating me like a five-year-old, you mean?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded indignantly, bending his head until their faces were nose-to-nose. "I've never treated you like a five-year-old in my life."

"The hell you haven't!" Her last fragile grasp on the react-first-think-second temper she'd worked so hard to rise above simply came undone. She thumped her finger into his sternum. "Don't you pretend to be concerned about me," she snarled, jabbing his chest in cadence with every word.

He had the nerve to look thunderstruck. "Iam concerned-"

"You've been avoiding me like an Ebola outbreak!"

"That's bullshit." Wrapping his fist around her drilling finger, he prevented her from poking at him any further but tightened his grip when she tried to snatch it away. Dark brows gathering over his nose, he looked down at her. "Jesus, Peej, I've just been busy. Between dealing with the cops, the press and the arenas for the concerts we had to cancel, there were a hundred things to do."