Mario locked up the front and they climbed the steps down to the main floor of the building before making their way across the hardwood to the hall on the other side. Once there the bouncer continued toward her office. Peter stopped him. “Hey man, why don’t you head on out? I’ll see to it that Leslie gets to her car safely.”

The bouncer cast a quick glance down the hall. “Sounds good.” He smiled. “The lady won’t be expecting me home early. This will be a nice surprise.”

Mario wished him a good night and went out the back door, muttering with a frown, “I thought I’d already locked this.” Peter waited until it shut behind him and then secured the latch, not wanting to be disturbed. He had some apologizing to do and didn’t really want any witnesses. Or interruptions. But mostly witnesses.

Once that was done he turned toward the hall and was about to walk down it when he heard a shuffle and a noise coming from Leslie’s office. What was that girl doing? Rearranging furniture?

Shrugging it off, he had just taken a step when he heard a muffled scream and something crash to the floor. His heart started pounding hard and something like fear lodged in his throat. “Leslie? Leslie, are you okay?”

Another crash came from her office and this time along with her scream he heard, “Stop it!”

He sprinted down the hall and slammed her door open in a heartbeat, his injured shoulder completely forgotten on the rush of fear and adrenaline. Inside he found Leslie sitting on the floor, a table lamp shattered next to her and her potted bamboo plant broken, dirt scattered everywhere.

And stumbling toward her with a crazed look in his eye was Seth.

Rage flooded Peter and he grabbed the bartender by the back of his shirt, bellowing as he yanked, “Don’t you dare, motherfucker!”

Seth flew through the air, slammed into the wall, and Peter was on him instantly, ramming his fist into his face. Seth’s nose shattered from the force of the blow and began bleeding profusely, but Peter didn’t stop. He couldn’t see beyond the red haze of fury.

“I just wanted to touch!” the bartender wailed and swiped at the blood pouring down over his lips, cradling his busted nose. “I love her!”

“You crazy bastard!” Leslie cried out as she scrambled to her feet. She was shaking, but he didn’t think it was from fear.

Her eyes shot daggers at her employee and she ran toward him, clearly intent on doing bodily harm. Peter grabbed her around the waist and pulled her in tight, effectively stopping her. But she swung out a leg and almost connected with Seth. “How dare you come in drunk and cop a feel on me! You’re not even allowed here after hours!”

With blood running between his fingers and down his arm, Seth looked up at them both with unexpected loathing. “You’re a bitch.”

Peter let go of Leslie and yanked Seth up by his collar, so full of white-hot fury he could barely see, and slammed his fist into his solar plexus. Seth doubled over, gasping for air, and just as Peter was going to punch him again, Leslie made a sound like a choked back sob.

He whipped his head around toward the sound to find her wiping at a cut on her hand, and the sight of her blood pushed him over the edge. He snapped. “How dare you touch my woman!” he shouted and spun back around.

Seth was gone.

His footsteps were fading quickly down the hallway. Then the back door creaked open and slammed shut. Fuck.

Peter was about to go after him when Leslie stopped him with a hand on his arm. Shaking, adrenaline and rage a thundering, furious concoction inside him, he looked up from her slender, bleeding hand. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

“Let him go,” she replied. “I’ll call the cops and file a report. I’ve got all his information, Peter. They’ll find him.”

“Not if I find him first.” He couldn’t think. Couldn’t reason. His blood was pumping and a primitive, primal need to protect her overrode all else.

Panting, Peter raked a hand through his hair, swore, and gave her a very thorough once-over. Other than the wound on her hand and messy hair she looked all right. Definitely less shaken up than him.

But her office was a mess. How much had happened before he’d arrived? “I hope you hit that bastard in the head with your broken lamp,” he muttered, grabbing desperately for a measure of control.

Leslie smiled at him in a way that had the anger subsiding a little and said matter-of-factly, “He kept trying to grope me, so I threw it at him.”

That’s my girl.

“Then I slipped on some potting soil and fell on my ass. That’s when you came in.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, realizing the question was more than a smidge belated as his brain started functioning again. Not much, but enough to remember to ask.

“I’m okay.” But she was looking around at the state of her office, frowning. He raised a hand and grabbed hers, held it still while he assessed the extent of her injury. It wasn’t much of one, thank God. Just a small cut at the base of her left thumb. No doubt it’d been from the porcelain lamp shattering.

“I’m going to go double-check the lock on the back door and make that call,” Leslie informed him, already striding out the door. And the sight of her ass all smeared with dirt had anger sizzling in his gut like acid.

Stomping after her, Peter was at a slow boil the whole time she made her report. When she refused to have an officer come to the club for her statement he scowled at her. She just held up a finger, giving him the signal to wait, and finished the phone call, providing her statement by phone.

When Leslie hung up, she put the cordless phone back in its cradle behind the bar and said, “An officer will get back to me tomorrow for a follow-up, but they have all they need now to find Seth.”

“Good.” A tick started in his jaw.

She leaned her elbows on the bar and cocked her head to the side, looking at him with her gorgeous hazel eyes. All he saw was messy hair and her dabbing at the cut on her hand with a bar towel. “Are you all right, Peter? You went after Seth hard and I’m worried about your shoulder.”

He didn’t feel any pain. “I’m fine.”

But he wasn’t fine and she knew it. “You’re not moving your arm.”

Peter glanced at his shoulder, shrugged. “It’ll hurt like a bitch tomorrow, but it’s fine. Felt good shattering the fucker’s nose.”

“Thank you for doing that.”

For some reason her gratitude pissed him off and he rounded on her. “What the hell was he doing in your office after hours in the first place?” The answer had better be nothing.

Watching him with what looked like caution in her eyes, Leslie answered softly, “Not what you think, Peter. He’d already been sent home for the night, along with the rest of the crew because of the snow. I was shutting down my computer when he came in reeking of whiskey and stumbled into my bamboo plant, knocking it to the floor. Then he tried to get handsy with me.”

So the little bastard had needed liquor to bolster his courage to try and grope her? Shit, Peter had to find him now for another sound beating, Philly-style. This was beyond not okay.

Emotions churned in his gut, hot and greasy. The events of the past few days piled up, one on top of the other, and Peter swallowed around the ball of anger that lodged in his throat. Everything was falling apart. His whole goddamn life was upside-down and he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t know what to do with himself.

All he knew was that if something didn’t change soon he was going to explode.

Leslie rounded the bar and came to stand in front of him, her back to the glossy mahogany counter. “I should have been more careful, I suppose. But I swear to you I didn’t see it coming. Not from him. He seemed innocent and sweet. Dumb, but completely harmless.”

The fact that she could even say that with sincerity after the asshole had tried to touch her breasts only succeeded in riling him up all over again and he whipped out a hand, grabbing a strand of her disheveled hair. “Right,” he scoffed, “he was completely harmless.”

She stilled and narrowed her eyes on him. “What’s going on with you? Are you okay?”

For whatever reason that question pushed him over the edge. Didn’t she understand the gravity of the situation at all?

Dropping the strand of hair like it was scalding hot, Peter took a step away and rounded on her, the dark emotional vortex sucking him in, and he yelled, “No I’m not okay! Christ, Leslie. How could I possibly be okay?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the bar. For a woman who’d just been almost assaulted she seemed too damn calm for his liking. “What is it, Peter? Tell me.”

He was swallowed by the tide of emotions and couldn’t think. It was too much. Everything. Just too fucking much. “I can’t tell you!”

Her head tipped to the side and she looked at him with sympathy. “You don’t know what’s wrong?”

Of course he knew what was wrong, he just wasn’t going to tell her. His life as he knew it was over, he was going blind in one eye, and the woman of his dreams was standing before him with a cut hand because somebody had almost hurt her. It brought out every frigging primal instinct in him. All he wanted to do was punch something. Again and again until this claustrophobic, choking feeling left him. “No,” was all he said, hoping frantically that she’d drop it.

But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. It was Leslie.

She stood her ground, looked at him searchingly, and said quietly, “You called me your woman.”

Denial cut through him like a hacksaw. “No I didn’t.” She wasn’t his woman. She didn’t want to be.