Page 6 of The Wrong Boss

My head dropped between my shoulder blades, and another mortifying sob made its way out of me. “I would’ve got it back if you hadn’t scared him away.”

The man was silent for a beat, crouching before me as I fell apart right there on the asphalt. When I finally looked up, his face was unreadable.

Finally, his lips parted. “He had a knife in his other hand,” he told me quietly. Breaking it to me gently that no, in fact, I wouldn’t have gotten the box back. I would’ve got a knife in the spleen instead.

I closed my lips. It was hard to gulp past the boulder in my throat. “Oh,” I whispered. I hadn’t seen a knife. Hadn’t even thought to look. All my attention was on that box. On the scraps of paper and the single earring I knew were inside.

“Let me help you up,” he said, extending a broad palm toward me. He was calm, unruffled. I would’ve almost preferred for him to be rude to me, because this quiet kindness was nearly too much for me to handle.

“I’m stuck,” I said, wrenching my leg.

The man moved around me, and the touch of his warm hand on my ankle was a shock. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and I saw the tightness of his jaw when he said it. Then he rotated my foot and lifted it, and the jammed heel came free. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring his outstretched hand, wincing as I put my weight on my rolled ankle.

He made a noise like he was frustrated with me, and I turned a glare on him. “What?” I snapped.

“You’re hurt,” he sniped back, that soft kindness ceding to frustration.

“So? What’s it to you?”

“Good question. Put your arm around my shoulders.” He moved closer, as if to put an arm around my waist.

I reared back, and a lance of pain went through my ankle. “What? No!”

His jaw clenched again. “You’d rather hobble on an injured ankle? It could be broken.”

“It’s not broken.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“I don’t need a doctor to know my ankle isn’t broken, genius.”

“I’m trying tohelpyou.”

“Yeah, well, don’t bother,” I said.

He pinched his lips and stared at me with those dark, dark eyes. I arched my brows and stared right back. I didn’t like this man. Actually, I resented him. Sure, he saved me from a knife attack from some crazy crackhead—so what? He also chased away my only chance at getting my memory box back. And now he wanted to play the hero?

I wasn’t having it. The past twenty-four hours had been toohard for me to put up with another overbearing man who thought he knew what was best for me.

But he kept staring at me, not picking up the hostile vibes I kept trying to send his way. Thinking I needed to be a little more obvious about it, I flicked my hands at him and said, “Shoo.”

All he did was blink, look down at my hands, then look back up at my face. A single dark eyebrow arched. “‘Shoo?’”

“You heard me. Run along.”

“You’re a very rude woman.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Now go. I don’t need any more of your ‘help,’” I said, putting the last word in finger quotes.

“I don’t think you know what you need.”

Oh, that was rich. Yeah, he was overbearing, all right. Just another man, wanting to tell me what to do. Damn him and his stupid skeptical eyebrow.

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t know what I need, but that isn’t any of your—” I interrupted myself with a scream as he bent at the waist and picked me up in his arms. “Put me down!” I screeched, but my hands clung to his shoulders.

Strong, broad shoulders. Triple damn him!

“No,” he said.

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