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were playing a game and she was holding a football not a loaded pistol. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs. Grayson could remain where he was, straddling her torso, his hands pinning her arms, for the moment. She tightened her hold on the pistol he was working so doggedly to wrench from her grasp.
    Pulling in a deep breath to calm her muscles and focus her strength, she visualized her first move. Her first approach, her attack, was crucial since everything that would follow would be born from instinct.
    “Hope I didn’t hurt you, sweet,” he whispered in her ear. “I just couldn’t give you the chance to shoot me.”
    His lips curled into that killing smile. “You are really very pretty.”
    Those eyes of his, eyes she’d memorized from the photo posted in her office, were nearly hypnotic in the darkness. He leaned forward. She heard his breath hitch. “I haven’t had a woman like you in…” His lips covered hers. She could taste the raw hunger in the forced kiss.
    “Sorry,” he said, ripping away.
    “Get off me or I’ll really hurt you.”
    He laughed. He actually laughed.
    In a fluid move, she twisted to the side, upsetting his balance, and pushed against the asphalt to propel herself up.
    He tumbled to the ground.
    He didn’t stay down long. She swung her fist, hitting his jaw as he sprang back to his feet. She didn’t need brute strength when he was so obliging in connecting his face to her fist with such force. She stood back and watched as he staggered, tripping over a cypress knee that had grown up through the broken asphalt.
    Her fingers produced one of the two pairs of handcuffs she carried in her jacket pocket. Capturing him, a former Special Ops officer, seemed far too easy.
    He stared up at her dazed, his eyes hazy and unfocused.
    “You put up a good chase, Grayson.” She locked a metal ring over his left wrist.
    He let out a light groan as she rolled him over onto his stomach. With her knee pressing onto the center of his back, she reached for his right arm.
    His hand shot out and captured her wrist as strongly as his left wrist had been ensnared in the trap of the handcuff.
    “I don’t want to kill you,” he said gruffly—which was really a funny thing for him to say since she still had him on his stomach with his face pressed into the pavement.
    She held his left wrist with her left hand. He held her right wrist in his right hand. She wracked her brain while trying to remember which side he favored.
    “I’m left-handed,” he said, startling her. He yanked his arm out of her grasp and swung with incredible speed back and up, slapping her in the face with the metal handcuff still hooked to his wrist.
    She reared back, unwittingly giving Grayson an opening. Before she realized what he was doing, he’d snagged her pistol and twisted around to point it at her.
    “Oh, no you don’t!” She wasn’t ready to let him win that easily. She lunged for her gun. The barrel flared red in the darkness as it fired. The force of the bullet’s impact at such a close range sent her flying. She hit the ground with a heavy thud.
    Great, just great. Braving a backwoods medical facility to be sewn up by a doctor, who probably doubled as the local veterinarian, was not her idea of a pleasant Christmas.
    Her shoulder burned, and her arm had already turned painfully numb. Gulping air, she focused all her energies on Grayson. It took everything she had to hug her throbbing arm to her chest and charge him. She prayed he wouldn’t have time to take careful aim and fire again before she could knock the gun from his grasp. She had nothing to lose. He’d already killed one bounty hunter, and she had no doubt she was about to be next.
    She staggered—the back wall of the bar must have just collapsed—surely, that was a wall that had just fallen on her.
    Clutching her splitting head, she sank to her knees.
    “Damn.” Was the last sound she heard.
    * * * *
    “Damn,” Grayson cursed again. The pistol slipped