He pretended to check ESPN on his phone. Spending a few weeks naked with her had become more important than it should. Maybe it had something to do with his retirement, with making certain the space between who he used to be and who he was now hadn’t changed.

She was new territory for him. Unsentimental and unpredictable. A woman who didn’t take him seriously—who didn’t care how many games he’d won, how rich he was, how famous. A woman who didn’t find him frickin’ irresistible!

It galled him. Compared to his usual women, she was a guy, for god’s sake. A guy packaged in an incredibly sexy, incredibly appealing, incredibly tough little body. Which basically contradicted everything he’d been trying to tell himself about her.

And that was the reason he couldn’t let Piper Dove waltz out of his life. Because he wanted her, and she refused to want him back. She didn’t flatter him or flirt with him, and she definitely hadn’t fallen for him.

He needed her to do that. Not fall in love for real. He’d hate that. Just fall for him.

“I want an exit interview,” he said when they’d pulled up behind her car in the city. “Tomorrow night at the club.” He handed over the fuses he’d taken from her Sonata without offering to put them back in. She’d know how to do that herself. Of course she would. She was the leading edge of a new civilization, one that rendered the traditional male skills of ex-jocks obsolete.

He left her with her head buried under the hood of her car, rump thrust out, and headed home. His garage door opened soundlessly. He parked next to his Tesla, grabbed his duffel, and let himself out through the side door. The floodlights on the back of the garage had burned out, and the path was dark. He heard a rustle. With no more warning than that, a man leaped from the shrubs and swung something that looked like a tire iron at Coop’s head. Coop spun and jerked. His adrenaline kicked in. He drove his shoulder into the man’s chest and grabbed his arm.

The guy grunted but didn’t fall. He tried to swing the tire iron again but Coop had his arm. He twisted it. The man kicked out, hitting Coop in his bad knee and throwing him off balance. Coop took a hard shot that would have sent him down if his reflexes hadn’t been so sharp. The guy was big. Hulking. Coop ignored the shooting pain in his knee to go after him.

The fight was short but brutal, and the thug had finally had enough. He tore away from Coop’s grasp, screamed something at him, and took off into the alley. Coop started after him, but his knee buckled, and by the time he got his balance again, the thug was gone.

His jaw throbbed. His knee hurt like hell, and his knuckles were bleeding. But instead of calling the cops . . . instead of going inside to grab some ice for his face . . . he limped back into the garage and climbed into his car.

***

“Oh my god! What happened to you?” Piper grabbed the edge of the door, her eyes wide with alarm. She was wearing a fucking Bears jersey again. How many of those sons of bitches did she have?

He pushed past her into the apartment. “You’re the hotshot investigator. You tell me!”

Instead of calling him on his bullshit, she slammed the door and came after him, her mouth set in hard lines. “Who did this to you?”

She had vengeance written all over her. As if she personally intended to go after the perpetrator. Which, he realized, she did.

He headed for the refrigerator, her fierceness beginning to settle him down. “A thug ambushed me as I was coming out of my garage.” He grabbed a dish towel and some ice.

It didn’t seem to occur to her to play Nurse Nancy, unlike the time she’d shoved him down in the alley. She snatched up a notepad. “Start at the beginning and tell me exactly what happened.”

“I got mugged, that’s what.” He pressed the ice pack to his face.

“Tell me what the guy looked like.”

“Big. That’s all I know. It was dark.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A Brooks Brothers suit! How the hell do I know? I told you, it was dark.”

“What about security cameras? Lights?”

He shook his head, then wished he hadn’t. “They’d burned out.”

“How convenient.”

She made him start at the beginning and go over it, detail by detail. There wasn’t much to tell, and he regretted coming here. Wasn’t sure why he had.

She looked up from her notepad. “You said he yelled something as he was running away. What was it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Think.”

He raked his fingers through his hair. “Hell, I don’t know. Some kind of threat. ‘I’ll get you.’ Something like that.”

“‘I’ll get you.’ That’s what he said?”

“Yeah, I think that’s what it was.” He shifted the ice pack.

“That doesn’t sound like your garden-variety mugger. And why didn’t he have a gun? They’re as easy to come by as candy bars in this town and more convenient than a tire iron.”

“You’ve seen too many TV shows.”

She persisted. “If he’d been after your wallet, he would have had a gun. It’s like he was after you personally. But why?”

He glared at her jersey. “Because he’s a Bears fan.”

“Not funny.” She stabbed her pen in the air. “You need to get to the ER.”

“A bruised jaw. Some sore ribs. I’ll take care of it. And before you say anything, I’m not reporting this to the cops.”

He was surprised when she didn’t argue. Maybe she understood that if he reported this, the story would hit national news, the press would be all over him, and without surveillance video, the police wouldn’t be able to do squat. All he’d end up with was publicity he didn’t want.

She shoved the pencil behind her ear. “Something’s not right about this, and I don’t want you going back home yet. You’re sleeping here tonight.”

He regarded her incredulously. She had to be kidding. He tossed down the ice pack. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I hide behind a woman’s skirts. Or, in your case, an ugly T-shirt.” He made it outside the building before she could yell at him about sexism and all that other crap.

He got home without a problem. His jaw hurt like a bitch, and he needed to get cleaned up, but before he did that, he crossed through the kitchen and went out into his garden.