“That’s not helping.”
Using the flashlight, Jess located the sterile tools, a needle, tweezers and scissors. Her heart was beating hard and fast when she turned back to him. But not all the tension inside her was due to the wound. Part of it, she knew, was because he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Because he was too close. Too male. And in all of her twenty-eight years, she’d never seen a chest like Mike Madrid’s.
She moved the candle closer, shifted his arm for a better angle. Sure enough, she could see the lump of the bullet beneath the skin. Picking up the tweezers, she touched the wound. When he didn’t wince, she slid the sterile tip into the wound. She could feel his muscles tightening beneath her hand, but he didn’t make a sound.
“Here goes.” She probed deeper. A sigh hissed between his lips, but she didn’t stop. A fraction of an inch and the tweezers made contact with the bullet. If only she could grasp it.
A groan escaped him when she let the tweezers open. Fresh blood trickled down his arm when she clamped down on the bullet. “My God…”
“Let it bleed.” He ground out the words. “Get the bullet. Do it. Now.”
Though the mission was chilly, sweat beaded on her forehead as she pulled on the tweezers. An instant of resistance and the bloody piece of lead was free.
“I got it.”
Madrid shifted, and Jess got the impression of him holding his breath. Quickly she tore open another alcohol pad and dabbed at the blood. “I don’t think you need stitches.”
“Good, because I’d hate for you to have to pick me up off the floor.”
She looked at him. Alarm shot through her when she realized he’d gone white. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“It’s okay.” He glanced at the wound, closed his eyes briefly. “You did well.”
“Let me just get it cleaned up.” She opened another swab. “Alcohol is going to burn.”
“Better than dying of infection.”
“Or evidently doing the smart thing and going to the hospital.”
He didn’t so much as flinch when she swabbed the gash. She felt one of them shaking, but for the life of her she couldn’t tell if it was him or her.
She spent a few minutes bandaging the wound. When she finished, she rose on unsteady legs. Madrid leaned forward in the chair and put his head on the table as if the ordeal had drained him of all strength.
“You need to promise me one thing,” she said as she began putting items back into the first aid kit.
But when she turned back to Madrid, he was out cold.
MADRID WOKE TO DAYLIGHT. For a moment he was mildly surprised he’d made it through the night. Pain throbbed in his left arm. Above him, dust motes danced on the air where sunlight streamed in through a window.
He sat up, cursing when pain streaked up his arm. He lay back down and for an uncomfortable moment he wasn’t quite sure where he was. Then the memory of everything that had happened the night before rushed over him in a flood. He and Jess breaking into Angela’s house and the police station. The sound of gunshots. Running through the night. The emergency call to the agency. Jess digging a bullet out of his arm.
The knowledge that they were still in danger sent him back upright, gingerly this time. He was lying on an old sofa, tangled in a single blanket. On the floor next to him, Jess lay on her side, shivering in her sleep. She had no blanket. No pillow. She’d given both to him.
“Damn,” he whispered, and something went soft in his chest.
Even with her hair mussed, her face devoid of makeup, her beauty took him aback. She’d wrapped herself with her jacket, but it didn’t cover her completely and he was keenly aware of curvy hips and the soft swell of her breasts. That she’d sacrificed her own comfort for his touched him in a place that hadn’t been touched in a very long time.
A powerful wave of affection washed over him, followed by a hard jab of sexual attraction. He didn’t want to admit either. He knew all too well the kinds of things that happened to the people he cared about. For some reason God had seen to it that the people he loved never survived long enough for him to tell them how he felt. First his parents. Then his wife and child. Angela. Was this woman next on fate’s hit list?
“Morning.”
He started at the unexpected greeting and jerked his gaze back to her. She tugged the jacket up to her chin and stretched like a cat. “How are you feeling?”
Considering the way those jeans were stretching taut over her hips, he didn’t think the truth was appropriate, so he settled on a half-truth. “A little rough around the edges.”