Chapter 9
Taryn flicked on the tiny penlight dangling from her keychain and aimed it at Rick. Blood seeped from his upper left arm to cause spots of red on his shirt. They were hard to see with the backdrop of the black tee, but clear enough to confirm her assessment. This wasn’t a scratch. He’d been hit.
Her stomach clenched. “Take off your shirt and let me see the damage.”
He looked down at his arm and gently probed the spot with his fingertip. The only reaction was an almost imperceptible wince. “It’s nothing.”
Stubborn man. “It isn’t nothing. We have to get you to the hospital before you bleed out.”
“No hospital.” He made a face. “I’m not going to bleed out, Taryn. I’ve had worse.”
“You’ve been shot before?”
“Grazed.” He grinned. “That doesn’t count.”
Great. She turned off the car and pulled the trunk latch. Facing him straight on with her best “I’m not taking any bullshit from you” glare, she ordered, “Then get out of the car. I’ll take care of it myself.”
Without waiting for him to obey her command, she went in search of her toolkit. Without the flashlights, which had been left at the storage unit, her options for lighting the area were limited. Thankfully, she had the penlight and the headlights. Between the two, there should be enough light to patch Rick up. Hopefully.
“You should see a doctor.” She walked to where he’d taken a seat on the hood. She dropped the toolkit beside him with a thump to show her aggravation. “There is only so much I can do if you have a bullet lodged inside your arm. If you get an infection and your arm falls off, don’t blame me.”
“I trust you, Doctor Brash.” His half smile and the warmth of his knee against her hip almost made her forget the gravity of the situation.
“I’m not brash.”
“Certainly you are . . . while driving.”
Instead of arguing, she got to work. “The first aid kit is meant for bug bites and scraped knees. Not bullet wounds.” She took out an antiseptic pad and ripped the foil wrapper open with her teeth. “Take off your shirt.”
Wincing, he got it up far enough to expose a seriously ripped stomach and stopped. “I think I need help.”
From the look in his eyes, she wondered if he needed assistance or just wanted her to undress him. Either way, she couldn’t work without it off.
She laid the antiseptic pad on the discarded wrapper.
Without hesitation, she tugged at the hem. Keeping her manner clinical, she tried to ignore the tattoo resembling some sort of hieroglyphic on his upper right arm. It was all one color, blackish, and very cool. She struggled not to trace her fingertip over it, but her eyes followed it down from shoulder to elbow.
The muscle beneath it flexed. Once. Twice. Three times.
“I’m not looking,” she said, jerking her eyes away.
He chuckled. “I didn’t think so.”
Frowning, she maneuvered the shirt over his head, leaving the damaged arm covered. Her eyes kept getting drawn back to the tattoo. She’d never been a fan of ink, but on Rick it upped his sexual appeal.
Geez. Did the man have any flaws?
Move on, Taryn. “I’m going to ease the shirt off your arm.” She held it bunched in her hands. “I’ll go slowly. Hopefully, it won’t hurt too much.”
A little at a time, she slid the shirt down over his left arm, exposing the head of a large scorpion, then its body and tail. Every nerve ending inside her buzzed, her breath caught, and her lips parted. She barely registered the seeping wound inside the curled tail.
“Like it?” he said softly.
“I, um.” Not only did she like it, she had the sudden urge to rip off her clothes. And his. “It’s, ah, okay. If you enjoy that sort of thing.”
Rick chuckled again. “Good thing you’re immune, then. I wouldn’t want you to start thinking sexy thoughts about me.”
Heat flashed up her body, taking up residence in her face. How could he know what she was thinking? Did he see heat in her eyes or was it just a good guess?
Biting back a frustrated groan, she disregarded the teasing, dropped the shirt on the hood beside him, and reached for the pad.
Unfortunately, Rick wasn’t finished flirting with her. “If you wanted to see me shirtless, all you had to do was ask.”
“I have no interest in you sans clothing.”
“Then why did you kiss me?”
One brow lifted. “A kiss in the heat of the moment is all that was. We were in danger. I thought we were about to die.”
“If you say so.”
Choosing to let the comment drop, she went into doctor mode. Even in the low light, his chest was amazing: hard, scarred, with just a light dusting of hair to play with. Just right.
If not for the blood slowly seeping from his arm, she might well have forgotten all about that whole client-PI thing and done something really stupid, like a full body exploration. With her mouth. That would be a disaster.
“Is that where you were shot?” She pressed the pad gently on the wound and looked over the rest of him for any other damage. She pointed to a puckered scar that marred an otherwise perfectly muscled stomach.
“Stabbed.” He touched the spot. “Shanked, actually. A gangbanger wanted my mashed potatoes. I said no. He politely asked again with a sharpened toothbrush. I didn’t react quickly enough to the warning signs. I got four stitches and he got a compound fracture of the tibia.”
“And the potatoes?” She brushed aside his hand and touched the scar. His skin was warm and soft beneath her fingertips.
“Lumpy and dry. I should’ve let him have them.” He twisted to the left and pointed to a scar the shape of a caterpillar right below his rib cage. “This was from a bullet.”
“Should I ask?” She touched the old wound.
“Drive-by.”
Releasing a breath through pursed lips, she shook her head and said, “Interesting.”
And he’d called her a menace.
Before her hand turned the touch into a caress, she returned her attention back to his arm.
“I thought you said you stayed out of the general population?” She drew the wipe over the wound. The antiseptic pad cleared away the blood so she could examine the wound. Rick was right. It wasn’t fatal. “And yet you got shanked.”
“True. But I still had to show up enough to establish a presence. The man I was hunting had eyes everywhere. Getting stabbed was actually good. It gave me prison cred.”
Men. Only a man would take pride in getting stabbed.
She lifted the penlight and squinted for a better view of the torn tissue. “This doesn’t look like a bullet wound. Hand me the needle-nose pliers. There’s something under the skin.”
“You stock pliers in your PI kit?”
“Yes, and two screwdrivers, a small pry bar, and a hammer. I’m always prepared for any eventuality.” She cleaned the pliers with a second antiseptic wipe. “If I have to play field surgeon, I don’t want to give you a fatal infection.”
“I appreciate your concern.” He rattled around in the box with his free hand, while she unhooked the penlight from the keychain and put it between her teeth.
“Here you go, Girl Scout,” he said. Taryn handed him the first aid kit and he gave her the pliers.
With the light illuminating the shallow wound, she could just see the edge of what looked like broken glass. She gently probed the wedge and after two tries, managed to get a hold on the slippery edge and pull it out.
Rick didn’t flinch.
“Got it,” she said, slightly slurring her words around the flashlight, and laid the shard and pliers on the hood.
Blood trickled out of the cut. “Hand me the big pad.” With him acting as her surgical assistant, and Taryn using the skills she’d picked up from watching hospital dramas on TV, they managed to patch him up with gauze and medical tape.
“Not bad.” She removed the flashlight and stepped back to examine her work. Even the scorpion seemed happy with the final outcome. “Not bad at all, with no medical training. I may have picked the wrong profession.”
“I’d like to see you in hospital whites.” His hand caressed her hip, before moving up to hook his thumb in her belt loop.
She looked up to see him staring at her, his eyes soft and smiling. Darn, he was way too handsome for comfort.
A couple of steps to the left and she’d be in his arms and kissing him again. Instead, she moved back, collected the semi-clean discarded wipe she’d used on the pliers and cleaned his blood off her hands.
“You shouldn’t look at me like that,” she said. “We’re working partners. That’s it.”
“I think you like me looking at you like that.”
“You’re delusional.”
“And yet you kissed me.”
There was that. “We’ve already covered this. Kisses during a life-and-death situation don’t count.”
He slid off the hood and leaned his hard butt against the car. Crossing his arms caused his upper arms to flex, showcasing the tattoos and causing heat to flow back through her body.
Was it wrong to want to unzip his Levi’s and answer the burning question foremost in her mind: boxers or briefs?
Well, that wasn’t the foremost thought keeping her awake at night. It was more about a part of his anatomy that was covered by said skivvies.
Lord, she needed alcohol, and lots of it.
“So you don’t want to kiss me again?” he said.
Anything she said at this point would be a lie. She wanted to throw her heated body against his long muscled self and kiss the hell out of him, explore his tattoos, cup his butt, and test the size of the backseat with their naked bodies. Rick was everything she wanted but didn’t need—another bad boy to run over her heart with his big, bad motorcycle.
The next man she took to bed would be stable and settled; a relationship kind of guy.
No more bad boys for her.
And this man was bad. Very, very bad.
“Kissing you was a mistake. You kissing me was your mistake.” She collected her things and tucked everything back into her PI kit, all while squelching the silent command from her body to forget caution and have some really great sex. Because a guy like Rick wouldn’t leave her unsatisfied.
Yet she couldn’t take that leap. Not now. Not with this man and his sexy tattoos. “From now on, no kissing.”
All sorts of emotions filtered through his eyes. When he finally spoke, the words were a surprise.
“I agree. Kissing and sex are a distraction from the case.” He reached for his shirt and eased it over his head. Taryn stayed back and didn’t help. “Our focus is catching Brinkman.”
Although she wasn’t certain he was serious—the attitude adjustment had been awfully quick—but she had to take him at his word. Life would be a lot easier if he wasn’t looking at her like she was his favorite snack food.
“I think we should call it a night. If you feel feverish and need to go to the hospital, phone me.”
“I will.”
She dropped Rick at his hotel and headed home. She slowed to turn into her driveway, when a large figure darted across the road, in a flash of her headlights, and vanished behind a hedge that fronted the red brick ranch opposite her house.
Strange. Her mind reached for but couldn’t grasp why someone would be out at this hour without a dog to walk or a backpack full of college books. Crime was low in the neighborhood, outside of petty thefts of stuff like lawn furniture or car stereos.
She pulled in and parked. There was something familiar about the way the man carried himself. But she couldn’t place him among the neighbors. She was too tired to put the pieces together so she let it go. The guy was probably someone new to the neighborhood out chasing his cat.
Taryn was not entirely surprised to see Andrew sitting in the darkness on her front steps after she got her stuff out of the car and headed for the front door. The fact that he wouldn’t look her in the eye as she approached was concerning.
“Hey, kid.” She sat beside him. “What’s up? More panties in my tree?”