Shiver

blood?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t like a lot of things. But without a college degree, there are only so many jobs I can get that pay enough to give my kid a decent life. Being an EMT is one of them. So I suck it up about the blood.”
    “What about this tow-truck thing you have going on?”
    “It works for now. But I only have the one truck, and it’s old. When it finally breaks down for good, where am I going to get the money to buy another?”
    “What about your kid’s father?”
    This time the look she shot him was wary.
    “What’s it to you?”
    “Nothing. Just seems hard that you should have to provide for a kid on your own.”
    “Life’s a bitch, or haven’t you heard?”
    He studied her averted face as she crammed the last of the remaining supplies back into the box, then restored it to the glove compartment. She could have let him bleed to death, but she hadn’t. Well, he meant to repay her by keeping her alive.
    “You want to help me get my pants back on again, we’ll be good to go.” Having his jeans down around his ankles was almost as bad as having his legs tied in terms of what it did to his mobility. Plus, it was embarrassing. But he had a bad feeling that he might not be capable of the effort required to do it all by himself. What he needed was some time to recover his strength. Unfortunately, time was something he didn’t have to spare.
    Her lips compressed, but she reached for his jeans and started pulling them back up over his calves. The feel of her cool hands brushing against his bare skin triggered another one of those instant, instinctive moments of awareness of her as a woman, which was, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how he looked at it, a little muted by the circumstances. When he could reach the waistband without shifting around too much, he grabbed hold.
    “I got this,” he said, even though his head swam alarmingly as he moved. Jesus, he felt weak.
    “Don’t be an idiot.” Ignoring his directive, she helped him get his jeans up, which was a good thing. In the end, he wasn’t sure he could have managed on his own.
    “Ah.” Despite his efforts at stiff-upper-lipping it, the sound emerged as he sank back onto the seat less gently than he’d intended and the wound got jostled. She shot him a look, but didn’t say anything. Instead, while he fastened and zipped up his jeans, she began to extricate herself from the foot well, moving carefully so as not to jar his injured leg. Her snug white tank was liberally covered with dark streaks now, he saw, and it didn’t require much of a mental stretch to figure out that they’d been made by his blood.
    “Thank you,” he said, meaning it.
    “It’s only a temporary fix. You still need to get to a hospital,” she warned, slithering around him until she was once again sitting behind the wheel. Clearly drained, she slumped against the door, letting her head rest back against her intact window as she looked at him warily. Moonlight played over her face. She was exquisitely pretty: her skin was creamy smooth, her cheekbones were high, her jawline determined but delicate. Her lips were full and soft looking. Her nose was small and straight. Her eyes—by moonlight they were a deep, clear blue—were thickly lashed and faintly slanted. Now that she was minus the shape-concealing uniform shirt, he was able to see that her shoulders were slender but well formed, her arms firm and sleek, and her breasts—well, suffice it to say that even under current conditions he was definitely a fan. The cable cord was still tied around her waist, which was slender and shapely; apparently she had been too consumed with patching him up to take the time to untie it. He undoubtedly would have been feeling guilty about now for forcing her to tie herself to him if what he hadtold her hadn’t been 100 percent accurate: she was in too deep to get out. Without him, she was a dead woman walking, unlikely to live out the next few hours, collateral damage as Veith et al came after him full bore.
    “So why’d you do it?” he asked, as he finished inventorying long, slim legs in blue jeans over sturdy black hiking boots and his gaze returned to her face.
    “What?”
    “Stay. Bandage me up.”
    “I couldn’t just let you bleed to death.” Her tone was testy. It didn’t take a genius to infer that she was having second thoughts about the wisdom of what she’d just done. Using her teeth to tear open a small foil packet that she’d