Take My Breath Away...

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Nicola gathered her thoughts.  She still hadn’t found any broken glass—or any explanation for the sounds she’d heard when she’d first entered the church.  Once more raising her gun, she moved down the side aisle of the church.  No signs of glass there.  A brief fan of her flashlight showed a door opening off the side wall.

It was open.  She moved toward it.  The cold blast of air hit her just as she spotted the boots.  Work boots, well worn on the soles and scuffed on the toes.  As she stepped into the room, her flashlight caught the rest of him, and her stomach knotted.  The man was sprawled full length on the hard marble floor. 

And he wasn’t moving.

As she dropped to her knees next to the man, Nicola absorbed other details.  His legs were long and clad in black jeans.  She noted the narrow waist, broad chest, and shoulders.  He wore a black T-shirt and an open Paul Bunyan style plaid flannel shirt.  It was rolled half-way up muscular forearms. 

His face was cast in shadows.  But the beam of her flashlight caught pale skin, dark hair, a strong nose and chin, a slash of cheekbones.

Recognition flickered at the edge of her mind, then faded when she saw the nasty looking gash on the side of his forehead.  Blood had already pooled on marble floor beneath his head. 
Nicola’s stomach clenched again.  His skin was too pale, his body too still.  Setting down her gun, she balanced her flashlight pointing upward.  Then she slipped her hand beneath the collar of the plaid shirt and felt for a pulse.

She found one. 

As it pushed strong and steady against her fingers, she let out a breath she hadn’t even known she was holding.  Whoever he was, he was still alive.  And someone had worked hard to bring him down.  The man was big.  But his skin was cold and clammy. 
And wet.  So was his shirt.  So were her slacks, for that matter.  Then she noted for the first time the shards of broken glass and the flowers—a spray of red roses that lay strewn across the marble floor.  Something else inside of her eased when she realized the blood that had pooled around his head and shoulders was mixed with water from the broken vase.

Who was he?  A janitor?  The driver of that other car?  Had he surprised Gabe Wilder when he was trying to steal the statue?  And now wasn’t the time to deal with any of those questions.  When she glanced at him again, she once more felt a flicker of recognition, but she couldn’t quite remember.

His cut needed attention.  And if she didn’t want him to go into shock, she was going to have to find a way to keep him warm.
Nicola took off her coat and tucked it as best she could around the unconscious man.  It barely reached his knees.  She slipped out of her suit jacket and pulled her silk T-shirt over her head.  Folding it carefully into a square, she pressed it to the cut on the side of his forehead. 

Finally, she placed her free hand on the side of his face and leaned closer.  “Hey, can you hear me?”

No response.

She patted her palm firmly against his cheek.  “You’re going to be all right.”

At least she was praying he would be. 

Reaching for his hand, she drew it onto his chest and covered it with her own.  Not an easy job.  His palm was much larger than hers, his fingers long.  They might have belonged to an artist, a pianist perhaps, except the backs of those long fingers were callused.    

And they were cold.  So was she.  The draft of air she’d felt when she’d first entered the room was growing more frigid by the second.  Glancing around, she spotted the open window and scrambled up to close it.  Then she returned to her knees beside the injured man and took his hand again.  Squeezing his fingers, she raised her voice.  “Can you hear me?”

His eyelids fluttered.  She noticed for the first time how dark his lashes were, how long.

“Come on.  Open your eyes.”

He did.  For an instant, as his gaze locked on hers, the punch of awareness and the flare of heat in her belly stole her breath away.

She’d seen this man before.  He’d been in her father’s office on the day after Thanksgiving.  And he’d had the same effect on her then.  Even through a glass wall, even at a distance of twenty-five feet, she’d felt the impact of his gaze like a punch.  He’d made her lose track of everything. 

“Cur...?”

The sound was little more than a gasp.  Cur?  It made no sense to Nicola.  But it allowed her to shove the memory away and focus her attention on the injured man.  She drew in a breath and felt her lungs burn.

“Head...hurts...”  His fingers linked with hers and tightened.

This time when she met his eyes, she concentrated on noting whether or not they were dilated.  They weren’t.  Even in the dim light from her flashlight, she could distinguish clearly between the pinpoint of black at the center and the cloudy gray of his irises. 

Then his lids drifted shut.

“Does it hurt anywhere else?” she asked.  She had to find that out.  And it was much safer to concentrate on that task than on what she’d just felt.  Or what she’d felt that day in the FBI office. 
But in the three months since it had happened, she hadn’t been able to rid her mind of the memory.  From the moment she’d walked into the office she’d been aware of him, but it hadn’t been until his eyes had met hers that he’d registered fully on her senses.

And he’d registered fully all right.  She was sure the impact might have been caught on a Richter scale—if there’d been one handy.  She hadn’t been able to breathe and hadn’t wanted to.  She couldn’t think.  Who needed to?  Part of what she was feeling, she’d recognized—that tingling sensation that always told her something was just...somehow right. 

But it had made no sense and it had never before made her feel as if the ground were dissolving beneath her feet.  Not that she’d been able to feel her feet.  All she could feel was him.  And she’d wanted to feel more of him.  Heat, glorious waves of it had washed through her system.  Every cell in her body had melted and yearned.

And when he’d risen to his feet in one fluid moment and taken a step toward her, she’d nearly run to him.  Right through glass walls like some kind of super hero.  The impulse had been so baffling, so totally insane, so verging on the irresistible that she’d finally found the strength to drag her gaze away from him.

And she couldn’t, she wouldn’t let him affect her that way again.  He was not going to make her forget to breathe.  Closing her eyes, she pulled in air, felt the burn in her lungs and then exhaled, and breathed in again.

Mental list time.  When she opened her eyes, she checked the cut first and saw that the bleeding was slowing.  After replacing the square of cloth, she slipped her fingers behind his head to check the back.  The instant she touched the bump, he winced and made a sound. 

So he’d suffered a double-whammy to his head.  No wonder he was woozy.  Shifting her coat aside, she ran her hands on a quick journey from the back of his neck, down his arms.  When he neither winced nor yelped again, she drew her palms from his shoulders to his waist, then from his hips down those long, long legs.  The man was one solid wall of muscle.

And she still wanted him.  There was no mistaking the heat that had flared to life deep inside of her as she’d run her hands over him.  No controlling it either.  She knew what she was feeling.  She wasn’t stupid, so she’d pegged it the first time she’d seen him.  Lust.  Pure and simple.  And incredibly intense.

(continued...)

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