to the head of the class.”
“Well, if you want to bawl me out, you’ll have to stand in line.”
That stopped her, deflating her unnatural animation. She slumped down in her seat and averted her face.
“See what I mean? The last word. You just have to have it. I didn’t think you’d stoop to spouting nonsense to score it, though.”
“It’s not nonsense. You can’t even begin to understand how angry I am at myself. I failed Diego and he died. La Clínica is still lacking in critical care, and it’s my responsibility. It’s also my responsibility you walked out today. I just see that beating myself up over mistakes and oversights is futile and counter-productive at this point. I’ll just have to live with it. At least I’m alive—and strong and healthy as an ox.”
“Don’t! Patronize me, ignore me, or even overrule me like you’ve been doing so far. But don’t—don’t you just sit there and tell me you’re feeling guilty. I don’t want to hear about it.”
So she was feeling guilty, too! But was it just a natural reaction to surviving an accident that had killed another, or was there more to it? Had she played a more active role in that accident, as he’d accused her? Shouldn’t she be feeling more than guilt, with her lover dead? Though Diego had said he’d broken up with her before the accident. Was that why she wasn’t grieving for him?
So many questions, all answers less than pretty. Not that he cared. He just wanted to slam on the brakes and haul her into his arms, comfort her.
Yeah, sure. Her only comfort right now would probably come from giving him a black eye!
He wrestled the urge down, adding it under an airtight lid to every other wild desire she provoked in him. “Try to sleep, Laura. There’s still a long way ahead.”
He watched her eyes dull with resignation, watched her turn her head on the headrest and fall silent.
He’d said there was a long way ahead.
Did she know how long yet?
* * *
Laura jerked awake to a jarring lurch. Aggravation rose inside her. Just as she’d managed to doze off, too, with the jostling motion of the van and Armando’s nerve-racking presence beside her!
But he was no longer beside her. He was beneath her. At least his lap was, his hot, hard thighs cushioning her head and shoulders, her upper torso hanging in the air in the space between their seats. Her lips and nose were buried in his abdomen’s steel-ridged muscles, in his virile-scented, naked flesh.
Breath congealed in her throat, the urge to jackknife up and away from the heart-stopping contact overwhelming. She twitched and the powerful hand securing her in place tightened around her buttock. A whimper escaped her swollen lips.
He shifted to accommodate her more and her right breast molded against his splayed thigh. As for where the back of her head was pressing…
She pushed at him and he immediately removed his arm.
“You’re awake.”
“How perceptive.” She forced herself to sit up in a natural, unhurried movement. “And you’re naked!”
“I’m not.”
Oh, no? Then she must have developed X-ray vision, if she could see the daunting expanse and definition of his exposed chest and abdomen. She’d known he was first and foremost a thoroughly physical being, tough, vigorous, carnal. Those were the first things anyone noticed about Armando Salazar. She hadn’t needed to see him naked to figure that out. But now he was…
“I’m half-naked,” he concluded lightly.
And I’m half out of my mind, if I’m reacting to you this way. Out loud she said, “I’m supposed to thank you for keeping your pants on?”
“You should.” His lazy nod and the easy bulge of his heavy muscles as he negotiated another steep turn set off a whistling in her ears, a tightness inside her head. What was wrong with her? This was her nemesis! Her blood boiled near him with anger and frustration, nothing else. Maybe she was concussed. That would explain all those ridiculous reactions
“They stayed on only for your modesty’s sake.”
A belated realization hit her. “Oh, the tear gas…”
It must have dissolved in the rain, soaked his clothes. The longer they remained on him, the worse the injury he’d sustain, up to second-degree burns. Armed with the professional incentive, she took a closer look at his body and saw how flushed his polished bronze skin was. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re erythematous! What ridiculous modesty. Take them off immediately.”
“Trust me, I can’t.”
Did that mean he wasn’t wearing—? “Oh!”
“Oh is right. La Clínica’s near, anyway.”
Recovering quickly, she asked, “Until then, shall I wash you down with a hypochlorite solution to neutralize the agent? Is it back there?”
“Hypochlorite is contra-indicated, Laura. It’s good for other sorts of chemical contamination, but with CS or tear gas it only exacerbates the reaction.”
“Oh!” She didn’t know that. A good thing she wasn’t ready with a bottle of the stuff. She bounced back with another suggestion. “What about another alkaline solution?”
“The one effective solution to relieve symptoms and hydrolyze the agent is a mix of sodium bicarbonate, sodium carbonate and benzalkonium chloride. Which I don’t have! Another colossal oversight, going into a riot zone without it.”
“You couldn’t have known what to expect.”
“I should have been prepared. I wasn’t. If I suffer burns, it will teach me a good lesson.”
“Aren’t you being too melodramatic, suffering in punishment for a simple omission?”
“Says the woman who marched into the middle of a riot and nearly got trampled to death!”
“OK. Touché. But have you at least washed yourself off?”
“I did, even though that also makes it worse, acting like the rain did, since it wasn’t a real hosing down. I only did it to decontaminate my skin just enough for when you slept on my lap.”
Sensations and flashbacks burned their way up to her skin in a flush worse than his chemical burn. “You should’ve kept me awake.”
“Why? You needed the rest.”
“Well, I don’t feel rested. I feel bent out of shape, permanently.”
“And if I’d kept you awake, I would have been heartless and a nuisance.”
“You could have left me sleeping in my seat with my seat belt on!”
“And have
