moved with the calm and efficiency of a trained first responder.
His take-charge attitude might have been annoying under different circumstances, but right now it inspired unenthusiastic confidence. Feeling like every kind of a traitor, Kayla allowed David’s confidence to wash her with calm as she attempted to slow her ragged breathing.
How was it he could feel so familiar to her—the dark glossiness of his hair, the perfect line of his jaw, the suede of his eyes—and feel like a complete stranger at the same time?
David strode over to where she had thrown down her bike, picked through the strewn sunflowers and green-leaf lettuce until he found the purse where it had fallen on the ground. He crouched, unceremoniously dumping all the contents of her bag out on the road. If he heard her protested “Hey!” he ignored it.
In seconds he had the “pen,” an emergency dose of epinephrine. He lowered himself beside her on the curb.
“Are you doing this, or am I?” he asked.
He took one look at her face and had his answer. His fingers tickled along the length of her leg as he eased her skirt up, exposing her thigh. She closed her eyes against the shiver of pure awareness that was not caused by reaction to the sting or the feel of the warm summer sunshine on her skin.
She wanted to protest he could have put the pre-loaded needle, concealed within the pen, through the fabric of the skirt, but she didn’t say a word.
She excused her lack of protest by telling herself that her throat was no doubt swelling shut. It felt as if her eyes were!
She felt the heat of his hand, warmer than the sun, as he laid it midway up the outside of her naked thigh and pressed her skin taut between his thumb and pointer finger.
“I think I’m going to faint,” she whispered, any pretense of courage that she had managed now completely abandoning her.
“You’re not going to faint.”
It wasn’t an observation so much as an order.
She attempted to glower at his arrogance. She knew if she was going to faint! He didn’t! But instead of resentment, Kayla was aware, again, of feeling a traitorous clarity she attributed to near death: his shoulder touching hers, the light in the glossy chocolate of his hair as he bent over her, his scent masculine, sharply clean and tantalizing.
Still, some primal fear made her put her hand over the site on her leg where he had pulled the skin taut with his bracketed fingers as the perfect place to inject the epinephrine.
He took her hand and put it firmly out of his way. When she went to put it right back, he held it at bay, his strength making her own seem puny and impotent.
“I’m not ready!” she protested.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
She did. She looked into the strength and calm of those deep brown eyes and all of it felt like an intoxicating chemical cocktail so strong it made a life-threatening beesting feel like nothing.
The years dropped away. He was woven into the fabric of her life, the way he cocked his head when he listened, the intensity of his gaze, the ease of his laughter, the solidness of his friendship, the utter reliability of him.
She could feel her breathing slow.
But then with her hand still in the grip of his, her eyes drifted to the full, sensuous curve of his lower lip and she could feel her heart and breath quicken again.
Once, a long time ago, she had tasted those lips, giving in, finally, to that want he had always made her feel. Though by then they had both been seventeen, she had been like a child drinking wine and it had been just as heady an experience.
She remembered his taste had felt exotic and compelling; she remembered how he had explored the hollows of her mouth as if he, too, had thought of nothing else for the two years they had known each other.
What a price for that kiss, though! After that exchange, he had gone cool toward her. Frosty. It had changed everything in the worst of ways. They had never been able to get back to the easy camaraderie that predated that meeting of lips.
David had started dating Emily Carson, she, Kevin.
And yet, even knowing the price of it, sitting here on the curb, Kayla had the crazy thought: if she was going to die and had just one wish, would it be to taste David’s lips again? She found herself, even though it filled her with self-loathing, leaning toward him as if pulled on an invisible thread.
David leaned toward her.
His eyes held hers as he came closer. She could feel her own eyes shutting, and not just because they were swelling, either. Her lips were parting.
He jammed the pen, hard, against the outer edge of her upper thigh.
The needle popped out of its protective casing and injected the epinephrine under her skin.
“Ouch!” The physical pain snapped her back to reality, and her eyes flew open as Kayla yanked herself back from him, mortified, trying to read in his face if he had seen her moment of weakness, her intention.
It didn’t look like he had. David’s face was cool, remote.
The indifference of his expression reminded her of the emotional pain she had felt that night after they had shared that kiss. She had thought, on fire with excitement and need, that it was the beginning of something.
Instead, she had become invisible to him.
Just as Kevin had become invisible to him. That was what Kayla needed to remember about David Blaze: he seemed like one thing—a man you could count on with your life, in fact—and yet when there was any kind of emotional need involved, he could not be relied on at all.
The moment of feeling intoxicated by David was gone like a soap bubble that had floated upward, iridescent and ethereal, and then pop—over.
“That hurt,” she said. It was the memories of all the ways he had disappointed her as much as the injection, not that he needed to know.
“Sorry,” he said with utter insincerity. He hadn’t cared about her pain or Kevin’s back then, and he didn’t care now. He got up, moved to his car with efficiency of motion. It seemed as if he were unhurried and yet he was back at her side almost before she could blink.
He settled back on the curb, and Kayla ordered herself not to take any more comfort from the strength in the shoulder that touched hers. She saw David had retrieved a small first-aid kit from the glove box of his car, and he unzipped it and rummaged through, coming up with a pair of tweezers.
“I’m just going to see if I can find the stinger.”
“You are not!” she said, yanking her skirt down over her naked thigh and pressing the fabric tight to her legs.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The stinger could still be pumping poison into you.”
She hesitated and he, sensing her hesitation, pressed. “I already saw the sting site. And your panties. They’re pink.”
To match the blush she could
