Explosive Attraction - By Lena Diaz Page 0,7
around the fabric when he saw the straight, deliberate cuts in her white shirt. “That’s not from the crash.”
Her teeth bit into her bottom lip. “He...cut me, at the warehouse, to get me to move. And again, in the boat.”
God help the bomber if Rafe got his hands on him before someone else did. Purposely hurting a woman was at the top of his list of unforgivable sins. He gently pulled the edge of Darby’s blouse up to see how badly she was hurt. “The cuts aren’t that deep. You’ll need a handful of stitches, though.”
“I shouldn’t have left my office.” She winced as he tugged her blouse and jacket back into place. “I should have stayed there like you told me.”
“Damn straight you should have stayed.”
Her lips thinned and she looked away.
He immediately regretted his harsh words. Until now, he’d never thought of Dr. Darby Steele as anything but a quack with a tendency to ruin his best cases with her so-called expert testimony. But seeing her hurt, and scared, had him feeling like a jerk for raising his voice.
Since she wasn’t looking at him, he took full advantage of her inattention to study her. She was far more delicate-looking up close than he’d expected. Her brown hair had fallen free from the severe bun she normally wore, gently curling around her shoulders, making her look softer, more approachable. The jackets she always wore concealed generous curves he wouldn’t have known existed if he hadn’t pulled the cloth aside to look at her cuts. He’d seen her dozens of times through the years, but this was the first time he’d ever really seen her.
And he liked what he saw.
That thought had him stiffening with self-disgust. This was a woman who would say anything to help the defense, and get criminals light, cushy sentences in a mental hospital instead of the tough treatment they deserved in a maximum-security prison.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” he asked.
She smoothed her muddy, hopelessly ruined skirt. “Nothing serious, I don’t think.”
Obviously she had other injuries or she would have just said no. “Where else are you hurt?”
He noticed for the first time that her eyes were a light shade of green. What the heck was wrong with him? Why was he noticing the color of her eyes? He dropped his gaze, and that’s when he noticed her bloody knees.
“Good grief, woman. You’re bleeding everywhere.” Her right knee was scraped, nothing serious. But the left...she had a two-inch gash that was trickling blood. “Did he cut you anywhere else?”
“I don’t think so.” She leaned forward to look at her leg. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“Bad enough.” He yanked his shirt up over his head.
“What are you doing?” She sounded alarmed, her eyes widening, her gaze dipping to his chest.
“We have to stop the bleeding.” He folded his shirt and held it against the gash on her knee. She blanched and scrunched her eyes shut.
“Hold it tight,” he said, grabbing one of her hands and settling it on top of the shirt. “Put as much pressure as you can.”
He needed to get her out of here to a hospital. They weren’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. There had to be some houses close by, where the marsh ended and prime real estate began.
Shading his eyes against the sun peeking through the trees overhead, Rafe stood and looked around. There, in a break in the trees behind Darby, he could just make out the outline of a building, a few hundred yards away.
“There’s a house through those trees. In a couple of minutes we’ll have you in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. You’re going to be fine.”
“I hardly think I need an ambulance. It’s not that bad.” Her voice was thin and tight, her eyes closed. She was obviously in more pain than she wanted to admit.
And Rafe didn’t agree with her assessment of her injuries. That cut on her knee wasn’t going to stop bleeding on its own. He bent down to pick her up, then froze at the feel of a gun barrel pressing between his shoulder blades.
Chapter Three
Rafe slowly straightened and put his hands in the air.
“Who are you?” The man behind him shoved the gun against his back. “What are you doing on my property?”
The raspy, older quality of the man’s voice reassured Rafe. The bomber had seemed close to Rafe’s age, thirty-five, much younger than this man sounded.
“I’m Detective Rafe Morgan with the St. Augustine Police Department. The