Crossing The Line. Candace Irvin

the exertion of digging had already taken its toll. The center of the dark-green cravat was now soaked with blood.

      Red blood, not brown.

      Fresh.

      She reached out, but he intercepted her hand before she could check the bandage. Startled by the warmth in his fingers, she jerked her hand to her lap. “You still need stitches.”

      “There’s still no time.”

      “I disagree. You said yourself, we’ve crashed in a remote area. It looks as if we’ve gone unnoticed for the time being. We should at least have ten more minutes to sew up your head.”

      He shook that same damned stubborn head.

      As if on cue, a thin river of blood spilled out from beneath the bandage and trickled into his right eye. She raised her brow as he swiped at it with the back of his hand. “If I don’t stitch it, you’ll just continue to lose blood during the journey. How long do you think you’ll be able to keep up with me and my cracked ribs if that happens?”

      Apparently she’d chosen the one argument that had a chance of working, because that dark gaze finally wavered. But his frown deepened. “My sergeant’s medical kit was charred beyond salvage.”

      Eve shrugged as she reached into the right pocket of her flight vest and pulled out her first-aid kit. Unlike her radio, the kit had survived the crash intact. “I guess you’re lucky you’re stranded with a pilot.” She flicked her gaze to the canteens he’d already topped off. “Now why don’t you wash the grime and camouflage off your face while I thread the needle? You might just save yourself an infection.”

      Bishop nodded curtly, but at least he complied.

      By the time he’d rummaged through his rucksack and located his stash of alcohol wipes and used them to clean his face, she’d managed to thread the needle and ready her disinfectant.

      He turned back. “Ready.”

      Sweet heaven.

      Her hands froze as she took in the man’s features without the olive-drab and brown grease paint smeared into his skin. Her initial instincts at the landing zone had been right on. Rick Bishop’s face was as commanding as his lean, muscular body. Perhaps even more so. Without the grease paint to break up the planes of his face, he was uncannily handsome. Not in the blond, pretty-boy way that had attracted Carrie to Bill Turner, but in a dark, pure male and very rugged fashion. The only thing remotely soft about this man were his thick brown lashes. But those curling wisps were deceptive.

      This was no tin soldier.

      Neither was Bishop a man to be toyed with.

      Each and every one of those deep lines carved about his eyes and mouth had been earned, etched in over the years spent in Special Forces. The man hunkered down in front of her was no weekend warrior. Nor was he a man who spent his days merely training for war. This was a man who’d lived it, day in and day out in the deserts and jungles of the world. On covert campaigns that had never made it into the nightly news. Those etched lines served as permanent testimony of a youth squandered on the planning and execution of missions no American mother wanted to know her son had ever been tasked with, let alone accomplished. There was no doubt in Eve’s mind, Rick Bishop was one dangerous man.

      God help the enemy who dared to cross his path.

      God help her.

      “Well? What are you waiting for?”

      Eve nearly jumped out of her skin as his low growl rumbled between them. But at least it succeeded in forcing her thoughts as well as her breathing back on track. Bishop might have the rugged looks and the mystery to attract a woman’s interest, but he didn’t have the personality to hold it.

      At least not hers.

      “I—uh—don’t have anything to give you for the pain.”

      “Didn’t ask. Just do it.”

      Yup, the man was definitely lacking in personality.

      Still, she owed him. Bishop might have the manners of a caged mountain lion, but he had spared her the task of retrieving Carrie’s body as well as those of her crew chief and passenger, and he’d buried them. For that reason alone, she tried her damnedest to work as quickly and as gently as she could.

      It seemed to help.

      The only hint of discomfort Bishop gave as she stitched was the subtle clenching of his jaw as well as the occasional tensing of his broad hands. Every now and then he swallowed firmly, but that was it. Had she been in his place, the added pain would probably have sent her over the edge. As it was, anything deeper than the shallowest of breaths still sent an eye-watering ache ripping up the side of her chest.

      They made quite a pair.

      Bishop must have thought so too, because as she reached the halfway mark on his three-inch gash, he shot her a half-hearted attempt at a smile. To her horror, for a moment the pain in her ribs actually ebbed. Good Lord, what kind of a woman was she—let alone soldier—that she could be reacting to this man as a man here of all places?

      And now?

      “You’re pretty good with that needle.”

      She yanked her gaze from his. “Yeah, well, I hear women go wild for the wounded-soldier look. I’d leave a better scar, but then your wife would have to drive them off with a stick.”

      Good one, Eve.

      She picked up the next stitch as the reminder that the man had a life back in the States—one that she wasn’t part of—helped to restore her breathing.

      “Don’t have one.”

      She almost dropped the needle.

      He must have taken her clumsiness for confusion because he elaborated. “A wife. That is, I don’t have a wife.”

      Wonderful.

      She forced a stiff smile of her own as she regained control of the slender needle and resumed her stitching. “Girlfriend then.”

      “Fresh out of those, too.” His smile deepened briefly.

      The effect was devastating.

      Who’d have thought Super Soldier would have dimples?

      “What about you? Husband? Boyfriend?”

      For a single, blinding moment, she couldn’t respond. She didn’t know how. Surely the man wasn’t coming on to her?

      After the way he’d barked at her?

      Not that it mattered. She could not afford to get personal. Not now, and certainly not with Rick Bishop.

      She must have sat there gaping too long, because he sighed.

      “Look, Paris, I was making small talk. It’s bound to be a long trek.” He might as well have come out and said she wasn’t his type.

      Despite her relief, she flushed.

      What the hell. The man was right, it was going to be a long trip. And since Bishop had an M-16 rifle and a 9 mm pistol as well as a machete to her lonely 9 mm, she might as well stay on his good side. She just might need him for more than company. Besides, the conversation was probably an attempt to take his mind off the pain.

      Eve shook her head. “None.”

      Despite her nearby stitching, his brow furrowed.

      She elaborated, “No husband, no boyfriend. No time.”

      “Ah…I know the feeling.”

      He probably did at that.

      He rolled his shoulders slightly as if to ease his tension as she picked up her last stitch. “So…what happened up there?”

      Slick. Very slick.

      Small talk, her ass. Rick Bishop wasn’t interested in getting to know her at all. Neither had he