In Close Quarters. Candace Irvin

open the door.”

      “I did. Now go away.” The words were muffled, but soft they were not.

      He sighed and cursed as he shifted the helmet, growing heavier by the moment, to his right hand. “Five minutes, this is all I ask, sí?”

      “No.”

      “Cariño—”

      “I said no. Now go away before I call the police.”

      “I am the police.”

      “Wrong. You’re DEA, and I’m smart enough to know the difference. Now leave.”

      He stared at the door, then up and down the dimly lit hallway. “I will go—after we talk. Unless you would like me to knock loudly enough to wake your neighbors?”

      “You wouldn’t.”

      But he would.

      And evidently she knew this. Because the door reopened. A crack. Her huge blue eyes filled the space.

      “May I come in?”

      “Don’t press your luck.”

      “Five minutes, no more. I give you my word.”

      Her gaze narrowed. “No, and you have five seconds.”

      “Cariño—”

      “It’s two in the morning, Agent Vásquez. You want five minutes, come back at nine.”

      He sighed. If he had but five seconds, he had best get started. “I am sorry I missed dinner.”

      “Apology accepted. Good night.”

      Dios mio. She was furiosa. Definitely angry enough to slam the door in his face again. He wedged a boot into the narrow opening just in case.

      “Get your foot out of my door.”

      “Un momento, por favor.”

      “Now.”

      It was late and he was tired, or he would have caught the warning fire in her eyes—and heeded it. Certainly before she whipped the door open and slammed the heel of her palm into the pocket of his shoulder.

      He stumbled back to absorb the blow, grunting at the shaft of pain that stabbed through his shoulder before slicing across his chest and down his arm. He was dimly aware of her answering gasp, and then she was standing before him, shoving his leather jacket aside and gasping again.

      “Oh, my God, Tomás, what happened?”

      He stared down at the spare T-shirt the paramedic had given him, at the scarlet stain seeping through the gauze beneath and rapidly spreading into the white—and groaned.

      Madre de Dios.

      He was going to do the one thing he had sworn he would not do. He was going to bleed on that damned white carpet.

      Chapter 4

      Karin snatched back every vile curse she’d leveled at TJ during the past eight hours as she waited on him yet again—this time for an answer. When he didn’t speak, she ripped the hem of his T-shirt from his black jeans, determined to get the answer herself. Unfortunately his hands closed over hers, stopping the shirt halfway up his chest.

      “Cariño, I am fine. A minor knife wound, nothing more. I was on my way to the hospital, but first stopped to—”

      “Knife?” She swallowed the surge of fear that followed, or thought she had, until his free hand came up to cup her cheek.

      “A graze, I swear.”

      She jerked her chin from his palm and tugged his shirt the rest of the way up. Graze, her ass. That gauze swathed around his chest was damn near soaked with blood—inches from his heart. “Inside.”

      “But—”

      “Now.” This time she didn’t leave room for argument as she wrapped her fingers around his good arm and hauled him into the apartment. She slammed the door behind them and threw the chain home. “Don’t bother stopping at the couch, either. Head back to my bedroom—past the kitchen on your right. Take off your shirt and lie down while I grab my bag.”

      She didn’t wait for another argument, but sprinted across the apartment, instead. Along with her bedroom, her study was the only other room that had escaped her mother’s redecorating wrath. That meant she might actually be able to find her doctor’s bag without tearing the room upside down. A rifled desk, rummaged closet and storage chest later, she wasn’t so certain.

      Calm down, dammit.

      She was a doctor, for goodness’ sake.

      Surely she could find one simple suture kit and use it to stitch up one Latin lothario, without that same lothario realizing she’d spent half the night sitting up in bed worrying about him. She hit the closet again and made another pass through the clutter. Where was it?

      There.

      Five seconds later, her black bag firmly in hand, she was back in the living room. Unfortunately so was TJ. The man hadn’t moved a blasted inch toward her bedroom, and he was still holding that damned helmet.

      Oh, Lord, he wasn’t going to faint, was he?

      She wasn’t taking any chances.

      Karin grabbed the helmet and dumped it on the breakfast bar, easing out a sigh as she studied his face. His pupils looked good—not fixed and dilated. Other than exhaustion, he seemed okay. “Aren’t you supposed to be lying in my bed?”

      Nope, those pupils were definitely not fixed. If anything, they were flaring. “Cariño, I—”

      “—said move. And I meant it.” She planted her hands in the muscles of his back and nudged him through the open bedroom door. This time he complied without argument. What the hell—she pressed her luck and tacked on another order. “Strip.”

      Leaving him to the task, she quickly skirted the rumpled bed and dumped her bag on the nightstand before clicking the reading lamp to high. That done, she started in on the covers, glancing up as she peeled the floral sheets down to the brass spindles that made up the footboard—and groaned.

      TJ was still standing just inside the doorway, still staring into the room, or rather at the room. He was also showing signs of shock now, or rather surprise.

      Okay, so she was a slob.

      Sheesh. It wasn’t as if she’d been expecting company. At least not in here. Besides, if the man was looking for a sterile environment, he should have headed for the emergency room. Come to think of it, why hadn’t he?

      Unless the cut was so severe, he hadn’t had the time.

      She rounded the bed. “Tomás, will you please hurry? You’ll need a transfusion at this rate.”

      He came out of his stupor, suppressing a grimace as she helped him shrug off his leather jacket. She tossed the jacket over the stack of clothes on the chair that had made it off the ship but not quite into her closet, then helped him ease off the still-mostly-white T-shirt. And promptly wished she could say the same for the gauze.

      She nudged TJ down into a sitting position on the bed and sucked in her breath as she bent to unwind the saturated strips. Whoever had wrapped him had done a damned good job, leading her to believe the person knew something about medicine. But as soon as she was down to bare seeping flesh, she cursed the person a thousand times, because he never should have let TJ leave without stitches.

      “What happened?”

      “I told you, I was cut.”

      That much she could tell by the four-inch slice riding his left pectoral. This was no graze. It was, however, superficial. The muscle beneath his skin was firmly intact. All he would need were stitches and those she could do here. She sent up another round of thanks and pressed a wad of the clean