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Crimson covered her ripped suit sleeve.
His blood ran cold as he watched hers drip. “You’re hit.”
He slammed on the breaks and did a U-turn, tires squealing, horns beeping around them as he plowed into the opposite lane, back the way they’d come. Oh, hell.
She was shooting him the megadeath glare. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”
If he was, he was entitled to it with her showing up in his life after all these years without warning. He straightened the car on the road. “Taking you to the hospital.”
“The bullet didn’t hit bone. It’s not that serious.” She held the bloody arm up, bent at the elbow, and looked under her sleeve for a few seconds before she flexed her elbow. She winced and tried her best to hide it, turning her head.
He stepped harder on the gas. Oh, man. He’d had her for only an hour and he’d broken her already.
Jamie was going to kill him. Mitch Mendoza, too. Mitch was probably going to torture him first. “Push your seat back. Head down, arm up. I’m going to get you help.”
“I’m not bleeding out. Take it easy.”
He couldn’t. He’d been responsible for her in the past and that somehow stayed with him. Plus she was Mitch’s baby sister now.
Dammit, he should have never let her come with him to Jimmy’s place.
He glanced into his rearview mirror, but the Mustang had already disappeared. “From now on, you work out of the office.”
“I don’t think so.”
Anger rolled over him. “If you didn’t get shot, I would have those idiots by now.” She had no idea how distracting she was.
“You could have killed us with your driving,” she snapped back. “You could have killed innocent civilians.”
He swallowed a growl, hoping to God they would sedate her at the hospital. He wondered who he’d have to talk to to get her knocked out for a week.
He drew a steadying breath and focused. “When we get to the E.R., you need to keep in mind that my team is doing undercover work here. We’re consulting for CBP as far as everyone else is concerned.”
“I’m not going to the E.R. Seriously.” She paused for a moment before she continued, “If you want to, you can take me back to my hotel. I wouldn’t mind changing clothes.”
“You need a doctor.”
“I have a first-aid kit in my room. It’ll be faster. I go to the E.R. with a non-life-threatening injury, and we’ll be there for the rest of the day.”
He chewed that over. She was right. Not that he had to like it.
“Fine. I’ll take you back to your hotel. But I’m looking at your arm. Then I’ll decide if you have to go to the E.R.”
She scowled and, even scowling, managed to look beautiful. “You were always bossy.”
She was talking about the bad old days.
“I was supposed to tell you what to do. That was my job.” And he’d failed spectacularly. He didn’t like to think about that, so he asked, “Where are you staying?”
“Pebble Creek. Prickly Pear Garden Hotel. Right in the middle of town.”
He knew the place.
He picked up his phone and called the office, updated Ryder on what had happened at the trailer park. With the license-plate info Lilly had already called in, half the team was already out looking for the Mustang, and so was local law enforcement, so that was good. They’d get them. Shep told Ryder the direction the car had been headed when last seen.
“How are you doing?” he asked Lilly when he hung up. They were reaching Pebble Creek at last and he had to slow a little as there were even more cars on the road here.
The small border town was getting ready for a rodeo. There were signs all over the place and billboards with images of cowboys and bucking bulls. The rodeo circuit was a big deal around these parts, a lot of outsiders coming in, which wasn’t helping their investigation one bit.
“You’re not responsible for my well-being,” Lilly was saying. “I’m not seventeen anymore.”
“Yeah, I noticed that,” he said aloud, without meaning to.
A quick laugh escaped her, the sound sneaking inside his chest. Even her laugh was sexy, heaven help him. He turned down Main Street, drove straight to the hotel and pulled into the parking structure.
“Are you okay? Why don’t you just sit here for a minute?”
She shot him a dark look. “I’m not going to pass out.”
Good. Because he really didn’t want to have to carry her up. He didn’t think he could handle touching her.
They walked to the elevators together. He kept close watch on her from the corner of his eye. At least they were alone when they got on. Her bloody arm would have brought on some questions, for sure. But they reached her room on the third floor without running into anyone.
She had a suite, small but tidy. She walked straight to the closet and grabbed some clothes. “I’m going to clean up. Make yourself at home,” she said before she disappeared behind the bathroom door.
He looked around more carefully. The space, like any hotel room, was dominated by a bed: king-size, plenty of room for two. He cut that thought right off and turned his back to the damn thing. He blew some air from his lungs. He shouldn’t be here. He shoved his hands into his pockets and reassured himself with the thought that he was here only in a professional capacity, and this would be the last time.
He scanned the rest of the furniture: a desk and a table with chairs in the small kitchenette. Plenty enough for the week she would be staying.
The sound of running water drew his attention to the bathroom door. He bent his head, rubbed his thumb and index fingers over his eyebrows as he squeezed his eyes shut for a second. He so didn’t want to think about the new, grown-up Lilly naked under the hot spray of water.
He did anyway. Maybe he had more self-discipline than the average Joe, but he was still a man.
She kept the shower brief. Long before he could have reined in his rampant imagination, she emerged from the bathroom, wearing soft white slacks and a pale green tank top that emphasized the green of her eyes. A nasty red wound, at least four inches long, marred her lower right arm. It still seeped blood.
She went to the closet again and bent to the bottom. She grabbed a jumbo first-aid kit, then came over to sit on the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t mind if you helped me bandage this up. I’m not good with my left hand.”
The bed? With five chairs in the suite, she had to sit there?
He almost suggested the kitchen table, but he didn’t want her to guess that she affected him in any way.
He stepped up to her, trying not to notice her fresh, soapy scent. “You travel with an emergency kit?”
She’d been a pretty haphazard person back when he’d known her, definitely not the Girl Scout type. More of a “let the chips fall where they may” sort of girl.
She popped the lid open. “I like to be prepared.”
Of course, she was an FBI agent now. She’d probably been shot at before, even if he didn’t want to think about it. Obviously, she’d lived and learned.
He looked at the brown bottle of peroxide in the middle of the box. “Let’s start with the disinfecting.”
The bullet ripped along her skin but didn’t go through, didn’t damage muscle, or not too badly. That was good. She was right—she didn’t need the E.R. Although, it might have been better if a nurse was doing this.
He hadn’t planned on seeing her in so little clothes that he would have to notice her toned arms. He hadn’t planned on getting close enough to her to touch her.
But fine—he was a soldier. He could suck it up for ten minutes. As long as he didn’t look at the curve of her breasts, which the tank top very unhelpfully accentuated.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s what they always say.”
He slipped into latex gloves and disinfected the wound then dabbed it dry. To her credit, she didn’t make a sound. He leaned closer to get a better look at the damage now that dry blood didn’t obstruct his view.
She held still. “So?”
“The missing swath of skin is too wide for butterfly bandages, but the gash isn’t deep enough to really need stitches.”
To her credit, she didn’t say I told you so.
He put on antiseptic cream then a sterile pad, wrapped her arm in gauze. “It’s going to leave a nasty scar.”
“Good thing I’m not a photo model.”
As she shrugged, his gaze strayed to her naked shoulder, to her soft, tanned skin. Feeling lust at this moment had to be wrong for at least half a dozen reasons. Trouble was, she had him so bamboozled, he couldn’t remember any of them.
He cleared his throat. “Good to go.”
She flashed a smile. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He stepped back.
“And thank you for...before,” she added with a tilt of her head, her eyes growing serious. She filled her lungs, a consternated look coming over her face for a second. “I’m sorry if I was a difficult teenager.”
Difficult didn’t begin to describe her. “You were something.”
She smiled again.
He didn’t smile back. “And by that, I mean trouble. And it was pretty obvious you’d be even bigger trouble in a couple of years. I was just hoping we wouldn’t be running in the same circles by then.”
She watched him. “And here I am.”
“And here you are.” He drew a slow breath, and the flowery scent of her soap hit him all over again.
* * *
LILLY WATCHED THE WARY expression on his face.
Being alone in a hotel room with Shepard Lewis had been her teenage dream. To have him here now seemed beyond strange, even if under vastly different circumstances than she’d spent hours daydreaming about back in the day.
She’d written songs about him, for heaven’s sake.
She pushed all that away.
“You kept insurance on the car I borrowed,” she said. Okay, stole. But seeing how they were practically colleagues now, there was no sense splitting hairs.
He shifted where he stood. “Figured you couldn’t afford it. Driving without insurance is illegal. Didn’t want you to get into more trouble if you got caught.”
“You never reported it stolen. That car saved my life. I lived in it the first year after I ran away.”
He nodded.
“How come you’re no longer a parole officer?”
His dark eyes focused a little sharper, his jaw jutting out a little, his masculine lips tightening.
Oh, God. “Did you quit because of me?” Had she been that bad?
He backed away from her, to the window, and looked out. He said nothing.
“You did?” She stared.
He did a sexy, one-shouldered shrug. “Technically, I was let go.”
She stared some more as she tried to make sense of that.
“Why? You were really good. You were the only decent person I met in the system. If anyone could have made me go straight, it was you. You just got me too late. I was... Look, nobody could’ve gotten through to me by that point. Why on earth would they let you go?”
He turned back to her, holding her gaze. “There was that letter.”
For a long second, she had no idea what he was talking about. Then it clicked. “The email I sent?”
“Work emails are not private.”
“But I was thanking you for all your help and apologizing for the car—”
And then it hit her.
Heat flushed her face. The email... Oh, God. At the end, in a fit of teenage drama, she’d confessed her undying love. She might have even mentioned that she would be saving her virginity for him.
She’d blocked that memory, apparently, until now. She cringed as she pushed to her feet and busied herself with packing up the first-aid kit. FBI agents didn’t blush, she tried to remind herself, too late.
“I’m sorry,” she said without looking at him. She couldn’t just now.
She had a fair idea what had happened. He’d probably been accused of encouraging her teenage fancy. He hadn’t. The opposite, if anything. He’d always tried to treat her as a big brother would, which used to frustrate the living daylights out of her.
“I’m really sorry,” she said again, feeling it in the bottom of her soul.
“Don’t worry about it. I found my place.”
