Free An Eye for Danger by Christine M. Fairchild Page A

bare, bruised skin. "Crazy fool, you're going to kill yourself and leave that on me."
    "Ain't dead yet."
    Panting, he aimed for the bathtub, but I resisted his moves. He leaned harder, heavier. I wasn't going to win this one. So with my arm around his waist, I managed him over the tub's ledge and onto slippery porcelain till he leaned against the tile wall.
    When he nodded he was okay, I turned, but he rammed his arm across my path.
    "Stay." He pushed his trousers off his hips, and my fingers curled, ready to claw into his burn. "Doing this for you, you know."
    My imagination ran wild. With alcohol softening his pain, he could try to overpower me. The walls would insulate my screams, the tight quarters limit my evasive moves. From experience I knew even kind people can kill, but with his eyelids drooping, and his gun in the kitchen, he looked a lot less dangerous. Though my wrist remembered his grip well enough.
    "Turn your head," he said. "Hey, I'm kinda shy."
    I let out my breath and lifted my gaze, relieved and annoyed simultaneously.
    "Give me your leg," he said, huffing harder. When I asked why, he snapped, "Christ, just do it. Put your foot on the ledge. Hurry." He shifted closer, practically chest to chest, his hot breath hitting my cheek as his fingers jabbed into my thigh. "This stable?" He reached for the curtain rod. I shook my head and his hand slapped back onto my thigh. "Then you're it."
    More panting, less moving now. Despite using me as a safety bar, he seemed stuck or on the verge of passing out. "You gotta help me, Jules. Can't stand here all day."
    I grabbed the waistband of his workpants and shifted them down his thighs. The day could not get any weirder. Then his boxer briefs plunged. My eyes snapped closed as I tugged his underwear back up, as scared to see him undressed as he was purportedly shy about it.
    "Good catch." Sam started shifting one foot to the other, pushing off the cardboard-stiff pants, while his thumb dug deeper into my thigh. "Why they make carpenter pants so damn rigid," he mumbled.
    "Sam." My foot clutched the tub's ledge to keep my leg from slipping. He finally stepped out of the pants, but by then my leg was shaking under his weight. "Sam!"
    "Got it." He released my leg and slapped his hand on the wall over my shoulder, caging me. But with the meat and sinew of his muscles struggling to hold him still, he wasn't proving much of a threat.
    He closed his eyes, gathered as much air into his lungs as he could manage, which wasn't much, and wavered, while I speculated how long he'd last till collapsing. Or whether he was expecting me to finish undressing him.
    "Let me find help. I won't call the police, I promise." I met his eyes as he lifted his head. A weak smile penetrated his pallor.
    "You still don't get it." Laughing, he raised himself to an unsteady height and puffed out his chest. "I am the police."
     

CHAPTER 6
    "So what now, Officer..." I prompted as I rummaged through an old makeup bag in the medicine cabinet and Sam showered.
    Judging from his mashing noises and the smell of my expensive rosemary soap, Sam was lathering himself. Suddenly, the bathroom felt too intimate. Leaving the bathroom door ajar made me feel only slightly less inappropriate about being so close to a naked stranger (as if the day hadn't already been an exercise in annihilating boundaries), but better about having a clear path of egress should events get weirder.
    "Eat, sleep, be merry."
    No way I was asking what Sam meant by that. "I mean I assume you have a plan." I stuck my hand through the shower curtain to proffer the four dusty ibuprofens I'd found. "You might at least call your precinct to come get you."
    "She's sick of me already, Max." Sam cupped my hand and sucked the pills from my palm. I snapped my arm back.
    "You weren't exactly invited." I quickly washed my hands, as he loudly balked at the sudden loss of hot water.
    Maybe he really was a cop. That would explain the vest, his saving my life,