CHAPTER TWO

      MATEO’S HARD BODY took her down like a football linebacker, as he somehow managed to wrap his arms around her before they hit the earth. The sharp pebbles they landed on stabbed and scraped her one bare leg, a bigger chunk of concrete jabbed into her ribs, and her face landed on the hard pillow of Mateo’s muscled forearm before sliding off it into a pile of silty debris.

      His weight smashed her down so hard she couldn’t get her mouth clear to breathe, and his body jerked at the same time as he grunted loudly in her ear. Lifting her head half an inch to suck in a chokingly dusty breath, she twisted and pushed at him, blinded by the dirt in her eyes, which sent tears streaming down her cheeks. “Get off! Can’t breathe...”

      He didn’t move, and she jabbed her elbow into his ribs, which sent another low grunt into her ear. “Hold still a minute,” he said. “I just took a boulder for you and you’re trying to hurt me more?”

      “What?” His weight lifted slightly off her, and she twisted around fully to lie on her back, sucking in deep breaths as she stared up at his grim face. Her hands decided on their own to grab at him, landing inside his coat on his shoulders, clinging, pulling him close. Somehow, she wriggled enough to move her spine off whatever was currently lodged there.

      “You okay?”

      “I—I’m okay.” She realized that was true, she was fine, possibly only because she had a two-hundred-pound blanket of bone and muscle covering her. “You?”

      “Bleeding, but okay. And see? Seems to be all finished,” he said in a ridiculously calm voice. He lifted his gaze to scan the tunnel. “Let’s give this a few more seconds to make sure it’s done, then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

      Light silt still showering down in intermittent swishes mingled with his heavy breaths against her lips, and her own fast breathing against his. Their eyes met and held, and she was suddenly acutely aware of the feel of his skin against her palms, the strength of his muscles, the movement of his naked chest against her. The grip she had on his warm shoulders loosened, and her hands moved down his pectorals, smoothing across the soft hair covering them before she realized with dismay what she was doing. Making herself let go, she curled her fingers into her palms to keep from touching him again. Fought the peculiar combination of sensations swirling around her belly that didn’t seem connected to the fear that had consumed her just moments before.

      She pulled in another deep breath. What in the world? The two of them were lying in a collapsed tunnel, for heaven’s sake, and it was long past time to get safe.

      “I’m...I’m ready,” she said unsteadily. “To leave.”

      “Finally?” His lips curved just a little. “Let’s go.”

      His big body lifted from hers, and his hands grasped her waist, effortlessly swinging her to her feet. His arm wrapped around her shoulders as they moved quickly out of the tunnel toward the light. Miranda blinked at the brightness of the sky—how had it seemed so gray and gloomy before? The fresh, cold air filled her lungs, sharp and stinging and wonderful. Trembling a little now that the whole thing was over, she tried not to think about how bad it could have turned out, and turned to see Mateo watching her with an odd expression on his face.

      “You sure you’re okay?”

      Probably, she looked pale and shaken, her pretense of bravery through the situation now shot to heck. “Yes, okay. Thanks for, you know, crushing me with your body so I didn’t get crushed worse by flying debris.”

      “You’re welcome. Except I didn’t completely succeed. Your coat is torn.”

      She followed his gaze to the large rip in the shoulder seam of her coat, and couldn’t help the little dismayed sound that came from her lips. “Oh, no! I just bought this last month! Must have happened when you tackled me.”

      “Better a torn coat than a broken head. Which you would have deserved for not leaving when I asked you to.”

      “Not even I deserve a broken head.”

      That statement made his lips quirk as he reached out to brush his finger across her dusty eyelids. “You’d better get washed up.”

      “Me? You look like a gray-haired old man right now.” Which couldn’t be further from the truth, since no old man had the kind of wide, muscular chest that was mostly bare right in front of her, or flat, rippling abs, or such a chiseled jaw. And because she couldn’t stop looking at him and was enjoying their banter far too much, she forced herself to look away up the sidewalk, pretending to focus on all the emergency equipment and personnel. Then her peripheral vision caught bright red drops of blood splattering on the sidewalk behind his feet.

      Wide-eyed, she jerked her attention back to him. “You’re bleeding! Oh, my God.”

      “I can tell it’s just a scrape. Maybe a gouge, too, but nothing worse than that.”

      “Take off your coat so I can see.”

      “I’ll freeze.”

      “Better to freeze than die from blood loss.” She pushed at the shoulders of his open coat and, shaking his head and grumbling, he finally slid it off. She turned him around, then stared in dismay at the swollen, raw scrape and shallow puncture wound that was the source of the drops of blood. “For heaven’s sake, you really did take a boulder for me!”

      “I’ll live.”

      “Does it hurt anywhere else?” She ran her hands across his shoulders and back, wiping off the dusty debris from when he’d had his coat off earlier, looking for other injuries that might not be obvious. “I feel just terrible that I was pushing and jabbing you to get off me when you really were hurt.”

      “Like I said, just a scrape. And I’m tough.”

      He tried to turn around, but she stopped him. “And you call me stubborn! Just be still a minute.” With her scarf gone, the best she could do to staunch the trickle of blood was a pathetic wad of tissue she scrounged from her coat pocket, pressing it firmly against the bruised indentation as