Page 24 of Rogue Wave

“Shadow bolted and jumped on him and took him down,” he continued. “But I still had a hold of him which meant I went down too. I landed on some rocks, which scratched up my face, shoulder, and arm. The suspect, however, landed in the grass, which cushioned his fall, of course, leaving me the only one of us injured.”

Hank unbuttoned his uniform shirt and I saw more scratches on his collarbone area and his left arm, where he must have landed.

My brain, however, also focused on his very chiseled chest. There was no chest hair, just smooth and perfectly tight skin over the most impressive pecs I had ever seen.

Focus, Hazel. Focus.

“Next time, Shadow, you should bite him,” I said as I looked over at her, needing someone else to look at.

She looked up at me, her tail wagging as if she understood me and agreed.

“That’s not what she’s trained for,” Hank responded as I grabbed some alcohol wipes. “We have a Belgian Malinois for that.”

He hissed as I started to wipe the injured area on his arm.

“It’s just to clean the wound before I bandage it.”

I moved to wipe his face, and he flinched and hissed again.

“Quit being a baby,” I told him. “You’re worse than the rockhopper penguin I had to bandage up last month.”

“You put Band-Aids on a penguin?” he asked. Not in the sense that he thought I was crazy, but out of genuine confusion.

“He had sores on the bottom of his feet that we were worried might get infected. So, we treated them and put a super cute zebra-print bandage wrap on him.”

He blinked and just stared at me.

“Unlike you, he was a pretty good patient. You want me to run over to my place and grab the zebra-print bandages so you can match?” I teased him.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, but I didn’t miss the slight twitch of his lip.

Ah, so the big bad sheriff thought I was funny but didn’t want me to know.

Using the non-zebra print and very boring plain bandages, I dabbed on some antibacterial cream and wrapped the cuts on his arm and then moved to deal with the scratches on his neck and collarbone.

I knew there was no way he would let me put a Band-Aid on his neck, but I could at least clean it up and put some antibiotic ointment on it to keep it from getting infected.

I kneeled down in front of him to get eye level with those cuts, which put me directly between his splayed legs. I stared straight ahead at the most gorgeous chest I’d ever seen and tried to tell myself to focus on the cuts and scratches and not his sexy body.

He squirmed a little in his seat and cleared his throat. “Hazel, you don’t need to do this. I’m perfectly capable of⁠—”

I cut him off because if I was going to win him over by killing him with kindness, he needed to just sit still and shut up while I did my helping.

“Zip it and sit still, Hank.”

He let out a rough exhale of defeat, and I took that as a win. A double win, really, since I not only won the battle of helping him, but I got to stare at his delectable body in the process.

After wiping the dried blood off and dabbing a little antibiotic ointment on the cuts, I leaned back to look at my work.

My gaze drifted from his neck up to his mouth and then to his eyes. He said nothing, but his gaze was boring a hole into mine. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the look in his eyes was full of heat and hunger—for me.

Don’t jump his bones. Don’t jump his bones.

My internal chants were the only thing keeping me distracted from running my hands over his muscled arms and gorgeous chest, clearly chiseled by Greek gods themselves.

My heart rate picked up along with my breathing as Hank just continued to stare at me.

What was he thinking about?