The Doctor's Rebel Knight by Melanie Milburne

‘Yeah, you could say that.’ He stepped into the overalls and did up the press-lock buttons up the front, before placing the hard hat on his head.
    He uncoiled the rope with a clip attached to the end and, moving past Fran, tied it securely to a tree a few feet away, tugging on it to check it held.
    ‘You’re going in?’ she asked, wincing as she thought of the spiders and sticky cobwebs.
    ‘I won’t be able to go very far,’ he said, and clipped theother end of the rope to the belt on his overalls. ‘It’ll be a bit of a squeeze but I should be able to see far enough inside to work out where Rufus is.’
    Fran was embarrassed at the trouble her sister’s dog had caused, but was also secretly pleased to watch Jacob in action. There was something incredibly attractive about a man’s man, the sort of man who was not afraid of a bit of dirt and dust, not afraid of the unknown, just determined to get the job done, whatever it took. She supposed it was part of his training as a cop. He had that aura of command about him. Cool under pressure, calm in the face of adversity. Dependable, dedicated…deliciously male and—
    Fran had to shake herself out of her reverie when Jacob backed out of the cave entrance, asking for Rufus’s lead. She crouched down beside his long legs and passed it to him. ‘Can you see him?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ he said as he moved back into the cave. ‘It looks like he’s dropped down a crevice.’
    Fran felt her insides clench. ‘Is he hurt?’
    ‘It’s hard to tell,’ he answered. ‘Ah…I can see him better now. No, he looks fine. Just a bit shocked, I think. Hey, boy. What are you doing down there?’
    Fran let out a breath of relief when she heard an answering whine. She watched as Jacob wriggled some more, this time leaving just his ankles and feet out of the cave as he reached down into the crevice and clipped on Rufus’s lead.
    Within a few dusty seconds both man and dog were outside, Rufus looking distinctly cowed after his adventure and Jacob looking…well…gorgeous, Fran decided. He had a cobweb draped on each broad shoulder and a smear of dust over his right cheek, and the graze above his cheekbone had started bleeding again from being scratched by something.
    She had never seen a more heart-stopping sight.
    ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ she said as she took Rufus’s lead.
    Jacob used his forearm to mop the sweat from his brow. ‘No problem.’
    Fran’s eyes were automatically drawn to a mark on his arm. ‘Your arm…’ She peered closer. ‘It looks like it’s been burnt.’
    ‘Yeah, I got that when I was out helping at the fire in the valley. Old Jack McBride was doing some brush-cutting and a spark lit a scrub fire. A branch came down and I wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way.’
    ‘But it needs dressing,’ she said, frowning up at him. ‘Burns are notorious for getting infected and you’ve just been crawling around in a dusty cave.’
    He gave her a wry look. ‘Yeah, well, I would have if there had been a doctor on duty at the clinic. I called past but Linda told me you had shot through with a headache.’
    Fran bit her lip, shifting her weight from foot to foot. The way he had said the word ‘headache’ felt like he had lifted his fingers in quotation marks for emphasis. That he didn’t believe her story about the headache was as clear as the cobwebs hanging from his shoulders.
    For the want of something to fill the awkward silence she said, ‘Um…you have cobwebs on your shoulders…’
    He gave them a quick brush off his overalls and took off his hat. ‘I felt something go down the back of my neck but it might have just been a bit of dust.’
    Fran watched as he stepped out of the overalls, her stomach giving a little flutter of awareness as his bronzed flesh came into view. He had a light dusting of chest hair, covering both pectoral muscles, narrowing down the flat plane of his stomach, finally disappearing below the waistband