When I straightened my gaze landed on a pair of all-too-familiar toned legs. Those toned legs were standing on top of a board and the owner—Jude York—had a long paddle and was propelling himself to shore. Behind him on the board were a cooler and a pole.

Jude fished from a paddleboard? This guy never ceased to amaze me.

But I knew I needed to hightail it out of there before he floated closer to the coastline. He hadn’t spotted us yet and I didn’t want him to think we had followed him out here.

“Let’s go,” I muttered so as to not call any attention to myself. Of course, Chopper was reluctant to leave and began twisting around my legs and whining.

I knew the moment he spotted Jude because he lunged into the water, dragging me forward with him. I fell on my knees in the shallow end and scratched the shit out of my shin along the rocks on the bottom of the lake. Damn, that stung. I could already tell I was bleeding. I had no control over the leash so before it cut the blood supply to my wrist or broke it cleanly in half, I let it go. I’d just swim out to get Chopper if I had to.

But then Jude jumped off his board to save the day again. He grabbed hold of Chopper’s leash and knelt down in the water while simultaneously using that whistle sound to calm his ass down. The dog became perfectly still as if awaiting his next command.

Jude’s eyes met mine and his brow furrowed. At first I thought it was in frustration but as I gingerly pushed off of my knees to stand up, I realized that he could tell that I’d been injured. And it wasn’t just my shin, it was my fucking back. I think the damn dog had thrown it out of alignment.

Jude made quick work of pulling his board into shore, making sure it was secured on the rocks, and then headed toward me. He was still holding Chopper’s leash and I straightened to my full height with some effort because goddamn it, I wasn’t some wuss unable to stand on my own two feet.

I looked down and saw my shin was bleeding, a trickle of blood making a path down my leg. Big fucking deal. The water stung so I carefully treaded toward land. My cheeks burned from embarrassment and I tried not to limp. Basically, my back was like my Achilles’ heel. Way to keep it macho and classy.

I felt Jude’s warmth and Chopper’s nose nudging the back of my knee as if to apologize, so I looked over my shoulder. “It’s like you’re a fucking homing device for this mutt or something. Goddamn going to kill me one day.”

A smirk pulled at Jude’s lip as I bent down to snatch my shoes from the dirt. I intended on grabbing the leash from him and sending him on his way, when I felt the searing heat of his fingers on my arm.

I held in my gasp because I had imagined this scenario so many times in my head. But never in a million years would I have pictured it happening after falling on my face because my dog had acted like a moron. I didn’t know which one of us had a bigger hard-on for Jude.

When I turned to look at him, he was standing so close I could see faint flecks of brown in his vividly green eyes. As his gaze slid down the front of my torso to the ground, his eyes widened. “Your foot is a bloody mess.”

“What?” That’s when I looked down and saw how right he was. There was a deep scrape below my ankle that I hadn’t even noticed because the fire in my back took precedence. I felt like a little kid who had fallen off his bike and was being checked on by a virtual stranger. “It’s fine.”

I tried to reach for Chopper’s leash but Jude began hightailing it toward the street and all I could do was hobble behind.

I gritted my teeth. “Can you hand over my dog? I need to head home.”

Still he didn’t answer, he just looked over his shoulder and shook his head.

“What the hell?” When we had gotten to the road, I calculated how far I had to go to make it home. It was not going to be pretty. I was already leaving an impressive trail of blood behind me on the pavement. “Give me the damn leash or I’m just going to leave my dog with you. He’d like that; he’s apparently your biggest fan.”

Now I saw a dimple indent his cheek as he turned the corner and began heading west. I was about to part ways and go home—to hell with him—when he finally spoke. “Relax. My flat is right over here.”

My heart almost hurtled out of my chest. “You mean the place you live?”

He nodded again. I should’ve been grateful but a larger part of me was panicking in a completely different way. He was obviously concerned about me enough to take me somewhere to get cleaned up. My foot was gushing all over the place.

“I’ll get blood all over your stuff.”

He stopped and his face swung close to mine. “No worries, mate. Got to get that cleaned up. I’ll come back for my fishing gear later.”

“It’ll get stolen.”

He looked up and his eyes scanned the horizon. “It’ll be fine.”

Right then I heard the distinct sound of an engine. A motorcycle engine. What the fuck? Had Jude been out here with one of the Disciples? Now I was losing it.

My head was so jumbled, I just nodded and continued following. At this point my abraded shin was stinging and my cut foot was throbbing.

Chopper trailed beside him on the leash like a good walker. The good walker that he never was with me. Little fucker. It was like he was showing off for Jude or something.

He turned into the driveway of a house that had this impressive front porch and for a moment I wondered how a guy that worked at the Board Room could afford its rent.

But then he continued walking past the silver car in the driveway and I spotted a tiny structure in the back of the property. Some of the century-old homes in this town had small cottages on their land and I’d known a few college students who rented them out over the years.