Looking for a Hero by Patti Berg

keep him right where he was?
    She laughed at herself. Why should she want him around? A man with a multitude of scars and only one eye?
    Surely she’d lost her mind.
    She rushed down the hall to her own bathroom, peeking in on Casey for a moment to make sure she was sleeping soundly. Rifling through the medicine chest, she gathered up cotton balls, alcohol, and gauze, dumping them into a small plastic pan she could fill with water.
    Joe’s old razor sat on the glass shelf in the medicine cabinet. Like so many other things, she should have thrown it away long ago, but she hadn’t. She started to put it with the rest of the items, then stopped, looking at the blade, wonderingif there were any traces of the dark blond whiskers that had covered Joe’s cheeks.
    But there were none. She looked into the mirror, hoping she’d see the face she’d loved so well standing before it, shaving as he’d done every morning. But the only face she saw was her own, and in her mind she saw the dark brown whiskers covering Morgan Farrell’s feverish face.
    She dumped the razor into the pan along with her own can of shaving cream.
    Casey’s pirate might be burning up. He might be suffering from a severe wound to his head and possibly a concussion, but he was going to lie there close to death with a cleanly shaven face.
    Sitting beside him once more, she swabbed the wound with alcohol, jumping each time he winced. It seemed as though hours had gone by before she’d cleaned the gash, but she smiled at her accomplishments when she sat back and studied the now sterile cut that looked as if it had already begun to heal. Thank goodness there was no need to cover it with a bandage, because she didn’t have the heart to shave away any of the hair that flowed so gloriously over his shoulders.
    His face was another matter entirely.
    Applying cool compresses once more to the back of his neck and forehead, she leaned over her patient and whispered close to his ear. “Mr. Farrell.”
    He didn’t move a muscle.
    Shaking the can of shaving cream, she applied a dollop on the tips of her fingers and gentlysmoothed it over his cheek, applying even more to his chin and neck, lightly swirling it over the heavy coat of whiskers.
    She’d never shaved a man before, and her fingers shook as she held the razor close to the base of his neck, remembering how in old western movies the barber always began there, dragging the razor upward.
    She took one light stroke, leaving behind too many whiskers. Again she shaved that very same spot, then ran her fingers over the stripe of soft, bronze skin. She shivered. It had been so long since she’d touched a man. She’d nearly forgotten the wondrous feel of a freshly shaved face.
    Wiping the blade on a towel, she worked up the courage to rid his face of the rest of his beard. His neck was the simplest, long and strong, and it looked so much better once the whiskers had been shaved away. Carefully she ran the razor over his square jaw and up his left cheek, trying to keep her mind on what she was doing, rather than on the fluttering behind his eyelid.
    Was he dreaming? she wondered. Was he ready to wake? How would he feel, knowing that she’d shaved his face? Maybe he’d been growing the beard for a reason, possibly for a movie role? Well, it was too late now. She couldn’t stop halfway through.
    Lightly sweeping his hair behind his ear, she allowed her fingers to admire the texture, the silkiness of the waves. It seemed odd, almost sinful, to be touching a man’s hair this way, especiallywhen he was asleep. Especially when he was little more than a stranger.
    Touching him made her feel…made her feel things she hadn’t felt in a long time, stirrings in her heart, quivering in her stomach. And it made her realize just how lonely she’d been.
    His head rolled on the pillow, fully exposing his right cheek—and the scar. She’d wanted to