her head and filled her mouth and nose. She popped back up like a cork, but her swimming skills were rudimentary, and she was not sure they would have helped her against the fury of the sea. She was being pulled out into what seemed to be an endless abyss. She tried frantically to swim back in toward shore. In seconds she was as exhausted as she had ever been.
I’m going to drown, she thought, stunned, choking on water and fear. How had this happened? One moment life had seemed so pleasant and beautiful and then...it was over.
Her life was going to be over. She waited, helplessly, for it to flash before her eyes. Instead, she found herself thinking that Drew had been right. It hadn’t been a heartbreak. It had been a romantic disappointment. Ridiculous to think that right now, but on the other hand, right now seemed as good a time as any to be acutely and sadly aware of things she had missed.
“Hey!” His voice carried over the crashing of the sea. “Hang on.”
Becky caught a glimpse of the rock she had fallen off. Drew was up there. And then she went under the water again.
When she surfaced, Drew was in the water, slashing through the roll of the waves toward her. “Don’t panic,” he called over the roar of the water pounding the rock outcropping.
She wanted to tell him it was too late for that. She was already panicked.
“Tread,” he yelled. “Don’t try to swim. Not yet. Look at my face. Nowhere else. Look at me.”
Her eyes fastened on his face. There was strength and calm in his features, as if he did this every day. He was close to her now.
“I’m going to come to you,” he shouted, “but you have to be calm first. If you panic, you will kill us both.”
It seemed his words, and the utter strength and determination in his face, poured a honey of calm over her, despite the fact she was still bobbing like a cork in a ravaged sea. He seemed to see or sense the moment she stopped panicking, and he moved in close.
She nearly sobbed with relief when Drew reached out and touched her, then folded his arms around her and pulled her in tight to him. He was strong in the water—she suspected, abstractly, he was strong everywhere in his life—and she rested into his embrace, surrendering to his warmth. She could feel the power of him in his arms and where she was pressed into the wet slickness of his chest.
“Just let it carry you,” he said. “Don’t fight it anymore”
It seemed as if he could be talking about way more than water. It could be a message about life.
It seemed the water carried them out forever, but eventually it dumped them in a calmer place, just beyond where the waves began to crest. Becky could feel the water lose its grip on her, even as he refused to.
She never took her eyes off his face. Her mind seemed to grow calmer and calmer, even amused. If this was the last thing she would see, it told her, that wasn’t so bad.
“Okay,” he said, “can you swim?”
“Dog paddle.” The water was not cold, but her voice was shaking.
“That will do. Swim that way. Do your best. I’ve got you if you get tired.” He released her.
That way was not directly to the shore. He was asking her to swim parallel to the shore instead of in. But she tried to do as he asked. She was soon floundering, so tired she could not lift her arms.
“Roll over on your back,” he said, and she did so willingly. His hand cupped her chin and she was being pulled through the water. He was an enormously strong swimmer.
“Okay, this is a good spot.” He released her again and she came upright and treaded water. “Go toward shore. I’ve got you, I’m right with you.”
She was scared to go back into the waves. It was too much. She was exhausted. But she glanced at his face once more and found her own courage there.
“Get on your tummy, flat as a board, watch for the next wave and ride it in. Watch for those rocks on the side.”
She did as she was told. She knew she had no choice. She had to trust him completely. She felt the wave lift her up and drive her toward the shore at a stunning speed. And then it spit her out. She was lying in shallow water, but she could already feel the wave pulling at her, trying to drag her back in. She used what little strength she had left to scramble to her knees and crawl through the sugar pebbles of the sand.
Drew came and scooped her out of the water, lifted her to his chest and struggled out of the surf.
On the beach, above the foaming line of the ocean, he set her down on her back in the sun-warmed sand. For a moment she looked at the clear and endless blue of the sky. It was the very same sky it had been twenty minutes ago, but everything felt changed, some awareness sharp as glass within her. She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her head on her forearms. He flung himself onto the sand beside her, breathing hard.
“Did you just save my life?” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse. Her throat hurt from swallowing salt water. She felt drowsy and extraordinarily peaceful.
“You’ll want to make sure this beach is posted before guests start arriving,” he finally said, when he spoke.
“You didn’t answer the question,” she said, taking a peek at him over her folded arm. “Is that a habit with you?”
Drew didn’t answer. She looked at him, feeling as if she was drinking him in, as if she could never get enough of looking at him. It was probably natural to feel that way after someone had just saved your life, and she did not try to make herself stop.
She was in a state of altered awareness. She could see the water beading on his eyelashes, and the sun streaming through his wet hair. She could see through his soaked shirt where it was plastered to his body.
“Did you just save my life?” she asked again.
“I think you Michigan girls should stay away from the ocean.”
“Do you ever just answer a question, Drew Jordan? Did you save my life?”
He was silent again.
“You did,” she finally answered for him.
She could not believe the gratitude she felt. To be alive. It was as if the life force was zinging inside her, making her every cell quiver.
“You risked yourself for me. I’m nearly a complete stranger.”
“No, you’re not. Winning the headache competition, by the way.”
“By a country mile?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“That was incredibly heroic.” She was not going let him brush it off, though he was determined to.
“Don’t make it something it wasn’t. I’m nobody’s hero.”
Just like he had insisted earlier he was nobody’s prince.
“Well,” she insisted, “you’re mine.”
He snorted, that sexy, cynical sound he made that was all his own and she found, right now, lying here in the sand, alive, so aware of herself and him, that she liked that sound very much, despite herself.
“I’ve been around the ocean my whole life,” he told her grimly. “I grew up surfing some pretty rough water. I knew what I was doing. Unlike you. That was incredibly stupid.”
In her altered state, she was aware that he thought he could break the bond that had been cementing itself into place between them since the moment he had entered the water to rescue her.
“Life can change in a blink,” he said sternly. “It can be over in a blink.”
He was lecturing her. She suddenly needed him to know she could not let him brush it off like that. She needed him to know that the life force was flowing through her. She had an incredible sense of being alive.