Saying Yes To The Dress!: The Wedding Planner's Big Day / Married for Their Miracle Baby / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride

“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.

“You were right,” she said, softly.

There was that snort again. “Of course I’m right. You don’t go climbing up on rocks when the surf is that high.”

“Not about that. I mean, okay, about that, too, but I wasn’t talking about that.”

“What were you talking about?”

“It wasn’t a heartbreak,” Becky said. “It was a romantic disappointment.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I thought of when I went into the water. I thought my whole life would flash before my eyes, but instead I thought of Jerry.”

“Look, you’re obviously in shock and we need to—”

“He was my high school sweetheart. We’d been together since I was seventeen. I’d always assumed we were going to get married. Everybody in the whole town thought we would get married. They called us Salt and Pepper.”

“You know what? This will keep. I have to—”

“It won’t keep. It’s important. I have to say it before I forget it. Before this moment passes.”

“Oh, sheesh,” he said, his tone indicating he wanted nothing more than for this moment to pass.

“I wanted that. I wanted to be Salt and Pepper, forever. My parents had split up the year before. It was awful. My dad owned a hardware store. One of his clerks. And him.”

“Look, Becky, you are obviously rattled. You don’t have to tell me this.”

She could no more have stopped herself from telling him than she could have stopped those waves from pounding on the shore.

“They had a baby together. Suddenly, they were the family we had always been. That we were supposed to be. It was horrible, seeing them all over town, looking at each other. Pushing a baby carriage. I wanted it back. I wanted that feeling of being part of something back. Of belonging.”