Rob took the drink that Blonde Number One offered him and tasted it. Strong, just the way he liked it. “Thanks, sugar.”
“So,” she said, giving her body a little wiggle to get his attention. “Think I’ve got what it takes to be on one of your shows?”
“Maybe,” he said absently, taking a bigger swig of his drink. Christ, that was really strong. He took another swig, because why not? He needed to get good and drunk. Two fucking ratings points. Jesus.
The other girl swam up next to him. “I heard you did lines off of Tiffany West’s stomach in Cannes,” she said with a sultry smile.
“Did you? How nice,” he said flatly. He didn’t even know who Tiffany West was, and he sure as shit didn’t do drugs. Alcohol was easy. Drugs just made you end up as someone’s prison bitch. He gulped the drink again, pleased that an alcoholic buzz was kicking in. He’d had three of these babies already, and number four was going to get him good and toasted. Which was a good thing, if ratings were down.
The busty blondes weren’t leaving. One swam up to the side of his raft, nudging it further out into the water. She smiled up at him. “Wanna do lines off of my stomach?”
“I’m busy.” Another call was due to come in any minute now.
“I can save the good stuff for later, if you want to party.”
Fuck that. Party of one in his raft, right here. He tossed down the rest of his drink, enjoying the burn it left in his mouth, and handed it off to one of the girls who watched him expectantly. When they didn’t go away, he looked back over at them. “How about you and you,” he said, pointing at both of them, “go do lines together and leave me the fuck alone?”
One of the blondes gave him a furious look and stormed away. The other wasn’t quite so nice. She huffed up, her fake breasts rising, and then gave his raft a vicious shove.
Rob flipped over and landed in the water, head going under.
Fucking perfect. His head spun and he resurfaced long enough to glare at the women who left. One of those two was going to buy him a new Bluetooth headset, so help him—
One of his legs cramped up, shooting pain through his muscles. Rob bobbed back under the water, thrashing. It was like his leg had locked up. Combine that with his spinning head, and he couldn’t quite get his bearings. He dragged his hands at the water, but only succeeded in getting a mouthful of brine and even more turned around. The current ripped at him, stronger than he’d ever thought. He pushed against it, but he still couldn’t find the surface, and now the water was dragging him farther away from the shore. Huh. Riptide. He thought you had to be farther out for those sorts of things. His lungs were aching, and he tried to push his head back above the water, but it seemed farther and farther out of reach.
Goddamn it, was he going to drown on the beach of someplace named Seaturtle Cay? Really?
But he couldn’t find air. Reflexively, his throat worked and salt water filled his lungs, his mouth, his nose. He choked, and the world started to go black. He was really, truly dying. His last thought was that he’d be in the tabloids for forever now—legendary for drowning in a few feet of water at the beach.
More blackness filled his vision, then red . . . and white polka-dots.
Polka-dots?
A strong arm grabbed him, and suddenly Rob’s face was hauled against a pair of breasts. Real breasts. He barely had time to process this before more darkness swam through his mind, and he followed it under.
“Breathe,” a voice shouted in his ear, and then lips pressed against his mouth. Air pushed into his lungs—and fuck, that hurt like hell—and suddenly water was coming up out of his throat and his nose and he turned his head to the side, vomiting salt water. His head ached in the most blisteringly awful fashion, and those white polka-dots were swimming in his vision again. But there was sand under his back, and slowly, blearily, he focused his eyes.
An angel bent over him on the beach. An angel with a faint peppering of freckles across her nose, a strong jaw and messy, wet, blonde hair, and dressed in the ugliest polka-dotted swimsuit he’d ever seen. And she was smiling down at him.
She’d saved him. And the look she gave him was so shy and proud all at once, that he felt his heart swell.
Rob was in love.
***
Oh sweet lord, this man was gorgeous. Marjorie pressed her mouth to the unconscious man’s lips and blew, trying to remember CPR steps that she hadn’t done since the fifth grade. She hoped he wouldn’t mind that a girl like her was mouthing on him, but she figured saving someone’s life took priority over petty things like attractiveness in a rescuer.
So she pumped his chest and blew into his mouth, and on her second round, salt water came rushing out of his mouth into hers, and she pulled away and spat even as she turned him on his side so he could vomit.
A moment later, he turned on his back and gave her a dazed, dopey look.
She couldn’t help smiling down at him. What a cute man. He was dark-haired, had green eyes with interesting amber flecks, and a fantastic chiseled nose. He’d also tasted like alcohol when she’d put her mouth on him—not Marj’s favorite thing—but this was a resort and most people drank.
He opened his mouth and made a garbled sort of sound. Probably a thank-you of some kind.
Marjorie patted his shoulder. “You’ll be all right now, mister. Just take a few deep breaths and maybe lay off the tequila when you go swimming.”
His brows drew together and he grabbed at her hand, which surprised Marjorie. His lips moved as he gazed up at her, but then he coughed again, still squeezing her hand as if he didn’t want to let her go. Shadows fell from overhead as onlookers rushed over to see what was going on. No surprise—they had probably stared at the sight of a stringbean like Marjorie carrying a guy out of the water.
Thanks to her height, she didn’t exactly blend into a crowd.
Still coughing, he squeezed her hand again. She squeezed it back, wondering what he was trying to say. A lock of wet black hair was plastered to his forehead and her fingers itched to push it back. There was just something about his face that she liked so, so much, and the way he looked at her with that interested surprise, not the instinctive flinch she normally got when she towered over men. Of course, he probably didn’t realize how tall she was since she was currently sitting on the sand next to him.
“You—” he began, still wheezing with a wet sound in his throat.
“Everyone get back,” a voice roared, and a man pushed forward in a red lifeguard suit, carrying a red flotation device. “Let’s give him some air.”
Reluctantly, Marjorie squeezed his hand one last time and got to her feet. “I think he’s okay—”
“I said get back,” the lifeguard said, thrusting an arm out and pushing people away as they crowded around the fallen man. “Everyone, please. Let a lifeguard do his job.”
Meekly, Marjorie brushed the sand off her knees and moved back with the crowd. She desperately wanted to look back at the handsome man in the sand again, but that would have been foolish, wouldn’t it? With a small sigh, she found her discarded wrap, tied it around her hips, and headed off to shuffleboard to meet her friend Agnes. For some reason, she felt a little down. It was selfish of her, but she’d wanted to talk to the man she’d rescued, if nothing else, to hear him speak other than coughing at her.
But she supposed that was just vanity—what did she want, a thank-you for saving a man’s life? She mulled this over as she crossed the long, winding beach, heading back toward the hotel. The weather in Seaturtle Cay was utterly gorgeous, and she couldn’t stay down for long. By the time she reached the shuffleboard area, her mood was back to its normal, even keel. Not much kept Marjorie down.
Agnes waved at her from the far end of the shuffleboard court. She was wearing a white, floppy straw hat and had an equally white smear of zinc on her hawkish nose, and she wore the loose floral layers that so many of the elderly seemed to favor. “There you are, sweetie,” Agnes said when Marjorie approached. “We were starting to wonder if you’d ditched us.”