LITMIR.BIZ

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Wake up. Open your eyes.’ But there was no response when she shook his arm. Twice she blew into his cold lips and twice he didn’t respond.

      Another wave washed over both of them, She needed to get him to shore. ‘Stay with me, friend,’ she urged into his ear as she dragged the board around to face the beach. She steered him sideways away from the rocks as the desperate urgency of his condition propelled her through the water faster than she would have dreamed possible.

      Twice more she blew into his mouth between swells and then a larger swell closed in on them and she angled the board so that they were lifted swiftly towards the beach. Another big swell carried them until a sudden wave swept them forward and tumbled them in an ungainly pile in the shallow water. She spat out seawater as she twisted on her side to hang onto him.

      The wave that had been powerful enough to throw them there seemed intent on proving it could pull them back. He began to slip and she knew she didn’t have the strength to return to the water after him.

      ‘Come on,’ she gritted out between her teeth, and she yanked him towards her with a desperate heave and he slid across the sand. The wave receded and it was then she noticed the tiny rivulets of his blood that went with it.

      Her heart pounded noisily in her ears as she dragged in welcome air before she rolled him over and pulled him an extra foot away from the reach of the next wave.

      His eyes were open, blue like his lips, and his white face was as unmoving as his chest as the water drained away from around him.

      It was too late!

      She bent to lay her ear against his battered chest. Thump… Thump… Thump… She could hear it. He had a heartbeat. It was slow, less than forty beats a minute probably, but so much better than no heartbeat at all.

      She pushed him until he rolled onto his side and water trickled from his mouth, but he didn’t move.

      She shook him and he rolled back onto his back. ‘Hey. Wake up, you!’ Misty tilted his head and after a quick glance to check his airway was clear she breathed another two quick breaths into his lungs as she watched his chest rise. Yes. Out of the water now she could tell there was chest movement.

      She pushed rhythmically on the lower third of his sternum to compress his ribcage and prayed cardiac massage would speed his sluggish heart. Thirty quick depressions, then Misty pinched his nose and blew into his mouth again.

      After several desperate cycles he twitched and finally stirred, his chest moved of its own volition, and he gurgled a bubbling stream of sea water as he instinctively rolled onto his side.

      Misty sat back and drew deep panting breaths of her own as the stranger coughed and wheezed his way to life.

      Her shoulders began to shake in earnest and she wrapped her arms around her chest in comfort as she stared down at him. Hot tears trickled unchecked down her cheeks along with a strangled sob of mixed euphoria and horror. She sucked in a big breath to calm herself and squeezed her arms around her body harder.

      Focus. Don’t fall to pieces yet. She could hardly believe it.

      He was alive.

      She glanced out at the ocean in incredulity and her pretty pink boogie board bobbed merrily in the swells as it drifted out to sea.

      She’d done it.

      She glanced down at the broken strap on her wrist and strained to remember when it had sheared.

      Who cared? Someone would enjoy the board.

      Ben Moore hovered in a beam of light and stared down at his body as it floated in the water. He dreamed in flashes that defined his life.

      Each flash contained an ocean of memories. His daughter’s birth, his wife’s death, a patient’s family hugging him, a baby’s first breath, a mermaid with long auburn hair and green eyes holding out her hand.

      He smiled at her beauty. He was definitely dying. Something jolted him and he felt himself fall.

      The other pictures faded away until only her vivid emerald eyes remained, and they came closer as she kissed him. Then he was coughing and retching and reality crashed in on him along with the fire in his lungs and the pain in his pounding head.

      When the fit settled he took another tearing breath and hoped to avoid the painful mix of seawater and air, but it was not to be. When that convulsion died down he eased his shoulders from the gritty sand on which he was lying and ran his hands over his lacerated chest.

      The surging waves lapped his feet and above him knelt the mermaid in person—except she had the most beautiful thighs in tattered denim shorts and long gorgeous legs—definitely not a mermaid, he thought fuzzily.

      He glanced at her fine boned arms and the slender frame that was clearly outlined in the singlet top plastered to her skin. How on earth had she dragged him above the level of the waves?

      As if she knew what he was thinking her voice washed over him, warm and reassuring, and the fact that he could hear the sound from her lips meant he really had survived.

      ‘We rode a wave in and I pulled you the rest of the way,’ she said. ‘You’ve hit your head and torn your skin on the rocks.’

      Her long red hair was tied in a limp ponytail that dripped silver rivulets of seawater between her breasts and she flipped it over to her back, which helped the thin singlet to plaster itself to her breasts even more.

      He sucked his breath in with disastrous results and, when that spasm passed, the air in his lungs finally began to feel less like lava and more like the cooler gravel he needed to survive. ‘Thank you.’ His cracked words finally emerged.

      He inhaled gingerly again. ‘What happened?’ Amazing how much energy just a few words took.

      ‘Don’t talk yet.’ She winced at his obvious discomfort and her hand slid down over his wrist, smooth and cool and very practised as she palpated his pulse. ‘I guess you fell into the water and hit your head. You nearly drowned.’

      She was looking at him as if he might not understand but he understood all right. She’d saved his life and put her own very much at risk to do it.

      He just couldn’t think of anything to say at that moment.

      She went on and he closed his eyes as he listened to her talk more to herself than to him. ‘I need to get you to a hospital for observation. Salt water can cause delayed pulmonary oedema in your lungs.’

      He’d have to move or she’d think he couldn’t and he didn’t want her having to spend more energy than she already had on him. He eased himself into a sitting position but even that hurt.

      Ben rocked his head gently and couldn’t help the tiny groan that escaped at the pain from his skull. It hurt like hell but he didn’t need a hospital. He needed his bed.

      ‘Thank you.’ He paused for breath. ‘Just my shack.’ He paused again. ‘I’ll be fine.’

      He watched her roll her eyes and it amused him in a ridiculous, semi-hysterical way. No doubt it was the euphoria of having been snatched from the jaws of death.

      ‘You need a good check-up,’ she said. ‘Does your head swim?’

      He put his hand up for her to grasp so he could stand. ‘Better than my body does when I’m knocked out, apparently.’

      ‘A joker,’ she muttered. ‘Just what I need.’ Misty took his hand and shared his weight as he rose, but still he swayed against her before he could steady himself, and she knew he was hanging on to his balance by sheer willpower.

      The feel of his strong hand left hers bizarrely energised and she looked down at his fingers curled around her own. She frowned at the strangeness of a connection that shouldn’t even have registered then shrugged the thought away. At this moment she needed to help him stagger to her vehicle and that was enough to contend with.

      When at last

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