LITMIR.BIZ

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face, whipping her long dark hair over her eyes and stealing her breath.

      Jiminy Cricket, it was cold.

      She turned to face the wind, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She pulled the scarf around her neck a little tighter and looked for Ben. Where had he gone? Impatiently she scanned the area, finding him standing precariously on the rocks above the water.

      What part of Don’t go near the water hadn’t he understood?

      “Ben? What are you doing?” she called in exasperation. “Get down and come back here.”

      He didn’t seem to hear her, poking intently at something between the rocks. She had no idea what he’d found—surely all the marine wildlife was in hibernation by early December. She quickened her step, intent on dragging him back to safety, when suddenly there was a loud crack and a shrill cry. His walking stick had snapped in two, throwing him off balance. His small arms made windmill motions as he hung for mindnumbing seconds poised above the water.

      “Ben!” Alyssa broke into a run just as his body toppled into the icy lake with a horrifying splash.

      She scrambled up and over the rocks, helplessly scanning the water for his body. Could he swim? Had he hit a rock? Could he survive in the dangerously cold water?

      There, his tiny head bobbed in the water, his arms flailing as he tried to stay afloat, his heavy winter coat dragging him down. Quickly, she shrugged out of her coat and pulled off her scarf. Remembering some of her old lifeguard skills, she wound one end of the scarf around her left hand and leaned out as far as she dared before tossing the other end into the water toward Ben.

      “Grab the scarf!” she shouted. “I’ll pull you in.”

      Ben reached for the end of the scarf, but missed. Her heart lodged in her throat when his head disappeared beneath the water for a couple of long seconds. Thankfully, the tide pushed him a little closer as his head cleared the surface again.

      “Ben!” She reeled in the scarf and this time took careful aim before throwing it again, hitting him in the chest. “Grab the scarf!”

      In slow motion, his numb fingers grasped the end and she nearly wept with relief as she towed him the short distance to shore. “I’ve got you. It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

      When he was close enough to the edge, she reached down to pull him up.

      Her center of gravity shifted. She’d forgotten all about her pregnant belly and her miscalculation made her lose her balance. She plopped with a thud into the water next to Ben.

       Her babies!

      Shockingly cold water surrounded her, sucking her down into the murky depths. For precious seconds she couldn’t move, stunned by the cold water, and she idly wondered if she and Ben were both going to drown. The thought spurred her into action. Frantically she strove toward the surface, her fingertips brushing against something soft. Ben. Her head cleared the surface and she coughed, grabbing hold of the boy and holding him upright in the water.

      “I’ve got you,” she repeated, gasping and clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. Poor Ben had already been in the frigid water too long for a child his size. She tried not to think about the potential harm to her unborn children as she shucked off Ben’s watersoaked coat so he’d weigh less and then used every ounce of her strength to lever him upright, literally pushing him up and out of the lake, onto the rocks. “See my coat up there? Use it to get warm.”

      Ben crawled over the rocks, falling facedown onto her coat. He may have been out of the water, but he still wasn’t safe. Hypothermia was deadly. He needed to get warm, and soon.

      Alyssa struggled to follow him out and over the rocks, but her fingers slipped and she fell back into the water, her strength seeping away. Desperately, she lunged upward, clutching a boulder while also trying to find a toehold so she could climb out. The task seemed impossible. She didn’t have the upper-arm strength to pull herself out of the water.

      Her legs were numb. She focused on Ben’s too-still body lying on her coat and on the survival of her babies to give her the energy and willpower she needed to pull herself out of the icy water. She had to do this. She had to! She found a toehold and inched her way up, willing the quivering muscles in her arms to support her.

      Finally she broke free of the icy prison, dragging herself up, over the rocks to safety.

      “Ben.” She collapsed next to him, beyond shivering as the cold wind hit her wet body. She recognized the numbing fatigue for the danger it presented. They needed help. Fast.

      Her fingers didn’t move very well, but she managed to pry her cell phone out of her coat pocket and fumbled to flip it open. Pushing the buttons for 911 wasn’t easy, but she had to try. She couldn’t rest, not until she’d told someone where they were.

      Dimly she realized the connection had been made. The dispatcher wanted to know the nature of her emergency. “We’re on the rocks by the lakeshore in Cedar Bluff Park. We fell in the water. Hypothermia. Hurry…”

      The woman dispatcher on the other end of the line continued talking, but Alyssa couldn’t hang on to the phone, uncaring when it clattered against the rocks, disappearing from view. Help was on the way, all they had to do was wait. She pulled Ben against her rounded stomach, sharing what little warmth they possessed between them and doing her best to use her coat to shelter his body from the dangerously cold wind.

      “Don’t worry, they’re coming to get us,” she whispered, closing her eyes, the need to sleep nearly overwhelming. “They’re coming…”

      Bright lights. Blurred faces. Unintelligible voices.

      Warmth. Lifesaving warmth.

      Exhaustion. Her arms and legs felt like dead weights. Even her head was too heavy. Tired. She was so very, very tired.

      Time had no meaning. She vaguely realized she was probably at the hospital. Maybe still in the emergency department. The people around her were a blur. She needed to know if Ben was all right, but couldn’t find the strength to ask.

      “Alyssa? Can you hear me?”

      She frowned, blinking against the light, recognizing a familiar face hovering above her.

      Jadon?

      No, it must be her mind playing tricks on her. Jadon was gone. He’d left.

      He was on a personal leave of absence. Gone for months. And never coming back. He didn’t know she was pregnant. He didn’t know he was soon to be the father of twins.

      “Alyssa? Look at me. Can you hear me?”

      No, she didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to keep having dreams about Jadon. They were too painful. She closed her eyes and turned away, seeking peace.

      Allowing the precious warmth to draw her down into blessed oblivion.

      Jadon Reichert clutched Alyssa’s limp hand in his and willed her to open her eyes, to talk to him.

      “We need to get her moved up to the OB unit,” Kim Rayborn was saying. She was the OB doctor on call, responding to emergencies as needed, but had informed him that she was also Alyssa’s regular OB doctor.

      Pregnant.

      Alyssa was pregnant.

      With twins. His twins.

      The irony of the situation didn’t escape him. He was certain, without talking to Alyssa, that the babies were his. The timing was right, for one thing. He’d thought they’d been careful, but obviously not careful enough. How could this have happened? With everything else in his life falling apart, he hadn’t even considered the possibility he’d left her pregnant.

      Even now, when faced with the reality of Alyssa’s round belly, his mind couldn’t seem to grasp the news. He’d told Alyssa from the start he wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, and she’d agreed that she wasn’t either. But things

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