LITMIR.BIZ

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around much lately.”

      “I’ve been busy, Mrs. Godwin.”

      Her expression changed to one he detested, but had seen far too often during the past year—cloying pity. “Poor dear. It must be so difficult for you trying to raise these two adorable children on your own.”

      Sam pressed his face more tightly into Trevor’s leg. Sam hated having attention focused on him—especially this sort of attention. Abbie babbled and crammed her fist in her mouth, slobbering enthusiastically.

      “Precious child,” Martha crooned.

      Abbie blew bubbles, making a sound that summed up the way Trevor was feeling. “Excuse me, Mrs. Godwin, the kids are hungry. Goodbye.”

      He moved the cart forward so that she was forced to move aside or risk losing a few toes. She left in a dignified huff when it became obvious that she would pry no interesting comments out of Trevor today.

      “Guess you put that old battle-ax in her place.” The supermarket checker spoke with a satisfaction that bespoke her experience of being on the wrong end of Martha’s gossip.

      Ignoring her, Trevor waited impatiently to escape the supermarket and get back to the blessed privacy of his own home.

      ON THE FIRST DAY of her summer vacation, Jamie Flaherty sighed happily and wiggled her brightly painted toenails, letting the sun soak into her mostly bared skin. She wouldn’t stay out long, she promised herself, thinking of all the damage excessive exposure could do to a woman’s skin. But it felt so good to just sit and soak up rays for a few blissfully lazy moments.

      In the end, it was vanity that forced her to move into the protective shade of a poolside awning. A few months away from her twenty-ninth birthday, she had no intention of risking premature wrinkles; she planned to fight aging as long as modern technology made it possible.

      She slid a pair of sunglasses from the top of her head onto her nose and glanced around, taking stock of the others who were enjoying the neighborhood pool on this Monday afternoon in early June. There weren’t many, since most people worked on weekdays—unless, like Jamie, they were fortunate enough to have summers off. Five or six children made use of the shallow end of the pool, some in inflated arm-bands, others showing off swim-class skills. Three women sat in chairs nearby, chatting as they kept watch over their kids.

      A little boy of four or five sat on the edge of the pool about halfway down, splashing his feet in the deeper water. His blond hair was dry, and he didn’t look as though he’d been in the pool at all. He didn’t seem unhappy or bored, Jamie decided. Just thoughtful. There was only one adult in the water, a young woman playing with a squealing toddler in a floating plastic seat. The little girl was blond, and reminded Jamie of the boy sitting on the side of the pool. Siblings?

      And then her attention wandered again.

      At the deeper end of the pool, near the diving board, half a dozen teenagers postured for each other, though most of the local teens hung out at the more popular new pool on the west side of town. A young lifeguard slouched in an elevated seat, his attention focused more on a couple of pretty teenage bodies than on his duties.

      Stretching out in her shaded lounge chair, Jamie smiled as she remembered the long-ago days when she and other girls her age had worked so diligently—but so subtly, they had believed—to distract buff young lifeguards. Her smile deepened as she fondly recalled how often they had succeeded.

      “I know that smile. It always means you’re up to mischief,” a familiar voice observed.

      “Just remembering mischief.” Jamie nodded toward the bikinied teenagers posing for the lifeguard’s benefit.

      Susan Schedler groaned as she lowered her very pregnant body into the chair next to Jamie’s. “Oh, God. Was I ever that young and thin?”

      “Hey, we were hot stuff.” Jamie pulled her gaze away from the girls to smile fondly at her longtime friend.

      Susan glanced pointedly at Jamie’s hot-pink bikini. “One of us still is.”

      “That’s very nice. Thank you.”

      “Just stating facts.” Susan lay back in her chair and rested a hand lightly on her bulging belly.

      “How are you feeling today?”

      Since Jamie had asked, Susan launched into a detailed analysis of her condition and how impatient she was to reach the end of it. Most of her attention on her friend’s words, Jamie allowed her gaze to wander again. The teens had stepped up their flirting, she noticed. One of the girls had “accidentally” positioned herself so the lifeguard could look straight down her bikini top. With a frown, Jamie realized that he was taking full advantage of the silent offer.

      While she had identified with the kids earlier, it perturbed her that the lifeguard was allowing his concentration to be drawn away from the pool. Jamie had worked as a lifeguard for three summers, and she knew the young man had been trained to resist distractions.

      She glanced again at the shallow end, where children were still splashing and squealing. The young woman still played with the toddler in the floating seat, and the three women in the poolside chairs were heavily into a gossip session. Murmuring a response to something Susan said, Jamie turned her eyes to the spot where the little boy had been sitting. He’d moved, she noted. He’d probably given in to the lure of the cool water. She looked at the shallow end again, casually searching for his golden head among the other kids. She didn’t see him. Was she simply overlooking him? Kids looked different wet, of course.

      Something drew her eyes back to the spot where she’d last seen him. The water was just over eight feet deep there, she estimated. She knew there were kids below the age of six who swam like fish, but he’d looked so small and alone.

      She glanced automatically toward the bottom of the pool.

      A moment later, she was on her feet, her heart in her throat. She reached the side in two steps, slinging off her sunglasses before making a clean, shallow dive.

      The boy was lying facedown on the bottom of the pool. Jamie scooped him into one arm and kicked forcefully toward the surface. By the time she reached the side of the pool, the others had just realized what was taking place. The lifeguard, his face pale, was there immediately to lift the little boy out of her arms.

      Jamie heard someone scream, heard a couple of the younger children start to cry, heard the panicked, excited babbling of the teenagers, but her eyes were on the child as she boosted herself out of the pool and rushed to kneel beside him. Still flustered by being caught so unprepared, the lifeguard hesitated, and Jamie automatically took charge. The child had a pulse, thank God, but he didn’t seem to be breathing. She rolled him onto his side, and lifted one arm above his head, hoping that would clear his lungs. She was prepared to do artificial respiration, but she was incredibly relieved when he began to cough and gag.

      Steadying him, Jamie watched as liquid sputtered from his mouth. He’d taken some water into his lungs, she realized, relieved that someone had run to call an ambulance. He hadn’t been underwater more than a couple of minutes, so there should be minimal danger of brain damage, but there was always a chance of complications from water in the lungs. Pneumonia, for one, she remembered. The child should definitely be checked out by trained medical personnel.

      He was crying now, in choked, gulping sobs. Jamie drew him into her arms, murmuring reassurances. “You’ll be fine, sweetie. Just fine.”

      “I didn’t see him,” the lifeguard muttered in a trembling voice. “I never even heard a splash.”

      “A child this small doesn’t make much of a splash,” Jamie answered, trying to speak gently despite her annoyance with him. She could tell he would pay for his negligence by painfully imagining what might have happened had she not been there.

      “Oh, God, is Sam all right? His dad is going to kill me.” The young woman who’d been playing with the toddler rushed to Jamie’s side, the dripping little girl on her hip.

      The

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