Mouth to Mouth (Beach Kingdom 1)

Kids on top of boogie boards were carried toward the shore by waves. They were probably half her age, so she had zero reservations about freestyle swimming farther into the murky blue, letting the sounds of the shore recede, stopping only when her feet could no longer touch sand. After a few minutes of letting herself drift, she decided to swim back to shore, march right up to Rory and…force him into a pleasant conversation. Yup. That would show him. He might have lamented their age gap, but she’d prove being young didn’t amount to being immature.

With that plan in mind, Olive let a wave crest over her and started to kick. She couldn’t seem to make any progress toward shore, though. Her position never changed, only shifting her sideways…or farther out. Was she drifting farther out?

That’s when she heard a whistle pierce the afternoon air—and she knew it was for her.

“Oh God. No, no, no…this isn’t happening.” She swam as hard as she could, losing steam after about ten seconds and attempting to reach the bottom of the ocean floor with her toes. She didn’t even scrape it. She did, however, become very aware of a separate current running down near her feet. Undertow. Unbelievable. She’d gotten stuck in an undertow.

A wave broke over Olive’s head, but not before she made out the blurry figure cutting toward her in the water at a fast clip, a red flotation device dragging along the surface behind him. Her lack of glasses prevented her from making out exact details—and then she couldn’t see anything. A healthy dose of water was sucked up through her nose when she tried to breathe. Panic made her flail, even though she knew it would burn energy. She couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop trying to remain on the surface where the oxygen lived. I’m drowning. I’m going to drown. Why did I leave my books? They’ve been so good to me.

An arm wrapped around her chest and she instinctively tried to fight the restriction, thinking it would drag her farther down. She twisted, her vision nothing but blurred blues and greens, fear roaring in her ears.

“I’ve got you, sunbeam. Easy. I’m here to help you.”

The imploring voice near her ear ceased her struggles immediately. Rory. That’s right. It was Rory, not some angry sea monster hell bent on drowning her. Within seconds, he had her face up, the flotation device pressed securely to her chest.

“Hold onto this while I get you back to shore. Wrap your arms around it. Good girl.” Was it her imagination or did he brush a kiss over her hair? “Goddammit,” he rasped, starting to swim. “Didn’t you hear me whistling? You just kept…I saw you go under…”

If Olive wasn’t totally spent after battling the sea gods, she would have said something to comfort Rory. He sounded so upset. But coming down from her adrenaline surge and landing in a pile of relief made her almost drowsy, so she could only listen, realizing absently that Rory had been required to save her life twice in twenty-four hours.

How humiliating.

Even more embarrassing was how fast they reached the shore after she’d been unable to swim an inch in the same direction. Her feet slid backward in the sand and then she was hoisted into Rory’s arms, the top of her head finding a home under his chin without conscious thought. They were surrounded by an applauding crowd as Rory walked them up the beach, and the tension in his shoulders told Olive he didn’t like the attention they were getting.

“Talk to me,” he said, leaning down to search her eyes. “I got to you in time. Right? Look, I just really need you to talk to me.”

Which one of them was shaking? “I’m fine. I’m just cold.”

“Cold. Okay.” Seeming relieved that he had a problem to work on, Rory picked up the pace to a stride, leaving their audience in the dust. Water dripped off the ends of his hair and coasted down his shoulder, chest, jaw, dripping onto Olive, but she didn’t mind it one bit, because a couple of drips was easily better than a whole ocean. Also the droplets had been warmed on Rory’s skin before landing on hers and there was something grounding about that. Like he was resuscitating her without trying.

His worried expression drifted in and out of the sunlight, keeping his face mostly in the shadows, but occasionally she would get a peek at the set jaw, downward slashing eyebrows. He was on a mission to take her somewhere, but until he unlocked a door and carried her inside a dark locker room, she didn’t speculate on where.

“This is the Hut,” he murmured, adjusting his hold to bring Olive tighter against his chest as they passed through long rows of lockers, a slim, wooden bench running down the middle. “I’m going to catch hell for leaving the beach, but I just need to get you warmed up, sunbeam. You won’t stop shaking.”