Rick frowned, taking a step forward. “It must be the scorpion bite you inflicted on her. You wanted her weakened. You did this to her.”
“No closer,” Chavez warned. “She and I are going to leave now.”
Like hell.
Her eyes snapped open and made direct contact with Rick’s.
Now! her unspoken message shouted.
Rick shoved Lauren to the right as Nola chopped Chavez’s gun hand down. The gunshot split the air, sending rock and dirt flying as Rick launched forward. Chavez’s weapon skittered away and into the water.
Nola dropped and rolled out of the way, toward Lauren. She covered the child’s body with hers. Watching. Praying.
Rick and Chavez exchanged punches and ohmigod, the older man seemed to be gaining ground. Blood poured from a cut above Rick’s eye. Another punch landed in his gut. Grunting, Rick stumbled backward a good five steps…
Backward?
Toward the watery drop-off.
Realization dawned. Rick wasn’t losing the fight at all. He was taking it to his playing field where he knew he stood better odds of winning. Two more punches put Rick’s heels on the edge of the water while Lauren screamed in fear as she tried to run for her father. Nola pinned the hysterical teen to the ground even as she, too, longed to run and offer help.
In a flash, his fist shot out and gripped Chavez’s shirt and they both went over backward. The splash swallowed both men, the water deep from the recent swell of rain.
She held her breath as if in sympathy. The murky waters churned with action. Bubbles roiled with no signs of a victor or loser. What if she was wrong and Rick couldn’t pull this off? His injuries had been extensive. How long could they stay under? How long had passed? The cooler temperatures would play havoc with their bodies.
Lauren whimpered under her.
Nola sat up and hugged her close. “It’s okay, sweetie, your daddy’s an expert at this. He’s trained for these kinds of waters. This is exactly where he wanted the fight to be.”
“He’s a hero.”
“Absolutely.”
A hero. But also a man who had entrusted his child to her. Keeping a hand firmly locked around Lauren’s wrist, Nola jerked her up to run to the porch and retrieve Rick’s gun, because as much as she prayed that he would come out of those waters alive, she knew that life wasn’t fair and predictable. She’d made him a promise to keep his daughter safe.
Nola pulled her cell phone from her pocket and passed it to Lauren. “Call the police again and update them.”
Then she wrapped an arm around the teen’s shoulder and gripped the gun in her other hand. Waiting for the man she loved. The power of it didn’t come over her in some gentle breeze or pretty flowering. It smashed her over the head then squeezed tight, a strong emotion as big and powerful as the man who’d brought it.
In a gush upward, Rick exploded from the water, alive. Thank God, alive.
Vital.
Hers.
Emotions swirled inside her, bubbling higher and higher until tears flowed down her face and the gun shook in her hand. His angular features wet, his hair streaming and jet-black. In his fist, he held the limp body of her captor.
“Unconscious, not dead,” Rick gasped, then grinned. “God, you look hot holding that gun, all fired up and protecting my kid. Wanna get hitched?”
Choking back the tears of relief, Nola launched forward with Lauren while Rick tossed the unconscious Chavez onto the bank. Rick took the gun from her shaking hand and trained it on the bastard sprawled on the sandy shore, gathering up Nola and Lauren with his other arm.
Nola let the tears of relief flow and hugged Rick back, Lauren, too, this unexpected child who had come into her life. A stepdaughter. Wow. Mind-blowing. Exciting.
Sirens whined in the distance, but Nola barely noticed with her cheek pressed to Rick’s wet chest, his heart thudding in her ear. A heart she would listen to for the rest of her life.
Leaning against a tree by the marsh, Rick wondered at the hitch in his throat that lingered long after the cops had cleared out with Chavez in handcuffs. Lauren and Nola were inside cleaning up.
He’d already called Lindsay and told her he would send Lauren home tomorrow. His ex-wife had gone a little hysterical after hearing what happened, but her husband-to-be had taken the phone and offered an awkward thank-you. Something that meant a lot coming from the guy who would be spending so much time with Lauren over the next few years.