Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

“I didn’t have any control over my foot. It was an involuntary movement that was stopped when you put your vagina in its way.” Sadie’s argument was weak, and she knew it because she squeaked and took a step behind Elijah, who just looked confused.

“I don’t get it, does it count as cheating?”

Marcus gave our brother a withering look and then helped me pick my injured angel up off the floor.

“Do you need a doctor?” I whispered as she took her first shaky step.

“I’ll go and have a look at it, but I don’t think so.”

She leaned into me as she said it, her face buried against my chest, and I grinned against the top of her head. Then there was a splashing in the sea, close enough for us to hear it and to catch it.

“There,” Sadie yelled, jumping up and down. “Shit, Sasha, it followed us into shore.”

Looking over the top of Sasha’s head at me, Marcus asked, “Longfin mako?”

“Possibly.” We’d dived off these waters, so we’d come across quite a few shark species during our time. The small glimpse that we’d seen would fit with a longfin mako, though.

“I need to sit again,” Sasha murmured and sank gracefully down onto her knees in the sand.

I’d planned on doing this later on, but the moment took me. Even though she was injured, she was at her happy place, surrounded by the beach and the sea, and we had members of our families around us.

So, I pulled the box that’d been burning a hole in my pocket out and opened it.

“Sasha?” When she just nodded, I grinned and got down onto a knee in front of her. “Baby, raise your head for me.”

She raised it enough to see the box in my hand, but froze and didn’t make it any higher than that.

Her head of normally crazy curls had been drenched by the sea, which had made them straighten out, but like they always did within minutes of getting wet, they were beginning to curl again at the ends. I just knew that within ten minutes, the riot would be back. It still amazed me how they did it, but I even loved that about her.

There literally wasn’t one thing that didn’t leave me feeling breathless when it came to this woman.

“Is that…?”

“This wasn’t how I’d planned to do it, but right now, with something that you love so much—”

I was just gesturing out to the sea when there was another splash, and she interrupted me.

“I’m rethinking it after almost becoming shark bait.”

Sadie nodded in agreement. “Ain’t that the truth, mate.”

“You’d never have known it was there if you hadn’t insisted on taking the transparent bottom pool into the water, pixie,” Elijah grumbled. “I told you it wasn’t a good idea.”

She spun around and gaped at him. “If we hadn’t bleedin’ known it was there, I could be floating around in pieces in the sea right now.”

Almost like it was proving her right, a fin came out of the water, and there was more thrashing.

Looking over her shoulder at Sasha, Sadie asked, “Do you think it found someone else? It’s been doing that for a while now. What if it found a diver?”

“There’d be more blood in the water,” Ryan supplied as cheerfully as he could, given how weak he still was. “And probably pieces of the person’s gear. Well, aside from the tank. Those things weigh a ton, so they just sink—”

A glare from his daughter shut him up, but not before he held his newly amputated arm up in the air and then rolled his eyes when he realized what he’d done. “Sorry, wrong arm.”

He mimed zipping his lips with his other hand, making Sam laugh.

Frustrated with the way things had gone off course, I snapped, “Look, I’m trying to propose. You all know already I want to spend the rest of my life with her, but I’m trying to tell Sasha that, too.”

Gripping onto the waistband of my shorts and almost pulling them off me as she used them to help her get up off the sand, she stood, still visibly in pain.

“You want to spend the rest of your life with me?”

“More than anything,” I replied firmly, not even taking a second to think it over.

“Even though I do weird things in my sleep?”

Rubbing the place on my jaw where she’d hit me last night, I nodded. “They make me love you even more.”

“He’s fucking insane,” Marcus muttered under his breath to Remy, who’d appeared beside him. “I’ve heard her and seen it in action.”

“Freak,” Malcolm coughed and then looked around the group when Sasha glared at him.

“Even though I have a cross-eyed cat who’s now addicted to wearing a helmet and goggles?” she pressed.

“Seeing as how I’m the one who started him on that addiction, I don’t see the problem with this.”