clung to him, dragging myself against him as he pushed upwards, wrapping my arms and legs around him just before our heads broke the surface. After the billowing underwater silence the shouts and squeals of the rest of the boating party seemed sharp and deafening. I buried my face in the crook of his neck to muffle them.
Slowly, rational thought returned. I coughed and hiccupped, thinking that if I’d known this was all I had to do to get up close and personal with this finely-toned physique, I’d have hurled myself in the lake the moment I got here on Friday afternoon.
I could feel the graze of rough wet cotton against my cheek, could feel shoulder and back muscles hardening underneath my arms as I held on tight. I felt totally vulnerable, yet totally safe. I knew he had me, and that whatever happened he would never let me go.
Was it wrong that it was now I got my tingle?
Despite the freezing water, a strange, buzzing sensation raced up my legs, surged through my body and lifted the roots of my hair. All I cared about was clinging on to him, the feel of him, the breadth of him, the dream of him…
‘Is she okay?’
The voice drifted above me, merging with other phrases of concern in different tones and pitches.
I was okay. Shaken. Wet. A little humiliated, maybe. But okay. However, I didn’t seem able to open my mouth and tell him that.
And then it hit me.
The voice. The one flowing in the air above our heads. That safe-and-dry-in-one-of-the-boats kind of voice. It was Nicholas’s.
Recognition hit me like a punch in the head. I knew this warm, hard shoulder I was resting my head on. I’d relied on it for most of my life, in fact. But the knowledge that it wasn’t Nicholas I was hanging on to didn’t change anything. I just clung to him all the harder.
‘Coreen?’ Adam whispered in my ear. ‘Are you okay?’
It was only then I noticed the pounding of his ribcage as it was pressed against mine, the hitches of breath between his words. I could almost believe he’d been as terrified as I had been. I raised my head to look at him, hair plastered over my eyes so I could only half see him through the sodden strands.
There was something fierce, something basic and protective, in those usually cheery brown eyes. I shivered a little. The water temperature, which I’d hardly noticed since he’d grabbed me underwater, suddenly seemed to drop. I still couldn’t prise my jaw open. Our gazes hooked together and I nodded.
A flood of warmth replaced the fierceness in Adam’s eyes. I loosened my grip on him a little, let my legs float downwards, but drew them up again quickly when they hit something soft and sludgy. It was then I realised I’d lost at least one of my shoes.
I also realised Adam wasn’t kicking and splashing to keep us afloat, which meant that the sludgy stuff I’d felt with the tip of my toe… Yep. It was the lake-bed. My vocal cords ended their strike and I groaned aloud.
I’d thought I was drowning in just over five feet of water?
How humiliating! I couldn’t even begin to look at the others, who were still peering over the edge of their rowing boats at us.
I sent Adam a begging look, no eyelash sweeps or tempting lip-bites included this time. I just telegraphed my desperation to him. Eye to eye. Friend to friend. Woman to man.
He didn’t even blink. ‘Let’s get out of this over-sized paddling pool, shall we?’ And then he hooked one arm under my knees and started wading towards dry ground.
Thankfully we were close to a section of bank that wasn’t engulfed in reeds, even though it had flattened into a rather small and very muddy beach. Adam just walked right out of the water—although how he managed to do it with me, my curves, and my water-logged tweed suit I’ll never know.
Once we were back on dry land I tried to slip out of his grasp and put my feet on the beach, but Adam stopped me with a firm squeeze and a stern look. ‘You’ve got no shoes,’ he said grimly. I hoped desperately that the strain I could both hear in his voice and see on his face didn’t have anything to do with the effort of keeping me aloft.
‘You can’t carry me back to the house,’ I squeaked. ‘It’ll kill you!’
Adam planted his feet firmly on the grass and twisted round to shout to the others, swinging me with him and yelling that he was taking me back to Inglewood Manor.
What a pair we must have looked, dripping wet, smeared with mud, and covered with tiny flecks of bright green duck-weed. I hid my face in his damp, white and, now that I noticed it, slightly see-through shirt—which prompted a Mr Darcy flashback so intense that my legs began to shake. It was just as well Adam had decided against plonking me on the ground after all.
And then I was bumping gently against his chest as he strode across the grass towards the formal gardens that encircled the house.
‘I can walk…really,’ I said weakly.
‘Shut up, Coreen.’ He puffed the words out above my head.
I’d thought offering was the right thing to do, but was secretly glad Adam had refused. If I hadn’t been feeling horrendously sorry for him, having to heft me all that way, I might have let the drama of the moment get to me. I don’t get to play the damsel in distress very often—not for real, anyway—and I was tempted to enjoy it as long as it lasted.
I snuck a look over Adam’s shoulder, wondering if the soggy, slightly smelly and muddy reality of what had just happened might look a little bit romantic to our audience, who were now some distance away. I also wondered if Nicholas might be even the tiniest bit jealous.
Wow.
That was odd.
For the first time in two months the thought of Nicholas Chatterton-Jones hadn’t sucked a sigh from my lungs. It hadn’t filled me with warmth because that glow had been snuffed out by a rather important question: why hadn’t he been the one to jump in and save me? He’d been a heck of a lot closer than Adam.
The thrill wore off a little at that moment. Enough to make me feel sorry for myself, anyway.
‘I’m so humiliated,’ I mumbled against Adam’s shoulder.
‘If anyone should be humiliated it should be Louisa and Marcus.’ Adam took a few more steps before he explained. ‘She was sneaky and selfish, asking you to lug that big lump around the lake instead of letting Nicholas do it. And Marcus—well, he’s just…’
‘A plonker?’ I suggested.
Laughter rumbled against Adam’s ribcage, and that delicious vibration made my chilly self warm a little. I hooked my hands more securely around his neck.
‘Couldn’t have said it better myself.’ He smiled down at me. ‘Anyway…look on the bright side.’
There was a bright side to being wet, smelly and utterly embarrassed?
‘Well, first of all, the glasses have gone for good.’
My fingers flew up to my face and I realised he
