yeah.”
“That was incredibly heroic.” She was not going let him brush it off, though he was determined to.
“Don’t make it something it wasn’t. I’m nobody’s hero.”
Just like he had insisted earlier he was nobody’s prince.
“Well,” she insisted, “you’re mine.”
He snorted, that sexy, cynical sound he made that was all his own and she found, right now, lying here in the sand, alive, so aware of herself and him, that she liked that sound very much, despite herself.
“I’ve been around the ocean my whole life,” he told her grimly. “I grew up surfing some pretty rough water. I knew what I was doing. Unlike you. That was incredibly stupid.”
In her altered state, she was aware that he thought he could break the bond that had been cementing itself into place between them since the moment he had entered the water to rescue her.
“Life can change in a blink,” he said sternly. “It can be over in a blink.”
He was lecturing her. She suddenly needed him to know she could not let him brush it off like that. She needed him to know that the life force was flowing through her. She had an incredible sense of being alive.
“You were right,” she said, softly.
There was that snort again. “Of course I’m right. You don’t go climbing up on rocks when the surf is that high.”
“Not about that. I mean, okay, about that, too, but I wasn’t talking about that.”
“What were you talking about?”
“It wasn’t a heartbreak,” Becky said. “It was a romantic disappointment.”
“Huh?”
“That’s what I thought of when I went into the water. I thought my whole life would flash before my eyes, but instead I thought of Jerry.”
“Look, you’re obviously in shock and we need to—”
“He was my high school sweetheart. We’d been together since I was seventeen. I’d always assumed we were going to get married. Everybody in the whole town thought we would get married. They called us Salt and Pepper.”
“You know what? This will keep. I have to—”
“It won’t keep. It’s important. I have to say it before I forget it. Before this moment passes.”
“Oh, sheesh,” he said, his tone indicating he wanted nothing more than for this moment to pass.
“I wanted that. I wanted to be Salt and Pepper, forever. My parents had split up the year before. It was awful. My dad owned a hardware store. One of his clerks. And him.”
“Look, Becky, you are obviously rattled. You don’t have to tell me this.”
She could no more have stopped herself from telling him than she could have stopped those waves from pounding on the shore.
“They had a baby together. Suddenly, they were the family we had always been. That we were supposed to be. It was horrible, seeing them all over town, looking at each other. Pushing a baby carriage. I wanted it back. I wanted that feeling of being part of something back. Of belonging.”
“Aw, Becky,” he said softly. “That sucks. Really it does, but—”
But she had to tell all of it, was compelled to. “Jerry went away to school. My mom didn’t have the money for college, and it seemed my dad had new priorities.
“I could see what the community needed, so I started my event company.”
“Happily-Ever-After,” he said. “Even though you had plenty of evidence of the exact opposite.”
“It was way more successful than I had thought it could be. It was way more successful than Jerry thought it could be, too. The more successful I became, the less he liked me.”
“Okay. Well. Some guys are like that.”
“He broke up with me.”
“Yeah, sorry, but now is not the time—”
“This is the reason it’s important for me to say it right now. I understand something I didn’t understand before. I thought my heart was broken. It is a terrible thing to suffer the humiliation of being ditched in a small town. It was a double humiliation for me. First my dad, and then this. But out there in the water, I felt glad. I felt if I had married him, I would have missed something. Something essential.”
“Okay, um—”
“A grand passion.”
He said a word under his breath that they disapproved of in Moose Run, Michigan.
“Salt and pepper?” She did a pretty good imitation of his snort. “Why settle for boring old salt and pepper when the world is full of so many glorious flavors?”
“Look, I think you’ve had a pretty bad shake-up. I don’t have a clue what you are talking about, so—”
She knew she was making Drew Jordan wildly uncomfortable, but she didn’t care. She planned to make him more uncomfortable yet. She leaned toward him. He stopped talking and watched her warily.
She needed to know if the life force was as intense in him right now as it was in her. She needed to take advantage of this second chance to be alive, to really live.
She touched Drew’s back through the wetness of his shirt, and felt the sinewy strength there. The strength that had saved her.
She leaned closer yet. She touched her forehead to his, as if she could make him feel what was going on inside her, since words could not express it. He had a chance to move away from her. He did not. He was as caught in what was unfolding as she had been in the wave.
And then, she touched her lips to his, delicately, needing the connection to intensify.
His lips tasted of salt and strength and something more powerful and more timeless than the ocean. That desire that people had within them, not just to live, but to go on.
For a moment, Drew was clearly stunned to find her lips on his. But then, he seemed to get whatever she was trying to tell him, in this primal language that seemed the only thing that could express the celebration of all that lived within her.
His lips answered hers. His tongue chased the ridges of her teeth, and then probed, gently, ever so gently...
It was Becky’s turn to be stunned. It was everything she had hoped for. It was everything she had missed.
No, it was more than what she had hoped for, and more than what she could have ever imagined. A kiss was not simply a brushing of lips. No! It was a journey, it was a ride on pure energy, it was a connection, it was a discovery, it was an intertwining of the deepest parts of two people, of their souls.
Drew
