One Week of Summer (2 page)

Then she dropped it.  Directly into the onslaught of tiny, destructive waves on the beach.  One washed over it, then another, and I knew there was no chance of saving it.

A cry escaped my lips, and it wasn’t a small one.  It was more like the sound was ripped from my throat, animalistic and full of anguish.  I almost didn’t recognize it was my own.

When it was done, it left me raw, and my body went limp.

I should’ve done that in the first place,
I realized.
Not fought. Just let them take me.

It was too late, though.  They saw they could hurt me and no way were they letting me go now.

Bex reached down and grabbed the soaking book from the sandy water.  She ripped out a page, folded it, and tore it in half completely.

I couldn’t even fight as the two girls behind me pulled me further into the ocean.  The only part of my body that was willing to move was my eyes, and even then it was only so they could stay on Bex’s hands.

When the water hit my knees and the bile rose in my throat, I was powerless to react.

If they let me go, I would sink into the abyss.  It didn’t matter that the water wasn’t even two feet deep.  My muscles had magically atrophied and my bones no longer existed.  The water would swallow me whole.

A mad-crazy splash sounded beside me, and for an extended moment, I truly believed it came from my body hitting the liquid death.  Especially when I realized the blonde and the brunette were no longer holding my arms.

This is it,
I concluded.
This is how I die.

But someone else held me up.  Warm, strong arms clasped my waist and dragged me back to land.  Back to sanity.

“C’mon now, darlin’,” a deep voice murmured right in my ear.

I didn’t know if the words were meant to comfort me, or to encourage me to get an emotional grip, or if they were intended to convey something else entirely.

It didn’t even matter.

I clung to them as my lifeline.

My legs still refused to obey the most basic commands.  They hung uselessly beneath me.  But my arms were suddenly a steel trap, which closed desperately on whoever held me.

With a sigh, the man attached to the words – and to me – seemed to clue in that wouldn’t – or couldn’t – let go.  So he scooped me straight up and into his chest.  He held me the way someone holds a small, sleeping child, with one arm under my knees and the other under my arms.

Vaguely, I was aware that the aforementioned chest was bare and muscular.

At any other given moment in my life, it would’ve been the exact kind of bodily perfection that would make me avert my eyes shyly, awkwardly.  Or if I could manage it…It might send me hightailing in the other direction.

Right that second though, all I could feel was relief.

He smelled like salt and sand and something else – something musky and masculine and heady.  He smelled like safety.

So I held on tightly and sobbed silently into the solidity he provided.  And remarkably, he continued to hold me.

“Rebecca Morrison.” The man bit off the name coldly, then followed it with three others. “Kirby Browne. Delia and Ennia DeFranco.”

Oh, God.

He knew them.  Maybe he hadn’t come to rescue me at all.  And I was stuck in his arms.  Trapped. 

But he spoke again, and in spite of the icy fury in his voice, his words reassured me.

“What the
fuck
is going on here?”

Absolute silence met his question.  Even the waves seemed to have stopped their menacing laps.

“It was a joke,” one of the girls muttered.

“A joke?” The man’s grip tightened to an almost painful squeeze. “You think drowning some poor girl is funny? The four of you are fucking crazier than I thought.”

“
We’re
crazy?” Kirby countered snidely. “You’re a barely-out-of-the-asylum asshole with a hero complex. I’m surprised you’re allowed out in public at all.”

“Since when is helping people a sign of insanity?” my rescuer replied.

“Oh, please,” snapped Kirby. “She’s hardly a little girl in need of saving and you know it.”

“Easy mistake,” he growled. “I’m just so used to you picking on the defenseless. Has your M.O. changed that much, Kirby?”

“What-the-fuck-ever,” Kirby answered. “I’m sure those perky tits of hers are what brought you down here in the first place. I bet you can you feel them pressed into you, right now.”

At that second I clued in that I’d misjudged the dynamic of the foursome.  It wasn’t Bex who led them.  She was just a pretty figurehead.  Kirby was in charge.  The meanest of the mean.  I knew it the way I knew the tree was the center of my drawing just a few minutes earlier.  But I wondered if the others even had a clue.

“She was laughing at the beginning,” one of them lied.

“It just got carried away.”

I jerked my head up at the blatant falsehoods.  My vision was still blurry with tears, but I could see Delia and Ennia nodding to each other.

“She’s practically a mute,” Bex told him. “She couldn’t answer you even if she wanted to.”

“Let me get this straight,” my rescuer said slowly. “She’s a mute, but she was
laughing
as you tried to drown her.”

“Exactly,” the brunette said.

“You’re so stupid, Delia,” Kirby muttered, then spoke to the man again. “Bex said
practically
mute. Not totally mute.”

He inhaled. “Any chance any of that bullshit is true?”

It took me several seconds to realize his rumbling voice was directed at me.

I wanted to shout out that no, it sure as heck wasn’t true.  But now that I felt a little safer, a little less like death was an imminent inevitably, my usual instincts for emotional guardedness had kicked back in.

Almost imperceptibly, I nodded.  Once.

He felt it.  I knew because the only part of him I could see – his jaw – clenched.

Let it go,
I prayed silently.
Please.

And he did.  Almost.

“Well, girls. It’s clear to me that it’s not funny anymore,” he stated in a measured voice.

“Not to her,” Kirby replied under her breath, and the other three giggled.

“Hey, Kirby?”

“What?” she snapped.

“You still fucking that married man?”

The giggles cut off abruptly.

“Oh. My. God. Who is it?” Bex demanded. “I knew you weren’t alone the other night!”

Kirby flashed my savior a furious glare, but Ennia had already grabbed her hand, begging for details and calling her scandalous in a delighted voice.

I let out a relieved breath and the man’s arms tightened around me again, this time in a reassuring squeeze.  I knew he’d redirected them on purpose.  If I’d been the gushing type, I would’ve been all over him with gratitude.  As it was, all I could do was sink back into his chest gratefully and enjoy a blissful, attention-free moment.

“Are you really almost mute?” He asked the question right into my ear, sending a warm breath across the sensitive skin there.

I shot a surreptitious peek in the direction of Kirby and her unpleasant entourage.  They were too wrapped up in their own salacious gossip to be looking our way.  At least for the moment.

Very slowly, and without taking my eyes off the foursome, I shook my head.  I knew he would feel the movement against his chest.

“Listen,” he said quietly. “I can tell you’re scared out of your fucking mind. So I’m going to get rid of these four bitches on your behalf. But when they’re gone, you’re going to tell me
exactly
what happened. Understood?”

I didn’t bother to answer him.  I knew he wasn’t really giving me a choice.  Because even though he finished with a question, his tone told me it wasn’t really a request at all.  It was an order.  With an expectation of absolute obedience.

If I was a different sort of girl, I might’ve been offended.  I might’ve argued. 

But if I was a different sort of girl, I also wouldn’t be stuck in a situation where four complete strangers felt it was acceptable to torment me in the first place.

“Delia? Ennia?”

All four girls turned our way and I couldn’t quite suppress a cringe.  They didn’t notice.  Or they didn’t care because they couldn’t get to me.

“Yes?” the blonde and the brunette replied in unison.

“I saw your dad up on the promenade. He looked pissed.”

“Shit,” one of them said. “How long ago?”

My defender shrugged. “Two hours?”

“Damn it! We’d better find him.”

There was a pause, and for a second I thought they weren’t going to go anywhere after all.  Or that the other two were going to stick around.

Then Bex sighed. “Fine. If your dad’s looking for you, he probably called mine and now he’s probably looking for me too. Kirby?”

I didn’t have to look up to feel the heat of the redhead’s gaze.  It seared into me.

“Fine. Yes. I’ll come. But I’m sure we’ll be running into this little peach again soon.” If the threat in her voice wasn’t obvious with the first statement, she made it totally clear in her follow-up. “Maybe not when her hero’s around though, right girls? I heard now that he’s
back,
he has to work all summer.”

“Fuck off, Kirby,” he snarled.

“Just about to,” she replied sweetly.

I clung to the strange man until their giggles faded away and he announced, “They’re gone.”

I thought – though I wasn’t entirely sure where the feeling came from – that his words had a deceptively gentle ring to them.  Maybe it was just because they contrasted too sharply with his earlier command.  Or maybe his strong physical presence made such a soft tone seem unnatural.

Or maybe it’s because it’s just been so long since someone was nice to you.

I shook off the last conclusion simply because I didn’t like the way it filled me with self-loathing.

“Do you think you can stand?” he wanted to know.

“Yes,” I replied, not quite above a whisper.

Admittedly, the sound of my own voice startled me a little.  It seemed like it had been quite a while since I used it.

But it really hadn’t been.  Had it?  Surely, I’d spoken to someone in the last few days.

Groceries!
I thought triumphantly.

Yes.  I’d bought some things this morning when I arrived at the beach house and I definitely, definitely spoke to the cashier.

Thank god.

“Hey?”

Whoops.  I was still in his arms.

“Yes,” I repeated, this time a little more firmly. “I can stand.”

His hold on me loosened and I slid down.  I was slightly less steady than I would’ve liked, but I still managed to hold myself up.  I looked down at my feet, grateful that they’d found hold in the sand.

“Are you all right?” he asked, the deep timber of his voice tinged with concern.

I dragged my gaze up from the sand, preparing myself mentally to meet his eyes – an unusual and stressful task for me at the best of times – so I could answer him and thank him properly.  But my eyes slowed on their own as they made their way up his body.

The man’s feet were bare, and striped with a tan that gave away his preference for flip-flops.  His calves were well-defined and muscular, and dotted with just the right amount of hair to make them ooze masculinity.  Knee-length board shorts covered his thighs.  But the shorts were damp, and his quads strained against the fabric.

I tried to force my stare up more quickly, but it only got as far as his stomach before it resumed its unhurried pace.

His abs were the kind which graced the covers of fitness magazines; they were lean and toned and they made my pulse jump unexpectedly. 

His hands rested just below his waist, pushing down the band on the top of his shorts and exposing the rigid line of his hip bone.

Sexy.

Never before had I understood the meaning of the word so completely.

A slow, creeping heat carried up my own body as I examined his.

The balls of my feet tingled.  Goosebumps rose on my legs, clashing distinctly with the warmth between them.

Oh!
The little gasp in my mind very nearly escaped from my mouth too.

The man lifted one of his hands off his hip, and my eyes followed it up as it found its way to his mess of sandy-blonde hair.  I watched it give his locks a yank, then finally, I turned my attention to his face.

And I froze.

He wasn’t a stranger at all.

His chiseled jaw.  His amber-flecked eyes.  His curved lips.

I’d seen them before.  Yearbook photos.  Halls of fame.  I knew him because
everybody
knew him.

Theodore Kimball Marcus.

The guy who saved me was Teekay M., the playboy, swim-star drop-out who once owned the keys to the kingdom that was my high school.