Summer by the Sea Read online

  SAM’S TEAM OBSERVED from the shore while he swam out as fast as he could to reach the woman caught in the rip current.

  He gripped a flotation device—one of the bright red rescue cans that they called torpedo buoys, or torps, because of the shape—and kicked out past the breaking waves on a course parallel to the swimmer he intended to assist.

  Sam’s adrenaline kicked in. He didn’t think he loved anything better than the intensity of making a save.

  When he was as far out as she was, Sam turned sharply and swam toward the female swimmer across the narrow rip current, kicking hard, holding the torp in front of him with outstretched arms. Though the woman’s dark hair was matted to her head and her blue eyes were huge, he assessed that she wasn’t in such distress that she couldn’t understand him.

  “Grab the handles and I’ll pull you to safety,” he called to her. When he was close enough, he helped the woman latch onto the flotation device and then guided her out of the lane of the rip current.

  Sam had to give her credit; she was breathing heavily but she was alert and hadn’t panicked—her skin wasn’t clammy and her pupils looked okay. She was a fighter, that was for sure.

  “Hang on,” he said to the woman. “Just a few more yards. I’ll stay with you until you can touch bottom. Then we can walk in to shore together.”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted through clenched, chattering teeth. “I can handle it on my own.”

  He said nothing in response. They would talk again when they were safely on shore and he’d called in a medical team to assess her.

  His feet hit the sandy bottom, and he shifted one hand to the waist of her red bathing suit. Soon they were sloshing through the shallow waves together. He kept his hand on her waist, guiding her in.

  “Let go of me,” she hissed.

  “Your legs might be shaky. You’ve been through a rip current.”

  “I had it under control,” she muttered. “I don’t need you.”

  “Maybe so,” he answered. “We’re just being careful. Rip currents can be quite powerful and tough to escape from.” He went into science teacher mode. “In this case, they’re formed by a depression, or low point, on the ocean floor, which in turn causes a strong surface flow of water running from the beach back to the ocean.”

  “I know all that,” she snapped. “I’ve had plenty of science classes in my day.”

  He nodded and remained silent, just walking in with her. Once on shore, she bent over and gave herself a little shake. He could tell she was a bit stunned from her ordeal, but it was obvious she’d be okay.

  He motioned to Jeannie McLaren to take out her radio. The new lifeguard looked at him owlishly. She seemed frozen.

  “We’ll review the procedures again in training tomorrow,” he said quietly to McLaren. “But right now, it’s customary to call the medical team. They’ll check the lady over. Then I’ll make a report to the lifeguard captain. Typically, just one person is needed to handle a save like this, but since it’s the beginning of the season, I wanted you all to learn and get experience firsthand. As such, all of you will get credit.”

  Charlie perked up. “Credit?”

  “For the save,” Sam explained.

  The lady he’d rescued shook her head at them. “No one saved me. I’m fine. And if you call any EMTs...”

  She paused and gazed toward the direction of the cottages. They all did. A woman in a business outfit—skirt and sleeveless blouse—was picking her way across the sand toward them. She carried her shoes in one hand. Across her shoulder bounced a briefcase.

  “...then I will sue you,” the lady they’d rescued continued, turning back to smile at them triumphantly. “And if I’m not mistaken, here is my lawyer.”

  Sam squinted. The lawyer with the briefcase looked an awful lot like the only lawyer he knew in town, Natalie Kimball. Or had her name changed since she’d married? He couldn’t remember. In any event, she wasn’t his lawyer because she didn’t handle child custody cases.

  While he was ruminating over name changes and custody cases, his “distressed swimmer” staggered off toward Natalie. Sam’s two lifeguards looked at him expectantly, as if to say, “Now what?” To add to the fun, most of the people who’d been soaking up the sun nearby wandered over, too. Everybody liked a show.

  “What did you mean by ‘credit for a save’?” Charlie asked him. “Does that get us a cash bonus or something?”

  “No, Charlie.” Sam sighed. “It just gives you bragging rights at the end-of-summer banquet.”

  Charlie looked disappointed, but honestly, all lifeguard groups that Sam had ever known set up friendly competitions during the season. However, Sam didn’t need to be explaining all that with an audience of civilians gathering before them.

  He slid a gaze back over at the lady. He couldn’t hear what she was saying to her lawyer, but could very well guess.

  “Okay, good news—our distressed swimmer is obviously feeling better,” Sam said to his green staff, wrapping this lesson up so they could disperse the crowd as soon as possible. “The takeaway for the day is that we can’t force a person to go for treatment if they don’t want to. This is all perfectly normal.”

  Charlie and Jeannie nodded in unison, along with some of the people in the crowd.

  Usually, the medical team with the resulting paperwork would have been here by now—even if just to handle the victim’s refusal of treatment—but the season was still young and Sam supposed the recent hires were getting used to Wallis Point lifeguard protocol. In any event, he’d seen new teams being a bit clueless before. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

  The radio on his all-terrain vehicle squawked. Sam’s boss. Sam headed over to answer the call. Probably, Duke had heard about the save. McLaren had radioed it in, and now there would be a report due.

  Damn it. Sam still needed to get the victim’s information for the save statistics.

  He glanced back up at the angry lady staggering away from them. He would have to follow her.

  Again, nothing he couldn’t handle. In his years as a lifeguard, he’d seen many different types of victim reactions before.

  Keep things smooth and easy—that was Sam’s motto.

  * * *

  SARAH CONTINUED HER march toward Cassandra’s cottage, her aunt’s lawyer beside her. She tugged tighter on the beach towel she’d wrapped around her wet bathing suit. The towel smelled strange, and the flimsy material of uncertain provenance felt gross against her skin.

  “...and it’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Natalie was saying breathlessly as Sarah strode through the sand. “I don’t know if you realize it or not, but Cassandra showed your magazine article to everyone in the office. I love reading about strong female role models. We all think it’s wonderful. My daughter, Hannah, is six, and I hope women like you will be an inspiration to her.”

  “Yeah, well—” Sarah stopped herself from a biting retort and glanced sideways at the lawyer. They were approaching Cassandra’s cottage now, near the tired-looking wooden deck without any railings, and the lawyer didn’t appear to be sucking up to Sarah or even blowing smoke. Natalie seemed strangely, provincially sincere. Sarah needed to adjust her expectations. She squeezed the towel tighter around herself. “Where is my aunt, anyway? She was supposed to be here to let me in. She knew what time I was set to arrive.”

  “Yes. She asked me to handle that for her. I’m sorry I got held up so long.” Natalie pulled her briefcase from her shoulder. Daintily, she balanced it on the arm of an Adirondack chair as she opened a side pocket. “Here, I have a note from Cassandra explaining the situation to you. And your copy of the house key.”

  “What situation?” Sarah spit out as she grabbed the letter with one hand and the key with the other. “Why is she always so damned dramatic? You should tell her to get a phone like regular people. Who uses a lawyer or a post office box
to communicate with her flesh and blood? Her only flesh and blood, I might add.” Sarah’s voice had risen. She hadn’t meant to express her anger, obviously much deeper than she’d realized. But it was always there, inside her, and today had been a crappy day from start to finish. That Cassandra had pulled another of her stunts was so typical. Sarah was even angrier with herself for not foreseeing it.

  Before Natalie could answer, the roar of an ATV drew suspiciously close. Sarah groaned and whipped her head around.

  It was the lifeguard again. The older-but-still-younger-than-her man with the too-good looks, the bare chest and the surprisingly calm, competent manner.

  He came to a stop and just gazed at her for a moment, his mouth hitched in a half smile, as if he found something about the situation funny.

  “What?” she snapped at him.

  “Hello, Sam,” Natalie greeted him.

  “Hi, Natalie. Good to see you again.” But Sam had focused all his intensity on her. Sarah.

  She’d been about to say something scathing to knock him off balance, but as his kind, appreciative eyes swept first up her body, then down, she felt the angry words wither in her throat. She’d forgotten what she was going to say in order to keep the upper hand. He didn’t seemed fazed by her anger in the least.

  And then his eyes met hers directly—as deep blue as the ocean that had first seduced her, then nearly swept her away and swallowed her up whole.

  She felt an uncharacteristic flutter in her chest. Her head was even dizzy. Yes, it must be the fumes from the cheap towel.

  “Whoa,” Sam said in his rich, deep voice, then leaped forward to steady her elbow.

  She hadn’t realized she was wavering on her feet. But the less this man touched her, the better. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence?” she asked, shaking his hand off her. “Do all your rescue targets receive such hands-on service?”

  Now he was full-out smiling. She hated that he reacted to her this way, but it was as if he refused to be ruffled by her bad mood.

  Worse, it was as if he saw straight through her offensive shield—over-the-top rudeness and all—and wasn’t intimidated in the least. He studied her as if none of what she said was real.

  Nobody treated her this way. Except maybe Richard Lee, but she didn’t like Richard, and he didn’t like her. With Richard it was all business. With her high-tech, artificial-intelligence patents, she stood to make him a fortune, and at the end of the day, that was all he cared about.

  Sam-the-lifeguard (yes, she would think of him like that—it was good defense for her), was back to peering into her eyes. Frankly, he looked worried for her health. Well, she was, too, but that wasn’t his business.

  “I’m fine,” she insisted again, sounding unlike herself and too similar to a breathless sixteen-year-old girl, which was just irritating. She wrapped her cheap towel even more tightly around her body. If she could just put her armor back on—suit, expensive shoes, briefcase (even if it was full of meditation books)—then she would feel like herself again.

  “Sorry to have to bother you,” he said to her, “but we’ve got unfinished business.” He shifted his gaze to Natalie. “I have to fill out an administrative report,” he said apologetically. “This won’t take a minute. Don’t sue me, okay?”

  Sarah couldn’t very well be insulted that he was speaking to Natalie, not her, because she had told him that Natalie was her lawyer. “Leave my name out of your administrative report,” Sarah told Sam.

  “Yes, please do,” Natalie agreed. “Sarah is a celebrity, and it wouldn’t do to bring that kind of attention down on her or Wallis Point.”

  “I know who she is,” Sam said. “I didn’t recognize her, at first, but now that we’re at Cassandra’s cottage, I fully understand.” Both he and Natalie looked at her.

  Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

  “You know who I am?”

  “Yes. But I didn’t know who you were when I rescued you.”

  “You didn’t rescue me,” she clarified. “I rescued myself.”

  “Right,” he agreed easily.

  Why can’t my employees be so agreeable? she thought. Maybe he wasn’t that bad.

  No. There had to be a catch.

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  He gave her a sexy, lazy smile. He backed up a step so he was leaning his hip indolently against the beach buggy, the motor still idling.

  She shook her head. She was practically forty. Over the hill, compared to him.

  Sam tilted his head at her. “How old are you?” he asked.

  She started. “Why?” Was this guy a mind-reader?

  “For the report,” he said, still calm.

  “Don’t put me in any of your reports!”

  He shrugged. “It’ll be anonymous. No name given. Nobody will ever know that it was you.”

  “Why don’t you just pretend it didn’t happen at all? Forget about it.”

  “Can’t,” he said softly. “The chief of lifeguards knows about the incident. You’re lucky—it’s only because it’s early in the season that the medical team wasn’t called and ready for you by the time we brought you in—sorry, by the time you brought yourself in.” He gave her a teasing grin, showing a smile with really nice teeth. “Then you would be in the system—name and all. Police, fire and EMTs—they brook no nonsense.”

  She crossed her arms. “You’re implying I create nonsense.”

  “We’ve dealt with VIPs here before, Ms. Buckley. They never complained.”

  She could feel her face growing red.

  “You’ll be written up as female, aged whatever,” he continued. “That’s how our public reports always read. No other identifying information.”

  “I don’t care what you put down,” she snapped. “Make something up.”

  “Nope.” He shook his head. “Not falling into that trap. You tell me.”

  “No.”

  He pursed his lips. “How about twenty-one? You good with that?”

  “Don’t be an ass.”

  He grinned, showing a dimple this time. “You talk just like my middle schoolers. The ones with bad manners, anyway.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He teaches middle school earth science,” Natalie chimed in. “In the local school system.”

  “Ah. Very funny,” Sarah replied to Sam-the-lifeguard who was also a science teacher.

  Obviously, he’d wanted her to know that. Wanted her to know he was serious of mind as well as body.

  She licked her lips, trying desperately not to look at that body. Toned, sun-kissed skin. Welcoming chest. Really, really hot abs...

  Stop. Just tell him you’re thirty-five. Not too much of a lie. Or go lower, thirty-two. It was a nice, round age for a woman. Not as preposterous as saying thirty, which was about the age that he looked.

  He gave her a kind smile. “My daughter will be happy to know I’ve met you already. She idolizes you ever since Cassandra showed her the article in Business Roundup.”

  Sarah coughed in surprise. She could feel her eyes bugging out, a blatant show. When she was younger, she’d practiced her “business” face in the mirror. An old mentor had suggested it as a necessity. He’d also suggested that she looked too vulnerable, which she’d been trying to correct, or at least to cover up, ever since.

  This was a major fail.

  “You think I’m too young to have a daughter, don’t you?” Sam winked. “Well, I had her when I was twelve.”

  She couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter.

  And yet, he wore no wedding ring. Not even a white tan line to indicate that he’d taken it off.

  Not all men wore wedding rings.

  “I’m not married,” he said, reading her mind again.

  Natalie stood by silently. Sarah could swear she was hiding a smile.

&nb
sp; It hit her all of a sudden. They were handling her. The way she usually sought to handle others.

  The name of the game is power, her old mentor had taught her. Others will try to top you—don’t let them. It’s a sign of weakness and the worst you can do is to show weakness.

  “Thirty-nine.” Sarah directed the information to Sam-the-lifeguard. “Put that number in your report.” It was the truth. She had almost two weeks until her fortieth birthday.

  Deliberately looking through him rather than at him, she then turned to Natalie. Enough of this, she thought. “Where is Cassandra?” She crumpled the envelope the lawyer had handed her and dropped it on the deck. She didn’t want to read another one of her aunt’s placating notes. She wanted the truth, and she was through with the flaky games. “Tell me what’s going on. Stop enabling her.”

  * * *

  SAM COULDN’T HELP IT. He was fascinated, both intellectually and physically, by this emotionally fearless, over-the-top woman. Sarah Buckley wasn’t like anyone else he knew. She seemed to have this armor about her, clutching at her beach towel as if it was a shield, and her words to him were like verbal jousts. He’d been having fun talking to her, actually.

  And his daughter was enamored of her, too. That made it difficult for him. He had to keep his hands off. And yet, he couldn’t walk away, either.

  Good thing he had Cassandra as a buffer.

  He turned to Natalie, feeling pretty confident as to where Cassandra was. She was with Lucy at the town library. Sarah was just going to have to chill out and wait for the two to return home. Yes, Cassandra could have left the house keys with him, but he wasn’t fixed to a lifeguard stand this year. He was more of a floating supervisor and therefore more difficult to find than he’d been in the past.

  Natalie blinked nervously, shifting her weight from side to side. Sam could see how Sarah would do that to her. Natalie had been in some of his high school classes. She’d been a shy, bookish girl back then. She wasn’t like that anymore—she was a lawyer who argued cases in court and won all the time—but Sarah was an overpowering person, to put it mildly.

  “Actually,” Natalie said to Sarah, “Cassandra left you the letter because she wanted to explain in her own words where she was. You really should read it.” Natalie knelt and picked it up.