With a wet hand, she brushed back his hair. "Thank you," she said.
"No, thank you." He grinned at her and bent his head, intent on another kiss. "Now where were we?"
Before lip met lip, they were tossed over by a wave. Damn, he thought as she tumbled out of his grip. Then a second wave struck, and he was submerged again.
Eyes open, he looked for Jane in the swirling green world of rising bubbles and undulating seaweed. He saw something yellow, but it was a garibaldi fish and not Jane's swimsuit. Hope she has her eyes closed, he thought. Then he popped up, and immediately began surveying the surface of the water. "Jane?" he called as he regained his footing.
Alarm squeezed his chest. "Jane?"
Then, a few feet away, thrashing arms and legs rose from the water. He rushed toward her, hampered by yet another, smaller wave. When he caught hold of one of her arms, the other smacked him in the shoulder.
"Sweetheart." Her eyes were tightly closed, and she didn't seem to hear him. "Honey-pie!"
Her wet lashes blinked open. He yanked her against him, and she latched onto his body. "You're okay," he said, keeping her close. "You're fine."
"I almost died!" she said, in Rebecca-like tones.
"Not even close." Her hair was sodden, and he finger combed it off her forehead.
Her breath was sawing in and out, and he just held her, waiting for her to calm as he kept one eye on the incoming waves. Finally, she shuddered, and her head dipped, her forehead against his chin. "I feel like an idiot."
"It was my fault," he said, moving a little closer to shore, Jane still in his arms. "I wasn't paying attention."
"I was thrashing."
"More like floundering."
Her head lifted. "Gee, thanks, I feel so much better now."
"It's no big deal."
"I don't like looking foolish," she said. "You didn't panic."
Only when I thought I might have lost you. He shook the words out of his head. "You don't have to corner the market on competence, Jane."
"Funny you should say that." She wrinkled her nose, then her pretty, clear eyes gazed past his shoulder at the horizon. "My father told me not long ago it was better to be competent than lovable."
"Jesus," he muttered, then he drew her head to his shoulder, holding her cheek to his salty skin. "You're a pain in the ass, Jane, you know that? But somebody's going to find that lovable about you. Somebody's coming along real soon and you'll know just how lovable you are."
She was still for a moment, her mouth touching his wet shoulder, pressing it there in the semblance of a kiss.
The water, the world, swirled about them for a quiet few moments. Then Griffin cleared his throat. "Want to go any farther, Jane?"
"No." She had begun to shiver, but he didn't think it was from the sixty-eight-degree water. "I'm afraid I'm already out of my depth."
* * *
EVERY PARENT KNEW the worst day in a normal family household was the day when all the kids were hit with the flu at the same time - and then the mom was struck down too. Tess tried telling herself that wasn't happening, though. It was the washing out of the barf bowl for the tenth time that was making her nauseous. She was only burning up one moment, then shivering with cold the next because one minute she was running to her room where she'd placed the two middle boys in her own bed, and the next she was sitting with the baby on her shoulder, trying to console his unhappy whimpers.
She and Russ were the only ones who hadn't disgorged the contents of their stomachs. But she had a terrible feeling it was only a matter of time.
The sounds of retching reached her. Duncan or Oliver - too sick to be counted on to make it to the bathroom - was making use of the big plastic bowl that she planned to never see again once this was over. Closing her eyes, Tess willed her legs to move. When they didn't obey, she raised her voice. "Rebecca, do you think you could - "
The remainder of her sentence was drowned out by the pitter-patter of her daughter's feet on a mad dash from her "bower of death" - the teen's own words - to the bathroom across the hall.
There would be no help there.
She pushed off with her bare feet and managed to stand. A short spin of