her head, ready to panic, but she found him looking up at her out of his one good eye. The other was naked.
She hadn’t known what she expected to see under his mysterious eye patch. An empty socket? Something so horrible it might make her look away.
But it wasn’t like that at all. The cornea of his injured eye was cloudy, and the skin around it puckered with scars. The sight of it didn’t horrify her at all.
“You scared me,” she said, redoubling her efforts to get them to shore. It still seemed a long way to the beach. She swam laps regularly, but here she had to fight wind and current.
“Shame on you,” she continued, looking away from his intense stare. She took another long pull against the water. “Don’t you know better than to swim alone?”
“I was trying to get stronger,” he said, “so I could climb the lighthouse stairs.”
His words hit with the force of a hurricane, rocking her to the core and sending a chill through her body. What if her truthful but ultimately unkind comment about the lighthouse stairs had led to his death?
What then?
Chapter Seven
He was stupid. Stupid to think he could make himself stronger. Stupid to have come out here in a fit of rage and remorse. Stupid to have pushed the leg farther than it wanted to go. And yes, stupid for swimming so far from shore without anyone there to help him when the crap hit the fan.
Which begged the question: Where the hell had Jessica Blackwood come from? Like an angel of mercy, she’d appeared in his hour of need.
And he’d been so sure that she’d left him forever this morning after he’d let his emotions get away from him.
“Why are you here?” he asked, as the last shred of pain faded away, leaving the offending limb quivering where it trailed in the water.
She didn’t reply. Typical.
“Answer me. Why are you here? Why did you come to my aid, especially since I was such a jerk this morning?”
“You were drowning this afternoon,” she said in an infernally logical tone. She had a way of speaking the truth in a blunt, unemotional way. He found it refreshing…and annoying.
He rolled his head, supported by the flotation device. They were still a ways from shore. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll get there,” she said, swimming with a strong kick.
“I remember the time you saved Randy McGinnis at the yacht club. I was very impressed.”
“What?” She turned toward him, her eyes flashing. Why did he get the feeling he’d just pissed her off?
“I never met anyone who saved a life before,” he continued. “I guess that’s two in your column.”
She didn’t respond, and he settled back and started to help propel them, using his arms.
“Thanks,” she finally muttered.
When they reached shallow water, he rolled off the flotation ring and tested his leg. It was okay. Painful, but what else was new.
“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” he asked again, as she stood up beside him and had the temerity to offer her shoulder up under his left arm. He availed himself of it, conscious of how small she was and yet with a backbone as strong as the cane he’d been so desperately trying to jettison from his life.
“Well,” she said as they walked out of the water, the unrelenting pull of gravity weighing him down. “I came to see if I could keep you as a client…and to tell you never to touch me again.”
He stopped and tried to stand on his own.
“Not now. It’s different now.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It’s just different. I’m not scared of you now.”
That was a slap in the face, wasn’t it? He’d never scared a woman in his life. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t do that again, okay?”
“What? Stupidly swim on my own or—”
“You know.”
“Look, whatever the reason, I’m grateful you came back. You saved my life. Now I owe you an enormous debt,” he said.
“I don’t want you to feel indebted to me.”
Her answer was so irritating. Of course she didn’t want something like that. Who would? He pressed his lips together as they made their way to his towel. He collapsed onto it, grabbing his eye patch and pulling it over his head and into place before meeting her gaze. He was so pathetically vain.
Jessica stood there before him, her T-shirt and khakis dripping onto the sand. She hugged herself and shivered. Her lips were turning blue, and his shame redoubled.