Coast Guard Sweetheart

by Lisa Carter

  The wind whipped the hood off Sawyer’s head. Lines of strain bracketed his mouth. He’d been on call since yesterday. Clamming in the tranquil waters of the inlet seemed ages ago. He had to be exhausted.

  “I’ll find them, Max.” Sawyer unclamped Max’s arms and legs from his torso. “I promised you. And I keep my promises.”

  His gaze shot to hers as if he expected her to argue. “Only way I could get Max to leave the cabin. The dogs are stuck underneath the lattice under the cabin porch.”

  She pulled at her nephew. “Let him go, Max. You’re wasting time Blackie and Ajax may need.”

  Max reattached his stranglehold to her. She reeled. Sawyer’s arms went around her and steadied her from toppling off the porch.

  Caught between them, Max’s body quivered with cold. She found herself inches from Sawyer’s face. The closest in three years to the man who’d never stopped haunting her dreams.

  And when he looked at her that way... Her mouth went dry. As if he still...

  “I—I wish you wouldn’t go back out there. I don’t want anything to happen to the dogs. But...” Her heart pounded with fear. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, either.”

  His arms tightened around her and Max. Something raw, something stark, eased in his expression. His lips brushed across her forehead.

  She drew a quick indrawn breath.

  “I’m tougher than I look.” He smiled at his deliberate mimicry of her earlier words. “Take care of Max. Okay?”

  Mute, she watched him trudge down what used to be the steps and through the water toward the woods. Her heart torn in two, she forced herself to retreat inside the house. She carried Max upstairs and busied herself by getting him out of his wet clothes and into dry ones. Max insisted on getting into Mimi’s bed where he snuggled his cheek against Amelia’s pillowcase.

  She rummaged through the cardboard box of kitchen supplies she’d carried upstairs before Sawyer arrived. From the thermos of hot water, she fixed a cup of hot chocolate for Max. He practically inhaled the stale Long John donuts left over from breakfast yesterday when the lodge’s last guests departed.

  Every few moments, however, she rushed to the window, scanning the darkening landscape for signs of Sawyer. He should have returned by now. What was taking so long?

  Nightmare scenarios erupted in her mind. Sawyer trapped under the wooden planks of the porch with the dogs. The water rising. The pocket of air diminishing. Sawyer gasping for breath. Going under. Not coming up—

  Something yellow bobbed in the fading light. Sawyer... Floundering. His strength giving out. It was a long way to swim. A river of oceanic tide separated him from the house. Two small canine heads dog-paddled beside him.

  Honey sucked in a breath and bounded down the stairs. Sloshing through the knee-deep water, she wrenched open the door. “God, please, help him!” The wind snatched her words away.

  She edged as far as she dared on the porch. Two lines tethered the dogs to Sawyer’s chest. If one of the dogs were to get snagged on the swirling mass of debris floating past the house, they’d go under and drag Sawyer with them.

  “You crazy, stupid man. Let go of them,” she hollered into the wind, knowing he couldn’t hear.

  What was he trying to prove? Risking his life for Max’s dogs. Her fear and anger rose. If he didn’t drown, she was going to kill Sawyer for scaring her like this.

  She clenched her fists. Her head throbbed. His long strokes faltered. Two strokes forward, the wall of water pushed him back three. He was losing ground. He’d never make it.

  A shutter tore free from the corner of the porch and flew across the expanse. It smacked Sawyer broadside before careening into the wind. He went under.

  Without stopping to think, she dove into the water. She cupped her palms, forcing her body through the churning water. She dodged a lawn chair. She narrowly avoided smashing her head against the battering ram of a downed tree.

  She reached Sawyer as a wave broke over his head and dragged him downward. In the semidarkness, she groped for something of him to grab on to. Scissoring her body, she took a deep breath and plunged beneath the water, her arms outstretched searching, seeking—

  Encountering something solid, she tugged upward. With a forward thrust, she surged above the surface of the water. She screamed and choked on a mouthful of water as Blackie’s coarse wet tongue licked her face.

  Not Sawyer. But if Blackie were close, Sawyer had to be nearby. Somewhere. She splashed the water around Blackie’s body. Another whine on her right. Ajax.

  Sawyer should be somewhere between them. The line. Treading water to stay afloat, her fist closed around the cord strung between the dogs. Hand over hand, her fingers traced the length of the rope. And was rewarded with the soft, feathery feel of Sawyer’s short-cropped hair.

  Inserting her arms underneath his shoulders, she rotated him onto his back and rested his head against her shoulder. With Sawyer unconscious, she had to keep his face out of the water. And somehow get them to the shelter of the house.

  But her legs were giving out. She wasn’t athletic like Amelia. She wasn’t going to make it. The distance between the raging ocean bent on reclaiming the Shore as its own and engulfing her home had increased, not lessened.

  It was too far. Sawyer was too hurt. They were both going to die. If he wasn’t already— Please, God... No.

  Sawyer groaned. Crying in relief, she brushed her hand over his face and felt his breath pass over her palm.

  “I’m too heavy for you.” His voice was weak. “You can make it if you let go of me.”

  She secured her hold. She wasn’t ready to let go of him. Not three years ago, nor since.

  “No,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “I’m not letting you go.”

  The line tied around Sawyer went taut. She barely managed to hold on to him. Their bodies sloughed through the water as if on skis propelled by a motorboat.

  Not a boat. The dogs. She raised her head toward where a light shone. And glimpsed the silhouette of a child.

  Framed in the light streaming from inside the house, Max summoned the black Labs forward. “Come on, Blackie,” he urged above the wind and rain. “You can do it. You can make it. Come on. Keep swimming. Come to Max.”

  Yard by yard, foot by foot, the dogs strained, weighted by their humans. But they were relentless. Persevering. Never stopping. Never giving up.

  Her knees scraped against something hard and unyielding. The steps. She struggled to find her footing. A tidal surge sent them the rest of the way. And she found herself cast like driftwood hurtling across the remaining distance toward the doorway.

  She yanked Sawyer through the doorframe. Max worked frantically at untying the rope before a receding wave could drag the dogs and Sawyer out toward the depths again. Flotsam streamed past what had once been the living room. And the water continued to rise.

  With Blackie and Ajax free, Max helped her lug Sawyer toward the safety of the stairs. “Upstairs,” Honey shouted. “I’ve got him.” Paws scrabbling, the dogs raced toward the landing. Max scrambled after them.

  Sawyer’s arm slung around her shoulders, she pushed through the waist-high water. His feet dragging, Sawyer stumbled and fell against the newel post.

  He righted himself and rung by rung pulled himself up the staircase. “I’m okay. Go to Max. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “No.” She glared at him. “I’m not leaving you. You go first.”

  “Of all the hardheaded, stubborn...” He gritted his teeth and muttered a few other phrases too low for her ears to catch.

  Something oily and coiled slithered past her leg. Her eyes widened. She screamed.

  Grabbing a floating umbrella from the overturned coat tree, Sawyer pinned the copperhead to the wall and smashed his head. She fought the bile rising
in her throat.

  Another triangular head broke the surface of the water lapping against the stairs. Two more followed. The hurricane had shifted loose a nest of vipers. She screamed again.

  “Get upstairs,” he yelled. “I’ve got this.”

  And this time, she didn’t argue. She darted up the remaining stairs to the sounds of Sawyer beating back the sea-loosed serpents.

  She charged onto the second floor to find Max leaning over the railing, cheering Sawyer on. “Smack ’em. Whack ’em.”

  “Max, get away from there.” She prodded him once again toward Amelia and Braeden’s room. Where she found the dogs curled under the bed.

  “You’re wet again,” she clucked. “But you were so smart and brave.” Peeling off Max’s shirt, she toweled his carroty locks dry.

  “So were you.”

  Honey glanced up to find Sawyer, breathing hard, leaning against the doorway. Blood trickled down the side of his head. His face pale, he swayed and caught hold of the doorframe.

  “I don’t like the look of that cut. You took quite a blow.” She grasped his arm. “You could have a concussion.”

  “Hard head. You should know.” He gave her a semblance of the former cocksure King of the Rodeo smile. “I’ll be fine.”

  She tugged him toward her father’s room. “You need to get out of those wet clothes. We need to get you warm before you go into shock.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin, curling her toes. “That sounds like the most promising thing I’ve heard in ages.”

  She propped him against the bureau. “You must be okay, cowboy, if you’re able to flirt. Though I suspect it’s so second nature, you’ll be flirting from your deathbed, too.”

  “Only if you’re standing bedside at the time.” A small smile quirked one corner of his mouth. “What can I say? You inspire me.”

  She ignored him and pulled one of her father’s shirts and a pair of jeans out of a drawer. “Here.”

  He shied away. “That belongs to your dad.”

  She arched a brow. “You will wear these or catch your death of pneumonia. Don’t make me go all Amelia on you, Sawyer. You wouldn’t like it.”

  He snagged the clothing from her arms. “You’re right. I wouldn’t. ’Cause I like you the way you are, Beatrice.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Now I know you’re feeling better.”

  He shuffled his feet. “You saved my life out there.”

  “Just doing what anyone would’ve done. God and those dogs saved us both.”

  “But you saved me first. Long time ago, too.” His eyes bored into hers. “In more ways than one.”

  She put a hand to her throat.

  “And you know what they say when someone saves your life where I come from, Beatrice?”

  “No. What do they say, Sawyer?” she whispered.

  He gave her the old smile that used to send her knees a-knocking. Still did, apparently. She caught hold of the edge of the bureau.

  “They say when a person saves your life, you belong to that person forever.”

  Forever? She swallowed. That’s how long she suspected she’d be in love with this brash guardsman.

  Sawyer leaned forward. She held her breath.

  And the lights went out, plunging them into the darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  “Drink this. The coffee’s hot.”

  Sawyer took the mug from Honey. His hand momentarily covered hers before she scooted away. Clad in Seth’s red-checked flannel shirt and jeans, Sawyer’s teeth chattered as he huddled around the kerosene lantern on the floor of the second-story common area at the top of the stairs.

  Dry and his belly full of stale Long Johns, Max had recovered his energy. Baseball bat in hand, he and the dogs hunched over the top step, waiting for the next sea creature to invade their domain.

  Sawyer flicked a glance at Honey. She’d not said much since the lights went out an hour ago. His heart lurched. Thrilled beyond measure to be this close to the woman he’d never stopped loving, yet he worried as the water crept up the stairs. The wind velocity had increased to an ear-shattering wail.

  The nineteenth-century house, built to last against nature’s fury, groaned. The walls and eaves vibrated. Any minute the house and its timbers could be torn apart, hurling them into the deep. Or as the flooding increased, they could climb higher to her third-story bedroom. But they could become trapped by the attic ceiling and drown.

  “I wish I had an axe.”

  Her eyes darted to his.

  “So, if worse comes to worst, I can chop a way onto the roof.” Where perhaps they could hold on long enough for the storm to subside and rescue to come. Better to leave that part unvoiced.

  But he didn’t fool her. She’d always been able to see right into his head. And into his heart.

  Those big, sunflower-brown eyes of hers widened. “The roof?” She glanced toward the ceiling and shuddered at the howling cacophony swirling outside the walls.

  He frowned. Last thing he wanted was to scare her. He’d give his life if it meant protecting her from harm.

  Rising, she disappeared into the flickering shadows cast by the lantern toward another bedroom. She returned clutching a quilt to her chest. Advancing, she draped the quilt around Sawyer. His breath caught.

  The alluring essence of Honey Duer filled his senses. Her signature flowery fragrance clung to the quilt she tucked around his body.

  Sawyer buried his nostrils into its folds and inhaled. Talk about crazy. He’d awoken one night from a dead sleep in his apartment in San Diego to this never-forgotten perfume. Convinced for a millisecond before reality returned, they’d found each other again. But just a dream. A hopeless dream.

  Honey put a hand to the bandage she’d rigged over his temple. Her fingers drifted. For a second, her warm palm cupped his high cheekbones. He closed his eyes. If this was a dream, then he never wanted to awaken.

  Sawyer’s heart sank. He’d never stopped loving her. But he’d never be good enough for her, either. There would—could—never be a chance of a future with her.

  His face chilled as she removed her hand. He opened his eyes to find her beside him, her back pressed against the interior wall. The safest place—if such a place existed for them—in the midst of the raging tumult of the storm.

  Max tired of his vigil. He inched over to the pallet next to the lantern. Bracketed by his faithful canine companions, he closed his eyes and slept.

  As suddenly as if switching off a faucet, the deafening banshee stopped. Sawyer’s ears continued to ring for a moment. And it took him another second to recognize they’d entered at long last the eye of the storm. Total peace. Total calm.

  Until the western wall of the hurricane swept over their oasis once more. Thirty minutes? He had at most that much time to assess their situation and maximize their chances of survival before the wind returned with a vengeance. He stirred.

  She snared his shirtsleeve. “Where are you going?”

  Though as tall as the older man, the jeans were snug on his frame. The shirt hung loose and untucked over a tan Henley, which also belonged to her father.

  Sawyer inched up the wall. He shrugged out of the quilt. Grabbing the lantern, he gripped the cold glass doorknob of a guest room and pushed open the door.

  Bunching the quilt in her arms, Honey stepped inside the room after him. “You’re still shivering. Keep this around your body.”

  He strode to the window. “Stop fussing. I’m okay.”

  At the sight that met his eyes, he considered retracting that statement. In the dim light, nothing but water stretched as far as the eye could see. The dock had disappeared. The water lapped halfway up the pine trees dividing the main house from the cabin.

  She quivered. “Oh, Sawyer. If it continues to
rise, what will we do?”

  Honey, born and bred on the storm-prone Shore, probably knew more than he about the dangers. “My granddad was a boy during the big one, Hazel, in ’33. A wall of water overran their barrier island home.”

  She sighed. “The Duers and everyone else, including the life-saving station that predated Station Kiptohanock, abandoned the island for good. But no one alive at the time—” she gulped “—or at least those who lived to tell about it, ever forgot. Even here on the mainland, people were found clinging to life in the uppermost branches of trees. Babies ripped from their mother’s arms, their little bodies never found. Boats shoved five miles ashore. Homes demolished and washed out to sea.”

  Honey trembled. “I’ve read about what happened to the island of Galveston, too, and those people trapped by the floodwaters in their homes at the turn of the twentieth century. We’re going to die, aren’t we?”

  Before he remembered how much she hated him, he put his arms around her. And she didn’t pull away. Instead, she leaned into him and rested her forehead against the hollow of his shoulder.

  “This isn’t Galveston. We’re not going to die. I won’t let anything happen to you and Max, I promise.” He ground his teeth. “I know you don’t believe in my promises. Rightly so. But no matter what I have to do, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  She nestled closer. “You have to be safe, too.”

  His safety didn’t matter. He’d barely gotten off Shore three years ago before he realized that in saving Honey’s future, he’d lost his own. For the first time since Braeden negotiated his reassignment to Kiptohanock, he breathed a prayer of gratitude. Perhaps God had brought him back for this—to save Honey’s life.

  Whatever God’s purpose, he allowed himself to relish the feel of Honey in his arms. Something he’d never dared imagine would be his privilege ever again. Not after he’d cut her loose without an explanation for her own good. Saving her for Charlie Pruitt.

  His heart knotted. In the end, saving her was the only thing that mattered. Then and now. He let go of her and stepped away.