Below the Surface Read Free Page A

little mermaid!
    He started to panic, his sweat mingling with the rain, even in the cool rush of wind. After what seemed an eternity, her mouth moved against his. He stopped and looked down into her face, glazed by rain and gulf water. Her thick eyelashes, plastered to her ashen cheeks, flickered. She frowned and moaned.
    â€œHey, mermaid!” he said, feeling like a fool, but he couldn’t remember her last name and wasn’t sure which twin this was. Still, he used the name he knew, one he’d remembered for months now because it had seemed to suit her. It had reminded him of the word brio, for her enthusiasm and verve that time they’d talked and eaten together. He’d felt an instant attraction to her, a surge of desire that he’d tried to control by being overly polite and teasing that day. “Briana?” he said, his voice shaking. “Briana!”
    She slitted her eyes open. “Daria?” she said, and started to cough up water.
    He rolled her over slightly and braced her with one arm around her. One hand held her forehead steady like his mother used to do for him years ago when he threw up. It wasn’t until he saw the burn marks on her limp left wrist, like a big bracelet around her dive watch, that he realized she might have been hit by lightning. He laid her back down on the sand, leaning over her, trying to keep the rain and wind off her with his body.
    â€œWhere’s Daria?” he asked. “What happened?”
    No answer. He gasped when he saw her eyes were dilated, the huge, black pupils eating up the gray-green of the irises, the color of the sea. He had to get her medical help—now. He couldn’t wait for the storm to end. But there was no way to get an EMS vehicle out here, and a medical chopper couldn’t fly in this mess. He could get on his radio and Mayday the coast guard, but it would take them time to get out here and he could have her into Naples by then—if all went well.
    He had to hurry. His mermaid had evidently fainted or gone comatose at his feet.
    He put his hand on her chest to be sure she was still breathing. Yes, shallow but steady. Though he hated to take the chance with the sloop, he had to risk sailing in with her right now. At least in an all-wooden boat—if he could get it off the beach—they might be able to escape the lightning. It would be rough going, but he had to try.
    Praying she had no broken bones or internal injuries, he lifted her into the sloop and gently lashed her down. He stripped off his polo shirt and, though it was soaked, too, laid it over her upper torso. One of his customers had been hit by lightning on a golf course, and his doctor had told him that fast medical help had saved him from severe complications. He could not bear it if this beautiful, bold woman were permanently hurt. That old adage about being responsible for someone if you saved their life hit him hard, but he hadn’t saved her yet.
    Straining every muscle in his body to get some lift for Streamin’, Cole tried to time pushing the sloop off the sand with the roll of the surf, but the power of the waves and wind beat it back. Waves could easily swamp or capsize a boat leaving a beach. His fourteen-foot sloop, which he knew more intimately than he knew any woman right now, fought him hard.
    But he saw the wind had clocked around to the north. He could use the power of the sails to propel the sloop off the beach. In a hand-over-hand effort, he pulled the main halyard until the sail had reached the top of the mast. Then with a grunting, grinding heave, Cole pushed the bow of the boat off the beach toward the pounding surf. As the little sloop swung her bow through the wind, the sails filled, and she moved into deeper water. He pulled himself into the cockpit and grabbed the tiller in one hand while securing the mainsheet with the other. As he lowered the centerboard, the sloop began to feel her sea legs. She quickly picked up