Sunset Tryst (13 page)

Evan tugged on a pair of heavy-duty work gloves before
gripping the railing yet again. “She’s a ten-footer, minimum. Tiger, I think.”

Garrett continued to battle the drag on the line. “I knew
sharks were strong, but holy hell…”

The shark changed course again with a flip of her powerful
tail, soaking all three of them and the deck of the boat in a single massive
splash. Still Garrett didn’t let up. Five minutes quickly became ten, then
barreled into twenty, but he never once eased up.

Riley was damn near beside herself. “Enough. Cut the line.
Let her go. Something!”

“No, don’t!” Garrett shouted. “I…” He cranked on the reel.
“Got…” He heaved on the rod. “This.”

Lord have mercy, no he didn’t.

When he went to crank the reel again, it wouldn’t budge.
Somehow, quicker than she could steal a breath, it had completely locked up.
Garrett threw a look at Evan. Panic riddled his eyes. He tried the reel again.

Nothing.

Oh hell. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.

Evan lunged toward Garrett. “The drag system—”

The rest of his sentence was bitten off. It was as if the
shark knew exactly what was happening up on the boat deck and she wasn’t beyond
taking advantage of the situation. This was her chance.

She was so out of here.

Only problem was, Garrett was still attached to the rod
harness. Riley screamed. Evan lurched. But none of that did any good.

Garrett flew over the railing and out into the black water
right along with the shark.

“
No
!”

Riley’s scream burned her throat as Garrett disappeared into
the water. She lunged, stretching over the side, reaching out to him—for his
leg, his foot, for, God, any part of him—but he was already gone.

The air in her lungs seized. Evan swore as he quickly
surveyed the water. “She took him down. Goddamn it.” Then he jumped in after
Garrett.

What. The. Fuck.

Her mind completely blanked—except for one desperate chant
she couldn’t put a halt to even if she’d tried.

Find him. He’s gone. Find him. He left me. Oh God please,
please find him.

She searched the horizon, hoping someone might be near,
someone who could help them. Someone who saw what happened. But there was
nothing out there. No boats. No lights. No sounds other than screams inside her
head. She was utterly alone, in the middle of nowhere.

Fear like she’d never felt before clutched at her heart,
sending terrified shock waves throughout the rest her body. She couldn’t
breathe. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t do anything but grip the railing in
her wet, slippery hands and…

Something crashed against the hull directly beneath her.
Then she saw them. Heaven above, she saw them. Her men. Garrett shot out of the
water, gasping for air. He grappled for the railing. Riley latched onto his arm
and pulled. Evan swam underneath him, pushing up.

That was when she saw the swirl of red in water. Blood. One
of them had been… Oh God. Bitten? Cut? Either way, blood in the water when
sharks were around was bad. Horrifically bad.

“Hurry,” she shouted.

Garrett pulled himself higher, growling through gritted
teeth as he lifted himself using only his upper body strength. He swung his leg
up and over the railing, tumbling over the top to collapse flat on his back
onto the deck. Evan followed, grasping where Garrett had on the chrome bar. But
his hands slipped.

Riley’s gut twisted.

A shadow passed underneath him. The shark. She was here. The
tables had been turned. She’d gotten a taste of one of them and wanted more.
Evan had run out of time.

“
Jesus
.” He scrambled for the railing again. His grip
was sure this time, his strength incredible as he heaved himself upward. But he
wasn’t fast enough.

Another scream tore from Riley’s throat when the shark broke
through the surface as Evan came fully out of the water. All razor teeth and
voracious hunger wrapped up in a slick, gray body, the beast jumped for him,
catching the meaty part of his ankle on one of her snarled, spiky teeth.

Evan jerked his leg, snagging the side of his foot and
ripping the flesh on top of it in a straight line from his ankle bone down to
his little toe on her serrated tooth. Riley grabbed for him, and Garrett was
somehow there too. They managed to hoist him up and over. They got him back in
the boat.

They saved him.

All three of them crumpled into a heap on the deck. They
panted recklessly, each breathy wheeze raging in and out of their lungs. Evan
groaned, then hissed. He tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Riley was sprawled on
top of him. And all she could think about while she lifted her chest off him to
see for herself that he was all right, was how much she wanted to kiss the hell
out of him—and then beat him to a bloody pulp.

But before she could do any of that, they had to get the
bleeding stopped. She scooted back along his legs, yelling at Garrett. “Get the
first-aid kit. Hurry.”

Evan gnashed his teeth together as Garrett scrambled on the
wet and slippery boat deck. He disappeared inside the cabin for a moment, then
popped back out holding a small white-and-blue box. He hit the switch for the
lights as he raced back to her.

With how badly Evan was injured, this tiny kit wasn’t going
to cut it.

“He needs stitches. And a lot of them.” That was putting it
mildly. “Is there gauze in there? An Ace bandage? Pressure. We need to put
pressure on this.”

Garrett ripped through packages and handed her several 4X4
white squares. She stacked them together, laid them evenly over the gouge in
Evan’s foot and then pressed—hard. He growled, but Riley didn’t let up. “Sorry,
sorry, sorry.”

Lord, she’d do just about anything right now for an endless
supply of gauze, a syringe full of Lidocaine and a simple suture kit. Oh, and
an ER department within spitting range would be crazy convenient too.

Garrett knelt next to her, unwinding the Ace bandage.
“Here,” he said. “Lift up.”

When he started to wrap Evan’s foot, she clutched his wrist.
“Are you okay? Hurt? Did she get you, too?”

He swiped at the drips of water running into his eyes from
his hair. “No, no. I’m okay. I’m all right.”

“There was blood. In the water. I saw it. Before the shark
surfaced, I saw it in the water.”

He looked down at his own body, yanking the hem of his swim
trunks higher up his thighs. “It wasn’t mine—”

“There,” Evan bit out.

Oh hell. Yes it was Garrett’s blood.

Evan hitched his chin toward Garrett’s leg. “Behind your
knee.”

He craned his neck for a better look. “Whoa. Okay… It’s not
bad. It’s just a surface cut. I didn’t even feel it.”

Not wholly atypical. The adrenaline pumping through his body
was doing a hell of a job at masking any sort of pain he might otherwise feel.
When his nerves started evening out, though, that’s when he’d feel every bit of
that superficial cut. The thing was going to hurt like a bitch—later.

“The bleeding is slowing down,” he said. “Don’t worry about
me.”

She wanted to throttle him for saying that, but instead, she
ripped the Ace wrap out of his hands. “He needs a hospital, Garrett. You do
too. You need to get us out of here. Now.”

He didn’t so much as hesitate. He jumped up, untied the rope
on the chum bag and chucked it into the water, then cranked in the other reel
and threw it and its still-attached big-ass-tuna bait onto the deck. Lunging
toward the helm, he flipped the toggle to raise the anchor and fired up the
GPS. Within minutes, he had them turned around and was hurtling them back
toward shore.

“How bad is it?” Evan groaned.

She secured the bandage tightly around his foot and went
back to pressing on the wound as best she could while Garrett seemingly slammed
the boat into every single wave in their path. Each crash jarred her teeth, her
bones, her entire body, but she didn’t ease up. She still wanted to punch
Evan’s lights out, but couldn’t, so she let the distraught tone of her voice do
the smacking for her. “It’s bad. You were bit. By a
shark
.”

Despite the rush of the cool night air, her face heated. The
electrifying flash spinning around inside her was rapidly being edged out by a
shit-ton of anger. The words
I told you so
dangled on the tip of her
tongue, but she forced herself to bite them back. Letting them out wouldn’t do
a damn bit of good anyway.

The gauze didn’t last more than thirty seconds before blood
started seeping through. The wrap went from a light flesh-tone to sticky and
deep-red right before her eyes. “You’re bleeding through. Damn it.”

“Hold on.” Evan grimaced and stretched out flat on his back,
reaching beyond his head for the under-seat compartment closest to him. He
yanked it open, stretched a little more and came back with handful of
towels—ones she suspected were clean and white at one point. They certainly
weren’t now.

“Nope.” The physician’s assistant and germ-a-phobe inside
her shuddered. “No way. Those are—”

“Right now, they’re all we’ve got,” he answered evenly.

Rivulets of salty water trickled off his arm as he held the
dirty cloths out to her. The line between his eyes ran deep as he drew his
brows together tightly. He worked his jaw and she knew, without a doubt, that
his
adrenaline wasn’t making even the slightest dent in his pain. It had to be
off-the-charts horrendous.

She also knew he was right.

When she shifted slightly to grab the towels, he hissed
through clenched teeth. She dropped the rags onto the deck and picked through
them one-handed, looking for the cleanest ones she could find. She pulled out
three that would have to do and placed the first one on top of the Ace bandage
before reapplying pressure to the wound.

“
Fuck
,” Evan ground out.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she chanted once again, pressing a
little harder. No matter how much pain he was in, she couldn’t let up. He’d
lose too much blood if she did.

The horrific flash in his eyes told her he knew the score. He
drew his lips between his teeth and shook his head. “No, don’t be. Just do it.”

Oh, she would. She wouldn’t think of letting him go.

At the helm, she heard Garrett shouting their coordinates
into the VHF marine radio.
Yes
, thankyouthankyouthankyou, he was
notifying the Coast Guard of the shark attack and where in the
godforsaken-middle-of-nowhere they were. But
Sunset Tryst
could haul ass
way faster than a CG ship could, so chances of the sailors actually finding
them out here in the dark before they reached the harbor? Pretty fricking slim.
At the very least, the CG could radio ahead and have an ambulance waiting,
ready to roll. Still, it was going to be an hour—or more—before they got that
far.

She didn’t know if they had that much time. Evan’s skin took
on a ghostly hue, his breathing sped up and damn it, he was starting to
tremble. Shock. Ah God, he was going into shock.

There was nothing within her reach, not one thing she could
use to cover him to keep the shakes at bay. The fact he was drenched, combined
with the wind whipping around them from
Sunset Tryst
running
balls-to-the-wall, only added to his uncontrollable shivers.

“Are they coming?” she asked.

Garrett shook his head and yelled back to her. “No, I told
them to meet us at the harbor. I’m not stopping for anything or anyone. Not
even the Coast Guard.”

Good, yes. They’d be waiting. Someone would be waiting for
them.

Evan groaned as more shivers racked his body.

“Whoa, hold on. No, no! Stay with me,” she ordered as he
closed his eyes. When he snapped them back open, the pain in his baby blues
rocked her to the core.

“I’m here. I’m good.”

Like hell he was. But he was tough, she’d give him that.
They rode that way for long moments, each holding the other in their terrified
stare, like if they didn’t, if they dared to look somewhere else, one of them
would end up slipping away.

“Halfway there,” Garrett shouted over his shoulder.

She didn’t say anything to that. She simply changed the
first now-blood-soaked towel out for the second dingy-yet-dry one. Pressing
down again, she looked up to grab onto his stare, only to find his head lolled
to the side and his eyes closed tight.

“Oh no. No, no, no. Evan! Wake up!” She shifted her grip on
his foot and slid up beside his body on her knees. Pressing two fingers against
his neck, she ignored the panic spearing her stomach as her breath froze in her
lungs.

Yes!
She got a pulse, a strong one. But he was out
like a light. “He passed out,” she said when Garrett looked back at her.

“Damn it. Hold on.” He fisted the throttle control in his
right hand, but he’d already maxed it out. They were flying through the water
as fast as they could.

Not long after, the shore came into view. Sweet, sweet
mercy. Her knuckles, wrists and elbows ached from keeping up the pressure, but
she didn’t care about any of that. She’d keep this up forever if she had to.
But as the twinkling lights of the hotels and resorts burned bigger and
brighter the closer they got, she knew she wouldn’t have to.

Finally they passed through the rock wall entrance that led
into the lagoon and there, at the mouth of the harbor, sat a Coast Guard ship.
But Garrett didn’t stop. He shot past them, paying zero attention to the posted
No Wake Zone
signs. He only slowed once they closed in on the docks. At
the end of the nearest one, haloed by the wash of the yellow outdoor dock
lights, stood a couple police officers and two EMT crews with their gear and
stretchers waiting for them.

Tears blurred her vision as a jumble of relief and anger and
fear ripped through her insides at the wonderful sight. The howl of the wind in
her ears was replaced by the baritone shouts of the rescue team. Two big and
burly EMTs hopped on board even before Garrett could throttle all the way back
and bring the boat to a complete stop.

One knelt alongside her and took over at Evan’s foot. The
two officers rushed in to tether the boat to the dock while an EMT helped her
to stand, moving her away from Evan. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

Her? No, why would he think…

Then she looked at her hands. Blood. Blood was everywhere.
Caked on her fingers, streaked up her arms. Coating the fronts of her thighs,
wet and sticky on her knees.

Oh
God
…

“No, I’m okay. It’s not… It’s not mine.”

No, it was Evan’s. And probably Garrett’s too. Holy hell,
there was so much. It was all over the deck. All over her. All over her men.
She moved to go back to Evan. She had to. She had to make sure…

The EMT gripped her elbow more firmly. “Come over here with
me. Let them work on him. We’ve got him now.”

Garrett blew past one of the cops and came up beside her
then. He took her face in his palms, kissed her once. Twice. Then again. “Rie.
Baby.”

Before she could think, she lunged into his arms, then just
as quickly, she pushed away. She shoved at his chest, wanting to knock him off
balance—wanting to knock him on his
ass
—but she barely budged him.

“Whoa, whoa! Hold up, what…”

“No! No holding up! I am
so
mad at you. At the
both
of you!” Her tears started in earnest then. She didn’t even try to stop them.
“I thought you were dead. That you both were
dead
. You left me. Evan
left me. I was all alone up here. I didn’t know…”