Stormy Vows - Iris Johansen [123]
“Exactly!” Jake said with a trace of his mocking grin. “That's why you're playing victim. It lessens both the motion and the noise factor for me to do all the work.” He looked over his shoulder. “We're almost halfway to the ship. We may make it yet.” Dominic looked down into her strained face, and she was again conscious of the strange ghost of excitement deep in those dark eyes. “Marc will throw us two life preservers when we get within reach of the ship. Grab one, put it on, and hold on for dear life.” He actually laughed at the irony of the unintentional pun. What kind of a man was he that he could laugh at a time like this, she wondered dazedly.
“Marc and some of the men will jerk you out of the water and onto the deck. We're almost two-thirds of the way home,” he commented with another look over his shoulder. “If I tell you to swim for it, I want you to swim like blazes for the ship, but quietly, with a minimum of splashing. Okay?”
“Okay,” she choked out, wondering what difference it would make at that terrifying point how much splashing she made.
But he didn't have to tell her, as it happened. Marc Benjamin's voice came over the water in a clarion call. “He's seen you! God! Hurry, damn it!”
“Go!” Jake ordered curtly, turning her over with lightning swiftness and giving her a mighty starting shove through the water.
Jane's arms moved under the water with a panic-driven urgency that propelled her through the water like a small torpedo. She could dimly hear Jake to the right of her and remembered with relief that he was an even stronger swimmer than she was. He would make the ship in a few more swift strokes.
She lifted her head, and there was the Sea Breeze before her, white and beautiful in the morning sunlight, with Marc Benjamin and several seamen standing tense and still at the rail. A life preserver floated a few feet in front of her, and she slipped it over her head and under her armpits.
“My God, pull her up! He's right behind her!” Benjamin's voice contained a chilling panic, and Jane could feel her breath stop in her lungs. There was a tremendous splashing in back of her. Was he so close, then? she thought. Was she to be ravaged by those razor-sharp teeth when she was within seconds of being rescued?
Then she was jerked out of the water with a mighty heave. She dangled awkwardly for a few seconds and then was pulled the rest of the way up to the deck. Several pairs of eager hands reached out to receive her, and she collapsed on the deck, her breast heaving with exertion and fear. A towel was thrown around her shaking shoulders, and she sat up, looking around quickly for Jake. He wasn't there!
Jane noticed for the first time that the captain and the men were still at the rail, the silence gripping them ominously tense. No, he couldn't still be in the water with that gray horror! Why hadn't they pulled him out? She was on her feet, elbowing her way through the men at the rail. She stared down at the water that had cradled her so lovingly such a short time ago and now seemed to hold all the horrors of hell. There was Jake's crisp black head, but he seemed so terribly far away from the white life-preserver in the water.
“He was right beside me,” she whispered to Benjamin, her hand grabbing his arm in a panicky grip. “My God, what happened? He was right beside me!”
His eyes did not leave the triangular gray fin that seemed to be circling behind Dominic's powerful, still-moving figure. “The shark was headed right for you,” he said tersely. “We would never have gotten you out in time. Jake cut through the water between you to divert him.”
That loud splashing, she thought dazedly, it had been Jake, deliberately baiting the shark away from her.
“He's going to die,” she moaned, as she watched the strong arms cleave through the water with boundless vitality. “He's going to die, and it's all my fault.”
“No, I think he's going to make it.” Benjamin's voice was