Life Is A Beach (Mills & Boon Silhouette): Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling Read Online Free PDF Page A

her.
    She yelled back, “I can swim,” but when the life ring landed beside her, she latched on to it anyway and began kicking in the direction of the dock. By this time, bystanders had gathered. “What happened?” asked the old guy who’d thrown the line.
    “She was riding a bike. Lost control of it,” Slade said, not wanting to get into a conversation with Phifer. At present he was much more interested in Karma, who was now treading water directly below him. “Swim over to the piling, I’ll lean down and give you a hand up.”
    She looked wary. “I can’t do that. I don’t have on anything but my underwear. That’s my sari,” and she pointed at the purple chiffon, which was being borne away by the outgoing tide.
    “What’d she say?” asked Phifer.
    “I believe she said she’s sorry,” Slade told him.
    “I should think she’s sorry,” huffed Phifer. “Riding a bike on the dock.”
    The otheronlookers agreed with him, and one by one they wandered off to their barbecuing or their beer on ice or whatever it was that they’d planned to do. “Me, I’ve got fish to clean,” Phifer said grumpily before slapping off down the dock in his worn old boat shoes.
    No one else came over to see what was going on, which told Slade something about how these Miami Beach people lived. Sure, Miami Beach folks lived a laid-back lifestyle, but in his opinion, they should have more concern for their neighbors. In Okeechobee City, this situation would have drawn a bunch of spectators, all of whom would feel inclined to give advice and, probably, help. But then, Okeechobee City was a small town. Miami Beach was not.
    He turned his attention back to the woman in the water. She was floating amid the flotsam, including but not restricted to a tangle of dirty fishing line, and assorted fish parts. “Um, ma’am?”
    “Yes?”
    “Did you really say that you don’t have on anything but your underwear?” he asked.
    “Do we have to keep talking about it?” she said.
    He was sure that this was a rhetorical question, so he decided to change his tack. “You can’t stay in there forever.”
    “Wait and see,” Karma said, and he thought she looked kind of comical in her determination. The key parts of her anatomy that he could see under the surface of the water looked nicely shaped and tan. Why they were tan, he could only speculate. Maybe she did a lot of topless sunbathing, like some of the models he and his companions of the night before had seen on South Beach yesterday. He tried not to think about Karma with no top on, but the image stuck in his mind.
    As if she could read his thoughts, Karma hugged the life ring to her chest, covering up what was interesting him. “I’ll come out when it gets dark. I’ll slink away into the night. Look, why don’t you forget you ever met me? I’m sure you can find another matchmaker in this town.”
    Slade hadno interest in shambling through the whole dating service sign-up process again. It was embarrassing enough to have to enlist help to find a wife in the first place. Besides, at the moment he was fascinated by Karma O’Connor, though he couldn’t quite figure out why. Mascara was running down her cheeks in rivulets, and she’d lost an earring. But with her hair plastered to her head like that so that he wasn’t distracted by her wealth of curls, he could better assess her beauty. And Karma was beautiful. Her complexion was pink-and-white and flawlessly textured; her nose was aristocratically narrow. She also had very white and very straight teeth. As a connoisseur of horseflesh, he knew you could tell a lot about an animal by its teeth.
    This, however, was a woman. A woman in distress. He said as comfortingly as he could, “Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to get a robe and throw it down to you.”
    Karma opened her mouth, then shut it abruptly just prior to being sloshed by the backwash from the propeller of a passing outboard. Before she took it into her head to object,