Page 118 of Finding Lexie
Thankful that she’d hit his legs and not his back, Kenna used her arms to bring herself back up to the surface before reaching for the drowning man.
But when her head broke the surface of the water, she found herself staring right into the confused and concerned eyes of the man she’d jumped in to save. He was very much neither dead nor drowning, and instead was looking at her as if she had a few screws loose.
He wore a black face mask, and she could now see the snorkel attached. As she treaded water and stared at him in shock, he pushed the mask onto the top of his head.
“Are you all right? Did you fall in?” he asked.
To complete her embarrassment, five more heads popped up in the water around them. Each had on the same black mask, but were also wearing scuba tanks on their backs.
“Oh shit,” she said, knowing her cheeks were probably bright red. She had no idea why this group of men were scuba diving where they were, but she’d obviously screwed up. Bad.
“Ma’am?” the man she’d jumped on top of asked again.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Um… I just…” Kenna looked around, trying to find the fastest way to climb up the rocks surrounding the lagoon so she could go home and die of mortification.
The man gripped her arm and easily held her above water. She was a good swimmer, but his grip definitely made it easier to float.
“What happened?” one of the other men asked.
“She fall in?”
“She hurt?”
“I’m trying to find out, if you’d shut up and give me a second,” the man holding her said.
Kenna couldn’t help but grin slightly.
“Right, so…you fell in?” the man asked once more.
Staring into his dark eyes, Kenna was embarrassed all over again. “Not exactly. See, I was running up there,” she said, indicating the path next to the lagoon. “Minding my own business, and I saw you. You were face down. Floating.”
The man’s lips twitched, and Kenna spoke faster, just wanting this over with. “I thought you were drowning, okay?”
“So you jumped in to save me?”
“Yeah,” Kenna said sheepishly. “But you obviously aren’t drowning, and I’m an idiot. So I’ll just be going now.” She looked over at the rocks meaningfully.
“We’re SEALs,” one of the other men said, obviously trying hard not to burst out laughing.
Aaaaand…Now her humiliation was complete.
“Didn’t you see the scuba flag?” her not-drowning victim asked.
Turning her head, Kenna saw the red and white flag bobbing in the water nearby.
“Obviously not,” she said with a shrug. “I just thought you were drowning and acted.”
“Well, I appreciate it. I’m in charge of safety for our training today, so my job is to hang out up here while my team does their thing under the water. Which is why it probably looked like I was a dead body. Anyway, I’m Marshall.”
“Kenna,” she said, feeling as if she were in the twilight zone. Treading water in the ocean and meeting a hot guy, a Navy freaking SEAL at that, wasn’t what she thought she’d be doing today.
“Be back, guys,” he told his friends.
“Don’t mind us, Aleck,” one of them said.
“Yeah, training can wait,” another added.
“Pretty girls come before scuba any day,” a third called out.
