by Robin Wells
“The baby!” She jumped up from the blanket and headed to the pond, but Austin was ahead of her, kicking off his shoes and diving in. Frannie looked for the child’s mother. She saw the blond woman standing by a baby carriage several feet away from the pond, her face a mask of terror.
“Emily!” the woman called. She placed the infant in the stroller and raced toward the pond, her expression panicked, her blond hair flying behind her. “Emily!”
The mother jumped into the water and disappeared beneath the surface just as Austin reached the drowning child. Frannie’s heart pounded hard as she watched him turn the toddler onto her back, put his arm around her and swim for shore. Just then, Frannie saw the mother bob to the surface in the same spot she’d disappeared, only to sink once more back under the water. Oh, dear heavens, now the mother was in trouble, too!
Without stopping to think, Frannie plunged into the cold water. It felt like ice, and it tasted like algae. Frannie kicked off her shoes and plowed through it, reaching the flailing woman just as Austin reached the shore with the toddler.
The woman was gasping and sputtering, her eyes wide with terror. “My baby!” The woman went under again, then resurfaced. “Help my baby!”
Frannie gulped a breath as she treaded water. “She’s being helped. Let me help you.”
The woman sank again. Frannie dove down to the spot she’d last seen the woman and brought her to the surface. The woman’s arms whirled like a windmill. Her sneakered feet kicked Frannie in the stomach. “Can’t swim,” she spluttered.
Frannie spat out a mouthful of water, trying to remember the lifesaving training she’d taken as a teenager. “Put your arms around my neck. I’ll take you to shore.”
The woman frantically grabbed at Frannie’s head, nearly drowning them both.
“Stop trying to swim,” Frannie ordered. “Put your arms around my neck and just hang on.”
The woman grabbed at her again. Frannie struggled to keep her head above water. “I can’t help you if you’re fighting me. Let me get you to your children.”
The mention of her children seemed to calm the woman, and Frannie managed to haul her the few yards to shore. Austin reached them just as Frannie’s feet touched bottom. Holding the toddler in one arm, he extended his other hand to pull Frannie and the woman ashore.
Gasping, Frannie helped the woman to her feet. The woman staggered forward, then reached for her bawling daughter, who was sobbing into Austin’s neck.
The child grabbed her mother, and the woman clutched her as if she’d never let her go. “Emily,” she murmured over and over. “Oh, Emily.”
Austin hauled Frannie against his chest, his arms tight around her. “Are you okay?” he murmured.
“Yes. Is the child?”
“She’s fine.”
The mother looked up, her eyes filled with tears, her voice thick with emotion. “Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you. Both of you.”
“We’re glad you’re okay.” Austin ran a hand down his face, rubbing the water from his eyes. “Your girl didn’t lose consciousness, but she swallowed a lot of water. It would probably be a good idea to get her checked out by a doctor.”
The woman nodded. Her face was streaming with tears and pond water, and her eyes were full of gratitude. “I don’t know how to thank you. I looked away for a moment while I changed the baby’s diaper, and the next thing I knew, Emily was in the water.”
“I’m glad we were here to help.”
“How can I ever thank you?”
“You just did. Do you need a ride home?”
“Oh, thank you, but no. We live just a block away.” After more effusive thanks, the woman and her dripping daughter traipsed toward home, pushing the baby carriage.
Austin looked down at Frannie. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Frannie nodded.
Austin’s gaze latched on to hers. His eyes held a warm light that made it hard for Frannie to breathe. “You’re really something, Frannie. A real-life hero.”
“I was about to say the same about you. You saved that baby’s life. You got to her in nothing flat.”
“I didn’t even see the mother, I was so focussed on getting to the child.” His teeth gleamed as he smiled. “You handled that like a pro. Did you used to be a lifeguard or something?”
Frannie shyly grinned and nodded. “Or some thing. My dad made my brother and me take lifesaving training. He said that if we were going to live near a lake, we needed to know what to do in an emergency.”
“Your dad sounds like a smart guy.”
Frannie ruefully looked down at her sopping clothes. “I wonder what he’d say I should do about this.”
“If he’s as smart as I think he is, he’d probably say you should go home and change clothes.” Austin tightened his hand around her arm. “Come on, let’s go gather up our stuff.”
They trudged around the grassy bank of the pond, back toward the heavy foliage that hid their picnic blanket.
“How am I going to explain showing up at the bank dressed in different clothes, after an extended business lunch with you?”
“Hmm. Guess I’ve put you in a compromising position, haven’t I?” Austin rubbed his chin. “Well, maybe you should just take the rest of the day off.”
Frannie lifted her eyebrows. “I go off to lunch with you, then call to say I’m not coming back?”
“I see what you mean.” He suddenly snapped his fingers. “You could say you caught a sudden cold.” He pulled her close to his side and ran his hand up and down her arm, causing Frannie to shiver. “You are cold, aren’t you?”
She was actually growing quite warm, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
“On the other hand, honesty is usually the best policy,” he continued. “Why don’t you just tell them the truth?”
“That our business lunch was a picnic in the park? It doesn’t sound very businesslike.”
“Nonsense. We can discuss business here just as well as we could in a restaurant. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’m perfectly willing to sit down and discuss investments now.”
“That still won’t explain why I changed clothes. And an explanation about getting wet during a lifesaving maneuver is going to sound pretty fishy.”
“Not as fishy as we smell.”
Frannie gave him a playful push. “Thanks a bunch, Austin. You’re really helping a lot here.”
“I pride myself on being helpful.”
Frannie couldn’t help but smile.
“Maybe I should pour a can of soft drink all over you,” Austin suggested with a mischievous smile. “That way you can say I spilled a drink on your clothes and you needed to go home and change.”
“Well, that’s more plausible than the truth, but it’s still going to look suspicious.”
Austin stopped and lifted a branch of a red cedar tree. “Here’s our blanket. You nearly walked right past it.”
Frannie stepped into the secluded area and plopped down onto the blanket. “Face it, Austin. Whatever I say, people are going to think you and I are fooling around.”
“Well, if that’s what they’re going to think anyway…”
Before Frannie knew it, he was beside her on the blanket, pulling her into his arms, his mouth slanting over hers. The kiss was playful at first, but it rapidly deepened into something more, something lusty and hungry and primal. A surge of heat pulsed through her as his lips mated with hers. His mouth was hot and demanding, his body warm beneath the wet cotton of his shirt. The feel of his masculine, muscular body stirred an urgent need to get closer. Frannie’s arms wound around his neck and she pulled him down until he was lying on top of her on the blanket.
He rained kisses everywhere—her neck, her ear, her jaw—then returned again to her mouth, deepening the kiss. Frannie clutched at him, drowning in sensation, drowning just as surely as either of the victims they’d just rescued. She felt the weight of his body over hers, felt the warmth of his hand cupping her
bottom, felt the hard length of his arousal pressed intimately against her. She moaned and arched against him, wanting more.
His hand moved up the inside of her thigh, pushing up her skirt and warming her skin. Heat shot through every muscle, every pore, every molecule of her being. The heat melted away all reason, all sense of time and place, leaving her with only a fierce, aching need.
His mouth slid down her neck to her chest, to her breast. He took her taut nipple in his mouth, through the silk of her blouse and the satin of her bra. The pressure was exquisite, but she wanted more. She longed for the feel of skin on skin.
She reached up and began unbuttoning her blouse, giving him access. One button, two buttons, three buttons…
A woman’s voice broke the heady spell. “They came from over here somewhere.”
Austin pulled back and looked at Frannie. Twigs snapped and leaves crunched. Someone—several someones—were coming.
Austin put his finger to his lips, then rapidly helped her refasten her buttons.
“Maybe they’ve already left,” said a man’s deep voice.
Austin pulled down Frannie’s skirt and helped her sit up. Adjusting his khakis, he cleared his throat and slowly rose to his feet. “Are you looking for someone?”
Frannie saw the woman she’d rescued point to Austin. “That’s him! That’s the man who saved Emily. And there’s the lady who saved me.”
Frannie scrambled to her feet, self-consciously straightening her skirt. The woman had changed into a long denim jumper over a white T-shirt, and she was still pushing the baby carriage. She held the toddler, who was now wearing a yellow playsuit with Sesame Street characters on the front. Both of them still had wet hair.
Behind the woman stood two men. The tall one had a large camera dangling from a thick strap around his neck, and the other one was carrying a notepad.
The shorter man stepped up and stuck out his hand. “Hello. I’m Hugh Miller with the Whitehorn Journal. I understand you two just saved my wife and little girl.”
Austin shook the man’s hand. Hugh’s face broke into an enormous smile. “Say, aren’t you Austin Parker, the race car driver?”
Austin nodded.
“Oh, wow! This story is going to be huge! Do you mind if we get some pictures? Maybe of you holding Emily, and the lady here with my wife?”
Austin gave Frannie an apologetic smile. “Well, at least you won’t have to worry about anyone not believing why you needed to change clothes,” he murmured under his breath. “Now you’ll have documentation.”
But Frannie was too busy reeling from the impact of that kiss to worry about awkward explanations. It was alarming, how quickly and thoroughly Austin could turn her from a clear-headed, sensible loan officer into a panting, lovelorn vixen.
“Oh, dear,” said the woman, gazing at Frannie’s bare feet. “You’ve lost your shoes!”
She was afraid she’d lost far more than a pair of pumps, Frannie through ruefully. Some where between the rescue and the kiss, she’d completely lost her heart.
Ten
Summer walked into the kitchen of the bed-and-break-fast the next morning, carrying a stack of newspapers. She kissed Aunt Celeste’s cheek, then plopped the papers onto the kitchen table and hugged Frannie. “I’m so proud of you!” She gave her a tight squeeze, then stepped back and beamed. “Imagine—our Frannie is a real, live, honest-to-goodness, front-page, news-making hero! She’s famous!”
Frannie winced and hunkered down over her bowl of cereal. “The paper made entirely too much out of it.”
Over at the stove, Jasmine grinned. “No, it didn’t. You saved someone’s life.”
“Doctors like Summer save people’s lives everyday,” Frannie said.
Aunt Celeste smiled at Frannie. “Yes, but most doctors don’t have the most popular race car driver in the country with them when they do it.”
“And most of them don’t rescue the wife and child of the local paper’s news editor,” Jasmine added as she turned out the last pancake onto a plate. She walked over and looked at the newspaper spread on the table. Summer seated herself at the kitchen table. “I stopped by a newsstand to pick up some extra copies on the way here, and the story has evidently been picked up by a wire service. That picture of you and Austin with the baby and her mother is in just about every newspaper in the country!”
Celeste grinned. “You know what they say—everyone in the world will be famous for fifteen minutes. This is your time in the limelight.”
“Great,” Frannie said dryly. “My fifteen minutes of fame arrive, and I’m dripping wet.”
“Oh, hey, get a load of this!” Jasmine looked up from her copy of the Whitehorn Journal, her eyes sparkling. “It says you’re Austin’s girlfriend!”
Frannie’s heart pounded hard. “That just goes to show you can’t believe everything you read.”
“It says you were having a romantic picnic in the park when the accident occurred,” Jasmine read.
“It was a business lunch,” Frannie corrected.
Jasmine’s gaze said she wasn’t buying that for a moment. “Oh, come on! A picnic?”
“In the park?” Summer asked.
Celeste raised a questioning eyebrow. “Just the two of you?”
Frannie sighed. This was exactly the reaction she was likely to get from the staff at the savings and loan. She’d called the bank yesterday afternoon to explain that she needed to take the rest of the day off, but Mr. Billings had been in a meeting, so she’d left a message with his secretary. She wasn’t looking forward to all the questions she was going to face this morning.
She glanced at her watch and sighed. It was time to head in and face the music. Her chair screeched on the wooden floor as she pushed back from the table. “I’d love to sit around and chat some more, but I’ve got to get to work.”
“Not so fast!” Jasmine said. “I want to know about this romantic picnic.”
“There’s nothing to know.” Frannie picked up her empty cereal bowl and carried it to the sink.
“Sure there is. Was it?”
“Was it what?”
“Romantic.”
All three women turned and regarded her curiously. Frannie felt her face flame.
Jasmine and Summer looked at each other and smiled triumphantly. “It was!” they said in unison. They smacked their palms in the air in a high-five.
“You two leave Frannie alone,” Aunt Celeste scolded. “Jasmine, you need to take those pancakes out to our guests.”
Jasmine moved to comply. Summer glanced at her watch. “And I’m due at the hospital. I’d better get going, too.” She rose and smiled at Frannie. “I just had to stop by to congratulate Whitehorn’s newest heroine.”
Frannie shot her aunt a grateful look as her cousins left the room. She rinsed her cereal bowl and placed it in the dishwasher, then glanced at Celeste. “I heard you up in the night. Were you having more dreams?”
The older woman nodded, her face solemn. “I dreamed Blanche visited me again.”
A shiver chased up Frannie’s arms. “Was it the same dream?”
Celeste shook her head. “Raven was with her. They were both sitting on the end of my bed and Blanche was trying to tell me some thing again, but this time I could understand what she was saying.”
“What was it?”
“To look to the past. That old faces and old places would help jog my memory.”
The chill on Frannie’s arms moved to her spine. “What do you think that meant?”
“I don’t know. But since Blanche has come to visit me a few times, I thought I’d return the favor.”
“How?”
“I plan to visit the cemetery this morning.”
The cemetery held the graves of both Blanche and Jeremiah. Given her aunt’s fragile mental state, Frannie wasn’t sure it was wise. What if she had a flashback and it was more than she could handle? Frannie’s brows knit in a worried frown. “Are you sure you’re up to that?”
C
eleste nodded. “A part of my life is missing, and I want to get it back. I think Blanche is trying to show me the way.”
“I don’t think you should go alone.”
Aunt Celeste smiled. “That’s just what Jasmine said. She offered to go with me.”
“Well, I hope you took her up on the offer.”
“I did. We’re going after all the guests finish breakfast.”
“Good luck,” Frannie said, kissing her aunt on the cheek. She lifted her purse from the back of the oak chair and slung the strap over her shoulder.
“You, too.” Celeste smiled as Frannie headed to the door. “Enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame.”
Frannie grimaced. “I think I’d enjoy a tooth extraction more.”
Make that an unsedated tooth extraction, Frannie thought an hour later. She hated being the center of attention, and she found herself just that. She forced her mouth into a smile as Mr. Billings droned on about her bravery during an impromptu speech in the middle of the bank lobby following the weekly meeting of the bank’s board of directors.
“…And since Frannie’s brave actions yesterday exemplify this bank’s commitment and dedication to the community, the board of directors has authorized me to give her this certificate of commendation.” He handed Frannie an official-looking document. “Furthermore, Frannie, the board wants to use your picture and story in a new advertising campaign to promote the high standard of service we offer here at Whitehorn Savings and Loan.” Mr. Billings turned and shook her hand. “On behalf of all of us, thank you for representing us so well.”
All of the bank staff broke into applause.
“Would you like to say a few words?” Mr. Billings asked.
A feeling of panic grabbed Frannie’s stomach and squeezed it like a vise. She longed to just sink right through the floor. “I’m…I’m not good at speaking in public,” she murmured to Mr. Billings.
“Oh, come on.”
The panic escalated to terror. She couldn’t. It was impossible. The last time she’d tried speaking in public…
The memory sent a surge of fear pulsing through her. She fought to tamp it down. “No, really. I—I—”