Texas Angel by Maggie Shayne

Author:Maggie Shayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: bayou, louisiana, western, cowboy romance, excon, maggie shayne, texas brand, texas cowboy
Publisher: Maggie Shayne

Chapter 9

ONE MINUTE JAKE was standing there thinking how unbelievably right she had been and how much better, how much lighter, he suddenly felt. He was pushing her on his mother's old tire swing, and he was thinking about good times, instead of sickness and bitterness and loss. He was smiling. Standing outside a place full of memories that should bring him nothing but pain, and smiling, and pushing a virgin kindergarten teacher on a tire swing. And, craziest of all, enjoying it!

The next minute he was standing there with his jaw lax, watching said virgin kindergarten teacher sink into the gator-infested swamp water. She came up sputtering and flailing her arms. She was still laughing, though, oblivious to how badly it had scared him to see her fly off like that and vanish beneath the muck. But she was okay. Sighing in relief, Jake kicked off his shoes and cracked a smile himself as he waded in to get her.

Then he saw the log-like shape on the far bank as it slid silently into the water. He tried to move faster. “Stop splashing, Sara!” He hurried closer, doing enough splashing for both of them, dammit, but you couldn't move through muck without it. His feet were sinking deep into the mire on the bottom by the time he reached her, snagged her around the waist and pulled her to him. The damned bathrobe was dragging in the water, and he shoved it off her, let it go, scooped her up and turned back toward shore.

She was still grinning. “My hero,” she sighed, fluttering her eyes in exaggerated Southern belle fashion. But when he looked down at her, her smile died. “What's wrong, Jake?”

The shore was still ten feet away when he felt the bump against his leg, and he knew damn well the next sensation would be far less pleasant. So he shoved her forward for all he was worth, tossed her toward shore and shouted, “Run!” And then he spun around, spied the damned monster coming for him just below the surface and did the only thing he could think of to save his leg. He dove down and wrapped his arms around the brute.

The gator went into a death roll, and Jake held tight.

* * *

SARA HAD KNOWN something was horribly wrong when Jake had looked into her eyes as he carried her back toward the shore. His face had been drawn and tight, his jaw rigid. Then his eyes had suddenly widened, and he'd thrown her bodily toward shore, shouted at her to run and vanished beneath the water.

She picked herself up and, standing knee-deep in water and ankle-deep in mud, looked for him. There was roiling, splashing...and then the slap of a huge, scaly... tail?

“Ohmigod,” she whispered. Was that...? “Jake? Jake!”

As if responding to her summons, Jake rose up out of the mire, but he was not alone. He was clamped to the back of a monster straight out of a Sunday-afternoon horror movie. The beast twisted and writhed, and then they both splashed down again and vanished from sight.

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