Page 10 of Meet Me in Tahiti
“And once a guy got stung by a jellyfish, and his girlfriend tried to help him by…” He paused.
“No,” Tessa said.
Russ just lifted his brows. “That one’s true.”
“Oh, my gosh.” She covered her face with both hands. “Okay. Maybe bleeding isn’t the worst thing I could do.”
“It’s definitely not.” He chuckled under his breath. “You’re doing fine.”
“No, I’m doing tourist-in-over-her-head,” she said,sighing. Why hadn’t she been more careful? Seriously. She felt like a moron.
Russ pressed a gauze pad to her leg and gave her a crooked smile. “There’s a learning curve. You’re just on the early side of it.”
“You can say that again.”
He shot her another smile that said she was beating herself up over nothing.
Jules handed him a bandage, and he wrapped it gently around her leg. “No swimming for the rest of today. You’re going to need to let these scrapes dry up.”
She sighed. “Are we seriously done snorkeling because of me?”
“We are, at least right here,” Russ said. “Sharks can smell blood from a quarter mile away.”
Her eyes went wide. So that’s why he’d called them in so fast? This just kept getting better. “Oh good. Just what I wanted to hear.”
He stood, offering her a hand. “The sharks around here are not aggressive or dangerous, for the most part. But now and then you get a species that means business. And blood in the water can set off their predator instinct, so we can’t take any chances.”
She tried to imagine friendly, unaggressive sharks, but couldn’t.
“Come on, we’ll find something else to do. That’s the beauty of a boat. We can go anywhere we want.” He smiled. “So don’t worry.”
She gave him a suspicious look but let him pull her to her feet. “You’re just saying that because I’m bleeding on your deck.”
“Exactly.” He helped her sit again in a more comfortable spot, and Jules handed her a bottle of water. “Hydrate. You’re still a guest, and we don’t let our guests get eaten.”
“That’s comforting.” Tessa grinned, her shoulders drooping nonetheless.
As the others dried off, chatting with concern and teasing in equal measure, Tessa leaned back and let the ocean breeze cool her cheeks.
Okay. So, she’d made a splash—literally. And only the very first whole day on the boat.
Russ wipedhis hands on a towel and stepped onto the upper deck just in time to hear Tessa laugh from the main deck below—loud, embarrassed, and entirely disarming.
“I am never living this down,” she declared, sinking deeper into the cushioned bench that wrapped around the port side deck. She had a pineapple drink in one hand and a fresh bandage on her leg.
“You shouldn’t have led with the phrase ‘ocean scratch,’” Marin teased from across the table.
“Or tried to chase a fish like it was a puppy,” Kyle added, raising his rum punch.
“Okay, to be fair,” Tessa said, lifting a hand, “it was a very interesting fish.”
“Interesting enough to bleed for?” Nate said, raising his beer.
“Yes!” Tessa demanded, grinning.
Russ chuckled and shook his head, watching from above. They all seemed like solid friends to Tessa who understood that accidents happen. He was glad.
After the incident, he’d motored away from the reef and headed for the other side of the island where the group had hopped back in the water—except for Tessa—and spent the afternoon lazing on the inner tubes and other floating rafts that the boat kept at the ready. Tessa had seemed content to sunbathe on deck for the rest of the afternoon, slathering lotion onto her sun-kissed face and limbs.
