So she fell in the pool.
The shock of the cold, fetid water made her instinctively scream on impact, even though she should not have opened her mouth immediately after having fallen into a pool full of decomposing leaves and storm debris.
She choked on sludge, and her arms and legs kicked out uselessly for purchase. Before she could work through the panic, Tom grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled her upright. The next thing her hands hit were his chest and the side of the pool, and with these two anchor points, Rose got her head above the surface.
“Oh God,” Tom said, but the asshole was barely able to breathe through his loud howls of laughter.
Rose coughed the worst things she’d ever tasted out of her mouth, determined to get her airway clear if only so she could tell Tom, with her last words, how much she was going to murder him, but she couldn’t stop wheezing. She weakly smacked him on his bare chest instead. He laughed harder. She tried again, but she didn’t have any leverage, and her palm only bounced off the muscle. She let go of the side of the wall, delirious anger telling her that if she drowned while strangling him it would be worth it, but she nearly slipped beneath the water again.
Tom’s sputtering laughter was cut off at the moment when someone else grabbed Rose from behind, under the arms, andhauled her out of the water. This latest insult made her throat close completely with surprise, because she was dangling in midair like a misbehaving kitten, the water making her clothes twice as heavy on her flailing body.
There was another flash of light, stunning her for a second time. She was suspended by her armpits, the tips of her toes just barely touching the ground, breathing with difficulty. She couldn’t get her legs under her. Her lungs were seizing up.
“Oh my God, Boyd,” Tom said, sounding both horrified and deeply annoyed. “Get the fuck off my wife.”
13
“You’re welcome,” Ximena told Tom after patiently listening to his angry, panicked update.
The rain had shifted to snow in the late afternoon, so Tom was able to stand outside the cottage and yell into his phone without disturbing Rosie’s recuperation inside.
“No! I’m not thankful,” Tom sputtered into the phone. “I askedyoufor help. Not Boyd and his camera crew. Boyd is not help. Boyd is ahazard. What am I supposed to do with him?”
Boyd had peppered Tom with a variety of questions about the repairs while Tom was in the middle of evacuating Rosie to the cabin, and only the presence of many recording devices had prevented Tom from telling Boyd to get back on the private plane he’d borrowed and fly it directly into the sea.
“Oh, come on, he’s a trouper,” Ximena said airily. “And he said he hung drywall for a couple of years in his teens. I’ll supervise him once I get out there.”
Tom growled despairingly in his throat and hung up the phone.
Any hope he’d possessed of demonstrating to Rosie that he had his act together was greatly diminished. As were his hopes of convincing Rosie, or anyone who had access to the Internet, that he wasn’t screwing Boyd Kellagher.
Rosie was beyond pissed at him. She wouldn’t even speak to him. Again.
Tom knocked on the door of the cottage. He’d prevented Boyd from carrying her back here, even though she was wobbly on her feet and wheezing badly. Then he’d gotten their wet clothes off and Rosie clean in the most respectful joint shower he’d ever participated in, but she’d tossed him out as soon as he got all the pool scum out of her hair.
He didn’t know what he’d do if she didn’t let him in now. He supposed he wouldn’t blame her if she still wasn’t talking to him.
“Rosie? It’s me,” he called again. He heard her coughing inside, but she didn’t tell him to come in. After he waited a few more seconds, he pushed the door open anyway.
Rosie was up in the loft along with every blanket in the cottage. When she didn’t yell at him to get out, he climbed up the ladder and hesitated at the top. She was curled in a ball on the far side of the bed, shivering.
When she saw him, she pulled the covers over her head.
Tom scooted to her side on his knees and bent so that his forehead was pressed against the mattress near her chest. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
She was still wheezing, even though her inhaler was on the nightstand next to her.
“What are you sorry for?” Rosie asked, voice inscrutable.
“Um. I’m sorry you fell in the pool because I did a Florida Man thing,” he said.
“Yes. And what else?” she asked.
“I’m sorry the photographer took pictures of you all wet,” he said.
“TheVoguephotographer. With fifty thousand Instagram followers,” Rosie said.
“Yes, him. Boyd said he’s leaving tonight,” Tom said.
