She sighed happily and seemed…fine. Which completely blew his mind. Most anyone else, having been in the vast ocean with nothing in sight for over an hour, would have totally freaked by now. He’d seen it happen to the most stalwart of men.
But not his Lace.
“Have you met my friends?” she giggled.
“You don’t mean the captain,” Vince snarled.
“Of course not. I mean my turtle buddies.” The pair were still hanging around her.
“Shall I start calling you Doctor Doolittle?” he quipped.
Yeah.It was time for some levity.
She looked at the two leatherbacks and tipped her head as if listening. “They say I’m nicer than him,” she snickered.
Vince could do this: continue distracting her with ridiculous humor until she was completely safe.
“Have I mentioned that I like your neckwear?” he teased.
Vince was feeling so much better now that he could look Lace in the eye and see that she wasn’t hurt or traumatized, but he still wasn’t going to be able to fully relax until they had her in the helo.
“Oh, this old thing?” Lace responded, flipping nonexistent hair over her shoulder and affecting a haughty look. “Just a little something I cobbled together.”
Vince couldn’t help the next question that came out of his mouth.
“Tell me. Did the prick take your life ring away from you?”
He’d wanted to wait until Lace was completely safe before asking, but his filters weren’t quite working.
“Nope,” she answered with the best shrug anyone could execute while bobbing about in the turbulent ocean. “I gave it to him. I had the skills to make my own out of my jeans.”
Vince grunted.
There had certainly been no surety in that plan, but that was Lace all over; thinking of someone else before herself, even if the guyhadtried to kill her.
“And speaking of jeans.” Lace wrinkled her nose. “I’m afraid everyone’s going to get a good look at almost everything I own from the neck down once I’m airborne. My waterlogged, white cotton panties aren’t going to hide my ass or my hoo-ha very well.”
Vince had just finished buckling himself to Lace for a tandem lift, and found himself laughing.
Laughing.
If anyone had told him a few minutes ago that he’d be in this situation, amused, he would have called them crazy.
But now, relief had made him nearly giddy.
Still, he needed to puzzle out what he could do to preserve Lace’s modesty.
In the larger scale of things, the problem was a tiny blip on his radar, but Vince could tell it mattered to Lace.
He tapped the waterproof comm in his ear and gave orders. “We’re just about ready for lift-off,” he said, “but everyone besides Jett needs to avert their eyes. My woman has no pants on.”
“Roger that,” he got, all around, but he could hear the amusement in their voices.
“Just to let you know,” Julian guffawed, “we’re recording this whole thing for possible blackmail, later.”
Asshole. Not true.
But Vince appreciated the joke, and loved every one of his brothers with all his heart.