With a chuckle, Ash pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket. “I suppose snowbanks work for all of us.” Catching the look Lana gave the cigarettes, Ash rolled her eyes. “I don’t need another person telling me what’s bad for me.”
“If I call you a hypocrite, you’ll probably beat me up, huh?”
This time, Ash laughed. “Touché. And I suppose there are worse things than a holiday fling,” Ash said.
“You should see him in a skintight Santa suit.”
Ash shuddered. “Rick’s like my brother. I really shouldn’t.” Her expression suddenly turned serious. “Lana? Is that—?”
Lana followed Ash’s gaze, then her heart dropped somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. “Get help,” she said.
Without thinking, Lana began to run.
* * *
Rick didn’t know what was happening—only that someone had started to shout, followed by people rushing past the bonfire.
“What’s going on?” he demanded of Zoey, the one person going the opposite direction.
“I’m calling for an ambulance,” she yelled back over her shoulder. “Someone fell through the ice.”
Meaning if they got them out in time, the swimmer would need to go immediately to the hospital. If. The water temperature was only slightly above freezing beneath the surface of the lake. Running fast on ice wasn’t easy, and people were slipping and falling as they converged toward the east side of the lake, the side everyone knew not to go onto.
The ice was too thin for everyone to go farther, leaving only a few of them reckless enough to head for the figures in the distance.
“Who is it?” he yelled to Easton, then Rick’s heart sank to his stomach as he saw a shock of multicolored hair and a figure kneeling where the ice had broken.
“Ash, get away from there!” Easton yelled. The ice creaked under Easton’s feet as he started to cross to his sister.
“Stay back,” Ash called back. “Graham, get my rope. They’re in the water!”
They.
They.
Rick’s heart knew it before his eyes found her in the broken circle where ice gave way to slushy water. That lime-green Christmas knit hat soaked and slipping sideways.
“Lana!” Before he knew what he was doing, Rick had cried out her name, ripping his arm free of whoever held him back.
Ash was dangerously close to tumbling in herself, stretching as far as she could to try to reach Lana’s hand. And within the water, fighting against the bobbing ice chucks, was the woman he loved. He didn’t know if she was a strong swimmer, but with one arm clinging to an ice chunk and another trying to hold a sobbing eight-year-old above the water, Lana wasn’t going to last long.
“Someone call Jonah,” Rick yelled to the crowd behind him. “It’s Daniel.”
Daniel was Jonah’s second-youngest son, and he must have snuck away from the watchful eyes of his mother. Jonah’s wife, Kelly, cried out in terror. She pushed her infant daughter into Frankie’s arms, darting out across the ice, but Diego caught her, pulling her back.
“Take him,” Lana said through chattering teeth, trying to push Daniel close enough for Ash to reach.
Lana was already turning blue, and the ice beneath Ash’s knees was pooling with water, about to break. The cracking of ice beneath them was a bad, bad sign. She shoved Daniel closer, just enough for Ash’s fingers to hook his jacket hood, then the ice beneath Ash gave way. Rick grabbed for Ash, and Easton grabbed for him, a human chain managing to pull the child out of the water and onto the dubious safety of the ice.
Pushing the duo into Easton’s hands, Rick abandoned them for the woman still in the water. Lana was holding onto an ice chunk, but her grip was slipping.
“Rick, don’t,” Easton snapped, but he wasn’t going to wait. Shrugging out of his jacket and kicking off his shoes, Rick dove into the water.
He’d only have a short chance to help her before the ice water stole his strength too. But he knew Graham was going for a rope, and Ash always kept one in her helicopter.
The water was like a punch to the stomach, so cold he cursed. Four seconds to swim to her, two to lock his arm around her, getting a hold on the slipped ice chunk and hauling them both higher out of the water.
“I’ve got you,” Rick promised.
“Who’s got you?” Lana asked, breathless and chattering.
“Easton has us both. Look at me, sweetheart. Don’t be scared.”
He was terrified, but when those liquid pools turned his way, Rick knew he would jump every single damn time. His arms shook as the cold stole his strength, along with his breath.
“Rick, grab the rope!”
Easton’s yell was barely audible over the rushing of blood in his ears. Then the rope splashed into the water next to him, giving him something to grab onto as Easton and Graham hauled them out of the water.
The entire group slipped and slid on the ice, scrambling to get back to the safer, thicker surface of the lake.
Lana was a shivery, blue-tinged version of herself, but adrenaline must have kept her moving as she reached for him. Shaking, icy hands pushed at him frantically.
“Are you okay?” she demanded, her eyes wide in concern.
“I’m fine,” Rick said with a grunt. “Your clothes are soaking wet. Socks, shoes, pants. You need to get them off before you get even colder.” She blinked at him, uncomprehending. “Lana, you’re freezing and in wet clothes. You have to get them off.”
They herded her across the ice and toward the shore where someone had already started a car, the heater on blast. Lana protested when Rick all but shoved her inside.
“You’re going to freeze standing out there,” she said through chattering teeth, trying to tug him inside with her. But Rick was more concerned with taking the spare clothes from Ash’s arms.
“I had some extras behind the seat,” Ash said, jutting her head toward the helicopter. “But they won’t fit her well.”
“Is the child okay?”
Rick glanced over to where Graham had taken charge, ordering everyone to stay back and give Daniel and his mother room. A natural leader, he might not have been sworn in yet as mayor—that was supposed to happen after the holidays—but Graham was exactly the person to keep everyone calm in a crisis.
He’d been the perfect choice to take care of the town.
The sound of sirens in the distance answered Lana’s question, which was good, because Rick wasn’t leaving her to go find out more information. “The ambulance is almost here. I don’t know how long Daniel was in the water, but I can see that he’s crying, which is a good sign. You saved his life.”