Read Online Calling All the Shots by Katherine Garbera - Free Book Online Page A

sexy and had this
way of looking at him that frankly made him hard. There was something about a
woman in control that turned him on. But with Willow it was more than sex. He
wanted to unravel all her secrets and find out why she was such a badass now.
The girl he remembered from Texas hadn’t been.
    “Ready to do this?” the director, Ben Johnson, said, coming
over to him.
    Jack glanced at the waves and then over at PJ and nodded. The
sooner they got this session taped and edited the sooner he could head back to
the East Coast. Though given Willow’s reaction to the presents he’d sent her
this morning, he’d say his wooing was going better with the distance between
them.
    He chalked that up to her orneriness. Every other woman he’d
dated had wanted to spend time going out to the A-list restaurants and
nightclubs so they could be seen. Willow seemed to prefer eating in his
apartment and getting gifts from him when he was gone.
    “Crazy.”
    “What is?” PJ asked as he walked over to him.
    “Women,” Jack said.
    PJ laughed. “You can say that again. You ready to do this?”
    “Yes,” Jack said. They both grabbed their boards and waded out
into the ocean. Jack listened to Ben’s directions and then got on his board to
paddle out beyond the breaks. The water was cold, even though he had the wet
suit on. He wondered if Willow had ever been surfing. Would she enjoy it? He
knew he’d like to see her in a bikini.
    “I’ll take the first set,” PJ said.
    Jack nodded and watched his friend paddling toward the wave.
Jack saw something swimming in the water near PJ and wondered if it was the
school of dolphins that they’d seen earlier. He’d taped his intro with the
porpoises frolicking behind him.
    But then he saw the dorsal fin at the same moment that PJ
screamed and fell into the water. There was thrashing and Jack stopped thinking,
realizing that PJ was being attacked by a shark.
    He dove into the water, trying to remember the advice he’d read
on shark attacks. He thought attacking them, punching them in the nose, would
get them to loosen up. Jack drew back his fist and hit the shark as hard as he
could, not once but three times in a row. There was so much blood he could
scarcely see through it but he managed to grab PJ as the lifeguard/medic who was
on the shoot swam out to them. Together they got PJ free and swam with him to
shore.
    Jack couldn’t stop shaking as the medic went to work on PJ. But
his friend was unresponsive as he was loaded onto the ambulance.
    “I’m going with him,” Jack said, getting into the back of the
ambulance with the medic.
    No one argued.
    The director yelled that he’d meet him at the hospital and Jack
couldn’t say anything. He’d had brushes with death before but this one…this one
had scared the hell out of him. He couldn’t believe that PJ was lying there
practically lifeless after just joking and laughing what seemed like seconds
earlier.
    Dammit, Jack thought. This was why…
    “You okay, man?” the medic asked.
    “Yeah. Is he going to make it?”
    “I don’t know. He lost a lot of blood, but I’ve got him
stabilized. That was some quick thinking jumping on the shark the way you did.
How’d you know to do that?”
    “I didn’t. I just knew I had to do something. I wasn’t really
thinking.”
    “Well, you’ve got good instincts. If he makes it, it will be
thanks to you.”
    God, please let him make it, Jack
prayed to himself. He’d never been overly religious despite his mother’s best
efforts. But he reached out all the same. He needed to believe there was someone
up there listening who could help his friend pull through.
    PJ was finally settling down to live the good life. He’d just
gotten married to a television actress and Jack wanted to believe his friend
could have it all. He wanted to believe that he could have it all, too, but this
incident made him realize that no one was guaranteed anything.
    There could be no more slow and gentle wooing