You're the One That I Want by Susan May Warren

her holding a steaming cup of joe from the cafeteria. He appeared wrung out, eyes bloodshot.
    “Carp.” She stood as he put the coffee down and pulled her into his arms. She hung on, breathing in the solid warmth of him. “Where’s Red?”
    “Aw, he’s outside in the truck. Smoking. You scared him pretty good. Needs to get his legs under him.”
    “That’s Red for you. Mr. Emotional. He’ll be in when he knows everyone’s in the clear. Probably yell at me for making you guys work shorthanded.”
    “Yeah, well, he seemed pretty emotional when he dropped the gear.”
    “What?”
    “All the pots, the rest of the line   —still sitting at the bottom of the Bering Sea. I think he’s going to let the Alaska King pull it in, maybe give them half the take.”
    “We’ll lose the boat!”
    “We searched for you all night. He’d mobilized the fleet to find you, and when the Coast Guard radioed in that they’d grabbed you, he simply took off for Dutch Harbor at thirty knots. I swore we were going to die.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Took the first flight out of Dutch Harbor, left Juke and Greenie to unload, picked up his truck in Homer, and drove like a maniac only to sit in the parking lot for the last hour. I finally left him to stew.”
    “You did the right thing.”
    “I’ve never seen him so shaken up, Scotty.”
    “Serves him right for nearly making me watch him die.”
    Carpie made a face at the reminder of her helming the ship in a January storm as her father collapsed on the floor of the pilothouse. Maybe she didn’t want to remember either.
    She and Red might not be close, but they were all they had.
    Carpie shook his head. “You two are cut from the same cloth. I remember you threatening all the way to harbor that if he died, you’d follow behind and kill him again.”
    She lifted the edge of her mouth, added a shrug.
    “So how’s Owen?” Carpie sat next to her on the sofa.
    “He broke a couple ribs when the wave hit, and they caused internal bleeding. His heart finally stopped and he nearly drowned in his own blood, but they were able to save him.”
    “All I could do was pray. Just pray, for twelve hours.” He tookher hand, squeezed, his voice suddenly wrecked. “I love you like you were one of my girls, Scotty. Don’t you do that to me again.”
    A surge of warmth crested over her at his words, and she leaned in, wrapped her hand around his arm. “Bossy.”
    “A ‘Yes, sir,’ will do.”
    She grinned.
    “I still can’t believe it happened,” Carpie said, reaching up to run a thumb under his eye. “One second I’m gulping in seawater; the next I look up and there Owen is diving into the ocean like he might be a superhero. Juke yelled at us to throw out the life raft and Greenie grabbed it, opened it to inflate it as it lifted off the boat. We tried to keep our light on it, but it vanished, just like Owen.” He cupped her hand on his arm. “Just like you.”
    “He found me. If it wasn’t for Owen, I would be dead.”
    She let that sit there a moment.
    The door opened and the nurse popped her head in. “Ma’am, your fiancé is starting to wake up. If you’d like to go in and see him, you may.”
    Next to her, Carp stilled.
    “Thank you,” Scotty said, affecting a smile.
    The nurse left. Scotty found her feet. “Not a word, Carp. It’s just   —”
    “You’re engaged? After twelve hours on the raft?” He pulled off his cap, ran a hand over his head. “Engaged. Wait until Red   —”
    “Not a word to Red.” She grabbed his arm. “It’s just . . . pretend, okay? Yeah, he proposed, but he didn’t mean it   —”
    “He proposed to you? And you said yes?”
    Technically . . . She nodded.
    “Have you lost your ever-lovin’ mind? What happened in that raft?”
    “Nothing!”
    “Then you can’t marry Owen Christiansen.”
    She stared at him. “Why not? You don’t think I’m marriage material?”
    His face said it. The way his lips tightened into a revealing