Seal With a Kiss (9 page)

She sniffed once and pushed away from him, leaving the air to cool his chest and cheek where contact
had warmed them. "Neither of us did it right. We
were young and stupid, and more in love with the idea of being in love than we were with one another.
And now we've spent most of a decade being angry
with each other for acting like kids. Well guess what?
We were kids. But we're grown-ups now, even if we
don't always act like it." She stuck out a hand. "Can
we call a truce? Make friends? It's what we're here
for, right?"

Smitty stared at the hand for a moment, mistrusting that ten years could be wiped away that easily.
Not sure he wanted it to be. Something important had
just passed between them, but he wasn't yet sure
what it was.

"Come on, let's shake on it." She waved her hand
and her perfectly painted nails flashed. "Then let's
get on the road. We can make it to the Seaquarium
by morning."

He took her hand and held it rather than shaking
it. "No fancy dinner for us tonight then? Not even to
celebrate our new level of understanding and the end
of our feuding days?"

She avoided his gaze. "I don't think so." But she
sounded sad. Almost wistful. She slid her eyes to his,
then away. "I've always valued our friendship, Smits,
even when we've mostly been fighting. I don't want to
endanger it by turning it into something ... else, okay?
We tried that once and it didn't work. I value you too
much to try again. I think we should just be ...
friends, and leave it at that, okay?"

Tugging her hand away, she wrapped her towel
around her waist as though suddenly self-conscious
about the amount of skin her bikini revealed. She
turned and headed for the locker area, calling over
her shoulder, "I'll meet you by the front entrance in
five. And I'm really glad we got all that sorted out."

She disappeared into the ladies' changing area,
leaving Smitty standing near the nacho stand, shaking his head. His body was warm where it had
touched hers. His hand tingled faintly, and he had
the insane urge to chase after her and play this whole
scene over again, differently.

Because as far as he was concerned, their conversation had raised as many questions as it had answered. And he'd be darned if he let her finish this
road trip without answering a few more of them.

Like whether her blood heated when they were
together. Or whether her heart pounded when they
touched.

Whether she ever wished things had been different. And whether she had the guts to try again.

The refrigerator truck's engine hummed a steady
monotone as they crossed the border into Florida late
that night. Violet glanced over at her passenger and
was relieved to see that Smitty had finally dropped
off to sleep.

When they'd gotten back on the road, he'd tried
to talk about what had happened at the water park,
but she hadn't been ready. So they'd driven in silence
for a time, with the questions humming between
them, unasked.

Was it really so simple? Had she spent the last ten
years blaming him completely for something that had been both their faults-or really nobody's fault at
all?

She shook her head and changed lanes. Perhaps it
was that simple. But it really wasn't simple at all,
because during the course of their day at the water
park, she'd realized she was in deeper trouble than
she'd thought.

Every time Smitty had glanced at her, it felt like
a caress. Every time he touched her-to help her
onto a ride, or to draw her attention to a pretty
scene-she felt like liquid fire had been poured
through her veins.

Before, she'd blamed it on irritation. On Streaker's
close quarters and the inevitable awareness that developed when two people worked together as much
as they did. Now she acknowledged she was attracted
to him. And that was a bad thing. There was no room
on Streaker for another couple, and there was sure
as heck no room for a breakup.

It had been weird enough when she and Brody
dissolved their so-called relationship, when frankly
there hadn't been much regret on either side. But she
knew from experience that breaking up with Smitty
brought forth very different emotions.

Wrenching, tearing emotions she'd rather not relive.

Ten years ago, she'd run away-straight to that
research project on Puget Sound. But where could
she go this time? Dolphin Friendly was her family,
and they couldn't afford to have her gone just as the
new stranding center was going on-line. Or could
they?

No, she decided. She couldn't leave. And if she
and Smitty started something again and it failed, she
wouldn't be able to stay.

The man in question stirred in his sleep and muttered something. She glanced over and was rewarded
by the play of streetlight over his familiar features.
He was going to have a heck of a sore neck if he
kept sleeping like that-all jammed between the uncomfortable edge of the bench seat and the smeared
window. Violet debated moving him, but decided to
leave well enough alone. She didn't want him to
wake up now. In the dead of the night, cocooned in
the cab of the humming truck, it would be too easy
to say something she'd regret during the day.

He stirred again and mumbled, "Violet? Vi?" The
words were thick with sleep and precious because of
it. She dreamed of him sometimes and woke up feeling warm and loved. Other times, she woke feeling
lonely. Maybe now he was dreaming of her.

She drove with one hand, reached over and
touched his clenched fist with the other. "I'm here Smits. It's going to be okay. We'll find a way to get
along so we can both stay with Dolphin Friendly.
That's all that matters."

Mumbling something else, he opened his hand and
tangled his fingers with hers, the way he used to
when they were together, and she felt a dull ache
under her breastbone.

Violet slid her hand free as the truck labored up a
gentle Florida hill. She stomped on the clutch and
muttered, "We've both got to stay with the group.
Nothing else matters."

Then she changed gears.

Smitty woke up just as they eased into the back
lot of the Seaquarium. From the looks of the sky, it
was early morning. He wasn't sure what day it was,
but he was convinced that he'd never been quite as
sticky and sore as he was at that moment. In his
opinion, which he'd shared with Violet when they'd
stopped to brush their teeth with iron-tainted truck
stop water, not even a four-day stranding rescue in a
sludge-filled inlet could compare to the experience of
riding in a non-air-conditioned refrigerator truck all
the way from Cape Cod to Florida.

Violet was still driving, as she had been since the
night before. She'd snarled when he'd offered to
switch, so he'd given up and gone back to sleep. She'd apparently opted to head straight for the Seaquarium rather than stopping off at a motel to shower
and change.

He glanced over at the driver's seat. Her brunette
hair was long and lustrous, caught up in a casual
ponytail that made her look about eighteen. Her nails
were perfect, her khaki shorts neatly pressed, and the
floaty blouse she'd tied over another of those clinging tank tops added just the right touch of girl.

Of course she hadn't wanted to stop and refresh
herself. She was born refreshed.

He lifted himself off the passenger side window
that had formed his pillow since Georgia, and tried
to sit up straight like his mother had always badgered
him to do when he was a boy. Every muscle in his
body protested the action with howls of pain. He
scrubbed a hand through his hair and wondered
whether it was possible that he'd actually made his
teeth dirtier by brushing them at that truck stop.

"We're here," Violet sang, sounding annoyingly
happy. "And look, there's a welcoming committee."

Sure enough, there was a small group clustered
around the back gate that led into the stranding rescue staging area of the Seaquarium. Smitty and Violet both knew their way around the place, since
Dolphin Friendly had worked out of the Seaquarium
several years ago, compiling stranding data for the
Florida coast.

Because of the familiarity, Smitty was annoyed
that he felt like such a mess when they arrived. These
people are researchers, he assured himself, they understand that being rumpled-looking is part of the job
... even if your traveling companion looks like she
just stepped off the cover of a fashion magazine.

He and Violet swung out of the cab to a chorus of
hellos and welcomes, and Smitty tried not to notice
that all of the Seaquarium staff members were
dressed in perfectly pressed khaki shorts and logo
polo shirts.

"Violet! Smitty!" A tall man stepped ahead of the
others and spread his arms in welcome. He looked
familiar in a slick, well-groomed sort of way. His
dark hair was disheveled and probably trained to stay
that way for the duration of the day. His teeth were
perfectly white, his tan perfectly even, and the legs
that stuck out of his perfectly pressed shorts were ...
well, perfect.

Smitty couldn't place him immediately-he hadn't
been one of the staff members they'd dealt with at
the Seaquarium before-but he was pretty sure the
guy was going to irritate him, which was surprising,
as Smitty wasn't one for snap judgments and he liked
just about everyone. Except this guy.

That thought became a certainty when Violet
whooped and jumped into the other man's arms. "Chaz! What are you doing here?" She hugged him
and Smitty ground his teeth.

He was right. Now that he knew who Mr. Perfect
was, Smitty knew for sure that he didn't like the guy
much. Chaz Trowt-with a name like that, he
should've gone into fisheries biology, not marine mammology-had been a year or two ahead of them at U.C.
Santa Cruz. He'd been a straight-A student, president
of half the clubs on campus, and had always had a
pack of women on his heels.

Finished with his excessive welcome of Violet,
Chaz turned and held out his hand. "And Smitty! I
haven't seen you in ages. You look ..." he glanced
up and down Smitty's rumpled, travel-weary form
and finished with a lame, "good."

Smitty shook his hand because he couldn't think
of a graceful way not to. "Chaz. I didn't know you
worked here." He glanced between Violet and Chaz
and narrowed his eyes when he noticed how close
they were standing. "And I didn't know you two
were so friendly."

Chaz looked surprised by Smitty's scowl. He took
a step back towards his coworkers. "Violet and I
worked together on the Puget Sound project. We got
to know each other pretty well, but fell out of contact
after. You know how it is." His eyes darted back and
forth between Smitty and Violet and one eyebrow lifted in silent question. "I didn't know you two were
back together. Brody didn't mention it when he
called to say you were on your way."

Violet shook her head in quick denial. "Oh no,
we're not together, Chaz. We're just friends, right,
Smitty?"

He felt her elbow in his ribs and nodded, irritated
with himself that he was annoyed. That's what they'd
decided on at the water park, wasn't it? Friends.
They'd called a truce and agreed to leave their past
behind. So why did the idea of her snuggling up to
Chaz-the-Perfect irritate him so much?

"Oh good! Then I'd love to take you out to dinner
tonight, Vi. For old times' sake." Chaz smiled dazzlingly and Smitty wondered whether he had ever
tried to jump off the side of a research vessel with
his swim fins glued to the deck.

"Sorry," Smitty said without a trace of remorse.
"We've already made plans for dinner tonight."

Violet looked up at him in surprise. "We have?"

"Of course. Remember? We have to spend the
specimen jar money." They'd added to it the night
before when he'd wanted to stop and buy Georgia
peaches and she hadn't, and again when she'd
needed a bathroom break a half hour after they'd
stopped for gas. They were up to almost a hundred
and fifty dollars now. "There won't be time to do it on the way home, and by the time we get back to
Smugglers Cove things will be in an uproar, getting
ready for the big opening."

She nodded and Chaz looked handsomely crestfallen. Then Violet snapped her fingers. "Chaz! Why
don't you come to dinner with us? We can all catch
up on old times, and there's more than enough
money in the fight jar to pay for all of us. Please say
you'll come!"

Smitty couldn't very well argue with her logicexcept that he'd wanted Violet all to himself for one
dinner. Just to test their new truce, of course, not like
it was a real date or anything. But it seemed that she
was bound and determined to spend her evening with
Perfect Chaz.

It was funny. He didn't remember having disliked
Chaz this much when they'd all been in school together.

Clearly sensing a dangerous undercurrent, Chaz
glanced from one to the other. "Are you sure?"