The Best Of Me. Tina Wainscott

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ reached out to touch Liberty, but the dolphin shied away. Another fish lured him close again, but Chris didn’t try to touch him this time. He was again immersed in his world, and she had faded into oblivion. If she had any dignity whatsoever, she would walk away. Just get up and hold her soggy shoulders high. Unfortunately, her curiosity overwhelmed any shred of dignity she’d managed to maintain.

      “Why do you call him Liberty?” She glanced up at the banner. “His name is Randy.”

      “Calling dolphins by human names encourages people to humanize them, so I renamed him Liberty.”

      “What are you going to do with him?” she asked after a few awkward minutes of silence. She wanted to change into dry clothes, but she couldn’t leave without his acknowledging that she wasn’t an evil person who abused dolphins. Though she didn’t explore why that was so important.

      “I have to untrain him, teach him how to catch live fish and to live in the wild again. He’s come to depend on humans and their language now. He has to learn to be a dolphin again, to use his sonar.”

      He hadn’t glanced up at her even once as he’d spoken. She wanted to see something other than disdain in his eyes. She ran her hands down her pant legs, squishing water out of them.

      “What do you mean, his sonar?”

      His fingers made circles on the water’s surface. “Dolphins use echolocation sonar to map out their surroundings the same way we use our eyes. They send out signals that bounce back to their lower jaw, telling them where they are and where their prey is. Here in this shallow pool, the signals bounce crazily back to him, so he stopped using them.”

      Sonar? It sounded so high-tech, so…advanced. She watched Liberty circle, trying to imagine what he saw down there. White walls. Chris’s legs. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

      The sun glistened off his wet curls as he shook his head. “Just leave me and Liberty alone, and we’ll be fine.”

      He hadn’t even thanked her for offering. Still hadn’t looked at her. He reached for Liberty, and again the dolphin shied away. As she watched Chris, she wondered if her father wasn’t like him, other than the dolphin-saving thing.

      “Is this what you do for a living? You said something about a free dolphin society.”

      “I am the Free Dolphin Society. I travel around to different abusement parks and work on freeing the dolphins trapped there.”

      “Abusement parks? Is that what this is?”

      “For this dolphin, yes. I don’t know how the other creatures are treated.”

      She looked around, but couldn’t tell from where she was crouched. The park looked clean, if old. “Do you think my father was being cruel or just thoughtless?” She was surprised to find him looking at her when she turned back to him. More surprised at the effect that gaze had on her.

      “I only met the man once, when I first came to investigate claims of neglect. It was probably a little of both. Liberty here eats about fifteen pounds of fish a day, so Sonny bought the cheap stuff. He didn’t want to mess with filtering in fresh seawater or even making phony salt water, so he put chlorine and copper sulfide in the pool. Your father was upping the profit margin, and Liberty was paying the price. Now I’m pumping in seawater, and hopefully he’ll be able to open his eyes all the way soon.”

      “Will he bite? I mean, was I in any danger when I fell in?”

      A smirk tugged at the edges of his mouth, and she bet he had a great smile, if he ever did smile. Of course he was probably laughing at her expense, remembering how she must have looked, all arms and legs and terror.

      “The only thing in danger was your dignity. Dolphins are pretty docile in captivity.” He tossed Liberty the last of the fish in the bucket and rubbed his hands together under the water. He lifted an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t your spirit be broken if you were held captive?”

      She shivered at the thought, watching Liberty as he waited patiently for more fish, his head bobbing. “Probably,” she answered at last, meeting Chris’s gaze across the sparkling water. “Dolphins are your life, aren’t they?”

      “Yep.” Chris lifted himself from the pool and grabbed a towel. “How long are you here for, anyway?”

      “A week. It’s all I can get away with.”

      He nodded, rubbing the towel through his curls. Then she realized he only wanted to know how long he had to put up with her. When he stopped near her, he looked down at the clothing plastered to her body. She wasn’t sure if she imagined the gleam of appreciation, but he offered her his towel before she could consider it further.

      She lifted the soggy towel with her fingertips. “Your chivalry touches me, to be sure, but I think you’ve just about used up all the saturation.” She handed it back.

      He shrugged in a suit-yourself way, removed a pair of shorts and a cotton shirt from his duffel bag, and shoved the towel inside. “I’m just a gallant kind of guy.” He stepped into the shorts and slid his feet into leather sandals. Golden hair sprinkled his long, lean legs. The muscles in his arms moved intriguingly as he shrugged into the button-down shirt, though she was trying hard not to look. She met his gaze and found that smile she’d been wondering about. Yep, heart tickling all the way down to her toes. “Take it easy.”

      Like a fool, she watched him go, watched what might possibly be the cutest derriere in the world walk away. He walked through the gate and mounted a moped. Never once did he look back. Not even a furtive side glance while her gaze was glued to him.

      Well, what was she in a snit about? Because he’d been as clear as the sky that he didn’t want her around? Not a man of subtleties and courtesy, that one. She could take a hint. Lucy Donovan did not go where she wasn’t wanted. She hadn’t hung around in her marriage once it was old and stale and she wasn’t about to hang around Chris Maddox, either.

      Lucy had a feeling it went beyond that, though. Chris Maddox simply didn’t want people around. And now she had to wonder why.

      2

      CHRIS WEATHERED the rocks and dips in the narrow road as he sped toward The Caribe Plantation. The other drivers were the biggest hazard. His clothes flapped in the wind, the tips of his shirt snapping against his skin. The Caribe was just down the road from the park, a mere fifteen life-threatening minutes away. The plantation wasn’t in the touristy area of the island, something Chris was grateful for.

      The plantation’s driveway was crushed shell, pristine white for those times when the Eastor family vacationed at their Colonial mansion on the ocean. Luckily they weren’t there, and even luckier, they had offered their grounds and lagoon to his cause. He wasn’t impressed by the flowering gardens and trees; what mattered was the private slice of azure water where Liberty would learn to be a dolphin again. He barely glanced at the mansion as he headed to the hut perched over the water that doubled as a boat dock—and constituted his accommodations.

      Through the traffic and roar of wind in his ears, it was Lucy Donovan’s face he had seen and tried to exorcise. Lucy with her brown hair plastered to her cheeks and framing her dramatic features. He caught himself smiling at the terror in her face when she’d fallen into the pool. He shook his head as he parked the bike and made his way over the boardwalk that led out СКАЧАТЬ