Seal With a Kiss (16 page)

I wish we could try again, she wanted to yell. I
wish we could go back and do it all over. But she
couldn't say that. She'd look foolish. Desperate. Like
she was clinging to the memory of a relationship that
was, by his own words, ended.

The rules had said she couldn't edit her answers
to save the other person's feelings. They hadn't said
anything about her own.

So when she answered, she intentionally lied to
Smitty for the first time in their rocky ten-year friendship. "I wish that the job at Seaquarium is as wonderful as it sounds, that I get to save hundreds of manatees, and I don't give in to the urge to drown
the eternally perky Candi."

In the cab of the truck there was silence except for
the swish of tires on the wet pavement and the rhythmic thump of the wipers as they dashed the rain
aside. A mile marker passed. Another.

Then Smitty said huskily, "Then that's what I wish
for too, Violet. I just want you to be happy."

He cleared his throat, threw the flashlight and the
magazine in the foot well, and pointed at an exit sign.
"Pull off here and let's switch. I need to drive for a
while."

Well, that pretty much said it all. Smitty scowled
as he sent the truck hurtling into the morning's
bloody light. She was leaving Dolphin Friendly and
starting a whole new life down in Florida, and nothing he could do was going to change it. She'd as
much as said so.

He glanced over. She was sleeping now. He was
pretty sure she'd been faking when they first got back
on the road-unless she regularly slept with her
shoulder muscles bunched, her fists clenched, and her
breath hitching. If she'd been any other woman he
might've thought she was crying. But hey, this was
Violet. She never cried.

Either way, she was asleep now and he was grateful for it. All he wanted to do now was get the heck
back to Smugglers Cove, deliver their belching,
lactose-intolerant sea lion to Brody's tender mercies,
and sleep until it was time for the grand opening gala
that evening.

They were somewhere in Connecticut now, and
home was feeling closer by the mile. In spite of all
their adventures, they would arrive on or near their
noon deadline.

Had they really left Smugglers Cove just four short
days ago? It seemed like a decade had passed since
they'd set off, and Smitty was feeling every one of
those years as he downshifted to pass a school bus
full of children. He hit the accelerator and sped by,
trying to ignore the small, waving hands and laughing mouths.

He kept the pedal down once the bus had disappeared in the distance. It would be good to get home.

"Violet? Come on, Violet. It's time to get up now
so you can go sleep in a real bed." She was dimly
conscious of gentle hands shaking her, of a female
voice talking to her.

"Maddy? What're you doing in Pennsylvania?"

The other woman's laugh tinkled, sounding like home. "You slept through Pennsylvania, silly. And
the rest of the ride. You're in the driveway." Maddy
helped Violet out of the truck.

"I never want to sit in another bucket seat as long
as I live," Violet croaked as Maddy helped her across
the clamshell driveway and into the inn. A feeling of
peace descended on her when she stepped into the
welcoming front hall.

She was home.

Then she frowned. No, that wasn't right. Home
was going to be a condo in Florida. This was only a
place she was staying temporarily, before she officially left Dolphin Friendly.

The thought brought an ache that almost stole her
breath away.

"How was the ride?" Maddy asked as she and Violet climbed the familiar staircase with its pretty oriental runner.

Violet shrugged, dredging up some of her usual
defenses as her head started to clear. "Not bad.
Smitty and I talked. A lot." Too much. So much that
she finally believed there was nothing left for her
here except memories. "It was okay."

Maddy paused outside Violet's door. "Before we
go in, I just want you to know that if you don't like
it, we can return it and pick out something you like better. I just saw it and thought of you." She
shrugged, smiled sheepishly, and opened the door.

Violet stepped over the threshold. Stopped. And
stared. "What happened to my room?"

Twisting her hands together, Maddy asked in a
small voice, "You don't like it?"

The lace curtains were gone. The doilies were
gone. The ruffled bedspread and canopy were gone.
In their place was shimmering fabric decorated with
wild swirls of blue and green. Air bubbles glistened
in the weave, and hints of sinuous bodies and laughing dolphin mouths twisted in the patterns.

Framed posters from famous underwater movies
adorned the walls and the grinning teddy bears on
the bed-which Violet had always hated but couldn't
bring herself to put in the closet-had been replaced
by an enormous plush manatee and a smaller white
harp seal pup.

"It's...." Violet looked around, speechless.

"You hate it," Maddy offered, clearly trying not to
be disappointed. "That's okay. We can shop together
for something you like better."

"It's...." She walked over and touched the plush
manatee, remembering how the real ones had suckled
on her fingers and bumped against her legs. Thinking
of living in Florida forever. Never seeing Smitty
again. Finally, she looked at Maddy. "It's perfect."

And to Violet's utter, horrified embarrassment, she
burst into tears.

"So how was it, really?"

"It was fine," Smitty answered Brody's question
with the same three words he'd used every other time
he'd been asked about the trip. He waved his hand
toward the waiting intern, and Ishmael slowly engaged the winch attached to the sea lion's crate. "I
don't want to talk about it, okay?"

Thanks to the recent grants, Dolphin Friendly had
a small mobile crane of its own for rescuing larger
marine mammals stranded on land. Now they were
pressing it into service for unloading Jasper. Fortunately, the crate slid out of the truck far more easily
than it had gone in, and the sea lion was transferred
to his temporary home without incident.

"Does he look funny to you?" Brody asked. "I
know it's been a while since I've been this close to
a California sea lion, but it seems like his belly is
kind of ... big."

Smitty shook his head, glad that Brody hadn't
quizzed him harder about the trip. Though Jasper
didn't seem permanently damaged by his frozen
pizza orgy, he still looked a little on the funny side.
Still, Smitty decided he'd rather talk about a gassy sea lion than Violet any day. "He looks the same as
when we picked him up."

"Are you sure? He's not getting sick or anything
is he?" Registering the tension in Brody's voice,
Smitty glanced at his friend, noting the pinched skin
around Brody's eyes and the nervous tapping of his
index finger against his leg.

Brody was counting on the grand opening going
well. He needed it to. Dolphin Friendly needed it to.
Not only would it secure the second half of the funding, it would earn Brody's team the publicity they so
desperately needed to be effective.

It was hard to educate the public when nobody had
ever heard of you. Therefore, Dolphin Friendly
needed some media attention. The gala would hopefully kick off their publicity drive with a bang, not
a whimper.

Smitty reassured his friend. "He's fine. We'll give
him an hour to settle in, then run him through the
scissor behavior a few times to make sure it'll go
smoothly when the time comes." Seeing that Brody
was still unconvinced, he added, "Nothing will go
wrong at the ceremony. I'll make sure of it myself."

"Hork, hork!" Having inspected his new surroundings, Jasper chimed in with a few healthy-sounding sea lion barks, and Smitty relaxed a fraction. "See?
Even Jasper thinks it'll be a great show."

"Thanks Smitty. I owe you one." Brody clapped
him on the shoulder. "I wasn't so sure it was a good
idea to send you and Violet off on this job, but you
guys pulled it off. I'm proud of you both." He
paused. "Where is she, by the way? You didn't leave
her in Florida, did you?"

As a joke, it hit a little too close to home, and
Smitty winced. "No. She slept the last few hours
while I drove. When we got here, she was so out of
it that I asked Maddy to take her inside while we
unloaded Jasper."

Now it was Brody's turn to wince. "I hope Violet's
polite when she sees her room. Maddy spent days
fixing it up and she'll be crushed if Violet hates it
after all that hard work."

"Where is he? I'm going to kill him." Maddy's
voice was muffled with distance, but the anger was
unmistakable. There was an answering murmur, and
in short order the two men saw a small, frizzy-haired
dynamo stalking along the walkway that connected
the inn to the Smugglers Cove Stranding Center.

"Looks like you're in trouble now, boss," Smitty
observed, glad that someone else would soon join
him in abject misery. "What did you do this time?"

"I have no idea," Brody muttered. He stepped towards his wife. "Honey? Is something wrong?"

She walked right past him and stopped in front of
Smitty. "Wrong? Why would anything be wrong?
Unless you count the fact that Violet's leaving."

Brody whispered, "Now who's in trouble?" before
Maddy's words registered and he jerked back with
shock. "Whaat?" He rounded on Smitty, standing
shoulder to shoulder with his wife. "What happened?
What did you say to her? Come on, Smitty, I sent
you two down there to make up, not drive her away!"

"Me!" Smitty yelled. "How is this my fault? I tried
to make up, I really did. We went to a water park.
We talked about old times. We even went out to
dinner ... well, sort of. And we did this quiz in a
magazine-except for the last question, which I
made up-and we agreed that while we'd both been
stupid, I'd been more stupid that she had." He took
a breath and realized Brody and Maddy looked utterly confused. He let the breath out and said, "We
made up. Really. It just wasn't enough."

"Why?" Brody asked. "Where is she going?"

"To work for Chaz the Amazing down at Seaquarium Florida. He's promised her a boat, a team,
and all the manatees she can stand." Smitty kicked
at a clamshell. "You know Violet and manatees. Who
can compete with that?"

Though it had been a rhetorical question, Maddy
answered, "You could, if you wanted to."

Smitty shrugged miserably. "I tried. I asked her
not to go, but she really wants to."

"What exactly did you say to her when you asked
her not to leave?" Maddy persisted.

"Um. I told her not to leave because..." Smitty
searched his memory, remembered not being able to
say the words he'd really meant, and finished with a
mumbled, "Because Brody would miss her."

Maddy growled and Brody snorted. "Me? Why
me? We went out maybe a half dozen times because
it seemed to make logical sense that we'd work together. When she finally said we didn't have to
bother anymore, I think I was more relieved than she
was. Me and Violet were just never meant to be."

Smitty stared. "Then why the heck has she been
such a bear ever since you and Maddy got married?"

Brody shrugged as if to say, Who knows? but
Maddy answered, "Because everything was changing
in the group, and she wasn't sure how to handle it.
Brody found someone, and she was worried that you
might be next."

"Me? Since when is she worried about me finding
someone else?"

Maddy looked at Smitty as though she wanted to
smack him for being so obtuse. "Since you married someone else while you were still in love with her,
that's when."

"But that's ancient history," Smitty protested, not
even bothering to protest the love thing, or wonder
how Maddy knew.

"And they say that history has a way of repeating
itself," Maddy replied. "But it isn't going to have a
chance if she's down in Florida with this Chaz fellow, and you're up here."

Smitty rubbed a numb-feeling hand over his face
and reminded himself to shave before the ceremony.
He must look like a disaster.

A very confused disaster. Did he really have a
chance? Or was this just Maddy being ultra-cheerful
and believing in happily ever after, even for couples
on the brink of disaster?

"Well, I guess that's enough of a lecture for right
now. You do what you think is best," Maddy finally
said. She surprised Smitty by stepping forward and
kissing him on his furry cheek. "We're rooting for
you, Scotty."

It felt like someone had kicked him in the chest.
Scotty. "Nobody's called me that in years," he managed to say. Some days he barely even remembered
he had a first name. He'd been Smitty forever.

Except that his mother had called him Scotty.

"I snuck it off your license one day out of curiosity. I hope you don't mind."

He shook his head, then found his voice, which
cracked when he said, "No. I don't mind. I don't
mind at all." He hugged his best friend's wife and
said, "My family always called me Scotty. I guess
that makes us family."