The Summer Wind (31 page)

“So these are the bachelor pods,” she said.

A long coral causeway was covered with the same thatched island-style roof found at the front lagoon. It created a shaded space for guests while they watched the dolphins. Each side was lined with spacious enclosures, partitioned to house different pairs or small groups of dolphins.

When they reached the partitioned dock that Nate would use today, Carson grabbed a spot on the bench in the shade.

“Are you sure you don’t want to join us in the swim today?” Joan called to her. “You’re welcome to, and it’ll be fun.”

“No, thanks. I want to take pictures,” she called back. She lifted the camera hanging around her neck to prove the point.

“We have a photographer,” Joan reasoned. “He’ll make sure to get plenty of great shots of Nate.”

Carson paused.

A part of her wanted to go into the water with Nate, to feel the rubbery skin of the dorsal fin under her hand again and glide across the lagoon. That feeling was unlike any other. But she couldn’t face swimming with another dolphin. Not yet. She’d had such a rare and unique bond with Delphine. She missed seeing Delphine’s bright, inquisitive eyes, hearing her high-pitched whistle or her nasal staccato laughs. Swimming with another dolphin would be too painful.

She shook her head. “My stomach’s feeling a bit off,” she called back. “Better not. But thanks.”

Carson bent over her huge canvas bag where she kept all their supplies and pulled out the lenses she wanted to use today. A dog’s bark from the far end of the lagoon caught her attention, and turning her head, she was surprised to see a large black dog on the lower dock at the end of the pavilion. A dog near the dolphins wasn’t the norm. Curious, she rose and
joined the cluster of tourists craning to watch the interaction between the big black dog and a dolphin. They were laughing and pointing.

Carson lifted her camera. Through her lens she saw the big dog lower its pointy nose as it inched with agonizing slowness toward the edge of the dock. The dolphin appeared equally curious about the dog and was rising higher in the water, angling closer.

Carson held her breath, her finger on the button.

The big dog reached the edge, then stopped. The dolphin moved forward to touch its rostrum against the dog’s nose.

Carson clicked the camera. “Got it!” she said, grinning. She felt as if she were the big black dog as its tail began wagging a mile a minute. Carson kept clicking away as the dolphin returned for more kisses. It was clear the two animals were having a good time.

When a man came to take hold of the dog’s collar and, with a gentle pat, lead it away from the dock’s edge, she lowered her camera and joined the chorus of groans from the audience who were enjoying the tender scene. He tied the dog to the dock post in the shade and gave the dog’s big head several more pats. When he returned to the lower dock and looked out, Carson realized that the man was Taylor.

She knew she should go right back to Nate’s dock, but she couldn’t resist watching Taylor give signals to the two dolphins at his dock with the ease and authority of any of the other trainers. He was working with two male dolphins, one huge and the other small. She poised her camera and photographed Taylor giving a command that sent the dolphins swimming off underwater. Clicking rapidly, she caught shots of them leaping
skyward in a beautifully synchronized leap. The big dolphin reached a remarkable height, while beside him the smaller one climbed not nearly as high.

Carson’s heart lurched when she saw a chunk was missing from the smaller dolphin’s tail fluke, like Delphine’s. She followed the small dolphin with her camera, focusing in on the details. When the small dolphin emerged again at the dock to receive a fish, she saw that part of its dorsal fin was missing as well. The crowd applauded and Carson caught a great shot of Taylor’s face breaking out into a reluctant grin.

“I could watch him all day,” a young woman to her left remarked to her friend. “And I’m not talking about the dolphin.”

“Mm-hmm,” her friend agreed, before they bent their heads together, giggling.

Perusing the group, Carson couldn’t help but notice how many of the women had their gazes not on the dolphins but on the handsome trainer. With her camera she captured his muscles exposed beneath his sleeveless T-shirt, the long swim trunks falling from his hips. Besides his good looks, his movements were graceful like a dancer’s. What made him all the more attractive was his being oblivious to the attention he was receiving. His focus was solely on the dolphins.

Carson lowered her camera, feeling an undeniable racing in her blood, a spine-tingling attraction to the ex-Marine. She was only human, after all. But then Blake’s smiling face popped into her head, and she felt guilty that the first time she’d left Blake, her gaze was wandering.

Carson covered her lens and hurried back to the other side of the pavilion to Nate’s dock. She quickly took several photos
of Nate chest-deep in the water, grinning ear to ear while confidently giving signals to a big dolphin. Then she went back to the bench and, pulling out her phone, placed a call to Blake. She wanted to hear his voice. Blake had been out doing fieldwork for the past several days, out of phone range. Once again, her call was sent to voice mail.

Sighing and putting her phone in her bag, she looked up to see Nate engaged in a splash battle with the dolphin. Clearly the dolphin was winning and Nate was loving it. As she watched, her mind drifted back to Blake. She’d never been in love before, but she thought what she felt for Blake might be love. So her attraction to Taylor was a red flag.

“Still stalking me, I see.”

Carson whipped her head up to see Taylor standing by the bench, a crooked grin on his face. He held on to a thick, black “Service Dog” harness attached to the black dog she’d seen on the dock. The dog was so big that, sitting on the bench, she was eye to eye with it.

“Taylor!” she exclaimed a little too loudly, rattled that he’d snuck up on her just as she was thinking about him. “I didn’t know if I’d see you again. And certainly not training dolphins.”

Taylor’s grin widened as he took a seat on the bench beside her. He seemed more relaxed today, and she wondered if it was because of his session with the dolphins or because he was with his dog.

“Didn’t I tell you I was having sessions here?”

“You did, but I thought you were doing what Nate’s doing, not training. You looked good out there, by the way,” she said, then blushed slightly at the double entendre. “I took some pictures. Here, take a look.”

He leaned closer to look into her camera’s LCD panel, their shoulders touching. Once again she felt a jolt of attraction. She flicked through the photos, enjoying the sound of his deep laughter and his occasional “That’s a good one.”

“I’ve got to get copies of Thor with the dolphin,” he told her.

“Sure. I’ll send them to you. What’s your e-mail?”

“I don’t have a pen or paper,” he said.

“No problem.” Carson turned to dig again into her bag, pulling out her card. “Here’s my card. Just e-mail me and I’ll send them to you.”

“Great. Thanks.” He tucked the card into his shorts.

“You were great out there,” Carson said.

“I’ve been training here for almost a year now.” He smiled a bit sheepishly. “They’ve offered me a job.”

I’ll bet
, she thought to herself. There’d be a line of women at the gate clamoring for tickets. “Congratulations.” She grinned and, turning her head, stared into a pair of dark brown eyes. “And your dog, too?”

He laughed and reached out to pat the dog’s head. “Where are my manners? Carson, this is Thor. Thor,” he said to the dog, “say hello to the pretty lady.”

Thor shifted his adoring gaze from his master to Carson and lifted his giant paw.

“Whoa,” she said as the paw hit her lap. “That’s a pretty big paw you got there, pal.” Carson loved dogs, especially big, gentle ones. Thor reminded her of Blake’s dog, Hobbs, with his large block head, wide chest, and floppy ears. He also had large, soulful eyes she could lose herself in. They reminded her of Blake’s eyes.

“He’s a great dog,” she told Taylor, who was watching Thor with affection.

“Yep, he is,” Taylor agreed, patting his head again. “He was rescued from the pound and trained as a service dog. He’s a mutt, but I’m guessing he’s part Great Dane and part Lab and part something else that gave him that patch of white on his chest that looks like a lightning bolt. Reckon that’s how he got his name.”

Carson began to absentmindedly scratch Thor behind his ears, and his tail started thumping in response. Taylor was a Marine with a service dog, she thought to herself. Interesting.

“You said you were in a program with Joan?”

Taylor looked across the walkway to where Joan sat on the dock watching Nate.

“I was here for the Wounded Warrior Project.”

Carson wasn’t surprised to hear that. She’d read that the Dolphin Research Center had a program for wounded warriors. Yet, when she thought of a wounded warrior, she thought of someone with physical injuries.

After an awkward silence Taylor said in a softer tone, “I know what you’re thinking. Where’s the wound, right? You don’t see the injury.”

Carson couldn’t reply. Blunt though it was, he was right.

“You can’t see all wounds,” Taylor said. “Especially not in this war. Sure, some of us in the Wounded Warrior program have missing limbs, or are in a wheelchair. Some have serious burns. But
all
of us have PTSD.”

Carson knew quite a bit about post–traumatic stress disorder because she’d studied the symptoms after Delphine’s accident on the dock. It was a debilitating condition that followed a terrifying event. She’d had bad nightmares after the fire that killed her mother, and she’d tucked away that traumatic memory
in her mind for years, only to begin to deal with it now. After Delphine’s accident she had been stricken with guilt and regret, but she’d been able to move on. She’d read how PTSD left one feeling emotionally numb, especially toward people they were once close to. Learning that had helped her to understand Nate’s angry behavior toward her.

“I think my nephew, Nate, had PTSD from the accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“Actually, it involved a dolphin. Delphine. She used to come by our dock on Sullivan’s Island. One morning she got caught in the fishing line and was badly hurt. Luckily we got her to a rehab facility in Florida, but Nate was pretty traumatized by it. You see, he was the one who’d put out the fishing lines.”

Taylor turned a sympathetic glance toward Nate. “Poor little guy. He must have taken it all pretty hard.”

“So did I,” Carson added, her voice catching unexpectedly. She cleared her throat. “Joan’s doing a wonderful job bringing him out of it.”

“She’s good at that.”

“What made you want to start training dolphins?” she asked Taylor.

“A lot of it has to do with that little dolphin out there.” He jutted his chin to indicate the lagoon.

“Which one?”

Taylor scanned the water, then reached out to point to a smaller dolphin. “That dolphin swimming near the dock closest to us. That’s Jax.”

“The little guy. I noticed that he’s missing part of his tail fluke.”

“Yeah, Jax is a real survivor. He was just a calf when he was found near dead in the water near Jacksonville. That’s how he got the name. They captured him and brought him to Gulf World in Panama City. The tip of his dorsal fin, half his left fluke, and part of his pectoral fin were bitten off before he got away. You can still see the scars left by the shark’s teeth on his flank. From the measurement, they figured he was attacked by a bull shark.”

Carson shuddered, remembering her own near miss with a bull shark earlier that summer.

“It’s a good guess Jax’s mother was killed trying to defend her calf. They saved his life at Gulf World, then he was placed here for a permanent home.”

“He wasn’t released?”

“He never would’ve made it out in the wild. Not only because of his injuries, but because without a mother to teach him the ropes, he’d starve or be shark bait. He was only about a year or so when he came here. Now Jax is part of the gang. He has his injuries, of course. And he’s younger than the others and still has some growing to do, so he doesn’t jump as high as the other males.” He grinned. “But Jax doesn’t care. There’s nothing he can’t do. He jumps, leaps, does all the routines right with the pack. Here’s the thing. The other dolphins don’t see Jax as injured. And Jax doesn’t see himself as injured.” He swallowed hard. “That says it all.”

Carson heard the emotion in his voice and understood why Taylor felt such a strong connection to the brave young dolphin.

“The program directors gave us this,” Taylor said, reaching up to pull out a silver chain from under his shirt. He turned
so she could see a small silver dolphin tail fin attached to the chain; the left tail fluke was missing. “That’s Jax’s fluke.”

Carson reached out and took the small silver fin between her two fingers, tracing the intricate lines. She looked up at Taylor.

“Aunt Carson!”

Carson had been so caught up in Taylor’s story, she hadn’t noticed that Nate had finished his session. She was surprised at how fast the time had flown and embarrassed that she hadn’t given Nate her full attention. Nate ran up to her, eyes aglow from his session, but stopped short at seeing Taylor and Thor at her side. Instantly he grew wary.

“Nate, you did great! I’m so proud of you,” Carson exclaimed. “Come closer, I want you to meet my new friend Taylor. He was a Marine. And guess what? He trains the dolphins.”

Nate looked at his feet without a word.

Taylor didn’t seem the least bothered by Nate’s silence. “Hey, Nate. Do you want to meet Thor?”

Nate looked at the dog. “Is Thor the dog’s name?” Nate asked.

“Yes.”

Nate studied the dog a moment, then asked, “Can I pet him?”

“Sure.”

Nate approached the dog slowly. Thor looked patiently at the boy and remained calm while enduring the petting.

“How much does he weigh?”

“One hundred and twelve pounds of pure muscle,” Taylor answered with a hint of pride. “He loves to swim in the ocean.”