by Becky Wicks
‘You still won’t talk to me?’
She could tell by the look on his face that she’d hit a nerve, or touched on something she wasn’t supposed to know about. She continued, softer this time. Whatever it was that he didn’t want to talk about had clearly affected him deeply and her heart went out to him suddenly.
‘Look, I wouldn’t have had Emmie if you hadn’t broken things off with me, so how I can regret that, really? But you need to tell me what happened.’
‘Dad refused to pay—or let Mum pay—for me to study in Edinburgh when he got out of prison, Jodie,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t want you to waste your life waiting around for me in case I never made it.’
Her hand came up over her mouth before she had to grip the side of the boat again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t want anyone’s help either, you know what I was like. I thought I could figure things out, but then you got pregnant and Casper told me not to go to you.’
The boat started rocking harder in the wind. Jodie’s hair lashed her face but she swiped at it, zoning in on Cole. ‘Wait... Casper told you that?’
Her knuckles were white. Her throat turned as dry as parchment. She felt sick, and not because of the sea, although it didn’t help. ‘Why couldn’t you have come sooner?’
Cole looked anguished. ‘I wish I could explain. It was a difficult time, Jodie. I thought you’d be better off without me.’
‘Well, I wasn’t.’ Jodie couldn’t stand it. ‘Ethan and I had an agreement, Cole. His dad was on the verge of winning his constituency seat again, and he didn’t need a teenage pregnancy right in the middle of his campaign. Ethan’s and my parents offered us support to finish our degrees, but only if we married, so we made it legal and carried on with our studies too, but we always knew we’d get divorced once we graduated.’
Cole’s fists were clenched. ‘So you got married for some rich, upper-class guy’s political gain.’
‘No one forced me into anything, Cole. I was just so in love with you I didn’t care what happened to me!’
Cole crossed the boat on his knees towards her, at the same time she went him, and the boat rocked so hard she let out a shriek that dissolved in his mouth as they met in a kiss. He fisted her hair in bunches and her hands fumbled at the buttons on his jeans.
Then...
Over his shoulder, gulls were squawking, circling something under the surface. Jodie sprang away and sat up straighter. ‘Cole, look!’
Dolphins’ fins were skimming the water, one followed by another, then another, making a glistening whirlpool in the sunlight. She gripped the boat side in awe. ‘This was what you brought me here to see?’
Cole’s eyes were fixed on the horizon behind his sunglasses, surveying the dolphins’ frenzied swimming. They were starting to create a frothy white foam on the water. ‘There’s usually ten or eleven around this time of day,’ he told her. ‘They know this boat by now. I come out here to read. Normally they swim right over.’
Yanking his sweater straight again, he crossed the benches with two strides and crouched in the bow. Adrenaline flooded her as he took a moment to observe the situation. Then he gestured to the driver’s seat, urging her to steer. ‘Jodie, get us over there.’
* * *
The fishing net was tangled around the dolphin calf’s nose and dorsal fin. There was no boat in sight but the net could have come in on the tide and cost this creature its life.
‘Cole, we have to do something.’ Jodie echoed his thoughts beside him. She was hauling the net in with him over the side, splashing ice-cold seawater all over herself as they tried and failed to raise the tangled dolphin higher.
Cole was fuming inside. This was something he’d never seen before. He would never have expected this around the lighthouse, these waters were supposed to be protected.
‘Grab that box under the driver’s seat,’ he said to her when they couldn’t raise the net any higher. ‘The net’s stuck on something, I need the knife.’
He figured the dolphin pod had been sending his boat a plea for help by not coming over to him, like they normally did. One or two were calves, including the one in the net, and the rest were eleven-foot adults. He knew them all by sight but he’d never seen them behave like this.
An adult female prodded the air with her nose, coming up alongside him and squeaking in earnest as he worked the oar to bring the net up to the surface. Her body language told him she was distraught; this must be the mother.
Standing up, he started taking off his shirt.
‘What are you doing?’ Jodie slid him the medical kit. ‘It’s too cold...’
‘We’ll have to cut the calf out of the net and we can’t do it from here.’
‘Then I’ll do it,’ she said, undoing her jeans quickly.
He put a hand on her wrist quickly, seeing the goosebumps on her arms. ‘Jodie, you’re not getting in the water.’
She pulled back in defiance, unbuttoning her shirt. The gulls above them were deafening. ‘You need to be up here to help pull me up and steer,’ she said. ‘I’m smaller, I’ll also dry quicker, but you’ll have to keep me warm.’
‘OK, some of that is logical,’ he said, but in a flash she was naked apart from matching black underwear and kicking her jeans aside. She took the knife he was holding and stepped onto the seat. He was too distracted by what he was seeing to stop her jumping in. ‘Jodie, you’ll get tangled in the net...’
‘It’s OK,’ she said, gasping for a second at the shock of the icy water. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she lied.
The dolphins surrounded her. For a second he worried they might do something out of fear, but he knew they trusted him as he’d been coming here for a year or so, observing their behaviour while they were observing his. It was why he’d bought the boat. But he wouldn’t let her do this alone, even though she thought she could.
He dropped the anchor quickly, made sure the tiny ladder was down in the water. In seconds, Cole was stripped bare and in the water beside her.
‘Help me hold it, like this,’ he said, coming up alongside her. The milky white of her flesh in the water could probably be seen for miles but she wasn’t complaining if she was cold.
They had the net under control in seconds, but the poor calf was still struggling below them. They had to take it in turns to dive under with the knife and carve away at the nets for as long as their breath would last.
To his surprise, the dolphins started breaching and pirouetting around them and the boat. He forgot how cold he was as he took his eighth or ninth dive with the knife.
By the time the last tangle of rope was cut away, Jodie’s lips were blue, but her eyes were enchanted when the calf wriggled free and swam around them. Cole tossed the knife back into the boat. He knew they were running on adrenaline, and he had to get them out of the water, quickly.
‘Do you think she’ll be OK?’ Jodie asked, from the ladder. Her knuckles were white, her thighs and arms prickled with cold, but she still wasn’t grumbling at all. He had never seen her look more beautiful than she was at this moment.
‘She wasn’t cut up...she was lucky,’ he said, hitting the deck after her. ‘And they’ll stay away from fishing nets from now on.’ He yanked at a pile of blankets and towels at his feet and cocooned her in them.
His brain was still swimming as he hauled the rest of the net up into the boat. It was heavy and his arms were tired. The ropes lashed his skin as he tossed them roughly under the bow. He’d dispose of them where they couldn’t cause any more harm. And he’d find out where those nets came from if it meant he had to call everyone he knew.
As he steered the boat, a squeal pulled his eyes from the horizon. The mother dolphin was following. She raced ahead and breached at the bow, sending a shower up over them and forcing Jodie to hide in her blankets.
‘She’s saying thank you,’ he told
her as she erupted into laughter. ‘She knows you now. She knows you helped her baby.’
‘We both did.’ Jodie had stood up and was shaking against him with the cold as well as with laughter, and his arm looped around her, shielding her from the sea spray. The coast guard was coming up now. The car he’d called for was waiting up ahead already. He’d come back for the horses when Jodie was safe and dry.
Thanks to Jodie’s quick actions and the dolphin’s trust in him, they had both changed the fate of that calf—he knew the pod wouldn’t have trusted the coast guard like they did him, and they’d cut the net faster together anyway.
‘The dolphins will never forget what just happened,’ he told her, daring to hold her tighter and drop a kiss on the top of her head.
‘Neither will I,’ she said, and he almost told her he loved her, but he didn’t. He’d already broken his promise not to make a move—not that she hadn’t reciprocated.
They cruised towards the coast, which felt like coming out of a storm somehow, but Cole’s adrenaline was still spiked hours later, after learning why she’d married Ethan.
* * *
The next few days of duties seemed to drag as Jodie went off with various media and staff members at Everleigh, and he continued with his appointments. He found himself looking forward to the next time the sound of her boots would echo out in the hallways, or her laughter would spill from the kitchen.
On the boat he’d told Jodie what she needed to know about his dad holding him back from going to Edinburgh, but somehow he hadn’t been able to discuss the part about him being a lousy, abusive, violent man who’d threatened him with such terrible things. A cloud of shame for his former cowardly self seemed to follow him around permanently. He had never told anyone. What would Jodie think of him if he told her now?
All she had ever done had been to love him, but instead of protecting her from being hurt, like he’d tried to, he’d sent her straight to Ethan to be turned into some political pawn, manipulated by two sets of parents who should have known better.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THEIR DOLPHIN RESCUE off the coast made the news as soon as word from the coast guard got out, but Jodie hadn’t told anyone why she’d jumped into the water first.
The truth was she’d panicked at the thought of Cole not coming up again, for whatever reason. She’d actively put herself first this time. The water had been freezing but she hadn’t cared.
She’d almost told him she loved him as they’d sped back to land on the boat. Maybe she had still been high on adrenaline. The words had entered her brain and floated around, and made her heart ache to be heard, but they hadn’t made it out of her mouth. She’d done enough to complicate things already.
She didn’t want to press Cole for more answers about the past, but it was clear his pride had taken a hit over his family’s dire financial status back then, and their wires had got crossed. And she hadn’t exactly been honest with him before now about why she’d married Ethan. But she couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he was still hiding something else, that she might have only touched the tip of the iceberg.
Thoughts of what to do next with Emmie were still heavy on her mind. Jodie had to ask herself whether Everleigh really was the right place for Emmie if she decided not to sell.
* * *
One morning she paid a visit to Green Vale, Toby’s school. He was giving a presentation to his class about the Everleigh animals.
‘You’re the woman who was with Cole Crawford and the dolphins! What brings you here today?’ asked a woman in a yellow shirt bearing a nametag that said Hetty.
The main hall at Green Vale was a bustling dome, with seats made of straw bales. The kids all had fifteen minutes each for their presentations.
‘I suppose I’m interested in seeing whether my daughter might...be a good fit here,’ Jodie admitted to Hetty, watching the scene. She had been thinking about this progressive school more and more since Cole and Toby both spoke of the place so highly.
‘My daughter is friends with Toby over there,’ she told Hetty. Toby was getting ready to make his speech on the makeshift stage. She liked the vibe in the place already, people seemed happy. It wasn’t like she’d had a chance to speak to Emmie about any potential long-term move to Dorset, she was merely looking around, garnering information to take back with her.
‘Toby’s a great student, love his energy. Did you see this, by the way?’
Hetty held out her phone to her. Jodie’s throat dried up instantly. It was a photo, just posted on a local news site, of Cole’s boat...way out in the distance, thank goodness. Jodie’s face flushed. She could just make out the blurry shape of a man and a woman on board.
‘Am I right thinking that’s Cole Crawford’s boat?’ Hetty eyed her sideways. ‘And I’m not being funny, because what you did for the dolphin was brave...but were you both naked?’
‘Not quite—but it was the only way to help,’ Jodie told her, as poised as she could manage it. ‘Was that posted anonymously?’ she asked.
‘Looks like it. So you’re a couple?’ Hetty asked curiously.
‘We’re working together at Everleigh Estate,’ she replied tactfully. ‘I’m a vet.’
‘Another vet! The perfect pair. He’s a mysterious one, always keeps himself to himself. Everyone here’s been wondering what kind of a woman would win his heart.’
Jodie didn’t quite know what else to say, the woman was practically gushing over Cole. It annoyed her as much as it amused her.
The boat was too far away from the camera to tell for sure if they were clothed or not in the photo. She’d already spoken to a reporter herself, but it made her slightly uncomfortable knowing someone else had taken a photo like that and published it.
You couldn’t make out any details, she reassured herself as she excused herself and took her seat.
She tried to focus on Toby and his puppy plan. They had a lot of puppy photos on the social feed suddenly, and Cole had taken a call last night about another rescue horse. Things seemed to be picking up again after Casper’s death.
Over the course of the next year she and Cole would work together with the contractors and local land management to build more shelters and stables, hire more staff—technicians, vets, another receptionist and an office manager just for the rescues. Jodie knew Cole would happily start as soon as possible—he’d even brought it up as they were both so encouraged by their progress with Blaze.
But while she had given her go-ahead to the plans, she couldn’t commit to being on the ground herself yet, not until she’d spoken to Emmie and Ethan. And as for her and Cole...
What were she and Cole now, apart from partners in Everleigh? The rumour mill was spinning but they seemed to be playing a dangerous game, tumbling into each other then taking a step back to process. He was giving her space, no pressure, but the more he did that, the more she wanted to pounce on him again.
‘This is how Cole Crawford gets a horse to stop bucking.’ Toby’s voice jolted her out of her thoughts. A video of Cole was up on the screen, larger than life, as though she’d just summoned him.
From the looks on the parents’ faces, Jodie had a feeling most people in the area already knew about Cole’s unique gifts. She felt another flutter of pride in her belly and couldn’t help but smile. The kids were engrossed—they clearly all loved animals here, just like Emmie did.
When the presentations were over, she headed for Toby. ‘Cole would be proud of you,’ she said, taking the wriggling six-week-old beagle-cross puppy from his hands.
‘I am...very proud.’ Cole’s voice behind her made her spin around.
‘Have you been here the whole time?’ she asked him in surprise, noting Ziggy at his feet. People around them were already recognising him, milling around like he was some sort of handsome celebrity. Hetty was staring from the lemonade stand, trying to make it look like she was
n’t.
Cole cleared his throat. ‘Came in a few minutes late. Sorry, had an issue with a lamb out by Abbotsbury.’
He gave Toby a high five then slung his arm around Jodie’s shoulders, making her freeze in shock. ‘I loved watching your face, when you saw the video of me,’ he whispered in her ear, so discreetly that only she could hear.
In spite of her fluttering heart she held the puppy close and joined in with Cole making polite conversation with the people all around them. He hadn’t touched her in public before now, not even in the farmhouse kitchen. If he was trying to make a point in front of everyone or create some more public buzz around them to stop her selling up and leaving a spinning rumour mill in her wake...she should have cared, deeply. She should have been offended. She was only here for Emmie—wasn’t that obvious?
But to her surprise it was starting to feel good, his steady presence, the way he was opening up to her. Not enough perhaps, but little by little. There were things only she knew about Cole Crawford. And things only he knew about her.
She reminded herself she shouldn’t care if they’d been seen out there at Portland Bill together, or anywhere else. It was no one’s business but hers...but she still couldn’t help wondering who’d taken the photo.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WAS THREE-TEN a.m. when Jodie woke with a start. She was in Cole’s bed and for a second she allowed herself to feel good, not guilty, about how a cosy fireside dinner in the farmhouse had somehow ended with them tearing each other’s clothes off again in the cabin. Then she saw his side of the bed was empty. Cole was gone.
