I let a giggle escape.
“God, you’re so hot,” he moaned. “And you still have too many clothes on.” He worked at the zipper on my shorts.
I wanted to pull them off, be the one taking charge, but it felt so good to be seduced.
After a bit of fumbling, he’d slid them off, and his own boxers, and held himself erect over me in the dim light, looking down at me. With those eyes.
Then he was kissing me again, drugging me with his slow, butter-melting kisses that left me panting. But this time, he didn’t stop. The intensity built until I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think.
Just feel.
Until, in the heat of the night, I lost all control.
Chapter Four
I awoke in a groggy haze of contentment.
Dalton lay beside me. When I moved, he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tight. “Let’s do that every night,” he whispered.
“And twice on Sundays,” I said before I could catch the words from escaping my mouth.
Oh no. I recognized the feelings. All the warm fuzzies and soft shivers. I thought for sure he’d slink out the door. Or I’d want to. I’d been counting on it. Easier to avoid all the awkwardness that way.
What do I do with this?
“I can’t believe you made me wait so long, but, oh my—” he kissed me on my neck “—you were worth the wait.”
I smiled. My cheeks flushed pink.
“God, you’re so beautiful.”
“You already got me into bed. You don’t have to keep up with the compliments,” I said dryly.
He pulled away and pushed himself up onto his elbow. “What? Is that what you think?” He looked hurt. “I’ve just been trying to get you into bed?”
“Well, no. Well, yeah, but no.”
He shook his head. “You are something. I don’t even know right now if I should be insulted or what.”
“No,” I said, regretting my words. “It’s me. Really.” How’d I screw this up already? “That’s not what I meant.”
“Well, what did you mean?”
What did I mean? “I just…you’re always…”
“You need to learn how to take a compliment.” He seemed satisfied with his conclusion.
“You’re right,” I said. “That’s it. That’s all.”
He kissed me on my forehead, rolled out of bed, and got dressed. “I gotta get to work. I’ll see you this afternoon on the boat.”
“Yeah.” I wrapped the sheet around me and headed into my bathroom. The fluorescent light flickered to life and I stared at my reflection in the rusty mirror.
“Oh crap,” I said to the woman facing me. “What were you thinking? Now everything will change.”
Maybe I should call Chris.
God no. The last thing I needed was more advice from him.
Chris was my best friend. He’d been the one to encourage this relationship. But he’d never understand. He’d give up anything for love.
I shook my head. Nope. Not calling him. I knew what he’d say. We love who we love. All that crap.
But this wasn’t love anyway. Simple case of lust taking over my brain. It had just been too long, that’s all. Work had been crazy. I’d almost gotten killed a couple times recently. I needed a little release. That’s all.
To the reflection, I said, “Don’t make more of it than what it is.”
I couldn’t think about this now.
After a quick shower, I stepped into some shorts and a tank top and was off to work.
Kerrie had me sorting fin photos again. Not exactly the kind of work to keep your mind off things. What had I been thinking? I should not have done that. But, omigod, wow. I knew that man could kiss, but, yikes. My head was still spinning, the two sides at odds. My logical brain said, stop this right now. The other part of my brain couldn’t focus at all, thinking only of his body and mine, together. Whew.
And now, right after lunch, I’d be on the dive boat, and expected to focus, to learn more about the dolphins, pay attention and watch for criminals. But I’d be there with Dalton. I caught my breath. Yeah, this was bad.
Get a grip. Like he said, we can have sex as much as we want. In our undercover roles, we could play lovers. No problem. It wasn’t a big deal. And people managed the friends-with-benefits thing all the time.
At one thirty, Natalie stopped by the office to pick up the video equipment and we headed for the marina together.
As we walked down the dock toward the boat, I noticed Dalton and the captain were already on board. I drew in a breath and steeled myself. Act normal.
“Ooooh, so that’s the new divemaster,” Natalie said with a mischievous grin. “He’s nice on the eyes.”
My jaw muscles tightened. I needed to get ahead of this. “Yeah, we, uh, met yesterday, on the beach, and kinda hit it off.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Really?”
“I mean, who knows if anything—”
“No need to say more,” she said with a knowing grin. “I’ve got the message.”
Kerrie came up behind us with more gear. “Are you ready?” she asked me.
“Sure am,” I said.
We carried the gear on board the dive boat and Natalie showed me where it gets stowed.
Dalton introduced himself to Kerrie and Natalie.
“And good afternoon to you,” he said to me with a wink.
I blushed twelve shades of red. What the hell? Get it together, McVie.
Captain Ron, a man in his late forties with sun-weathered skin, thinning hair tied back into a ponytail, and a mustache in dire need of a trim, was at the helm. We pulled away from the slip to move the boat around to another dock where the snorkelers waited to be picked up.
“Are you excited?” Dalton whispered to me.
I nodded.
“Me too. I can’t wait for tonight.” He buried his face in my hair and found my ear. “We should skip dinner and go right to dessert.”
Something fluttered around in my stomach like a damn butterfly. I couldn’t respond.
“You all right?” he asked, concern in his eyes.
“Yeah, of course.” I gave him a little shrug.
“You just…” He frowned. “You’re not alright.”
“I’m fine. What could be wrong?”
The boat nudged the dock fenders. Dalton moved away from me to toss the line around the post. As soon as he had it tied, he turned back to me. “We should talk.”
“I’m fine,” I said and gave him a big smile. I was. Really.
The boat held seats for twelve snorkelers, plus room for the crew. The sunburned tourists filed onboard, one at a time and found their seats.
“Oh my gosh! I can’t believe it.” A female voice.
I swung around. A woman, my age, maybe a little older, with long, straight dark hair and strikingly-beautiful eyes stared at Dalton with her mouth hanging open. One hand dropped to her belly—she must have been about seven months pregnant—while the other nudged her husband.
The man looked right at Dalton. “Sumbitch. Dalton. I didn’t know you were working here in The Bahamas.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dalton said with his usual calm demeanor. But this could be a problem—people who knew him from real life, or worse, a previous op. “Yeah, I’m a divemaster now.”
The woman shook her head with confusion. “I thought you were—”
“No, that didn’t really work out.”
She looked even more confused. Obviously, she knew Dalton personally, but didn’t seem to understand that he might be undercover.
Dalton looked at her, down at her belly. “I see you’re—” His eyes snapped back to her husband. “I didn’t know you two were…together.”
“Yeah, I, uh, tried to call you, but, uh, couldn’t catch up with you. You know, we kinda lost touch.”
Dalton nodded, a little more than normal.
The woman stared at Dalton in a curious way.
“Honey, let’s not hold things up,” the man said to hi
s wife, urging her to a seat. “Sit down there. We’ve got the whole boat ride to catch up.”
I came up beside Dalton before they could step away. “Old friends?” I asked.
He lowered his voice. “Rod’s a SEAL. I’ve known him since boot camp.”
“Ah,” I nodded to Rod in greeting. He looked like a SEAL. Similar build as Dalton. Fit. Big arms. “Nice to meet you.”
I looked to the woman. She offered her hand. “And I’m Alison. Dalton’s ex-wife.”
Uh, what? Wife?
I stared at her. Had no words. No undercover training had prepared me to hide my reaction.
She looked from me to Dalton, then back to me. “Oh, so you two are a couple?” She grinned with the knowledge.
“Did you say wife?” My eyes snapped to Dalton’s.
He shifted his stance. “You know, right now is probably not the time—”
Saved by the Captain. He hushed the crowd, asking everyone to get seated, then gave a quick overview of the location of life jackets and other safety features before we pulled away from the dock.
I hoped I wouldn’t need that information because I didn’t hear a word of it.
Married. Dalton never mentioned having been married. He never said anything about an ex-wife. Did he? No, I would have remembered that. Should I have asked? I don’t know. Seems like something you’d include in conversations sometime before sex. Maybe?
An ex-wife. And now, married to an old friend. And pregnant.
I watched him for any sign of what he was feeling. I’m not sure why; Dalton never gave his feelings away. He could hide anything. That’s what made him so good at this job. He’d take a secret to his grave. Of that, I was sure.
Me, well, I was still working on that skill. Everything I’m thinking seems to play out on my face, at least when it comes to personal issues.
I couldn’t help staring at her. She was stunning. Long dark hair and hazel-green eyes. She had the legs of a dancer and perfect skin. Definitely the kind of woman you’d expect on Dalton’s arm. Unlike me, with my crazy, do-whatever-it-wants hair and my boyish figure. And she had a glow about her. Some women, when pregnant, get that look of misery, as though every movement pains them. Her rosy cheeks and pleasant smile made her seem utterly content, as though her most joyous contribution to the world was to bear beautiful babies.
Is that what Dalton wanted? A child? He’d never mentioned it. We’d never talked about that at all. Marriage. A family. Kids. Was he hurting right now seeing her pregnant? And with an old friend?
I never thought of him that way. A dad. Until yesterday. And then I’d learned he had two siblings. Something else I didn’t know about him.
My stomach twisted into a weird shape. A shape of worry. Had she crushed his heart? Was that why he was so aloof? So…the Dalton I thought I knew.
Or had he hurt her? I suddenly felt like I didn’t know him at all.
I tried not to stare. At her or him.
But I noticed, as we rounded the buoy at the end of the harbor, that he casually walked by, leaned into her, and whispered in her ear. He was probably telling her he was undercover, to be careful with her questions. Would he reveal that? She was his ex-wife, after all. Certainly telling her was a better option than letting her blow our cover. She obviously wasn’t involved with whatever was going on with the dolphins here. She and Rod could be informed of his need for secrecy without compromising the op. Assuming they’d respect his situation.
Natalie came up beside me and whispered, “Well, that was awkward.”
I shrugged. “No matter. I hardly know him.”
“Right,” she said. “But still.”
I busied myself helping the other passengers fit their masks and fins as we headed out to sea.
Kerrie hung onto the back of the Captain’s chair and addressed the group over the rumble of the engine as the boat moved through the waves.
“So, who here has ever seen a dolphin before?”
A few hands went up.
“In the wild?”
The hands went down.
“I guarantee, this will be an experience like no other. I’m excited to share it with you today. Though of course, I must be clear. These are wild animals and wild animals don’t always cooperate.”
Kinda like children, I thought.
“Hopefully we’ll find some today and they’ll be in a playful mood. I want to start with a little overview about dolphins and dolphin behavior. You might not know, but dolphins are mammals, just like us. They’re warm-blooded, breathe air, and have live young, which they nurse, and they even have some hair.”
This brought some surprised looks around the group of faces.
“Dolphins are toothed-whales. But their teeth aren’t like ours. They have a single row of teeth that are all alike. They mainly use them for grabbing fish, not chewing. Does anyone know the land animal who’s the closest living relative to dolphins?”
“Land?” someone said.
“Believe it or not, it’s the hippopotamus.” That brought more surprised looks. “The dolphins we know of today have existed in their current form for about five million years. As they evolved, their front limbs became flippers.” She held up her own arm as an example. “They have the same bones in those flippers as we have in our arms and hands.”
“How fast can they swim?” someone asked.
“They can swim as fast as twenty-five miles per hour in bursts,” she said. “They move through the water using a single muscular peduncle, that’s the long part of the tail, and their flukes work like a paddle.
“Today, we are most likely to see the Atlantic spotted dolphin, but we may come across some bottlenose dolphins. Here in Bimini, the spotted dolphins are more easily approached and tolerant of our presence in the water.”
One woman raised her hand, looking worried. “I’ve heard that dolphins are known to rape people.”
I stared at the woman in disbelief. Was she serious?
Kerrie clearly had encountered this myth before. “There’s no need to worry. We’ve never had any kind of incident in the wild that would suggest any truth in that. I’m sure that idea has been perpetuated by the many swim programs, where captive dolphins are forced to interact with the participants in ways that are counter to their natural behavior, particularly the popular activity of women wanting selfies with the dolphins. That kind of close contact can be aggravating for them and they can become quite upset. But rape behavior, that’s just not…” She shook her head.
“I have a question.” It was Alison, the ex-wife, her hand in the air. “What are the threats to these dolphins? I mean, are they healthy here?”
“That’s a good question,” Kerrie said. “This is a healthy population, as far as we can tell. In the years we’ve been studying this group, they’ve shown a normal birth and mortality rate, and their overall body conditions are good.”
That was interesting. If the scientists considered this community of dolphins healthy, why were we here? The stranding incident was obviously a problem, but that was typically a rare occurrence and probably didn’t need to be mentioned to a bunch of tourists. But she could be lying about the overall health of the dolphin population to keep the tourists coming. Mental note: follow up on that one.
“The biggest threat is noise in the ocean,” she went on. “These animals are highly sensitive to sound. The main way they experience the world and understand their surroundings is by the use of echolocation. They send out sound waves and read the echoes to visualize, or perceive, the three-dimensional world. Their ability to do this is absolutely astounding. Their perception is incredibly accurate. Not only can they determine shapes in space, they can also identify the substance. For example, whether it’s made of rock or metal.”
“But can they talk to each other?” someone else asked.
“Well, that’s the main focus of our research here. What we know for sure, is that they are able to communicate with each other. Whether they use a language, as defined
in the traditional way, is yet to be determined. Natalie, my research assistant”—Natalie gave the group a wave—“has also been studying their interactions and determining relationships. We are establishing the family tree, so to speak.”
Alison piped up again. “You’re able to cross match DNA samples?”
“Oh, no,” Kerrie said, shaking her head. “Our study here is noninvasive. We never touch the dolphins for anything. All our data are collected through visual observation. We’ve been at it long enough to connect mothers and calves, so maternal lineage, and then we track their social relationships.”
“Off the starboard bow,” the Captain shouted.
Kerrie swung around. “How many?”
“Ten, maybe twelve.”
She grinned. “Get your masks on.”
Chapter Five
“Okay, everyone. Please remember rule number one: absolutely do not touch the dolphins. Their skin is extremely sensitive. They don’t like it. Also, if we see anyone chasing a dolphin, we’ll pull you out of the water. Got it?”
Heads nodded as the tourists, clad in brightly-colored fins and masks, plopped into the water off the stern, two at a time. Kerrie scowled. She’d made a point of asking people to gently enter the water.
Natalie toted the video gear and told me to go ahead and enjoy my first experience without worrying about the equipment.
I admit, I was thrilled by her generous offer, and anxious to be with the dolphins.
Dolphins had always been a favorite animal of mine. As a child, they seemed like magical, mythical beings and had a grip on my imagination. Though some so-called-scientists claim they are no more intelligent than dogs, which are pretty darn intelligent, I say we can’t accurately assess such a thing. At least not until we can agree on the definition of intelligence.
As soon as I was in the water, I put my head under and looked around. The indigo blue world shimmered with shafts of sunlight that streaked across the sandy bottom. Two dolphins shot by, swimming on their sides with their bellies facing me. They zoomed by so fast, I almost missed them.
Operation Dolphin Spirit Page 4
