An Alpha's Lightning (Water Bear Shifters 2) (4 page)

Thirty-six hours later, Ace had finished his Coast Guard shift, and managed to sneak in a long stretch of sleep. The shift had been an exhausting one, and Ace had collapsed into bed when he got home. But, after a chance to get some shuteye, and a huge breakfast of bacon and eggs, Ace was feeling rejuvenated. He sat at his kitchen table, sipping on a huge mug of black coffee, and toying with his cell phone.

The number for the rescue center was still listed in his recent outgoing calls. He stared at the digits on the screen for a few long moments, and then hit call.

A woman answered the phone. “San Diego Marine Mammal Rescue Center. This is Mary. How can I help you?”

Ace recognized the voice as belonging to the old lady who worked at the front desk. “Oh, hi there. May I speak to Jade, please?”

There was short pause, and then Mary spoke again. “Give me just a minute and let me check whether she’s here right now. Can I tell her who’s calling?”

Ace grinned to himself. “Sure,” he said. “Tell her it’s Ventura.”

“Uh, okay,” Mary said. “I’ll be right back.”

Ace chuckled as he imagined Mary going up to Jade and telling her some lunatic on the phone was asking for her and saying he had the same name as the whale that had been rescued. About a minute later Jade came on the line.

“Well, hello there, Ventura,” she said with a laugh. “I thought you hated being called that.”

“I do,” Ace said. “But I wanted to get your attention.”

“Well, you have my attention. What’s up?”

“I wanted to know whether you’d wizened up yet and decided to accept my invitation to dinner.”

Jade paused for a moment, and then laughed. “Really, Ace? You think if you just keep asking that I’ll eventually say yes? It doesn’t work that way.”

Ace leaned back in his chair and took a long drag from his coffee mug. “Why not?” he asked. He tried to sound blasé about the situation, but he cared more about the answer than he wanted to admit, even to himself. He wanted to know why, exactly, Jade was refusing to date him. He had never been so quickly brushed off by a woman like this. It irritated him—and it only made him want her more. No one said no to him. He was an alpha, a bear, a legendary panda. She didn’t know what she was refusing.

“You’re just not my type,” Jade’s voice came over the line.

Ace sighed. “That’s not a real answer,” he said.

“Why not?” Jade asked. “It’s the truth.”

“Is it? What is your type, exactly?”

“Not you.”

Ace sighed. “Fine. Can we go to dinner just as friends, then?”

“Nope.”

“Why? Am I not your ‘friend’ type, either?”

Jade laughed. “Come on, Ace. Pretending it’s going to be just hanging out as friends when it’s obvious you want more? That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

“Just tell me why I’m not your type, then. At least let me know why you’re rejecting me so I can work on fixing it.”

“I doubt it’s something you can fix. It was nice talking to you, Ace.”

“Jade, come on—”

The line went dead.

Ace tossed his phone on the table and crossed his arms. What was he supposed to do now? Come up with some romantic gesture to prove that he was worth her time? Ace had never been interested in playing the romance game. He always took good care of a woman he was in a relationship with, but he preferred the direct approach. If he loved a woman, he told her so. If he wanted to date a woman, he told her so. And that life philosophy had worked well for him up to this point. But Jade was going to require some convincing.

If she would just spend a little time with him, damn it, then he felt sure she would come around. But she wouldn’t even agree to go to dinner as friends, so he wasn’t sure how he was going to manage to spend time with her. Ace stared at his coffee mug for a few moments, when, suddenly, it hit him. If he wanted to spend time with Jade, he just needed to go to where she spent the majority of her days.

Ace picked his phone back up and dialed the number for the rescue center again. When Mary answered, Ace made his voice sounds as friendly and upbeat as possible when he spoke.

“Hi, Mary. I was wondering what I would need to do to work as a volunteer at the rescue center.”

* * *

A week later, Jade sat in the charting room at the rescue center. She furrowed her brow as she reviewed records from the rescue center’s current patients, most of which were suffering from malnourishment. The number of seal pups currently in the rescue hospital had become overwhelming. The entire staff was working around the clock to get everything done, but they still needed more help. And rescue requests continued to come in daily for stranded seals. Jade needed more people with vehicles capable of transporting the animals, but none of the staff had trucks. They all drove tiny, eco-friendly cars. Their commitment to the environment was admirable, but it wasn’t doing the stranded seals any favors.

Jade rubbed her forehead as she closed the file of yet another seal pup. Jade had gone before the board of the rescue center last week to beg them for funding for a dedicated rescue vehicle, but the board had refused the request. The large number of seal pups needing to be rescued right now was a fluke occurrence, the board had pointed out. It didn’t make sense to make such a large purchase to deal with a situation that was temporary. Jade had tried to explain that the vehicle would continue to be useful long after the last of this year’s crop of seal pups had been rescued. But the board had remained impassive, telling Jade to get creative.

Jade frowned. Get creative? How? It’s not like she could manufacture a vehicle out of thin air. She had already contacted local animal shelters and law enforcement agencies to ask whether anyone had a vehicle they could borrow. No luck.

A knock on the charting room door startled Jade out of her musings. She sat up in her chair and glanced in the direction of the door. “Come in,” she called out. When the door opened, Mary poked her head into the room. Jade smiled and waved at Mary. The old woman was friendly and warm, and one of the kindest people Jade had ever met.

“Hello, dear. Sorry to bother you, but I have someone here I think you’ll be interested in talking to.”

“Don’t be silly, Mary. You’re never a bother. Who’s the person?”

“A man called last week and asked about volunteering with the rescue center. He attended the volunteer orientation and training last Tuesday night, and I talked to him for a bit during the break. He mentioned that he has a truck, and I know you’d been looking for one to help with the rescues. I asked him to come by today and talk to you or one of the other rescue coordinators.”

Jade perked up. “Mary, that’s awesome. He’s here now?”

Mary nodded. “He’s waiting out in the lobby. Should I tell him you’re coming?”

“Yes, please!” Jade said, already gathering up the charts she had been reviewing to return them to the shelf. “I’ll be out in just a minute.”

Mary disappeared, heading back for the front entrance. Jade quickly put away all of the paperwork she had pulled out, and practically ran down the hallway toward the front of the building. If this guy really had a truck they could use, it would take such a huge load off of her mind.

Jade threw open the door that led to the front lobby, then stopped in her tracks when she saw Ace sitting there.

“You?” she asked, crossing her arms and shaking her head in a mixture of embarrassment and amusement. If Ace had a truck that she could use, she was just going to have to get over the uncomfortable fact that she had rejected his requests for a date on more than one occasion. She needed his help.

“Yes, me,” Ace said. “I hear you need a truck for your rescue efforts. I have one, and offered to drive it as a volunteer for the rescue center. Or am I not your “type” of volunteer, either?”

Jade gave Ace a sheepish smile. “I’d say you’re exactly my type, when it comes to volunteers.”

“Good. Glad that’s settled. I generally have one to two days off from the Coast Guard every week. I’d be happy to come up here and help with animal rescues on those days. When do you want me to start?”

Before Jade could answer, the radio clipped to her hip buzzed, and a voice called over it. “Jade? We’ve got another potential stranded seal pup on Torrey Pines State Beach.”

Jade pulled the radio off her hip, then arched an eyebrow in Ace’s direction. “What about starting right now.”

Ace grinned. “I’ll go warm up the truck.”

Ten minutes later, Jade was sitting in the passenger seat next to Ace, explaining to him the procedures for rescuing the seal.

“We always try to return the animal to the ocean right away, if possible,” Jade said. “But if they need medical care, which has been the case with most of the seal pups lately, then we catch them with a net and put them in a plastic kennel for the ride back to the rescue center. They’ll be evaluated by one of the veterinarians there, who will come up with a treatment plan. If all goes well, the animal will recover and be released back into the wild. The babies usually have to stay with us for a significant stretch of time, though. They can’t survive alone in the wild without their mothers.”

Jade glanced at the profile of Ace’s face as he drove. His chin once again had just a hint of stubble on it, which accented his strong jaw line. He kept his eyes on the road, nodding occasionally as he listened to Jade’s instructions. When she had finished talking, and finished answering his questions, the pair fell silent. Jade let herself steal several more glances in Ace’s direction. She couldn’t help herself—despite her insistence to him that he wasn’t her type, he definitely made her swoon.

Jade sighed as she felt her heart beating faster. She forced herself to look away from Ace and out the passenger window. She mindlessly watched the houses passing by, and tried to keep her thoughts on the rescue task in front of her.

Ace proved to be an excellent sidekick for a seal rescue. Most volunteers were nervous around the scared, wounded animals, which tended to thrash about wildly and bare their teeth at you in an unmistakably threatening manner. But Ace remained levelheaded, and his presence alone even seemed to have a strangely calming effect on the seal. Jade chalked it up to his Coast Guard training. No doubt, he had hundreds of hours of experience with remaining calm in tense situations. Dealing with an angry seal pup probably didn’t come close to the stress of flying rescue missions in stormy weather.

Over the next two weeks, Ace had a total of five days off from his Coast Guard job, and he spent each one of them assisting with rescuing seal pups. Jade halfheartedly told him he should take a break or he was going to burn himself out, but he brushed her off and said he was enjoying the work. Jade secretly felt relieved. She was beginning to wonder how they had managed to keep things afloat at the center before Ace came along. She knew Ace had decided to help so that he had an excuse to spend more time around her, but she didn’t care at this point. She needed his help, and, besides, she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy spending time with him, too.

In fact, she hated admitting to herself just how much she was enjoying spending time with him. He had a dry sense of humor that she appreciated, and he was a good conversationalist. He seemed to know a lot about many different subjects, so no matter what Jade felt like talking about, he was able to keep up. She was falling for him, and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself. On the days that Ace was working a Coast Guard shift, she found herself staring up at the sky any time she heard a helicopter rushing by, wondering if it was him.

Thursday night was one of those days. It was the third day in a row, in fact, that he’d been on duty at the Coast Guard air station. Jade, as usual, had spent over fourteen hours at the rescue center that day, chipping in wherever needed to keep things afloat. By eleven p.m., though, her work for the day was finally done. Instead of going home right away, she walked to the back of the hospital, where a grassy hill bordered the edges of the animal pens. Jade tiptoed past the sleeping seals, shivering slightly in the cool evening air despite the sweatshirt she was wearing. Noiselessly, she lay down on her back in the grass and looked up at the skies. She wished she could see more stars, but the lights from San Diego and the surrounding suburbs drowned out all but the very brightest of them. Jade breathed in deeply, taking a moment to savor the calm after a long, tiring day. A few puffy clouds floated by here and there in the darkness, but the skies were relatively clear tonight. The winds were low, too, which meant Jade worried a little less about whether Ace would be okay if he had to take the helicopter out on a rescue mission.

Jade sighed. She couldn’t escape the worry, could she? She had refused to date Ace for this very reason. But he had quickly become one of her best friends, and the only thing keeping them from becoming a couple was her stubbornness. They had great chemistry, and even the other volunteers and staff at the rescue center had noticed. Jade got a teasing poke from someone at the rescue center anytime Ace showed up to volunteer. She pushed away the hints, and insisted that there was nothing romantic going on between them.

Jade allowed herself, for the umpteenth time that day, to let Ace’s handsome face run across her mind’s eye. She fantasized all the time about saying “to heck with it” and just giving things a go with Ace. She was already worrying about him as a friend, so why not take things to the next level? Why not push aside her fears and finally allow herself some happiness?